“You know you’re a real San Franciscan if you don’t even react when you see a naked person walking on the street.” – from a post on the SFGate Blog
Here’s a true story about “the City,” as everyone in the Bay Area calls San Francisco. (“So what’s Oakland then,” asked Eddie Izzard when he did “Dress to Kill” in San Francisco. “Just a collection of houses?”)
It was 1972. I was in my early 20s and still a hippie. I’d grown my hair long in hopes that it would look like Joan Baez’s, but her mane seemed impervious to the City’s famous fog, whereas mine frizzed out in a triangle that matched the shape of my bell-bottomed trousers.
At home with Spark and Cyclops
My tiny studio apartment at the top of Nob Hill came with a Murphy bed that pulled down from the wall, a pint-sized fridge called Cyclops, and a 1930s-era gas stove called Spark. (The appliances had nameplates.)
Fare then: 25¢. Today: 5 bucks.
At night I’d lie in the Murphy bed hearing the ding-ding of the California Street cable-car and, less romantically, the 55 buses grinding up the Sacramento Street hill behind my building.
I didn’t own a stereo (or a car or a TV) because I was saving money to travel. A friend gave me a Sears record player and I bought an LP of ocean sounds. Played at 16 RPM, it drowned out the traffic noises with an hour of waves-crashing-on-beaches. Most nights, I slept.
Jobs vs. principles: jobs win
On weekdays I’d get up, eat breakfast, dress in bell-bottoms or a maxi-skirt, and walk half an hour down Nob Hill to the San Francisco office of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich on the corner of Polk and Geary.
My job for their school textbook department was to write letters to teachers extolling the virtues of our books. This felt dishonest to me. I hadn’t read the books so how could I be sure that they were good? Still, it beat my summer job back in college: typing weapons specifications for Lockheed Missiles & Space Company (numbered paragraphs, manual typewriter, two carbon copies).
Comic relief at HBJ
Bull in search of balcony
Our foreign-language textbooks were tricky for the harried school employees who had to order them. I got one request for 15 copies of “Joaquin ah dess enwiss” (Joachim A Des Ennuis). Another school needed “that book about hay and bacon” (Hay un Toro en Mi Balcón).
The usual mispronunciation of C’est La Vie turned into a family joke. My sister and I, when confronted with one of life’s minor slings and arrows, still shrug it off with, “Oh well. Sest lah vye.”
Just two bills
On Fridays I got paid and at noon I’d walk up Polk Street to deposit the check in my version of Jessica Mitford’s “running-away account.” Mine was a going-to-Britain account and strictly for savings. I didn’t have a credit card; I didn’t need checks. I got money orders for the two bills I had to pay each month: rent (which included utilities) and telephone.
Polk Gulch, as the neighborhood is known, was HQ for the City’s LGBT community, so my walk took me past several gay-themed shops. I saw the double meaning in Hard On Leather but it was years before I got the joke of the alcohol store called Sukker’s Liquors.
Are we getting to the point of this story soon?
Yes! There was a women’s clothing store across the street from Sukker’s. I couldn’t afford to buy the clothes but I liked to hang out with them. I was in there one day with a few other shoppers when a gorilla walked in. We looked up – “Huh. Gorilla” – and went back to shopping.
Ho-hum. A gorilla.
The gorilla (or rather the man in a gorilla suit) lingered, trying to attract attention to himself by calling “Hoo hoo hoo!” and poking a mannequin with a banana. But the clothes were, like, oh wow, man – they looked like things Joan Baez might wear! – so we paid him no heed.
When I resumed my course toward American Savings I saw the gorilla up ahead, hoo-hoo-hooing down the sidewalk and brandishing his banana while everyone ignored him. Naked person? Gorilla? Best to ignore.
You should visit the City. Our golden sun will shine for you, unless, of course, the weather happens to be foggy. You might even see a gorilla.
Cable car: I, Daniel Schwen [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Grace Cathedral: I, Sailko [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
