Outlook

Um. What's the name of the word for things not being the same always. You know. I'm sure there is one. Isn't there? There must be a word for it... the thing that lets you know time is happening. Is there a word?

--Delerium

In September 2005 I moved from Columbus, Ohio to Chicago. I had no family nearby, so I had the privilege of spending each of the next seven Thanksgivings feasting and sharing gratitude among friends new and old. Quite a few relationships started at those orphan Thanksgivings, some brief and superficial, some lasting and deep.

In September 2012 I moved to San Francisco. Come Thanksgiving, I still didn't know too many folks, and those I did know were off doing their own things for the holiday. So I wandered south to parts of the city I'd never been to before, over the Twin Peaks and around the Sutro Tower.

This year, my friends had their Thanksgiving festivities on Friday, so I went about Timelessly exploring my surroundings again. My target this time was partly suggested by an encounter with Kate Saturday at the nearby Journey to the End of the Night where I'd confessed I'd not spent nearly as much time in Oakland as I'd liked. So grabbed a digital camera, left it's clock unset, and at 10pm Wednesday night I shut off my computers, turned off my smart phone, and took a walk.

Old Haunts

Haight Street is emptier than I've ever seen it. Emptier than it is on Christmas day. There are a few folks about, mostly other men alone. I walk into Best of Thai, but it's so empty that I have to ask if it's closed. It's not; some folks pick up their orders, and a couple sits down as I eat.

Across the street at Magnolia, the bartender tells me she just made last call. They're closing at midnight tonight, but she'll get me one drink if I'd like. Magnolia has a habit of serving interesting and delicious beverages, so I have one. As I sip and ponder the futility of being Timeless among the time-bound, the few customers that were there begin to leave. By the time I'm at the bottom of my glass there's less than a handful of folks in the bar, so I decide to head down the street and see if Noc Noc is still open.

Looking for Love

Noc Noc an entirely different place. It's the busiest place I've been to this night; it could be just any Thursday morning. The cozy warmth of the places chases out the nighttime chill. It's a dark place, made to look like an alien haunt, with a bomb hanging from the ceiling over a crooked island table, narrow high-backed chairs fixed to the ground at the bar, and only one television in the whole place, showing static. Unusual electronic music fills the space. The ATM and the fridge behind the bar seem completely out of place in their mundanity.

I love Noc Noc. As much as I enjoy the decor and the promise of "No Bud No Coors No PBR", it's the folks who come here that I love the most. Half the time I show up someone ends up making out with unusual abandon for a public place, or I see a couple facing each other across the island with their noses inches apart as they talk. Their affections warm the cockles of my heart. This early Thanksgiving morning, a couple sits by the window in a little alcove, talking in the corner. As I sit and sip and write down what I'm thinking, their passions erupt. She climbs on top of him, their arms around each other, lips locked, ignoring the rest of the world.

Dan used to point at strangers and say "They are so in love with each other". He doesn't drink and wouldn't care for the dark lighting and the funky layout, but he would enjoy hanging out at Noc Noc, and in this moment, I miss him.

Meanwhile a group of three men at the island table talk so loudly that I can hear them halfway across the room over the music. One is a 23 year old Asian who says "That's how you know how drunk I am" loud enough that everyone there knows how drunk he is. He and his friends are talking about girls on online dating sites, looking at their profiles on their smart phones. Or about China, and not speaking Cantonese.

Another group of four is stuffed into another alcove between the couple making out and the entryway. As I write my thoughts down, it occurs to me that I haven't put an actual ink-spewing pen to dead-tree paper this much in years. And that I'm not sure "alcove" actually means what I think it means, but if I could use my smartphone could find out instantly.

Interlude

I went home to think about what to do next. I had intended to stay up all night and through the next day, to not view a single timepiece or use any computer, phone, or internet during this time. But intent rarely matches outcome, especially after a couple drinks, and took a little nap when I got home.

I woke up a short time after that and decided to listen to one of the most intense albums I've heard while I pet my cats and planned my next move.

Education

I set out again toward the University of San Francisco campus. Nobody is around. When I get to the University hospital there's a security guard in one of those neon orange vests in the middle of the street. Half a block up, two are chatting near a doorway at the hospital. And then there's a tent in the middle of the street labeled "Dignity Health".

Away from the hospital, the campus is empty. The buildings here are beautiful. There's a gigantic illuminated cathedral and an elegantly modern Center for Science and Innovation. The winding walkways lead to another common area for students where you can see fireplaces blazing through the windows. The rooms are empty, the lights shut off, and yet the fire burns on.

I climb up the hill at the center of the campus area and look about the city, still lit up at this unknown hour early on Thanksgiving morning. I head back down and stop at a 24 hour diner that's still open and have breakfast. There's an Asian woman behind the counter who takes my order and an Average Joe American who looks like someone you might imagine if I asked you to picture a truck driver eating at a nearby table. The stranger sipping his coffee next to me, a middle aged black man reading a paper, greets me pleasantly while I eat and the other two discuss the Forty Niners.

Dawn

I step out again and the sun has risen. I know my goal: to get to BART and take it to Oakland. So I begin heading east.

I walk through a park and I see a lone middle-aged man practicing Tai Chi. I have to use the restroom urgently and luckily the park's is open. As I'm using the restroom there's a man in the next stall over hacking and spitting. I remember that I have a toothbrush in my bag, so I decide to brush my teeth here while I have the opportunity. The man in the stall doesn't come out, still hacking. I never see him the entire time.

I continue east and north, and as I approach Telegraph Hill I once again find myself in a park with a profound need to use a restroom. Inside I find some sensible advice for having a good time. Outside a group of elderly people run through their morning Tai Chi exercises.

