The Streets of San Francisco
...and a cocktail with Andy
The joke starts with my wife and me walking into a bar…
Our hotel bar is dark and cramped with retro seashell patterned wallpaper and gold trim, an element from the 1970s. It was a theme in some of the seedy watering holes that dot the once exclusive shopping district of Union Square—a place that hosted out-of-control gangs of youth and directed mayhem that terrorized stores and people. Dirty Harry would find these places fit well on his movie sets but I think he probably would have forgone his five shots or six comment and gone straight to shooting.
Our bartender appeared to be one of those guys Dirty Harry would lean on for information. Balding with longish hair and wispy moustache, sporting mauve tight fitting polyester pants and matching vest, he stood polishing glasses as he scanned the room looking for customers in need. He was an affable man and as we would find out a bit later, a man struggling to find an inner compass that included the works of Thomas Sowell and the preaching of Joel Osteen.
There was a dapper man sitting at the other end of the bar, just two seats down, appearing to be a discount version of Alejandro Mayorkas; my wife insisted that’s who he was. I smirked; yeah, he kind of looks like him. He was eating something that included French fries, sipping a rum and Coke, and working his phone intently. Occasionally he would glance around the bar to make sure people weren’t paying him undo attention. Then he said something to our bartender (let’s call him Larry).
Profiles are ambiguous; the voice, like a fingerprint, doesn’t lie. Alejandro—just call him Andy—shot me a tight smile and I returned the gesture. Well, by damn, it was in fact the rascally former DHS secretary.
Our bartender had casual chats with Andy. Andy was a regular and the kitchen was generous with his portion, as Larry pointed out. Andy thanked Larry, paid his tab, and escaped into the night. Andy seemed a genial man.
Some said Heinrich Himmler seemed a genial man.
When I asked, Andy’s identity was confirmed by the coy smile from Larry before he stepped back into his employee role and stated he had signed an NDA with the hotel—he could have simply said no.
Last call produced a drink I took back to the room. The room had a nice window alcove overlooking Stockton Street that led to Union Square. I opened the window to give the room some air and I kicked back, with my drink on the windowsill, and munched on some olives. Occasionally, wisps of cigarettes or dope would drift in.
As I got settled, I almost missed the opening act.
Down below, partially shielded by a youthful maple tree (there was a lot of replanted landscaping), an assault and robbery was taking place.
A man, I’d say early 30s, was tugging on a backpack with a stick figure of a girl grabbing tight. Another guy, black tee shirt and black shorts, stood in front of the main entrance to the hotel across the way and about twenty yards from the melee, ready to pounce. He was stocky and short.
There was a scooter about twenty yards behind him and he was just jumping up and down, full of something that made him jittery.
The struggle continued and I was incensed that stocky guy wasn’t doing anything. The man was yanking hard to get the backpack from the girl but suddenly all became clear.
The guy was just pulling; he was trying to hold his ground as the girl was more frantic. Then it dawned on me; the girl was the one stealing the backpack. When it looked like the guy was about to win the tug-of-war, stocky guy began running at them full throttle. In that split second, the girl won and began running toward the square. The man gave hot pursuit but the girl was faster. Stocky guy slammed on his breaks and frantically sprinted back to the scooter, jumped on, and off into the night he raced.
Stocky guy was the spotter.
After a minute, a dude with a beard, a friar’s hat, and a woman’s floral skirt ambled from where the struggle had occurred, oblivious to whatever had just transpired. Was it Friar Tuck or a dude playing the dude, disguised as another dude!
Then from beneath my perch stumbled a potbellied middle-aged man dressed in a white polo, royal blue shorts, and sock-less Italian loafers, propelled by some unseen force into the street. He almost face-planted a couple of times. A Hispanic kid (a kid to me is anyone under 30) appeared and guided Potbelly across the street. The kid kept hugging him, praising him, patting him on the back. It appeared they were old friends. Appearances can be deceiving but that’s just speculation.
The kid produced a cell phone and had Potbelly use his thumb to open it and started strumming through screens. He then showed the man something, patted him on the back and tried to steady him the best he could. I think he showed him he summoned Lyft or Uber or Satan as far as I could tell. Potbelly was oblivious.
Enter stage right… Franz Kafka.
A van pulled up and a young Hispanic girl in a full quinceañeras dress elegantly exited. A man in a matador outfit rushed around from the other side and helped guide her into the hotel across from mine. (Evidently, San Francisco City Hall hosts a lot of these events.) Potbelly was oblivious; the open door to the van, though, was an invitation and he dove in. The kid burst out laughing and the driver was perplexed. Both pulled Potbelly out.
