🇺🇸 The Mission District - San Francisco - 12.29.24

The narrative will change depending on how things are wrapped. The introvert side of my ambivert personality prefers to be 3 to 4 blocks away from the vortex of the mosh pit… but still close enough to the mix. This past week I was located just a few steps off of 21st and Mission Street. The mush… between the 24th and 16th Street BART stations. It has an eclectic population… but the air is coated heavy with the industry of drugs. My observation, validated by a little research, is that it’s a ‘don’t ask-don’t tell’ scenario. No police presence. Citizens don’t report. Do what you want… with no consequence. The sun comes up the next day.

Except parking. The city seems to have resources and presence for parking violations… and the citizens pay particular attention to it.

Otherwise, just look the other way. Or more specifically… only look where you step. And that’s how the morning begins… walk out the door. Watch where you’re stepping. Trash cans and dumpsters are emptied from their contents (every morning). Trash everywhere… walk towards my car to shuffle it to a new parking place. Step around the shit, the needles, foil, vomit, disguarded food, liquor bottles, cardboard boxes that served as beds, shoes without an owner, fentanyl addicts bent over on their feet and propped in a corner, vacant eyes, sad faces, crazy minds, faded hopes and troubled dreams, and this and that and the other… and there’s my car. It’s surrounded by the remains of last night’s tequila street party. My car is untouched… just piles of empty bottles, limes, food wrappings, and who knows what. I drive past Van Ness where there is permit free parking. I get waves and a mouthed, “come over here…” from the sex trade workers standing on the corner. Find my new parking spot… it’s a good one and I don’t need to move for a couple of days. Stroll into a shop for a breakfast burrito. Order my fare in Spanish. Get some side-eye looks. Walk back through the mosh pit to my place to shower off the dust and grime.

I often ask myself why I do what I do… but it’s a rhetorical question… and I know the answer… without needing to know the answer.

When I was staying in Hayes Valley I would pop out from the train station at 16th and Mission… and just shake my head (along with clutching my wallet) at the chaos. Sometimes there would be cops dealing with some incident… but it was the business of craziness as usual for everyone else.

Now… I find myself waiting for a bus, as it approaches midnight, on the corner of 16th and Mission St; as I return from the Los Frikis movie with my friend ValVallejo. It’s a scene… screaming, posturing, popup street venders selling (likely) stolen goods and drugs… Val, who’s been a fixture of the neighborhood for sometime, points out the opposite corner of the street where she said she passed out needles and homeless care packages from 6-9pm on Friday nights for several years through a support program. We don’t get hassled… but it’s a nervous and tense vibration and I only stop looking over my shoulder when the bus arrives.

And it rains… and the lands and the people are baptized… and the dust, and tears, and the stench… are washed away for a fleeting moment.

•••••

My Mission gig ended this week. Dispite the hot mess… it was a good week. I met up with Michelle downtown for some lovely moments and a climb up to the Coit Tower. It’s a sweet nature lined stairway path and more SF coolness. There was talk about hot springs and that happens to be one of my four love languages. More patrols in the Haight neighborhood… it still has the crazy… but it’s easier on the nervous system compared to the Mission… and it reinforces my fondness for the streets of San Francisco.

I managed to pick up a little respiratory bug… and after 5 flights, trains, buses, a yellow-fever travel immunization so I can go back to Bolivia… or Borneo or I forget… and kicking my way through the mean streets… I’m lucky that I don’t need a round of penicillin.

I left SF on Sunday around midday via the Golden Gate Bridge… and drove the long way up the coast to Dillion Beach, then through Petaluma, to spend the last days of the year, in the vomit free streets of a town called Napa. It’s full of vineyards, wineries, distilleries, craft breweries, tasting rooms and booze stores... Well… maybe a little vomit. But the people are in nicer clothes; all dressed in layers of fifty shades of beige. Again… the narrative will change depending on how things are wrapped.

So… Napa, California… there’s a hot springs one hour North that has my name on it… and it’s been longer than I want to admit since I was baptized clean in geothermal mineral waters of planet earth. Join me and we’ll talk about what countries you can and can’t visit with a yellow-fever immunization.

#thelightsgodowninthecity

#andthesunshinesonthebay

#thanksforeverything2024