Recessionizing

The other morning, I was rattling along McAllister on the #5 line, heading to work. Yes, rattling along, as that early in the morning I am nothing more than a hyper-intelligent bag of potatoes, bouncing and jostling along the road, not talking to people on the bus (hyper-intelligent for a bag of potatoes, I mean). I usually wake up after visiting a market to get a bagel and an orange juice and ignore the young teenagers casually walking through the empty check stands on their way in, stuffing small objects in their pocket as they go--I'm not turning a blind eye to young people sticking it to a corporation, mind you; I just really dislike teenagers and would rather ignore them.

But my morning routine was shaken when I saw that Cafe Neon was gone. All of a sudden, the windows papered over in that brown butcher's paper decor that seems to mark storefronts more and more these days. One day here, the next day gone like a pot of coffee gone cold and stale and thrown out.

I used to go to Cafe Neon a lot; it was handy to Vaughn's apartment, so we would meet there after work before watching a ball game on TV. They did good french toast, I remember, from a year and a half ago.

I guess that is the nature of a recession. After seeing Cafe Neon was gone, I started noticing more and more empty store fronts along my usual walking/busriding routes.

The weird thing was, I couldn't even remember what some of the empty store fronts once contained--which probably explains why they are now empty, but still, it bothered me that I couldn't remember.

They say the recession is ending. The stock numbers are starting to trend upwards, for whatever that is worth. But I question that, because of my observation of these emptying stores.

I can think of three possible explanations for the discrepancy:

1) I'm not nearly as observant as I would like to think I am, and just haven't noticed all the failed stores until now that it has been brought home so thoroughly with the demise of Cafe Neon;

2) the recession is ending, but there are some lingering aftershocks that are catching up to some businesses that have been desperately holding on;

or 3) the recession continues, and any talk of it ending is premature, or at least not yet relevant on the ground.

I'm going to discard possibility 1 out of hand, because that would make me feel so much better. As for the latter options, I'm not qualified to answer. What do you all think?

Slices of San Francisco, From Recession to Absolutely Fabulous

I.

A spectacled young black man in a bulky jacket and neatly trimmed beard sits down next to me on the 49 Line.

"3 bucks for the whole bag," he announces.

"What?"

He lifts a grocery bag from the floor, sets it down between us.

"All this," opening the bag to reveal a cornucopia of potato chips and Hostess pies,"for only three dollars."

"Oh, no thanks. Don't need it."

"You sure? Okay." He turns away, moves the bag into the aisle, turns to the old bearded ex-hippie with the beret and the long beard.

"What have you got in there? Magic?" The hippie laughs, savoring the sound of the crinkle of the cellophane bags.

They fall to talking about growing up in the city, and the young black man, Nate, tells the old bushy-bearded bohemian about his temporary job, cleaning buses.

"You mean cleaning off this poetry?" he gestures at the scrawling tags of graffiti on the floor and the back of the seat

"Yup, and scrubbing the metal, peeling off the address labels."

A block on, Nate disembarks after asking for the nearest liquor store.

"What a beautiful child," the old man muses.

II.

Say what you will about recessions and economic woes in general: they do bring out the resourcefulness of the individual.

In addition to the story of Nate, the Public Transit Peddler of Junk Food--have to wonder where he got that and why he was selling it for $3--I have within the last five hours witnessed the following:

1) on the platform of the Civic Center Bart Station, a homeless man wearing a rust-colored jacket almost bigger than his body trying to sell a sealed FedEx package that he acquired somehow, somewhere, presumably illegally, to other passengers;

2) a wiry-haired gentleman in worn-out coat like a khaki army blanket and well-cared-for glasses asking for help for food in light of the economy and the historical re-occurrence of the rich exploiting the poor;

3) a young lady in newsie hat, denim jeans and jacket and scarf swiping a hunk of food off an abandoned plate on an outdoor table at Boogaloo's on Valencia.

I also heard a pedestrian telling his companions how he had just sold a van to a 50 year old man who was planning on overhauling it as a place to sleep. Shelter is shelter, and it is a pretty simple concept at its heart.

III.

In further news, I saw an office on Valencia that seems to be offering Confidential Marriages. I'm not sure what this would entail, but I like the connotations, which seem to harken to the jazz/noir age.

I also saw a poster advertising the California Lottery on a Muni shelter, written in Spanish, but I think it was saying, "If $27 million is muchmuchmuchmuchmuch money, is $12 million muchmuchmuch money? It's still plenty." The implication being, why wait for the jackpot to grow larger? Play the lottery now!

IV.

Riding the 24 Line last night, I saw a posse of five young people, three boys and two girls, all primped to look older than they were, disembarking from the bus, with talks of parties in high-pitched voices of excitement. The girls were also talking excitedly.

After the doors slid shut with a hiss, a cadre of four hip older kids, three latinos and one blonde woman, discussed the probability of the previous group being 18 or older. "And the girls probably think those guys are straight," they added.

A few minutes later, they started talking about which Absolutely Fabulous characters they would be. The guy in the baseball hat leaning against the blonde's chest said, "I would be Patsy, I think. No, wait, I'd be Edina."