Best San Francisco

(photo Eric Fischer)

Best book-browsing - the two hours spent in City Lights, wandering from one shelf to another, wonderfully overwhelmed by the selection (mentally cursing Glasgow's lack of equivalent) and sitting down on a wooden chair reminiscent of my family home's dining chairs, next to painted placards demanding change, and reading a momentary discovery, Roland Barthes' "What Is Sport?" a text for a documentary for Canadian TV by Hubert Aquin (apparently unavailable online) printed with incongruous images of English and European football from roughly 2007, including Brad Friedel saving a shot for Aston Villa, and a Chelsea and Valencia player going up for a header. Turning a corner to find Lil struggling under a weight of ten or so books, unable to choose which ones to get.

Best communal breakfast - America is supposed to be individualistic, and dinner is supposed to be the meal you go out for. At Brenda's, at 8am, it was packed with people eating amazing breakfasts and chatting to each other and the waiters and chefs. There were queues to get in at both Dottie's and then Brenda's. People wanting to get out and about early on a weekday morning.

Best intense emotion - the sheer joy at hanging out with Tobias, Dain and Neil again, all of us together in one place for the first time in seven years; the ridiculousness of that - why hadn't we done it earlier?! - but also the beautiful fact of it being halfway across the world, how we'd not managed to meet up in London all those years but had somehow managed to congregate in a magical city for a special event. Being able to remember publicly the great times we had making films and to say how happy I was to be here, in this moment, celebrating with Tobias and Tu.

Best oasis - the Tenderloin National Forest, discovered in reading City Lights-bought Rebecca Solnit's Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, and just around the corner from where we were staying. Set up in part by the Luggage Store Gallery (whose premises on Market Street we failed to find in 2008 and forgot to search again for this time), it exists in a small alley on Ellis Street, opposite the Glide Memorial Church (where tourists can see gospel on a Sunday morning, providing they queue early to avoid sitting in an annex and watching it on TV), and is experienced as a genuine oasis of calm and contemplative peace in the dark chaos of the Tenderloin. Ellis has a particularly large population of homeless people and drug addicts, who by day gather at corners and the entrances to convenience stores, and by night lie curled up in piles of blankets along the sidewalks up against buildings and fences. Mornings, they congregate outside Glide. There is an occasional local support worker there talking to them.

The Forest is made up of a gravel path around the edge of a garden of mixed plants and trees; there are big leafed bushes and small succulents, and there are two human-made ponds, one constructed from an old bathtub that is home to orange fish. Halfway down, under the shade of a large tree, is a small seating area. An old man with a white beard was sat there quietly when we passed, and we nodded and said "good morning".

Best use of stereotypical American phrase - the guy on the BART station wearing a SF 49ers cap and jacket, talking to his wife who may have been blind (she held a non-white stick out in front of her to guide her) who was also wearing a 49ers cap and jacket, though of a different design, who asked her to "quit busting my chops".

Best overheard mobile phone conversation - on the Muni 71 back from the Quiet Lightning reading in Golden Gate Park, a guy got on already talking on the phone. He had two long plaits of hair either side of his head that met behind to form a ponytail, and wore three or four bead necklaces that reached to his abdomen. He sat a few rows back from us, and talked loudly to a friend about a girl who "has not done anything to change my view of her character", as well as a guy they both know, though vaguely, who had been a keynote speaker at a conference at SF State, a conference at which the bus-rider had also been speaking on a panel, this mutual friend being someone "that works with the young brothers real close" at schools and I think youth clubs, someone who has realised that "that's how close" you've got to work with them: daily, in their own environment.

Best epiphany that everyone probably had ages ago - American fashion is America having a conversation with itself, mainly about subcultural groups and to a lesser extent class. This is made more clear on returning to the UK where the class element dominates. The (white) (middle-class?) youth of the US wear far more classic Western wear (those shirts with curved pockets, popper buttons, flanel and wool shirts, gimme gaps, even Levi's) than in the UK, where the current fashion, from Topshop/man right down to vintage stores and small manufacturers seems to be a convoluted, arch, raised eyebrow and above all IRONIC conversation about the UK class system; all this stuff that one way or another always seems to reference Brideshead Revisited, deck shoes, Oxford shirts, Panama hats; the very British confliction in regard to the aristocrats - revulsion/attraction. How Burberry has become a working class label. America's dominant styles are conversations between different subcultural groups, and of course far more about race, too; thin white middle-class hipsters (both male and female) referencing the hyper-masculinity of cowboys.

