Stranger On A Bus

The back of the 38 Muni line can be a lively place. I've seen two undercover policewomen handcuff a disruptive, bald woman and escort her off the bus. I've heard scruffy men muttering to themselves, but it could be they were faking it in order to get people to leave them alone, because that is really all anyone wants on the bus: to be left alone.

The other day, I sat down on a bench next to a scruffy guy in baseball hat and purple knee pads. I pulled out the book I am reading about the 2010 Giants championship team, my accustomed shield against having to notice the loud teenagers--seriously, can't the city afford school buses so the rest of us don't have to deal with teenagers?

As I was reading, the guy in the kneepads asked if it was a good book. "I have it, but I haven't read it yet. My dad's a season ticket holder, and they gave everyone a signed copy."

We started talking about the Giants and their lack of hitting this year and how everything came together at the right time last year.

"I went to the parade and got REALLY drunk," he said. "I wound up in the Drunk Tank. That was my last drink." He told me he couldn't drink anymore, because he was sick. He had been on sick leave from work for a year.

"I guess that would be as good a moment for your last drink as any," I said.

"Yeah, it was something. I've never seen the whole city come together like that."

He told me that his dad was still a drunk. He told me that he was writing a book about everything that had happened to him. He and his dad were both ex-Army Rangers, and he had seen so much shit in his life. He told me he had a recording studio, and he was tired because he had stayed up all night recording, trying to be creative.

"I'm Travis," he said, proffering his hand.

He told me he used to be a great athlete, playing for the Cal basketball team from 1992 to 1994 as a backup to Jason Kidd.

When I was in fourth grade, Vaughn and I loved Battle Beasts. Another kid in our school told us that he had some dinosaur Battle Beasts that he would give us. He kept forgetting to bring them in, and then told us that a fire destroyed the shed where he kept them.

Years later, I went online, and found no indications that dinosaur Battle Beasts ever existed. Similarly, I looked online for the history of Cal basketball, and couldn't find a record of anyone named Travis on the rosters for that time period.

You Call This Art? If There's A Party Bus And Kahlua Involved, Then, Duh.

At the Academy Awards, Justin Timberlake told us he had a confession to make: "I'm Banksy."

This tells us two things:

1) People these days want to be secret criminals, not secret crimefighters. Remember when people used to say, "I'm Batman"? I guess being a millionaire playboy with a secret alter ego who fights crime is no longer as cool as being a mysterious criminal--since technically, guerrilla graffiti art is generally illegal.

Banksy is one of those mysterious figures whom no one seems to actually know. Our tour guide Russell, in all sincerity, told us how he knows a guy who knows Banksy, and it sounds like this is a common story. Russell was sitting in a bar somewhere in Slovenia, where he met a fellow stencil enthusiast who had apparently once spent an hour in a London pub talking about stenciling with a stranger before figuring out that he was Banksy.

This means that Marina and I now know a guy who knows a guys who knows THE guy. Everyone should know a guy like that. Everyone WANTS to know a guy like that. I think this is what caused the whole hipster movement.

2) Street art is EVERYWHERE. I don't mean simply that street art is now a part of the pop culture mainstream--and I wonder what street artists REALLY think about that; street art is literally everywhere you look, even places you've walked past on numerous occasions without giving a second glance.

Yesterday Marina and I joined a tour set up by TransportedSF. Yes, it is as awesome as it sounds. Let's put it this way: as our converted school bus full of dancing hipsters drove up Van Ness, two homeless guys leaning against McDonalds pointed at us as if to say, "What the f***'s that?" Now that's awesome, when you can befuddle a homeless man, especially if you have a flask of kahlua that you are unafraid to use.

The tour assembled outside the Revolution Cafe on 22nd Street, where Marina bought a plastic cup of spiced fruit from a man in the back of a moving van. Illicit fruit for illicit art: brilliant. We also had cocoa, which we spiced up with kahlua.

Did I mention the Banksy Art Tour was 21+ and BYO?

There were thirty of us, plus Alxndr the host/DJ, Russell the stencil expert, and Alex the driver in pink sunglasses, all piled in to an old school bus. Padded benches lined the sides and back of the bus, and the middle was kept clear for a dance floor.




The first stop was Sycamore Alley, which, oddly enough, was where Marina and her family lived when she was first born. Russell told us how this Banksy piece had been obscured over the years by many other artists wanting to leave their marks. Banksy apparently draws all sorts of reactions, from contemptuous defacing to tributary additions. However, Russell said we could still make out the punchline of the piece.



There is a lot of scribbling on top of the original, but once you make out the quiver of arrows, the feathers, and the sign incorporating the No Trespassing notice, you get the idea. Brilliant.

From there, we drove down Mission towards Duboce, stopped at the corner of Erie. A fence around the parking lot prevented us from getting too close, but it was a remarkable view anyway. A Banksy piece depicting a singing bird was in the center of the wall, with other artistic contributions all around, including a man with a jackhammer at the bottom that was the work of Blek La Rat, one of Banksy's influences.



