[LEMONS] 2.25.2002
I love San Francisco
Case in point. I woke up yesterday and shuffled down to Nimer's, the corner store for a Cliff Bar. My man RC was working and the two of us chatted for a few minutes about various things. He told me that I had missed a hell of a house party the night before on the corner across from the store, and I told him that I'd seen people all over the street last night milling around outside the place, with a steady thumping beat coming from above. RC said the entire joint was wall to wall people, and that the cops had finally broken it up at around 6 am. At this point I looked over across the street to the house and saw on the corner...
A giant foam pig head.
(click to enlarge)
Which I immediately claimed as my own via the law of Curb Karma. This is the essence of the city to me, wake to discover that you have a giant foam pig head. I would go weeks, even months, on end in Georgia without finding a giant foam pig head. I couldn't even buy one in a store. And here. Here I just wake up one morning, and there it is on my doorstep. So to speak.
And it was a gorgeous California day, no clouds to be seen and as warm as Baja. After a quick sandwich, we headed over to hippie hill. Harp did some Yoga while I laid in the grass with my shirt off, reading. Hundreds of people were out. People were dancing, drumming, fluting, twirling, stilt-walking, reading books up in trees, playing hackey-sack volleyball, smoking pipes and hookahs, playing clarinets, french horns, saxophones, trumpets, electric guitars, turntables, drum machines, bells, xylophones, and instruments of their own creation. I saw turtles, snakes, parrots (on a bike, no less), dogs, cats, punk rockers, indie rockers, mods, ravers, hippies, preppies, tribal types with dreds and bad teeth, militant queers, aged old beats, small children, all nationalities, hula hoops, homeless drunks, balloons, bicycles, artists, kites, public nudity, twitch-dancers girls who should have turned back but because what's at daddy's house was so impossibly horrific--too awful to even imagine or contemplate--forged ahead instead and fucked like Caligula in the California sun while black ink slowly covers their flesh inch by square inch until the darkness outside makes that within seem bearable, Rastafarians, capoeira, computers, cameras, and even a cop or two, standing idly by, smiling.
This is why so many wonderfully strange eclectic people choose to make the city by the bay their home.
Just as we arrived at hippie hill (and what an unfortunate moniker, particularly considering the eclectic crowd drawn there), I broke the chain on my bike, beyond repair, I thought. but we stopped at Cyco SF on the way home and Pete, from whom Harp bought a bike, fixed it for free. They're always fixing things for free there.
We ended the day with a trip to Rainbow grocery, and our fridge is now chock full of soy, while the cabinets are bursting with curry.
I love San Francisco
- l i n k -