San Francisco Images

I got back 6 or so films from SF. Click on the photos below to be plunged into the middle of the rest.

San Francisco Notes: Images from Here

From Delta airlines inflight magazine, on the Triangle region of North Carolina:

"located strategically in the center of the triangle ... the 7000 park is home to more than 170 of the most influential, avant-garde companies on the globe"

"this is a region whose most important industry is higher education"

"applied science of engineering, textiles and agriculture - areas that generate the intellecutal property and human capital of the Triangle"

"the nation's first university-operated nuclear reactor"

"seven nationally renowned community colleges that are each in tune with what existing and emerging industries need in order to assist the area's ever-upward growth"

"we're ... helping to build that next generation of students who will fill jobs and also be in an entrepreneurial position to create new ones"

*

Overheard at JFK, one uniformed worker to another: "if only we can make it as friendly as Terminal 3."

Overseen at JFK, on a TV news screen: "Polygamist prophet set to stand trial."

*

Walking westward along O'Farrell, a group of five or six people in ragged clothes that have broken down from specific colours to a general street-dirt-grey, slumped outside a grocery store. Very hard to see where their heads are and other body parts, they seem to sink into their clothes. One clear image - a hunched figure, all layers of battered fabric, extending out from this material a muddied hand. Another: a row of people sat on upturned milk crates, propped up against convenience store walls.

Images: big cars that are more like minibuses than cars, with tinted windows, arms at the wheel the only sight of the driver; the area's ambient noise, shouts and cries and zooming cars and the eerie human-ish wailing of emergency sirens, sub-woofing bass; the shopping trolleys piled high with a person's life; the shopping trolleys full of Coke cans scavenged from bins up and down Market, going to the reclaimer for 6cents a can; the guy below our kitchen window with a brown paper grocery bag full of shoes.

All this two or three blocks from the tourist area and the Marriots and Hiltons. This appears inevitable; appears as a geographical bad conscience - America's attempt to hide the underbelly always a failure, it sticks to commerce and cheery positivity. Even the addicts and madmen wandering the streets here appear cheerful.

More images: a thin white man in pajama bottoms, shoes and dressing gown stops halfway across a busy street to laugh and point and chat to a skyscraper; a man sits on a fold-out stool outside a convenience store - he's homeless but you get the impression this is his regular spot - cheerily shooting the breeze with fellow street-dwellers. This morning a queue down a block - a church? soup kitchen? - waits patiently. A policeman who seems to be patrolling the line chats amiably to the beggars who gather round the fire hydrant on the street corner.

*

An indie-mart at punk venue Thee Parkside, Potrero Hill. Small crafts, lots of paper goods, jewellery, most of it referencing one way or another ideas of Native American patterns. Loads of small, independent and entrepreneurial enterprises, especially food - a guy hand-making pizzas, Angry Man Eats, Kung Fu Taco.

*

The vivid cultural mix of the Mission; Mexican and white hipster. Mission Street bilingual, Spanish dominating over small-lettered English. Other streets full of a youth that reminds me of the extended interviews in the Woodstock film, a mix of innocent traditionalism and rebellion, earnest and honest even when striking a pose. That particular interview with a kid with blonde hair and his girlfriend, sitting on a road-side verge, him talking about his immigrant father, how he had wanted to make something of himself and so doesn't see why his son would give up all that, the son saying he is trying to do the same as his father but in his own way.

6:44 in:

and into:

I always see American youth through this interview. The kids here, in cut-off jeans, careening round on bikes, talking languidly. A girl saying over and over "motherfucker" and managing to create layers of meaning in the repetition of one word: as inclusive gang, jokely as fellow reprobates, as lovers of beer (available in- and out-side), bands starting at 2pm.

