Specs Bar in North Beach, San Francisco, September 1975 — It was because I was dating a writer named Barbara Austin, whom I’d picked up at San Francisco State using a fancy pick-up women technique.
And Barbara had a pal named Suzie.
A Ritzy Hideaway in the Woods
At that time there was a fancy fellowship to a woodsy place all scenic as hell back east, perhaps Connecticut. And if you applied, and if they accepted you as a proper artiste, then they’d put you up for several weeks in a cabin in the scenic woods and while you worked on your art. Now Suzie was a painter who specialized in pictures of Navajo blankets draped on chairs, and Barbara wrote poignant novels. Since both of them were accepted at this ritzy fellowship this summer, worked on their respective art, and became friends.
Now it seems that Suzie and her boyfriend, Jules Pfeiffer, whose cartoons adorned the New Yorker, and newspapers, and Playboy magazine which me and my friends often read because we liked the articles so darn much.
And that’s how it was that we all went out that night for the San Francisco Experience, meaning that we had to ride on cable cars in the freezing air, and as it happened Jules had some friends who were doing improv at a bar in North Beach, so naturally we had to go there. Although I’d lived in North Beach, I didn’t know this bar. It was right next to Tosca’s, a huge, poorly-lit, and grandiose bar, very smoky and noisy with opera playing at all hours.
On the way, jolting down the street in the cable car, Jules said something funny. I’ll tell you about it at the end.
Now Specs the bar is in a little sort of alcove just off Columbus Avenue below Broadway, and they have a sign that shows a pair of glasses. And this is because the owner wears squarish glasses like that, and that is why his nickname was ‘Specs.’
Here in 2018 it seems that Specs the bar is just now celebrating it’s 50th Anniversary, and so there we were at Specs, way back then, and this was the first time I’d ever seen an improv performance.
Yes it was funny. Yes the people probably went on to become famous; so many did from San Francisco from that time. But no it wasn’t Whoopi Goldberg or Robin Williams or Dana Carvey, and I’ve now got no clue now who those people were, and don’t remember anything else about it, but then, we were in a bar, feeling a little giddy, and I am a real lightweight when it comes to alcohol.
And then afterward, with a couple of people from the improv, we adjourned to Tosca’s next door to enjoy the smoke, the noise, and the incomprehensible operatic ambiance. Some kind of little expressos with more alcohol, as I recall.
And presumably we then went home.
You see how little I remember?
The Memorable Moment
And the one thing I do remember, the one thing clear in my mind, was actually on the cable car jaunt on our way to Specs.
We were at the front end of the car, so we could enjoy the hilly climbs and watch cars and pedestrians dashing around in the bright city lights, and as we clattered up the street, in front of the cablecar were the tracks and now and then a manhole cover.
Steam in little bursts floats up from these manhole covers from time to time. It always does that, I don’t know why.
So Pfeiffer, looking at the rising plume ahead of us, paused in a story he was telling.
“Hmmm,” he said, nodding toward the rising steam, “So that’s the San Francisco fog. I wondered where they kept it.”
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