stories from south of market

Two Truths And One Lie

At that moment I told myself that there was no place I would rather be then on the train, with these friends, heading toward the park on a Sunday afternoon. This was the truth.

Other truths I found out that day. Sailu can ride a unicycle. Greg was in the hospital with pneumonia on his first birthday. In the eighth grade, boys often pinched Meg’s butt. Anju was a breech baby. Evan owned four bicycles when he was sixteen.

Each person told two truths and one lie, and the rest of the group had to pick out the lie. The six of us played this game under a very bright sun in Yerba Buena Gardens. Here were some of my truths. A coffee can full of worms fell on my head and I had to get stitches. When I was little I got lost at a college football game. Once I burned my nipple on a muffler. These were the bits of my childhood that I shared. The truth that mattered: I hadn’t cried in two years. Today I did.

Still reeling from lingering hangovers, the six of us climbed out of the Powell street station and headed toward the nearest café. After filling our bellies, we took off for the park. Evan suggested we go through the Martin Luther King Memorial.

With the cascading water shielding the city noise, all of us silently walked through the memorial and read the quotes inscribed on the glass panels. The words spoke to me. They reminded me of things that didn’t make sense, like all the bums and the poor and the lonely that live together with the beautiful buildings and incredible San Francisco sky. And, knowing that everyone else was not only reading but hearing too, made me cry.

Afterward, we played the truth-telling game with the same mutual understanding and trust. It made my soul light again. I hope for more days like these.

jake

I'm really new to the city.

New enough to wonder why any thoughts I might have about the place might be of relevance to longtime residents, but then again that's the feeling I'm trying to convey.

I moved down from Montréal on the 29th of November. Tech job, nice company on Third street, near Townsend. Makes me homesick, because my fiancée's name is Townsend. She'll be joining me in a few months, but every time I reach my office I think of her and feel just a little bit alone.

On the other hand, the company that occupies the floor below me at work is the same one that occupied my previous job's offices back in Montréal. A little surreal, that.

But my life isn't about work. Now that I'm here, I had the usual pressure to find a place to stay, and ended up signing a lease in a new tower on Beale street, right near the overpass, the Bay Bridge, across from a warehouse but in no way a residential kind of place. A nice enough, small place, but not what I'd imagined.

When I decided to come to the city, it was in no small part to shake up my life; at 29 I was feeling somewhat stale.

SoMa clashes so strongly with the other parts of this city I barely know that I feel compelled at this late hour to try and write something relevant about a barren, concrete-encrusted stretch of industrial reclamation which contrasts so sharply with the concentrated consumerism of Union Square of the postcard-perfect stretch of Union street in Pacific Heights where I stayed at corporate digs while looking for my own space.

Back home, living in a warehouse district like this would mean funky industrial lofts or serious squattery, and something in me wishes that were my scene now. Here, the relentless encroachment of an ever-increasing population of tech-sorts needing a roost has opened up unlikely lots like mine to high-rent human habitation. (I had a nice place in Montréal; big and victorian and pretty; I could rent it five times for what I'm paying here.)

But there's something about the fact that if I head out into the streets right now, I won't find much; after dark, with the exception of a few bars I've seen, the area rolls itself up and waits for morning's businessmen to bring it to life once more. Something about this that, despite the building's relentless attempts to provide all the comforts of a real home, an underlying isolation leaves me surfing sites like this and typing undisciplinedly into the wee hours trying to put my finger on a pulse I can't yet feel but know is there.

I'm writing this mainly so that in six months or a year I can come back and see what I was trying so inadequately to express tonight, and maybe follow it up with something clever and insightful.

Or maybe I'll still be looking for answers to questions I don't know how to phrase.

Ross

We decided that it was time to make a trip up to The City. Mark wanted to go see Superbooty at the Phoenix. They were playing an afternoon pool party. Leaving from Santa Cruz, we got there late. Just in time to see everyone leaving. So, we got a room at the Renoir on Market. Luck was with us and we were surprised to see that Netwerk Electric was playing at the Elbow Room (I think that was the club). Anyway, it was somewhere in the SOMA district. Netwerk Electric happens to be one of my favorite Santa Cruz band.

We got to the club early and started drinkin'.

San Francisco sure is an adult Disneyland. There are so many people, all dressed in black with leather jackets. Everyone looks so sophisticated. And the women are real friendly. No one had heard of Netwerk Electric before, so it was fun to be the only "fans" of the band in the room, and we proceeded to tell everyone that these guys were a great band. Netwerk came out and played a fantastic show. I did stand out as a tourist, since I was not wearing a leather jacket, but that is ok.

After the show we went to the Power Exchange and hung out till like four in the morning.

I do love San Francisco

greg rose

I was in town visiting my best friend for a few days; time to catch up, shop, explore new restaraunts. He was relocating to a new apartment, so we set aside an afternoon to move his stuff. After loading up a borrowed van with a menagerie of household items, we doubled-parked outside his new place and began unloading. We forgot to turn the car's lights off, though. When all was moved inside, we tried to start the van, but it was dead, and hanging out in the middle of a very busy street. Desperate for a jump, we walked to a body shop at the end of the hill, hoping to find cables and someone kind enough to lend a hand. The shop was run by two black guys decked out in FUBU gear, so we kinda felt like dumb white kids, but it was no big deal. One of the guys, wearing a satin FUBU varsity jacket, walked out to the parking lot where his girlfriend (sister? wife?) was waiting in her car. She was enormous; she spilled into the passenger seat, and her breasts threatened to bury the stearing wheel. The weirdest part was the girl riding in the backseat, a tiny little white chick decked in gangsta gear with a nosering. She was smoking a cigarette and bobbing her head in time with the rap blasting from the stereo. After talking to the guy from the body shop, they peeled out of the parking lot and pulled up in front of our dead van. Cables were found, hooked up, and the car brought back to life. The woman and her honky side kick drove off and we said our thank-yous to the body shop guy. It was like a short film on people of all races working together for the betterment of man; just like one of those cheesy, Latter-Day Saints commercials that promise a free Book of Mormon.

wundershoes

My darling man, who is the father of our 9 month old baby just drove 2,500 miles in the middle of winter for a new life for us. Only to get to SoMa and have the worst moving experince of his life. Our car was packed to the maximum, clothes, shoes, TV, cameras, crib, blankets...You get the point he has to get out of the car for one moment to sign our lease and bam, the window is smashed, everything gone. O.K. no big deal I have a certain non-attachment belief to material possesions. But this is not the worst of it. We call the police (it was Sunday) they said they do not respond to such matters on the this particular day of the week. The next mourning he was walking our dog and surprise the car has vanished. Who the fuck wants a honda civic with Illinois plates god only knows. But the car is gone he then walks at six a.m. to file a police report for what reason I am not quite sure, and upon his return is attacked by some young, white, homeless freak who asks him for a light and when my husband tells him he doesn't smoke the monkey charges him. He maces the guy. Be careful of who tries to catch a fire because you might get burned

Jessi