I've always been attracted to what gets called the American "can-do" attitude: replying "yes" far more than "no". Taking things where you can, because life is harder (more risky). Wandering around this city, even this city, the streets are a far more conflicted place than in the UK. Rougher, yes, but more at stake, too - you have to work harder to get something, but what you get will mean more. Less complacent. "Closer to the bone". More rooted; if the streets are up for grabs, it's because there's something worth fighting for.

At 24th/Mission, at the BART, on a crossroads, street preachers with megaphones shouting in Spanish about God. One guy without a megaphone walking a line of meek-looking street-dirt-grey attired men ranged along a flowerbed, enunciating a passage from the Bible.

At 16th/Mission, at the BART, on a crossroads, an intimidatingly large number of homeless people sit around on the mural-ed bollards. The atmosphere feels extra-tense and there is shouting weaved into the ambient noise. It is unclear where the shouting is coming from.

Before coming home, a detour down an alley with hundreds of painted murals, all shouting positive accolades of the human spirit and aiming fire at the true culprits: "Capitalism Is Over! If You Want It".

*

Any Help.

Two times in one day this appeared scrawled on a piece of cardboard. The first, an old guy with a grey beard and a happy face under a SF baseball cap, wearing a black leather jacket in the sun, propped up on a medical crutch and taped to the crutch the sign. Us, walking down from City Lights clutching a logo-ed brown paper bag holding books and postcards, talking enthusiastically about plans for activist and literary activities. Any help. The man's face seemed different to others asking for money - if possible more melancholy, with a bemusement at his predicament that made even sadder than the others that seemed so resigned, already so sad. We walked past and stopped and went back and gave him money. He asked: "Can I help you find anything?" and pointed us toward SFMOMA. Any help. After giving us directions ("see that jukebox-shaped building?") he said in a voice it was impossible to tell whether it was sarcastic or not: "it's not like I know this place or anything".

The second time, walking home from a burrito and a beer in a Mission taqueria. It was dark and busy somewhere near Cyril Magnin and O'Farrell, lots of people, tourists and not, and a figure slumped at the intersection, nearly on the road, in some sort of bright hooded top with blothes on it as part of the design. The hood was up over the figure's head which was slumped onto their chest. A small figure but difficult to really tell how old they were or whether they were a man or a woman. Against his or her legs the cardboard sign. Any help more desperate and plaintive, a last gasp: ANY help. The sign seemed to speak instead of its author.

*

A street on, under the squared-off arches of a Hilton, a group: a young man with a suitcase on wheels, piled high with bits and bobs and a variety of crudely self-laminated begging signs. He had a guitar case on his back. He was talking enthusiastically to a man playing a steel drum, who had on his face a look of resigned pride, as if to say to the world: "you think I'm begging, but I'm serious. This is art." He didn't seem like he wanted to be associated with the others in the group milling around.

*

Two abortive trips to Gertrude Stein-related exhibitions due to prohibitive prices: $18 for the SFMOMA, $11 for the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

*

I am woken up in the middle of the night by the surprise sound of an amplified guitar out on the street below our window. The morning after, walking toward Powell BART station, what I presume to be the same guitarist appears, an amp cord extending from the guitar around his body and into a small bag on his back, where the amp is. He's still playing.

*

UC Berkeley, long-time bastion (in my head) of a progressive university culture, the FSM, that great speech by Mario Savio in 1964:

It turns out to be a pale, pathetic shadow of that, somewhere between the country club/golf course-style landscape of the grounds and an upmarket 18-30 vibe of the surrounding streets. We wandered up past the clock tower, past a building with BOTANY engraved on one tower and ZOOLOGY on another. Real-life students scurried past, all wearing blue and yellow Cal-wear, under black-and-white banners featuring their smiling photographed likenesses and inanely positive quotes about university life. One in particular: "Happiness! Opportunities! Critical Thinking! Research!" followed by the obligatory reference to the football team: "Go Bears!" On the campus periphery the shops and bars form what appears as a theme park for the "college experience", a town entirely devoted to the commerce of education. All communication seems to occur in banners, always the next event, always a cheery special offer.

