Forever Isn't Over Yet

There’s nothing like a stroll down Columbus on a hot night -- crowded pavements, men in shirtsleeves and t-shirts, women in sundresses, people arguing in English, Italian, Chinese, French, German, Spanish, every window thrown open, the diners inside talking to strangers on the sidewalks, music and light spilling out. Il Pollaio is one of those long-lived North Beach restaurants too often overlooked, a modest joint with a limited menu. But damn, what they do serve is good. We had plates of roasted, moist, perfectly seasoned half-chicken, spicy fennel sausage, and fresh combo salads. We talked politics a bit, M and our houseguest, K reminisced about college life in Champaign, and while they talked sports I counted the number of times I heard either “Hillary” and “Obama” in the conversations at other tables. (Eleven. One slight anomaly – the name “Con-do-leez-a” pronounced with emphatic precision by an older, sharp-faced man leaning across his table and gazing fiercely into the eyes of his dinner companions, a couple of slightly younger guys in baseball caps. I couldn’t hear the rest.)

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Our much heralded lunchtime event with Da Mayor took place yesterday without too many hitches. In spite of some dire predictions – “He’s always late you know. Always” -- and the announcement the day before by his social secretary that he could only stay until a little after 1:00, Mayor Willie Brown stepped out of the elevator at exactly 12:00 and cheerfully settled down to signing and occasionally personalizing copies of his book, Basic Brown for attendees. He gave his talk, held a Q&A, and stayed a good half hour past the time we’d been told he absolutely positively had to leave. (The warning about him being always late impacted not us but his next appointment.)

Willie Brown is a true San Francisco character who will probably be remembered in the same way Abe Ruef, Lillie Coit, and Melvin Belli are remembered. I see him occasionally in our neighborhood, usually walking up Leavenworth. There seems to be a legal requirement that the word “dapper” appear in any description of Willie Brown, but it’s not an unreasonable one. Yes, by God, the man is dapper as all Hell. His taste in ties and suits is impeccable, his hat is always set at a perfect angle, and his handkerchief always peeks out in four precise little points from his breast pocket. Listening to him speak is like watching a magician. Brown is adept at a sort of verbal sleight of hand in which you become so engaged by his wit that you only notice after he’s finished that he just spent thirty minutes talking about himself to an extent that would be dull and irritating if he were anybody else. I do believe he could make an hour-long lecture on tax law entertaining by including at least five anecdotes about Willie Brown. And it might very well be a damned good lecture on tax law.

Well why shouldn’t he be delighted with himself? He was born poor and black in Mineola Texas. He’s now rich and powerful in San Francisco California. How he managed this, whether by hook or by crook, is worth knowing. He is smart, pragmatic and absolutely ruthless. He has the faux naïve charm of a bon vivant who considers the fact that he enjoys good things wonderful news that should be shared with everyone. The day before the event one our members dropped by the office to make his reservation and told us an anecdote about encountering Brown at Wilkes-Bashford, passing him in the store. The weave of Brown’s suit was so beautiful. so soft, that he tentatively reached out to touch it, and Da Mayor stopped, grinned, and obligingly held out his arm.

His ghost-writer, P.J. Corkery did a wonderful job. Basic Brown is no ordinary boring political memoir. It begins with a description of Brown’s dirt-poor childhood in Texas, then leaps to an almost gleeful account of Brown’s deft and merciless payback to the “gang of five” who tried to oust him as Speaker back in 1988.

I have some serious problems with Willie Brown as a politician. During his tenure as mayor, many working class San Franciscans, many artists and filmmakers were driven out of the city because of his emphasis on development. The only citizens he seemed willing to acknowledge as worthwhile San Franciscans were either the people he encountered at the Big Four or other uber-wealthy hangouts or the affluent-on-paper young dot-commers who helped drive rents into the sky (many of whom by now have probably moved out of the lofts they infested in SOMA and back into their parents basements.) He’s even quoted as saying at one point, “poor people shouldn’t live in San Francisco.”

He never keeps records he declared, smiling, during his talk. “When I was an attorney, I learned that’s how people got in trouble. So no records. No emails, no letters, nothing.”

There’s a scene in the horror film, The Ninth Gate, where a wicked old woman says that, as a young girl, she once glimpsed Satan himself. “I saw him one day. I was fifteen years old, and I saw him as plain as I see you now: cutaway, top hat, cane. Very elegant, very handsome. It was love at first sight.”

