How bazaar! The entire city was recently invited to celebrate along with all of Chinatown, as it is every year at the start of the new lunar cycle. For their part, the businesses and residents of the neighborhood hosted a week of celebrations including a street fair, flower market, beauty pageant, 5K run, and, of course, the largest Chinese New Year Parade in the western world, which includes the Gum Lung, a 201-foot dragon dragged by a hundred martial arts experts down Market Street and back up into the heart of Chinatown.

No map would call where I live part of Chinatown, but I am right on the border. The fact is the Chinese population of the region spills out well beyond the formal boundaries of the district. A large percent of the people I see on the street, and the shop owners on Polk, are at least Asian, if not Chinese. But, for all that, it's recognizable as part of an American city.

China town, not so much.

Yes, this is where that Kurt Russell movie Big Trouble in Little China was filmed. And, of course, that's an exaggeration, but the truth is that it does feel like another world compared to the rest of the city. Just a few blocks from me, on the other side of Nob Hill, between here and North Beach, English is rarely heard or seen except for on the standard tourist fare of San Francisco hats, shirts, and sweatshirts.

Though I'd walked around Chinatown lots of times on my way to other places, I hadn't really taken time to explore it, to talk a little bit to the people, as much as that's possible. Perhaps they purposely put the least Americanized members of the community out in front running the shops to maintain the integrity of the culture, but I don't know. The elders of Chinatown left that country before it was the modern global superpower it is today. Though I can only imagine what the neighborhood was like a few decades ago, it still seems to possess the feel of a rural mid-twentieth century China that might be difficult to find today in Beijing. Maybe.

But what can be found right to this day is some incredibly good prices. $2.99 for a pound of raw walnuts: where else can you get that? And longan berries, where can you even get those at all? Stockton Street is a smorgasbord. There's whole smoked chickens hanging in the windows, mysterious herbs, fish, all manner of dried fungi, and strange vegetables I've never seen before. Yeah, there's also a wide assortment of swords, knives, and all the fun stereotypical stuff you'd expect. I don't know how they do it, but it's all priced to move. I keep going back.

In other news, the rains have finally hit the Bay Area, which is good because the entire state is in drought conditions. There's already some concern that water will have to be cut off to farmers, which would drive produce prices up around the country. The whole thing is a bit fishy to me, since our U.S. Senators have supported a plan to divert sufficient water supplies in the San Joaquin Valley for the restoration of salmon habitat. It's this very same water that will be denied the farmers. Maybe it's too soon to say this will become an emergency, but I'd say it reeks of a manufactured crisis, you know, the fish rotting from head. Quite a bit like Chinatown, actually.

But the rain is probably good for another reason. I just learned from the Hastings Tower management there's only about a month until I need to start putting money down on my unit for the fall. That means I'm going to have significantly less time than I'd expected... so it's time to get writing!

"It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint on Polk Street.”

So begins the novel regarded as “a central statement of evolutionary awareness in late nineteenth century America”, and which just so happens to be set precisely on my block. The film adaptation, shot on location nearby, is considered one of the best films ever made. But I probably wouldn’t have had the slightest clue I was living in a tableau of such cultural significance if it wasn’t casually remarked upon by a young lady of my acquaintance who happens to be a dramaturgy intern at the American Conservatory Theater and, as such, is aware of literature in a way that I, even as an English major, have never been.

In McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, the narrator mentions the sound of the cable cars on Polk Street, which makes it clear McTeague’s “Dental Parlors” were not located down by City Hall or near Ghiradelli Square at the wharf, but literally within a block or two of where I currently reside. Which is, I suppose, why the bar right down the street from me is named "McTeague’s Saloon" (4 stars of 5 on yelp). Though the story is over 100 years old now, its descriptions of life on the street really aren't that far off. The description of the stillness when the cable stops at 1 AM... well, as if waking up to the sound of the cable car every morning wasn’t already like living in a dream, this city never ceases to amaze.

