Friday, October 22, 2010

miscellany: bus drunks, celeb sigs, and phone photos

I know I haven’t been around much, and you should blame yourself.  It’s not me, it’s you.  You, who keep giving me acutal work to do when I could be blogging at leisure.  You, who keep scheduling parties and events that I need to attend and/or enjoy, instead of sitting in my writing hovel sketching out a post.  YOU, who distracts me with sleep and hunger, which take up precious opportunities to make tiny tweaks to my template that might reduce the quantity of spam commenting I’m getting.  YOU.  I blame you. 

By which I mean I blame myself, for we are all one, and who would do unto the least of us that which makes posting to this blog less convenient for any of us?  Not you, certainly.  You’ve got better things to do, like wringing out your socks or picking metal scraps from your plastic recycling.  I would fain interfere with such critical activities.  As, for example, by posting to this blog.  As for which:

I’ve got a few posty things simmering in the crockpot of my creative cocina but those will have to wait.  More pressing is my urgent need to close out the old grey writing notebook, in which I’ve worked for most of a year but which now holds only a handful of random notes.  Some of those I’ve transferred to the new green book, but some seem better suited to regurgitation all at once, here and now, in your face and up your piehole.  But, you know, lovingly, because they are about some of the wonderful people I have seen on the bus while writing in the grey notebook.  In this case, two of them were drinking large cans of malt liquor, on the same night as it turns out - and one was just noteworthy in her own inimitable way.  So let’s get that out of the way so I can put ol’ greyboy in the drawer with all the other old notebooks, for my biographer eventually to discard.  All the good stuff is here already, right? 

To wit:

On the 38L, coming home at about 7 pm, through Union Square: Lavender shirt, silky, open wide at its wide collar. Blue jeans, slim leg, dark wash. Black square-toed loafers, somewhat scuffed. Tight afro, thin mustache, substantial build, and clutching a 40 of Olde English in a paper bag. Laughing, sashaying up and down the aisle, trying to engage everyone (anyone) on the bus in conversation. He went from the back of the bus, to a bench across from me, to a seat next to the driver, always laughing insinuatingly and having a one-way conversation. Next I knew, he was on the sidewalk, talking to a police officer, not. laughing.

Two stops later on the same bus, a man boards carrying another paper bag with another 40 of OE ineptly concealed therein.  He is wearing a red team jersey with white numbers, a black jacket, faded jeans, red-on-black basketball shoes, a watch cap, and gloves, and staggers toward the back of the bus where he leans on a pole by the rear exit doors.  He begins a somewhat agitated monologue, loudly enough to break through the music I’m shooting straight into my brain through my earbuds, so I hit pause on the ‘pod for a moment and write down a bit of his message: “That’s just the way my hair grow, it just grow like that! Yeah it does! In dreadlocks! That’s how it grow, all by itself, right down to my FEET! Yeah! Damn right! Damn right it does...” Oh, he had dreadlocks, too, but not quite down to his feet.  Still, they were impressive, and when he eventually deboarded the bus, he did so under his own power and without obvious legal compulsion.  Good for him. 

And a few weeks later I found myself sitting in my usual seat, and as usual the seat next to me was empty - it’s almost always one of the last to be filled, probably because I am scary and imposing.  An art-student type boarded and I was pretty sure she’d take the next-to-me seat but in fact she sat one seat away.  She wore black pants, a beige camel driving coat, khaki scarf, rings on L3 and R4 with cheap stones, and her hair was in a simple ponytail.  She seemed to have a lot of energy, and pulled out a sketch pad just as a fairly studly young latino guy swung into the seat next to her.  Not next to me, I was clearly not part of his picture - he wanted to sit next to the energetic blonde with the cheap jewelry.  I understood why, she looked like fun and I was a little rankled that she had chosen not to favor me with her propinquity but hell I’m a scary scowling baldie and couldn’t actually blame her.  She and the dude next to her (who was coincidentally but not intentionally next to me as well) immediatly got into a conversation about her sketch work, which I accidentally overheard by hitting pause on the ‘pod: she was working on: “celebrity signatures.” Apparently, according to the expert in the cheap jewlrey, celebrities sign their names with huge graffiti-tag-like symbols that are more like graphic art than personal identifiers, a first name or nickname in wide swooping characters that’s mostly only readable when you know what you’re reading.  She was demonstrating these celebrity signatures, one to a page, with delicate but assured pencil strokes, and the dude next to her gave her his undivided attention.  Then he left the bus at Divisadero, leaving an empty seat between myself and the artsy chick.  About three minutes later, as we crested the Masonic hill, I realized she was talking to me.  I plucked a bud and gave her a brow-tweak to indicate I hadn’t heard her, so she repeated herself: “It’s a shame Brad Pitt is so scorchingly masculine.” This came pretty much out of the blue for me, so I demurred with some innocuous comment, like “Is it?” This set her to thinking and she focused her gaze out the window contemplatively before she responded: “Well, not for me.” Shortly afterwards she left.  I should have asked her for my own celeb signature.  Lord knows the people seem to flock to me, and it’s only fitting that I have something lovely to leave them with. 
Oh! OH!  I know!  I can just take photos with my cellphone and leave THOSE!  Let’s try and see.  I’ve got two varieties of cellphone shots today - urban renewal and dystopias.  Yes, they’re sometimes hard to distinguish, but I think I can break it out for you:

First, as you may know from slavishly following this blog and transit issues in this locality, they’re tearing down the Transbay Terminal, eventually to rebuilt it in a modified modernized manner.  But so far it’s all teardown, including the demolition of some elevated roadways that curled from the 80 freeway’s skyway off the bay bridge all the way into and then out of the old bus terminal.  Those elevated roads are - no, were - across the street from my office building.  Here’s some shots of what was left before there was nothing left of them:

This is a support tower for the roadway, reaching up as if it still had a purpose, and next to it in the image but really a block away, a new office tower emulating it in form and function:

This is a padlock that has been attached to the hurricane wire fence that surrounded the parking lot that used to be under the elevated roadbed.  The roadbed and the parkg lot are gone; the fence now secures a dangerous looking demolition zone, and the lock is just doing its best.

Let’s move on, there’s nothing more to see here, until I take more photos that are not really badly exposed or otherwise unworthy of your retinal attentions.  I’ll start with every metropolis’s boon and bane: Ice cream stores!  And Godzilla!  A local dessertatorium is famous for being festooned with vintage toys, and here’s a few of them peering over the transom to make sure non one steals the fake mustaches or novelty car fresheners near the cash register:

On the other hand, during a recent visit to L.A. I was lucky enough to hang out for a day down by the post-industrial district, a region that calls itself skid row and houses the highest concentration of homeless people in California if not the nation. Actually it was a very interesting visit, which is a story I will not share with you, but here’s a photo of the fence at a parking lot that I found rather evocative:

Finally, here’s a storefront in that same neighborhood, which distinguished itself with a jumbled window display of faded and crumbling toys.  One of the toys is of a “hero figure,” separating from his cardboard backing and blisterpack, trapped with a religious icon and a deflated soccer ball and a whole bunch of other crap behind iron bars.  I choose to think the hero figure is not behind bars for its proection, but for ours.  We can’t let our heros just fight crime willy-nilly.  That’s what godzilla is for, n’est pas?

That’s all for now, good readers.  This weekend is going to be hellishly fun - too much going on and no enough time or parental oversight to make it remotely easy to manage.  Not to worry.  I’ll do my best, and the hero will figure something out.