San Francisco Archives - The Adventures of Bloggard

North Beach, San Francisco, 1974: I’d found this neato apartment and thought myself lucky. The I Ching had said “Supreme Success!”

Little did I know how much the Chinese Gods of Divination love a good joke.

It was a success, for there I found Rosie the Cat, and took her away and lived happily ever after. Other than that, it was a disaster so stupid you can’t help but laugh.

In North Beach, on the corner of Grant and Green, in the picture you see a bar, but back then it was a Hawaiian Bar, and just above that Hawaiian Bar, behind the large bay window you see on the right, along with mice and cockroaches and loud Hawaiian music on the jukebox of the bar downstairs, that’s where I lived.

Living Over a Hawaiian Bar

Strange and bizarre … all night long, loud lyrics like: “Hooka lakka shooka lakka, wikki wikky ogaloo!” Over and over again. The guys downstairs had the consolation of alcohol to take the edge off these songs; I had nothing.

However, I worked an odd shift at the Westbury Hotel at this time, from seven in the evening until three am. This saved me from several hours of Shooka Lakka Hooka Lakka, for which I was grateful.

Strange Chinese Vegetables!

It was also interesting, leaving work at three in the morning. The busses run infrequently that late, and taxis were expensive, so I’d walk through the Stockton Street tunnel and through a deserted Chinatown at three. All the shop’s trashcans pungent with strange chinese vegetables and worse, but these barricades didn’t stop me.

Home at Last, at 3 a.m.

At home at last. But two doors up at Wumpers Bar, they had after-hours entertainment with Perry and the Pumpers. I’ll give the Pumpers one thing: they were plenty energetic. So, to the strains of pumping rock and roll, it was time to hit the hay.

The bars and shops on Grant have lots of garbage, and trashcans filled with empty bottles. So much that the trash companies come every night, sometimes three times during the night. The growling trucks and the crashing din of the bottles leant an exotic ambiance to the late hours on North Beach.

Luckily, the mornings are pretty quiet

Except one day, I’m awakened by a loud, repeating banging. A voice is chanting “Goddamned Phonebooth! Goddamned Phonebooth! Goddamned Phonebooth!”

Rising to peer blearily from my window at the sunny morning, below my window, a stringy unkempt fellow is kicking the back wall of the phonebooth below. A burly fellow across the street calls out “Hey!”, meaning Stop, or maybe What the hell are you doing?

Stringy guy sticks his head outside the phonebooth door, and screams, “It took my dime!” The guy across the street, a big guy, makes a fist and yells to knock it off. Stringy guy, glaring, makes off down the street.

I go back to bed.

And then …

I’m awakened by a loud, repeated banging. A voice is chanting. I rise and peer from the window. Stringy is back.

Now, the mailbox has been tipped over and lies flat on the sidewalk. Stringy guy is kicking the mailbox over and over again.

“Goddamned Mailbox!” he screams, “Goddamned Mailbox! Goddamned Mailbox! Goddamned Mailbox!”

Ah, life in North Beach.

Lacunae — blind spots —
like black cats prowling midnight,
but just out of sight.

Napa Street, Berkeley, Summer 1977: In Christine’s room, Richard W. and I were yakking about nothing in the late morning. The windows were open; the day would be warm. A fat fly buzzed lazily around Richard where he lounged on the floor beneath the window.

Our talk turned to magic and miracles. He’d seen some; I’d seen some. I was relating a strange experience in England. How magic can happen in an instant, with no sense of effort, and as though something else is acting through you. I’d felt it before. It feels natural, more natural than most days’ living; it’s hard to describe.

“It was as if, suddenly, there’s a kind of a wave, and you’re being carried along. You’re caught up,” I said, trying to capture it.

He looked dubious.

Suppose I said, to the fly …

“It’s like this,” I said. I pointed to the fly. “Suppose I said to that fly, ‘Come here.’”

The fly flew across the room, and landed on my finger.

“And then suppose I said, ‘Fly out the window.’”

The fly took off, flew past Richard and out the window.

And it was so …

Richard gaped. I nodded. It had come; it had gone. I felt no sense of triumph, or strength; it wasn’t exactly me that did it. It felt … right. At the time, it seemed inevitable.

Is this something that’s always in us, waiting to emerge? Or does it pass through humanity like a wind through the boughs? Why does it appear seemingly only at great need, or, like today, in no need at all? Is it a matter of attention, or, like conscious dreaming, a matter of exactly the right amount of inattention? What is it?

These things — miracles, epiphanies, synchronicities — surround us, like nebulae of faeries, visable and hiding in plain sight. Magic breathes into and out of our world, transient lacunae, trailing thin and smoky tracks like cosmic rays in this cloud chamber we call Earth.

A blink of the mind; they are gone.

The Apartment From Hell