Sloane en Pointe
Tag: San Francisco
Clouds Over Golden Gate
San Francisco from Sausalito
Working at the 30th Street Senior Center, 1996
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
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.
Birthday at Kokkari
I Should Have Been Born In 1955
what once was is all i think about, no, i don’t want world war 2 and the holocaust, and no, i don’t want to be drafted to vietnam, and the kennedys weren’t really that great, and jim crow was terrible, i don’t want polio, thank you jonas salk, there was no perfect time, what i’m talking about is technology and the speed of life, the environment, 24/7 internet television, tiktok addiction, the list is endless, the modern world is tough on someone who was born in the wrong year, i’m thinking it should have been 1955, not 1972, in 1955 tv was still new, american cars were still cool, food was less toxic, the planet wasn’t full on globally warming, and the dodgers and yankees had some epic baseball battles, the who could have been my first concert instead of the village people, as a kid i could still use a typewriter, and i could live for several decades with no email, no text messages, no cellphone, and i could have gotten lost more, remember when we used to get lost with real maps? i sound like an old curmudgeon, and i guess i’m getting there, but i look up and down san francisco streets and there are self-driving cars, motorized bikes speeding through red lights, people in tents, nothing seems to make sense, and shel silverstein isn’t alive anymore to help explain it to me, gosh bless his sarah cynthia sylvia stout, remember what happened? the whole pile of garbage just fell everywhere and destroyed everything, sometimes that feels like us right now, the 21st century collapsing into automation, artificially intelligent machine learning, humanity riding in the backseat, but tell them how you really feel dan, i still have hope, otherwise why teach? why be a parent? but something is off, it’s all just too fast, too digital, too many screens, can’t we just slow it down a little bit? take a deep breath, now one more, that’s a start.
The Life & Death of North Beach, San Francisco
north beach has changed, the spontaneity is gone, we used to just go out, to shop at city lights bookstore, to eat, to have a drink, to be in the city together, listen to music, jazz, or whatever, the city used to be a community, no one really knew what might happen any given night, at vesuvio’s or caffe trieste, or on broadway, people being people, san francisco people, with their freedom and self-expression, the edifices remain, but the past is past, now they shop amazon online, order uber eats, reserve on opentable, scrutinize tripadvisor, calculate with gps, where to go and when, the city has had a partial death, and no one really cares, why go back to the old ways? we are now more and more, part of the machine, technology guides us, separates us from –lets just go out and be.
Caffe Trieste: North Beach, San Francisco
Write What You Know
what if what you know is just a basement rug, ballgame on upstairs, crickets outside, september night, cool air, touch of smoke wafting in, forest fires north of here, is this enough? reading a random poem by nuala ní dhomhnaill, sounds irish to me, real irish, as in gaelic, depending on whether you’re english, not me, i’m american, as in, related to merica, tennessee talk, knew it, southern, sometimes reel southern, like fishing with words, deep accent, but here in california everything is different, mostly people ask me that, isn’t san francisco different? yes, and no, y’all still just people, politics a side, and who wants politics for a main course? not me
Daniel W. Polk 