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Cloudy Reflections
By
Nancy McClure
My first job in San Francisco was set in the Tenderloin district. Pretty rough going, considering I'd spent the previous 18 months in the bucolic neighborhoods of Palo Alto and Menlo Park. But I'd been gung-ho for moving up to the city, both for my social life and for my sanity - there are only so many evenings I could stomach watching elite undergraduates dine better than me.
The job was with a small architectural firm - one that specialized in very high-end residential remodels for the city's Bluebloods - the irony of setting versus subject matter being not at all lost on me. I accepted the position coincidentally at the same time I found a place to live, and it turned out that I'd have a 12 block straight-shot walk - transitioning me from the gentrified Russian Hill neighborhood directly into the 'Loin.
That year was fraught with 'incidents' - the day I turned the corner at lunch to encounter a man, screaming, with absolutely no pants on. I wasn't sure if his outrage was the result, or the cause, of his troubled pantless state, but such is the dichotomy of the 'Loin. I was stalked on my walking commute, I was verbally threatened by passengers in cars, slowly cruising the 'hood. I had a man thrust a clear grocery bag filled with live cockroaches in my face, just to see my reaction. My boyfriend bought me a pocketknife to keep on me, which didn't make me feel safer, but did provide me a comforting touchstone in my overcoat pocket on the late evening walks home.
When I changed firms, and relocated to a SoMa shop just south of the Financial District, I was all about sliver linings. I was going from men in skirts to men in suits, and I couldn't have been happier. I joked with my new officemates to just point me towards the nearest after-work watering hole that I was ready to soak up some refined elbow rubbing.
That first year answered the call - product vendors were still hosting grande fetes, and I honed my flirtation skills. Though after that first Fall, the industry slump hit rock bottom, and there were no more gala events. My trek home bypassed the design district, and instead wandered me through the seedier zones - first in seeking out funky dance classes, and ultimately, drawn in by the streetwise graffiti art and poignant, desolate building structures that echoed like greecian ruins.
I started paying attention to the quiet details. The mosaic of broken window panes. The dignity in an abandoned storefront. I started noting the graffiti - picking out the posse styles and recognizing the cryptic tags. I attended a screening of a documentary on SF and NYC tag artists, and identified with their rebellious spirit. I sold my car and embraced public transit, seeing each trip as a window into the true mechanism of the city - the menial working class - and identifying myself , philosophically, if not financially , into that class.
Now, there are icon figures in MY San Francisco that go beyond Gavin Newsom's shellacked hair, or images in the Nob Hill Gazette. For me, there is the ancient asian woman at the corner of Second and Market, who's traditional quilted jacket and feverishly outstretched hand wrench at my heart. There is the clearly disturbed, grimy young man, ever wrapped in a crusty felt moving blanket, whose raging violent outbursts I can now predict, and I can gauge from a half-block away if I should give a wide berth. There is the woman on Howard Street who venomously spat at me, while I painstakingly photographed an amazing wall mural on a Sunday morning, These are the dwellers along each corridor, defending their own pocket of wild turf, while I - the intrepid outsider - traipse through.
My experience living in San Francisco post-dot-boom - my exposure to the extreme contrast of Haves and Have Nots - has forever altered me. I still get invited to swank industry events, but now I note the carnage at the buffet table, and wonder if the street dwellers could even stomach the finery, if the dregs somehow made it's way to them. I mentally tally the extravagant expense, and wonder how long it would last a family on the street. I know I'm skirting with Bleeding Heart Liberalism, but it's more than philosophical. I myself am one paycheck away from not affording my Pacific Heights apartment, one bad year from financial destitution. "There but by the Grace of God go I" is not a theory - it is, for many of us seemingly-well-heeled city dwellers, a reality we stubbornly ignore, by facing north towards Union Square, and turning a blind eye toward our southern, cloudy, mirror.
Copyright © 2006 Nancy McClure
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