Monday, October 10, 2011
Trifecta: San Francisco Treats
A couple weeks ago it was L.A. Stories. But that’s not to imply that they’ve got a corner on the droll vignette market. Here’s a few local moments from late summer that made it all the way into the notebook:
1. He was a lanky redhead, elongated further by white trousers striped with red bars. He wore a light black vest over a thin white T, flaired up with a handful of retro needlestick buttons. On his head rested a standard issue black bankers bower;; betwixt his legs and beneath his underpadded butt was a unicycle which he pedaled down a clogged stretch of Mish with notable aplomb. And in case one failed so to note, he randomly honked a ball-bulbed Harpo horn as he went along. This might be a big weird town, but even here this kind of behavior demanded a double-take. I gazed - maybe even gaped - from the sidewalk swarm. He turned to look toward me, raised his horn and honked thrice in my general direction. But it’s tricky to tell where a bowler-bearing envestulated unicyclist might be honking at any given moment, so I turned to see if perhaps he’s been signalling some random office hottie in my vicinity. I didn’t see one, though. All I saw was a tall slim dude in a boring button-down and chinos, just at my shoulder. He blurted to me, “He was totally honking at you, dude.” “I don’t know,” I replied, “you were right in his line of sight.” He laughed, and so did I. Because we both knew he was right.
2. Union Square was packed for the cultural festival. I was making the scene in nondescript clothes and a tidy little woven fedora. The crowd was full of people who’d catch your eye just to smile at you, but of course I had to catch the eye of that other dude. Though his dungarees and workshirt were in decent shape, his white canvas shoes were frayed and grey, and his jacket was rumpled and shapeless. His face was over-tanned and deeply creased, with a long salt-and-pepper goatee and sparking dark eyes under unruly overgrown brows. Surmounting it all was a disreputable hat, tall-crowned and wide-brimmed, circumscribed with a red and blue-striped band and ringed with a wide dark stain where his sweat had soaked it through over the course of years of wear. He was looking at my hat in a way that I recognized meant he had something on his mind, and I was going to find out what it was whether I wanted to or not.
He began with a classic gambit: “I like your hat.” It’s tried and true, inoffensive and approbative. However, when spoken by a person who himself is wearing distinctive headgear, you’ve kind of got to reciprocate, and in that festive setting, as he grinned eagerly at me from under his soiled droopy brim, my response had plainly been scripted. “Back at ya,” I said in a way I hoped would, but feared would not, be understood as concluding our little chat.
Hope died and fear triumphed: He seized the bait with desperate eagerness. “You know, it’s got a history to it, this hat. A history! See - ya ever seen Guys and Dolls?” I opened my mouth to answer but a reply was evidently superfluous since he plowed heedlessly forward. “This is the hat - The Very Hat! - that Big Frank gave to Little Frank in (some scene I might have recalled had I seen the show within in the past 20 years). It was a gift from (big famous dancer guy) because my daddy was his (backstage person of significance)! An’ I inherited it! You watch that movie, you’ll see this hat! This Very Hat!”
My three-year-old ran past me, frantic with glee, waving flags and kicking balloons. My escape pod had arrived. I turned to pursue him, tossing over my shoulder a perfunctory “I’ll have to check that out - I gotta chase a monkey, bye!” In my final glimpse of him, he was smiling broadly to me, ceremoniously tugging the brim of his well-worn hat, and then turning back to the crowd - and to another behatted foil with whom to share his tale of Hollywood history.
3. The park is not small but it is dwarfed by its neighbor, a national recreation area of about 1500 acres. In contrast to that behemoth of greenery, the park where they held kiddie soccer practice felt positively intimate, though it boasted a good-sized lake, two levels of play structures, several tennis courts, a dog run, a par course, and a spacious field for general running around. The first-graders’ soccer team was on this field, being gently herded from chaos to cohesion. My preschooler got tired of watching his brother run drills, and asked to hit the sandbox on the far side of the tennis courts. I escorted him thence.
So there I stood between the tennis courts and the upper sandbox when I was accosted by a woman of obvious charisma - an older woman, hair more platinum than onyx, with flawless complexion, subtle cosmetics, and stylish couture: a black check skirt, well-tailored and well-chosen; a black and white striped shirt, silky and impeccable; large dark sunglasses and a striking herringbone parasol. She approached me with the proprietary air of a dowager confronting her errant gardener. On her feet she wore sophisticated grey pumps right out of the box; as I looked from them to my scuffed old construction boots I felt distinctly off-balance as she planted herself before me.
She rolled her imperial gaze to the tennis courts behind me and demanded peremptorially, with a heavy far-east accent: “Where the tennis playahs?” And in truth there had been plenty of them whacking away not half an hour earlier - but now, not a single ball had been left behind to mark their passage. And so I answered her, “Gone, I guess. No idea.”
She found my answer, predictably, unsatisfactory. Behind her shades her eyes narrowed at me. If I was holding out on her, she’d make me regret it. She barked out a follow-up question, but between her accent and her dudgeon, I had to risk offending her by asking her to repeat it - which she did: “Murdered?”
Okay, so I hadn’t misunderstood. This was not the person with whom I’d thought I had been dealing. She wasn’t just the elegant dowager, she was the elegant crazy dowager. But here she was, in front of me, so I’d better start placating her.
“No ma’m, not to my knowledge.”
She snapped her eyes from mine back to the empty courts, scanning for evidence of mayhem. With apparent frustration and disappointment she continued her abrupt interrogation of me, the parasol twirling slow and sinister on her shoulder: “Homeless guy?”
Again I needed her to repeat herself, and her impatience with my idiocy was tangible. “Homeless guy?!!" Once again I’d heard her right; once again, it hadn’t much helped. I fell back to my previous answer, switching it up a little in feckless effort to assuage her: “Not to my knowledge, ma’m, no.”
She took a moment to stare me down, her eyes black behind black lenses, her shoulders broad and her back ramrod straight. Something seemed to click for her. Without further comment or acknowledgment she turned away and began walking purposefully out of the park. Halfway, she stopped and looked quizzically around her; I watched with trepidation, hoping she was done with me.
J. appeared at my knee. “Who dat lady, daddy?” There was dirt on his knees and sand on his brow. I answered him, “I don’t know, J. I think she’s confused.” However, the same could just as easily have been said about me.