There was a chest-high traffic cone—it seemed to appear out of thin air—and Potbelly grabbed onto it. Potbelly was now in self-preservation mode as he bumbled around in circles; the cone kept him from leaving this earthly plane.
A second van drove up. Potbelly was hopeful and he lumbered toward it. The door opened and another girl, also in full quinceañeras dress, wasn’t as graceful. There seemed to be no cause and effect but Potbelly was beside her as she crashed onto the sidewalk; lace, silk and heavy fabric engulfed her and threatened to swallow Potbelly. Somehow Potbelly avoided the trap. She either stepped out too soon or her matador had been too slow. The kid and her matador helped her up but in dove Potbelly.
This time Potbelly wasn’t budging. The kid, always jovial and sober, rushed around to the other side of the van, laughing as the driver was fuming. The kid opened the side door and out tumbled Potbelly. The driver punched it, leaving the kid and Potbelly in the middle of the street. There was more swinging and swaying and plenty of close calls with death and destruction.
Potbelly began flagging down any car that passed but finally his ride arrived. The jubilant kid pushed Potbelly onto the back seat, jumped in and off into the mystical night they rode. Kidnaping or comic relief?
The olives were gone, my drink long since drained and as I rose to close the window, the final act appeared.
A man, clad in heavy black gear marched up the street from Union Square. A girl was thrown over his shoulder as if he were evacuating a fallen comrade from the battlefield.
Huh. Don’t see that everyday.
There were no more docudramas over the next three nights. It had been Saturday night in San Francisco. Elton John sang something about fighting on Saturday nights but this didn’t feel like a fight; the fight has been fought and this is just the aftermath.
I drove along the streets of Haight-Ashbury where trash and other… well, I don’t know what the other was and I don’t want to know. The scents alternated between fried foods, raw garbage, and block after block of urine. The tie-dyed colors are muted and building façades are rotting and splintering. It is dirty and dingy and a relic of something that never was.
I walked along the streets of San Francisco. Union Square, the place where high-end stores’ windows were smashed and their products redistributed via eBay, is showing signs of life. A couple of cop cars were parked in front of shops, giving a sense of a safe zone, and the SFPD actually has a parked trailer titled Mobile Command One; I’m not thinking it’s very mobile nor do I see what it’s commanding; it’s there just in case.
The cars are mostly for show as the only cops I saw were pulling overtime in front of Louis Vuitton and the Apple store. There was an undercover cop disguised as an old guy ambling down the street but he wore a corded earpiece and kept whispering into an unseen mic. Perhaps he was being commanded by Mobile One.
Down from the square along one of the cable car lines is an area that may have once been a little Bourbon Street-like with colorful neon attracting shoppers and partiers. There’s a dungeon-like dive bar illuminated only by neon, straight out of Clint Eastwood’s imagination, with midwestern tourists sipping wine behind an alcoved window.
Down the way someone kept popping off small strings of firecrackers but no one seemed to pay it any attention. Tucked away in abandoned storefronts are lone sentinels on scooters, clad all in black. They ignore the pops too. These ninja wannabes are ready to deploy the street urchins for a quick buck to feed their drug habit.
The homeless are everywhere but they seem no more harmless than a park bench; in fact, people walk by them as if they were. There were a couple of stagnant zombies, hunched over, seemingly waiting for reactivation. I was told that the worst part is in the Tenderloin district, not too far from our hotel. To witness that mass depravity of humanity is to open a level of cynicism for which I’m not ready.
An out of shape offensive lineman dressed like an extra on the set of The Fisher King marched diagonally across an intersection, oblivious to traffic. He was shouting at the top of his lungs: MAN, YOU’VE GOT A GAMBLING PROBLEM! YOU NEED HELP; YOU’RE MOTHER WOULD BE DISAPOINTED. I’M TELLING YOU, GET FUCKING HELP! This was his mantra as he trudged down the hill and away from his problems.
San Fran was the birthplace of today’s aggressive progressivism that has subdued California. It is war-torn and weary but the war is over. Andy is a veteran of that war and he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong; his is the righteous cause of the misanthrope, for there is no other explanation for leftists’ incoherent policies other than the hatred for mankind.
I was apprehensive in going out into the city. I didn’t wear my watch, I kept personal belongings to a minimum, held my wife close by, but by the end of the trip I wasn’t any more concerned than traveling in areas of Houston, which do warrant concern, but not as much as I would have suspected. But walk into any business and they smile warmly. They engage you in conversation, ask you where you’re from, so on and so forth. But they are genuinely nice. They aren’t hippie transplants or ideologues who would just as soon spit on you. It’s their city and if they could push those out who did this, they would. They’re just outnumbered.