Scenes From An Urban Street: Redemption For $1

1) The sky is that odd mix of sun and rain, where you think you should be able to see a rainbow somewhere, but it must be blocked by the towering blocks of concrete and glass. The sidewalks are damp, the tiles of Powell Street seeming to float. The line for the cable cars is empty this evening.

2) A bundle of human desolation sits on the sidewalk, asks, "Does anyone have any change?" He says it into the teeth of a flood of conversation, cell phones, car engines, and it is lost.

You cannot expect to move the homeless and the panhandlers away from the tourist areas. When you live upon the charity/pity/guilt of others, you go where there are people. Basic survival law: if you need to acquire resources, you go where the resources are.

They are loafing along the sidewalks, long rail-thin pieces of humanity. I don't often give, because I don't want to. The signs that say "Why lie? It's for beer" are no longer funny, nor are they original. It is a low-percentage game for them, sifting through the crowds of people who are tired and want to go home, trying to latch onto those who have the emotional energy to make contact and give them money. But it is the only game they seem to have going.

Unless, of course, they are lying, and the money they get they put into a mutual fund. That would be disappointing.

You think I'm joking, and I probably am, but not entirely. I have heard reports of wealthy Marin County teens who drive into the city to play at panhandling on Haight Street.

I'll buy Street Sheet now and then. When I can, and when I want to. I'm more apt to give to musicians.

3) Speaking of, there is a cellist at the 24th Street Bart Station, exploiting the musical properties of tunnels. His music crests and drops like a wave at low tide, mellow and slow, a pleasant transition on the escalator up into the Mission Street twilight. I give him money, because it feels pleasant to listen to his music.

I wonder if the panhandlers get annoyed when there are musicians around. Maybe the panhandlers should unionize to protect their territory.

I give the cellist a dollar, which makes me feel all better for not having given a dollar to the people selling Street Sheet at Powell Street.

Sing

Last night we went to Bimbo's, the North Beach club from the 30's that I have written about before. You know, the one with the bathroom attendants that make you confront the specter of the past and serving classes and slavery, etc. I made sure to use the restroom at home, because I like my live music without a garnish of middle-class guilt.

We were there to listen to a new project by Ben Gibbard from Death Cab For Cutie and Jay Farrar from Son Volt, an album of songs based on Jack Kerouac's novel Big Sur. The show was sold out, so we were randomly seated next to an IT consultant from Tulsa who works four days out of every week in San Francisco, and his wife who had flown in for a weekend visit; the IT consultant told us 90% of the lyrics were taken directly from Kerouac's text. We didn't ask them their names, nor did they ask ours, but we had interesting conversations about bands we had or had not seen, Oklahoma--not as impacted by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression as you might think, because it was the capital of the oil industry at the time--old Highway 66, and music venues in Tulsa where Marcy Playground fell over backwards and kept playing to much applause.

The opening act was a funny and talented musician from Seattle named John Roderick. I'd never heard of him before, but, true to the beautiful quality of the indie rock circuit, he had enough fans in the crowd to keep him busy with taking requests. He was suffering from a cold, but he dealt with it with poise, turning it into humor by cadging Theraflu from audience members. He played with a great deal of passion, which resulted in broken glasses, which lead to a tech worker named Jesse becoming a hero of the night when he fashioned a hinge for the glasses out of guitar wire before the end of Roderick's set.

Then things really got cranked up with Gibbard and Farrar and their band that had "been a band for about a week," according to Jay. The show was really quite terrific, great lyrics, great singing, great vibe in the crowd. They sang, sometimes together, sometimes with solos, but the songs, "These Roads Don't Move" in particular, really evoked the feel of Big Sur and a lonely drive to nowhere.


How cool must it be to be successful at music and to have the opportunity to find this other musician who shares with you a fascination with Jack Kerouac, and for the two of you to put together a side project that really works?


I want to see more shows. I totally get the addiction to live music that some people acquire. It's vulnerability from the performers, putting these words and notes out in the world, and we all get to ride along.

It's incredibly simple to sing, and simply incredible when someone can sing well, especially when combined with playing an instrument, and when they have the confidence to perform in front of an audience, well, that becomes inspiring, very ceremonial in an age that is becoming less and less ceremonial as religion's influence wanes for more and more people. Festivals, concerts, live performances, these are when we can feel connected to other people, regardless of our position on the existence of a deity, mystical energy, or simple evolutionary process.

Snapsounds

I. STREET SOUNDS

The flat, echoless hooting of the pigeons with their raggedy andy button eyes.

The constant beeping of a broken mini ATM set into the wall of a Mission Street establishment, the kind that never works and never gives you the right amount of money.

The rising wail of a siren, each iteration building on the last, the Doppler Effect, then expanding, blossoming into concentric waves radiating off the Victorian houses and the hills of the Presidio and Golden Gate Park, like liquid, like waves sloshing between Twin Peaks and Bernal Hill. Sirens in harmony, different angles converging, a symphony of something is wrong.

A quiet splash as whiskey decants into a short solid glass.

Loud old men speaking a foreign language in the back of the bus, legs propped up on the rear-facing seats across from them.

The rattle of an old sedan, grey with dirty windows, as it grinds down the hill past the cherry trees whose pink blossoms are just billowing open in a puff of air.

The hiss as the train doors slide shut, the vibrations as the train starts again, glides down into the darkness of the tunnel.

Missionaries in nice clothes and ties preaching in Spanish on a sunny late afternoon on the street-level courtyard of the BART station, exhortations in a musical language you don't quite know but can get the gist.

II. MUSIC OF THE CITY


Musicians plying their trade in the acoustic convenience of BART station hallways, voices resonating off the polished floors and walls, steel and carpet and tile and dirt and change depositories. Acoustic guitars, saxophones, a soft fluid sound that permeates everything.

A street woman, mid-fifties, cut loose from the quilt of society, sits against a light pole, jangling change in a red plastic cup, calling everyone "sweetie" who passes. She has two small hoops ringing her nose, and a dark ugly mole on her right temple. Her words are a susurrus lost in the rumble of street noise, cars, phones, conversation, the change in her cup a heavy slosh of quarters, dimes, and pennies, money music dropping beneath everything.

Leaning against a pillar in the BART Station, down below street level, a bulky man in a beige sweater and long dreads pours out waves of sound from his saxophone, reading music from a stand, a folding black mesh laundry hamper on the floor before him, inviting recognition. The music is light and fills the air like the tide filling a cove.

Three happy people sitting on BART, knit caps, baggy clothes, dark hair tightly curled, clumped, knotted, braided. They pull out instruments of wood and horsehair-string, thrumming into the silence, as she starts to sing and the other man begins to slap his palms against canvas pulled tightly over an empty gourd. It's infectious, joyful, a counterpoint to the steady hum and whine of the train running through the darkness.