I continue the long walk toward Embarcadero station, down the side of Telegraph Hill, through the skyscrapers of the financial district, and past an ice skating rink set up near the Piers at Embarcadero. It's the most ice I've seen at once since I left Chicago, and it's lying there on a bright, sunny, 50-some degree day, entirely unused.

A Digression on Public Restrooms

By the time I arrived near BART I needed to pee again. I tried to get to the restroom in the Pier, but that was closed. So I used one of those toilets on the street. You know, the ones that don't really work. A morning of relying on public restrooms reinforced what I'd already thought about why they really should be so much better.

I'm fortunate to not have to rely on public restrooms very often. Even so, I would be better off if we had more, cleaner public restrooms. Event the richest among us would benefit from a clean place to pee when the need strikes and less shit on the sidewalk. Everyone would benefit, and the benefit would disproportionately go to the poorest. What makes for better public policy than that?

So it's disheartening that this city, and most cities I've been to, have such poor public restrooms. I wonder why that is. Do our leaders really see it as encouraging homelessness, as the article above claims? Are there cost reasons? Is there some way I help this improve?

Ah, but I digress.

On Timing

Up to this point I had occasionally been trying to estimate the time. I probably left Magnolia a bit before Midnight, Noc Noc before 2 am. The Ben Frost album was about an hour long. The sun probably rose around 7 am. I'd guessed it was 9 or 10 by the time I got into BART and across the bay.

And here's about where that thinking stopped.

Oakland

Oakland is an unfamiliar and sprawling place. I never know how to find what I'm looking for, even if I have no particular thing that I'm looking for. I tend to let myself "be drawn by the attractions of the terrain", but in Oakland I find the terrain drawing me toward the same places.

So instead I head North several blocks and then turn east. I move past banks, car lots, churches, occasionally a bright, unexpected mural. I notice a large construction site with a stairway leading through it, and I'm naturally drawn to stairways, especially when their openness to the general public is ambiguous. I summit the steps.

And find myself in a plain residential street, houses to my right, a church to my left, and no one about on this bright and sunny day. I figure south leads me to familiar territory, so I turn left and head for the hills. I pass some quaint looking little shops, all closed. Over those hills one particular house catches my eye, sandwiched between two roads at a fork, with two rainbow flags.

I doubled back and decided to follow a stairway I had seen to wherever it led, but wherever it led was not very far. I was left with no way to proceed east, so I headed south, where I met that sign that gentrification is not a thing that is happening, but a thing that has happened.

I don't care for Whole Foods. I don't like paying extra for food on the basis of a marketing campaign promoting a dubious understanding of "sustainable", "green" products. I walk past it, up and around some meandering roads leading to many a fine home and its companion automobile and find myself spit out onto Grand Avenue. Surely I can find something excellent to eat here, even on a holiday. But the cafe that's open is full, and after a short jaunt into a bookstore surprisingly open for business, I head back on Grand. Hunger and lack of better options turns me back toward where I think that Whole Foods might be. It's an ostentatious beast so even my internet-bereft, sleep-deprivation addled brain can manage to find it.

I eat some sushi outside and read some fictions. A woman asks if it's okay if she eats at the enormous table I'm sitting at, then quickly finishes up whatever she's got and moves on. Nearby, two women fluently switch back and forth between French and English in conversation and I idly wonder what factors govern which language they choose to express themselves with each other, why they code-switch. One is talking about her mom, and seems to switch to French when quoting her. One says she wants to marry a Haitian man.

Lake and Cascade

There were two familiar places I'd intended to return: Lake Merritt and Cleveland Cascades. I'd been to both at least twice, but never during the daylight.

The parks around Lake Merritt were by far the most inhabited places I'd seen all day. There were families out enjoying a beautiful day lounging around, couples sitting in benches, friends talking, and a man practicing a small woodwind instrument by himself. Strangers passing by said their hellos far more often than they do in the city.

I have never seen so many people out on Thanksgiving. Unless you count the hordes of tourists taking pictures at Twin Peaks, but tourists are different. It makes sense; if you don't have a fetish for watching young men in armor throw their bodies into each other, an afternoon in the park is a great way to spend a day off. Where I come from we'd much rather gather indoors and huddle close for heat.

I pass by a lovely sculpture that looked kind of like a giant dandelion and another that looked like a stone attempting to impersonate driftwood. I saw a little gazebo and the saddest little wildlife sanctuary (birds only). And I came across the often advertised Children's Fairyland. It was a disappointment; not only was it closed, but the likelihood that a child would be swapped for a changeling by some faye creature seemed nonexistent. Instead one got this:



Leaving aside that the best fairy tales don't end happily ever after, there seems to be very few pages between the Once upon a time and the Happily ever after. Perhaps they've learned the wisdom of being brief if you can't be excellent. Clearly I haven't.

I proceeded to Cleveland Cascade. The first time I saw it it was a magical place to me, with lights under the rails providing an otherworldly illumination. Familiarity and the light of day have transformed it into a lovely, quiet place to sit and read.

Exit

I continue up to the top of the cascade to see what the neighborhood up there is like. I find winding streets on rolling hills, with modest houses and their companion automobiles everywhere I look. The street I follow kicks me out at MacArthur Boulevard. Lack of sleep has turned my mind to mush. I have no idea where I am, but I look to the west and head that way. Soon I'm back at Grand and I make my fastest retreat to BART, the sooner to meet head to pillow.

But mush brains have trouble with downtown Oakland BART stations. The trains are on two levels. In better times I would just know that the upper level only went the wrong direction for me, but this time I was confused. I tried to look for signs about which trains arrived where, and that's when it hit me.

3:40 PM. Fuck.