Sunday, January 09, 2011
City Twins
Yeah yeah yea happy new year and whatever and all. I’m working my ass off these days and it took me three days to steam-clean the kitchen floor and these are the times that try men’s souls, and not only that but find them guilty and put them on a freaking labor gang. So far 2011 is all that it was ever cracked up to be by all of history’s greatest cracks. Including myself. So let’s take a moment of sober reflection. I could just post adorable photos of my kids, or inspirational ones of a huge iron ball smashing into a bus terminal, but for some reason that seems like the wrong choice right now. I’m gritting my teeth right up through the eardrums but some people have it worse than I do. I’ve decided to hone in on some of them. For your cheerful first-of-the-year post, I urge you to visit the rest of the interweb. If you’ve already got that taken care of, you might be ready for this.
Iconic, is what they are. Two blond sweetheart-types, impeccably styled, identical down to their genes - identical twins, marketed to a T, always appearing together in their replicated character, grinning up from local periodicals or down from billboards. They played to the hometown crowd but began to appear less frequently as time inevitably caught up with them. They aren’t so regularly seen around town anymore but they still come out for the holidays or around Easter, to totter along a block or two of Union Square or Union Street. I saw them myself on Stockton Street, I think, a few Decembers ago - wizened but unswerving, they supported each other and minced their way though an uncaring holiday crowd that barely bothered to sidestep them, much less to bestow on them the recognition they seemed, behind their timid, anachronistic smiles, to seek. They were fixtures, to a certain mainstream midcentury bay area demographic. Up and coming whippersnappers might not even recognize them anymore, just two old blonds in matching suits. Marian and Vivian Brown - the famous San Francisco twins. Iconic, they were, I tell you. If somebody mentions the SF twins, they’re who you’re supposed to think of.
Lately, this simple matter has gotten a bit more complicated for me, though. Give me an icon and I’ll find a way to complicate it as a matter of basic policy. So too for the twins. Ask me about the Famous Twins and I’ll think of the Browns. But just mention “San Francisco Twins” and these days I’ll likely flash on a very different pair of matriarchs.
In the blocks around my office, and downtown generally, I have come to notice a couple of elderly women. They’re occasionally together, walking close and talking secretively, so I know there’s two of them. Otherwise I’d just rack it up to an inconsistent recollective capacity, since the two look quite a bit but not completely alike. Some of it’s in their styling, too, but maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me introduce you properly to the San Francisco street twins:
There are two of them, as I’ve mentioned, and I’d put them into their seventh decade, though a gentleman never asks. Undoubtedly they could be much younger - the streets are hard on one’s complexion. They wear mid-length overcoats over plain dresses, and stand in them as if apologizing to their own clothes. They carry green canvas totes from a major pharmacy chain. Their faces are typically lightly made-up and their hair is auburn and invariably neatly combed, straight with bangs - so invariant and consistent for them both that I seriously suspect they’re wearing wigs, but it’s hard to tell because both wear kerchiefs over their heads in a way that seems less modest than embarrassed. They look like two great-aunts, properly turned-out for a bit of fresh air.
It’s their eyes that start the story going in a different direction, eyes that are tired and cold, hungry and defeated. Their eyes see everything that’s on the street, and have seen it all before. They don’t just see things, too - they weigh and measure them, always finding that lack between what is and what might or should be, the unfulfilled potential between birds in hands and in bushes. They try to catch each passing eye and politely ask those who return their gaze for a little cash. When one of them turns to me I immediately feel guilty and am not sure whether it’s for something I did or that I failed to do. Either way, it’s disconcerting and I try to move on as quickly as I can.
I don’t know if they’re really twins. It might just be the wigs and coats and green canvas bags, and how they’re the same height and have the same posture and the same expression on their similarly structured faces. Maybe they’re just friends and that’s all they share - apart from each other’s company. Which is, after all, all either of them really seems to have to share. The SF street twins may not even be related to each other. They certainly seem to relate to me well enough, though, like those cookie-cutter ad-copy “famous” twins never did. San Francisco is a city of icons and the Famous Twins fit right in with that tradition. Indigency needs no icon, but when I walk past one of the street twins quietly, respectfully asking for handouts, I can’t help but think it’s got one anyway. Two, really. I keep seeing them on street corners with their begging faces on and I wish I could do something about it. This damn icon is an absolute albatross, and I’ve already got enough around my neck at present.