From there, we drove up Van Ness, turned down a narrow street next to a hotel, where a famous Banksy piece had actually been preserved by the hotel behind plexiglass. Corporate intelligence, in contrast with the Texan owner of Amnesia bar on Valencia, who ordered a Banksy piece there painted over. Remind me never to go to Amnesia again.

Here's the glittery piece on Fern Street:




Which does raise the question: is it still a statement of anarchy if it is preserved behind plexiglass? Regardless, this was one of my favorite pieces for the delicacy of the stencil work; the rat's fur looked amazingly realistic.

Speaking of anarchy, there could be no doubting the anarchic cred of the next piece we saw, overlooking a major North Beach intersection, and framed in such a way as to address the skyscrapers of the Financial District.




Of all the artistic and philosophic questions you might ask, one of the first would be "How the heck did he get up there?"

The highlight of the tour came when we were all standing on the street corner looking at this one, and a little old man and his wife came by to ask us what we were looking at. He got tremendously excited: "THAT'S a Banksy??? We went ALL OVER London looking for a Banksy piece!" We made his day.

From there, we headed to Chinatown, where on a small side street next to a bakery, we saw another piece that was quite detailed and preserved along with a couple additions by some other artist:



This is the bakery where Banksy apparently paid the owner $50 for the right to stencil on the wall.

The last Banksy piece we saw was at Howard and Ninth, featuring a rat and a skull and crossbones.



After that, the happy, drunken bus shouted down the host's suggestion that there was not enough time to stop by the Treasure Island Dance Festival, and so we rolled across the Bay Bridge for fifteen minutes of wild but family-friendly debauchery. The whole day seemed very urbane and awesome. If this was what the people touting Judgement Day on May 21st are trying to warn us about, then bring on the end times. As long as there is kahlua and fascinating street art, that is.

Oh, also, we met Elmo.

As Easy As Picking Up A Baby

"What are your plans on Saturday?" Her sister asked Marina this question last week, as casually as if they were arranging a coffee date, and not discussing the arrival of Nephew: The Sequel.

But they were, in fact, discussing the birth of Ryker West Keylock, Marina's second nephew, which is how we ended up driving along I-80 and up the 505 to I-5 on the day before Mother's Day, heading for Chico, wondering if Ryker would in fact expedite matters to avoid a lifetime of having to dilute his birthday gift-receiving with a modicum of Mother's Day gift-giving (he did).

This is how we had the following conversation while driving from Orland towards Chico:

"We're looking out for Meridian Avenue, and then we're going to turn left on West East Avenue," Marina noted, checking the map on her iPhone.

"Which street?"

"West East Avenue."

"West East Avenue?"

"Yes."

"F*** YOU, Chico!"

However, Chico is not a bad town, other than the despicable people of the City Planning Department, Street Names Division. The Enloe Medical Center was quiet and easy to find, and there were plenty of well-wishers there, which was good, because when I agreed to accompany Marina, I had a hidden fear--okay, not so hidden--that I would be left in sole charge of her two year old nephew, Boden. Don't get me wrong, he's an adorable kid, getting more verbal and interactive every time I see him; I was just worried that I would BREAK him, which would be kind of awkward, especially since I haven't married into the family yet.

I've held Boden on my lap before, because, well, he's practically family, which makes me okay with sitting on a couch with him--if I drop him, he has somewhere to fall.

And just look at this kid: isn't he delightful?




So of course, anxious to avoid any risk of breaking the kid, I found myself playing hide and seek with Boden around the salad bar in the hospital cafeteria, just like I play hide and seek with the cat at home.

So somehow, when he came running around the corner and I was waiting, he ended up running into my arms, giggling gleefully, and I found myself thinking, He's so light. I should just pick him up. So I did, and held him until he started squirming. Since he's two, this took about three seconds; nevertheless, I've felt remarkably protective towards him ever since.

I don't know what it was, exactly, but it explains a lot about the best side of human nature, I think.

Thursday Tides

Here's another reason to love the city. Leaving work, if I walk north on Presidio Avenue, I pass the mammoth palaces of the Pac Heights riche, both nouveau and vieux, I suppose, and reach the gates of the Presidio, the giant green and colonial creche of history and silence in the corner of the city.

From the gate, instead of following the road, I can turn at an angle and follow Lover's Lane down through a cathedral-like grove of eucalyptus and fir trees. Andy Goldsworthy is designing a new, natural artwork in this grove, a curving line of log segments tracing a path down slope, following the line left by a row of firs that could not compete with the eucalyptus trees for sun. Lover's Lane is one of the oldest paths in the city, being used by Spanish missionaries and, later, American soldiers, to travel from the Presidio to the city itself.



At the end of Lover's Lane, you can head to the Main Post, or to the YMCA gym, or you could head down to Crissy Field and its wide-open panorama of the bay, Alcatraz, the bridges, the East Bay hills and the Marin headlands. At the western end, at Fort Point, crazy surfers ply the rolling waves smashing on sharp rocks at the base of the bridge. Further around the shore, in the middle of Crissy Field's beach, you can see flocks of sails for kite-boarders and windsurfers.





It's hard to picture a better place to walk after a long day of work.