Norris’ description of Polk as an “accommodation street” is not precisely understood today, but the street certainly remains dominated by small shops as he describes. At least one analyst reckons the expression refers not just to Polk as a place where food and lodgings are offered, but also as a part of the infrastructure designed to afford access to someplace else. In other words, if that’s correct, Polk Street was never itself intended as a destination, only a means to somewhere people would actually want to go. But that, of course, is what makes it so appealing to all sorts of marginal characters, and an ideal setting for a gritty novel. And it fits exactly the role Polk Street has played in my life. I have to admit, when I was a just-slightly-better-than-homeless freelance writer, the crudity of Polk in the Tendernob region seemed appropriate.

Now that I’m a just-slightly-better-than-homeless freelance writer who’s been accepted to law school, I’m a little less comfortable with these surroundings. Still, the irony of having this street as a central figure in this blog doesn't escape me. A future post will have to discuss more about the troubled history of this area right up to today, but it's comforting to know the link to City Lights on the other side of the hill: the same 1988 proposal that renamed streets in North Beach for Beat writers, creating Jack Kerouac St., also made an alley off Polk into Frank Norris St. And I'd always assumed, as I walked by, he was some old senator or something.

Anyway, I plan to make a serious effort to read McTeague, and from what I’ve already seen, the writing is quite good. In a way it feels strangely like deja vu, like reading a story I already know, as if this classic had seeped so deeply into our culture that it's enfused our awareness without ever being read directly by any of us. It certainly doesn't read like a "classic." Between coming up with enough articles each week to survive, and working my way through a 700-page history of American law, as well as several other nonfiction books, my plate is a bit full. Still, on a Sunday afternoon, I reckon I can make it my custom, while I still live here, to take in some Frank Norris at one of the coffee joints on Polk Street.

Two guesses what the demonstration du jour was this past weekend in the downtown Civic Center Plaza. Yes, on the day headlines around the world were relaying Israel's threat of escalation and thousands of Europeans were taking to the streets, San Francisco protestors gathered to speak out against the bombing in Gaza.

The most ardent demonstrators appeared ethnically linked to the conflict, many driving in circles around the Civic Center waving huge Palestinian flags from their cars to show solidarity with their relatives and compatriots being attacked on the other side of the world. Others were just there in sympathy and in the interest of peace. The event’s organizer revealed herself to be a public school teacher, staging demonstrations in her own time after work. Most of the other coordinators were students; all were volunteers.

The event was entirely nonviolent, though on the way there I personally witnessed a white man in a BMW lean out his window to tell a woman and her young daughter, who happened to be holding a 'Free Gaza' poster, that she "might as well put a swastika on that sign." The little girl tripped and fell.

Several local musical acts appeared, including some authentic Middle Eastern performers and at least one rapper. "P-A-L-E-S-T-I-N-E, Palestine will be free!" the refrain rang out from the stage. Otherwise, a constant torrent of rhetoric from several speakers kept the crowd cheering and chanting, with most leveling their criticism at US funding of the Israeli military, and some going as far as to link American complicity in the Middle East violence with the murder of Oscar Grant, still a sore issue in the Bay Area for sure.

The day after the pro-Palestine demonstration in the Civic Center, a group of about one hundred gathered there in the plaza. As they marched down Market Street to the Powell cable car turnabout shouting, “We are Oscar Grant!” their ranks doubled and police in riot gear were called out to confront them, though no arrests were made. Authorities initially claimed the surveillance cameras at the scene had malfunctioned and not recorded the shooting, but several videos shot by witnesses on cell phones have appeared, confirming testimony Grant was not only lying in submission when shot, but was in handcuffs with a knee on his kneck.

Tuesday evening, Johannes Mehserle, the officer who shot Grant and had since resigned from the police force, was arrested near Lake Tahoe and charged with murder. At the same time, word was coming through that Hamas and Israel were possibly negotiating a new ceasefire with the help of Egypt and the US. And no matter what side of these issues anyone is on, it's a positive step.

