Tag: Noe Valley

Working at the 30th Street Senior Center, 1996

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the elderly are grumpy, cloistered together in plastic chairs, waiting for their number to be called, i’m the guy with the microphone calling the numbers, the elevator can only take 8 people down to the cafeteria at a time, i’m so lonesome all the time, since i left my baby behind, on blue bayou, i’m crooning to the mostly spanish speaking geriatric crowd, entertainment for the hungry, they smile, call me young clin-ton, or danielito, charlie is my elevator operator, he gives me a shout when he’s ready for more people, send them my way danny boy, they shuffle their feet, eager to eat a free meal, i say hello to conchita, manuel, margarita, & maria vela, they are all so kind -i only worked at the senior center for 6 months, but they gave me a few hundred dollars & a nice card when i left, periodically i looked through obituaries over the years, one by one they disappeared.

My First Solo Apartment, 1996

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throughout college i had roommates, later, i futon-surfed my way through the east & west village in the nyc, by the time i landed in san francisco during the fall of 1996 i was done with roommates for good, that is when 204a day street found me, a 3-minute walk from my job at the 30th street senior center where i was the bilingual (spanish) volunteer coordinator, $540 a month & it was mine, when i first moved in i had a cot to sleep on, 6 cds, & a plant, spartan, no question, apartment highlights included: getting up at 5am to admire comet hale-bopp from my roof, hosting thanksgiving & a paella dinner party, listening to sonny rollins on sundays while cooking pasta -my solo sf apartment adventure ended when i moved to paraguay in 1998, but there are moments when i daydream about studio-living, less really was more.

Noe Valley, San Francisco

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Once the Irish, the Germans, the workers pressed together, clustered little Victorians, where they were born, lived, then died. Now babies in strollers, babies pressed against mom, against dad, toddlers wobbling, wide blocks of deconstructed, reconstructed, houses, pasted photos, smiling women and men, realtors, listing, listed, selling, sold. White buses, elevated people, wearing laptops like blankets, heading south to touch more technology. Hilly hills, wisps of fog, oceanic clouds, permanent winter like they say Twain said. Past and present commingle in gusts of wind, September summers, sometimes rain and rainbows.