At the time, I pictured Satan as a dashing young Italian count. Now I’ll always imagine the Devil she saw as a rather stocky late-middle aged black man with a moustache, a tilted hat and a perfectly tailored suit.

Suddenly, after several days of unusually cool weather, it became hot. I mean that in the San Francisco sense. In the East Coast/Midwest/Southern sense it's pleasantly cool, but in San Francisco, if you can go outside after dark with bare arms and feel no urge to run inside to fetch a sweater, it's hot. At the film last night, I had to run about making sure all the windows were wide open, and even then some people left before the discussion because the room was too close.

M and I walked home afterwards through streets that were a little more crowded and lively than usual. A warm weekend night in San Francisco is almost like a snow-day in the Carolinas. Everyone seizes the day. Girls in short dresses and bare shoulders clicked past in their high heels, men walked with their ties loosened and their jackets slung over one shoulder, doors and windows were open so that music and light spilled out a little brighter and louder into the streets. Sometimes restaurants on Hyde street will turn themselves inside out, moving most of their tables onto the sidewalk, and I'll bet Twin Peaks was crowded. Normally when people go there at night for the view, they park, hop out of their car and stand there shivering in the wind for a long as they can stand it before running back to the car. On a warm, windless night, the lookout point is packed.

At about 2:00 this morning I woke up nude on top of the bedclothes and looked over the edge of the bed to see that I'd pulled off my pajamas and dropped them in a little pile on the floor. Our cat had abandoned his usual spot on our bed and was lying on top of them. When he saw me he let out a warning "mrrr" -- he was lying exactly where I'm likely to put my feet when I get out of bed -- and turned over on his back to stretch luxuriously, smiling up at me as if to say, "Isn't this wonderful?" Cats get drunk on warmth.

So now it's a blazingly beautiful day, with only a faint pale haze of our usual fog to the west, and not so much as a speck of white in the shore beyond the Golden Gate. No surf at all, that I can see. I've not gone outside yet, so I don't know whether it's still hot, but here in the apartment I can comfortably wear a sun dress from my southern days. It would have been a good day to go down to the Farmer's Market, but I'll probably just settle for a quick run to Whole Foods and a good workout on the hills. Maybe I can wear, not only one of my colorful skirts, but my favorite straw hat, and take my vanity out for of one of our increasingly rare walks.

Yesterday afternoon as I was walking down California Street to work, just about at the Pacific Union Club, I heard voices overtaking me. I glanced over my shoulder to see four tall guys in their twenties striding along the sidewalk behind me, deep in conversation and dressed for a day out in jeans and t-shirts. They were covering a lot of ground very quickly.

“(inaudible, inaudible,)…big deal….(inaudible) physical sciences test…(inaudible) all the answers… what happened was, this guy (inaudible)..completely freaked everyone out, we couldn’t (inaudible, inaudible) papers flying everywhere. And the instructor, he’s going ‘whoa!’ but of course he didn’t have to worry because security tackled him just as he came through the door, man, they nailed the guy!”

“No way!” “Damn!” “Oh man that is FUCKED!” For an instant I was in the middle of them, but I don’t think they even noticed as they parted slightly to go around me, continuing the conversation over my head.

“The gun just goes flying across the floor, and security grabs that so that’s taken care of and everyone’s looking at each other and going ‘Man, THAT was weird,’ and the guy’s being hustled off in cuffs and then…”

They were pulling ahead fast. I quickened my pace slightly, trying to be discreet.

“…this guy in a suit comes in and talks to the instructor and then he turns around (inaudible)…do the whole thing over. I shit you not. He says it’s just been too disruptive and we have to come back again late in.. (inaudible)

“So what….(inaudible)….?”

All four were far ahead of me now, and I was going at an undignified trot that reminded me of how my family’s Cairn Terrier used to move in a blur of stubby legs when she tried to keep up with our Setter mix. I could see it was no use. These guys each could cover more ground in one stride than I can in four. To keep up with them I’d have to gallop.

“….(inaudible) big guy front row…(inaudible, inaudible) and another two guys behind him (inaudible) and security’s GONE now…(inaudible) do about it…(inaudible, inaudible, inaudible…)”

I gave up and watched them dwindle into four tiny, gesturing figures heading towards Chinatown.

This is what comes of being taller when I sit down than when I’m standing.