stories from south of market

When I moved to SOMA in '85, Moscone Center did not exist. Nothing but parking lots between Folsom and Market. Each with a tire destroyer jaggedly effective if you went the wrong way.

The 'Holy Cow' was there, as well as what is now the Stud Something on 9th and Folsom. It was a straight club then. DV8 on Minna played strange organ music on the weekends and the cockroaches at 'Mary's Hamburgers' were already there.

That was then; this is now. MOMA, The W, Moscone: North, West, East and South. (Now they will have to travel in time to find a new location. Welcome to the Fifth Dimension). Even a Chevy's and Lofts, too. The gentrification of the area is rapidly approaching a 'bursting at the seams'ness.

Am I sorry it happened? Au contraire. I am delighted it did. It is now vibrant, pulsating and alive. I do not go to clubs any more. I met my yon fair maiden in England. The Old Codger found Love, long after he had stopped looking for it. I am the luckiest man in the world.

Sirk

I had just moved to San Francisco from Northeast Oregon. I started out as so many of us did; totally broke, living with innumerable roommates in a particularly rough part of The City, and wondering if I could ever make it here. Coming from a very rural background, I was in a constant state of wonder, shock and fear.

I grudgingly stepped on to the sidewalk up at 4:30 am to begin my journey to Redwood City where I was gainfully employed. It was a complicated interconnecting system of busses, trains and shuttles that eventually got me to the office by 8:30. Owning a car at this point was completely out of the question.

It was that morning, while I sipped my coffee at the Cal-Train station, when a young woman approached me pointing to a dark spot on her jeans and asked "can you tell if this stain is blood?"

"No," I lied. Only in San Francisco can you start you day with questions like that.

"We're trying to get to Arizona," she replied, motioning to her scruffy boyfriend sitting further down the bench. I nodded, trying to give my best good-for-you-now-leave-me-alone look. I braced myself for the inevitable panhandle.

It never came. I talked with them both for the next 30 minutes about how they cleaned up from drugs and were trying to get away to start a new life. She couldn’t bring herself to become a prostitute, wanting to preserve what little good remained in her soul. Her boyfriend explained they wanted to get to Arizona so they could enroll in some type of crazy clinical study and get many of their expenses paid for. I was mesmerized by their unbridled optimism about a situation that seemed utterly hopeless from my perspective.

The train's whistling beckon snapped me back to reality. As I hurried into my seat, my eyes welled up with tears with the realization of just how truly rich I was.

Justin