I don't know if these demonstrations here in San Francisco or around the world played a role in these tentative resolutions, but I can see they were cathartic for the participants. And they reaffirmed my desire to live and go to school and maybe even someday work down here at the Civic Center Plaza. What is clear in all of the activity the last few days is this is the place people come when they want to connect with the larger issues, with each other locally and the rest of the world. It's where they come to express their visions and dreams about what civilized society should be like. And, that, more than any particular cause, is what draws me here.

לְמַ֤עַן צִיּוֹן֙ לֹ֣א אֶחֱשֶׁ֔ה וּלְמַ֥עַן יְרוּשָׁלִַ֖ם לֹ֣א אֶשְׁק֑וֹט עַד־יֵצֵ֤א כַנֹּ֙גַהּ֙ צִדְקָ֔הּ וִישׁוּעָתָ֖הּ כְּלַפִּ֥יד יִבְעָֽר׃
‎ ‏וְרָא֤וּ גוֹיִם֙ צִדְקֵ֔ךְ וְכָל־מְלָכִ֖ים כְּבוֹדֵ֑ךְ וְקֹ֤רָא לָךְ֙ שֵׁ֣ם חָדָ֔שׁ אֲשֶׁ֛ר פִּ֥י יְהוָ֖ה יִקֳּבֶֽנּוּ׃

Flat maps really do no justice to a curvy city like San Francisco. It reminds me of the "wiggly" world of Alan Watts' "Conversations with Myself", filmed in Marin, in which he even says putting a grid pattern on the hills of San Francisco is a uniquely human folly that reveals our lack of sophistication in comparison to nature's graceful complexity.

Anyway, I came across a program to not only generate a wiggly map of San Francisco, but animate it and fly over. The image above is a still shot from that program, showing the areas described and photographed in this blog. The blue line is Polk Street, the white dot is where I live. The black circle is where the top of Nob Hill shots came from and the red circle is the Civic Center and Hastings.


Like a flat map, my camera also fails to do this town any justice, but in this pic to the left you can start to get the feel of Nob Hill ascending in front of you, even if it's just Pine Street, which doesn't hardly get to the same elevation as the streets just slightly north. In fact, when walking west back from the Financial or SOMA districts, Pine Street is the way to go unless you're looking for a serious hike.

Being away for the holidays, I lost touch a little with what was going on in the Bay Area. I was disgusted, shocked and appalled to learn a few days before I returned about the murder of Oscar Grant by an Oakland police officer at the Fruitville BART station on New Year's Day. The Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART), is like the subway in most any major city, though it spends a good bit of time above ground, particularly in the East Bay, where Fruitville is located. While any police shooting is a tragedy, in this case video of the murder has surfaced showing Grant was unarmed and lying on his belly when he was shot.

When it became clear the officer responsible for the shooting would not be so much as reprimanded, protesters gathered at the Fruitville station. Despite the best intentions of the organizer and probably most of those present, they soon became rioters as spitting, fire-starting, looting and general pandemonium ensued.

The day this all occurred happened to be the day of my return, when I would be riding BART to the Civic Center/UN Plaza stop, shown above, on the very line that would eventually cross under the bay and past the site of the murder. During the whole ride, the BART central dispatch made announcements over the intercom updating the situation and alerting us the train would not be stopping at Fruitville for our safety. And this, too, is ultimately part of the topography of the Bay Area.


The culture of this progressive stronghold is nonetheless inseparable from the struggles required of the free and the brave. Down the street from the wealthiest, Blackberry-toting 20-something software execs is the greatest homeless population in the entire region. And amidst the beautiful natural scenery are some of the highest per capita murder rates in the country, some perpetrated by the police force itself. The Bay Area is the birthplace of both the United Nations and the Black Panther Party.


So, it's a weird and wiggly world, my friends. Happy New Year, and stay safe. I love you.