*

On the BART back from Berkeley, a girl in front of us who completed a Rubics Cube twice in rapid succession between stops.

*

At a McSweeneys book launch at The Make-Out Room, we took the last two seats opposite friends Aimee and Bernardo, who we began chatting to, and when she had to leave Aimee invited us to a barbeque she and her husband are holding this weekend.

Talking to the guys from Apple who work with the guys from McSweeneys about what can a book do. Lil meeting Greg, the guy who has ran the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation for the last five years, and being able to tell him how reading What Is The What? inspired her to start working for refugees.

*

Russell telling me that Jonathan Richman lives in San Francisco, wanders around the Mission, and has been seen doing paintings of houses, using an easel propped up in the middle of the street, resting on one knee as he paints.

*

Russell pointing at a double-decker luxury coach and telling us about Google, Yahoo, Apple etc ferrying their employees to-and-from work in these coaches that have food and wifi, and travel specific routes separately from public transport, a whole network of routes not marked on public maps.

*

A guy on O'Farrell falling into step with us, a big grin on his face, asking us "What's the greatest nation on earth?" Our hesitant reply: "I don't know." "I'll tell you what it is, cause you're gonna need this," he says, half raising his arms to the heavens. "It's the do-nation." He asks us where we're from, and on hearing Scotland asks us whether 'Danny Boy' was written there rather than in Ireland, because he's heard that. Then he starts singing it, in a wonderful deep resonant voice. As we reach the corner, I find a dollar and he smiles again, telling us how happy he was that we laughed at the "do-nation" joke. Our smiles make him smile. He starts off down the street, but stops, and asks us what the greatest city is: "Genero-sity" comes the answer.

*

Waiting to go into a bar on the corner of O'Farrell and Jones, a woman appears. Her teeth are what strike me most; they are broken and split off at different angles. She starts singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and we mill around, feeling many levels of uncomfort. She kneels to ask for a dollar, saying "but I tried to make you happy". It is only a few hours later that this hits me; and when it does it really does HIT: in the incongruous atmosphere of a club on a Friday night, remembering this woman trying to make us happy.

*

A Sunday in Mill Valley. Sitting on the back deck of a French-styled cafe, wearing tuxedos without the jackets, me and two old friends collaborate on our speeches for our friend's wedding. The light filtered through the trees is mottled and creates ornate shadows. In front of us are sandwiches with fries, pushed aside to make way for paper and pens. Sitting here, elbows on the table, hands in the air, thinking, watching the others write, feeling a wonderful sense of camaraderie that comes from us all being together for the first time in seven years, us trying to express our love for our friend, it feels (embarassingly enough) like one of those scenes from The West Wing where Leo gets the staff together for a working breakfast, or those times at "Campaign Camp" where they play basketball in between making policy.

Driving back at night, in a bus full of wedding guests and the groom, through Marin County and over the Golden Gate Bridge, the city and the bay and the bridges all lit up, constellations in the dark. Lil remarking on the 30s-style design of the GGBridge, it's almost like time-travel.

*

In Powell BART, a man with a beard and a gravelly voice singing with a guitar who is surprisingly good, stopping midsong for a spoken word section: "What year is it? What week? What day is it? Not a relevant question. They're all the same" before going straight back into the song.

*

A woman at a bus stop on Haight, near the park, walking up and down shouting, first something about the tenth anniversary of 9/11, then "shut the fuck up".

*

At the entrance to Golden Gate Park, early evening, under a tree a group of homeless men gathering for what looks like a discussion, sat in a circle with one guy speaking earnestly in the middle. Yards away, more homeless people on their own. One guy has lain out blankets like a picnic, and has a radio tuned to a local station that blares out ads.

*

Watching an exotic beetle on the floor of the Conservatory of Flowers, feelers feeling spilt beer on the floor as readers read into a microphone at a Quiet Lightning night. It is only a matter of time until the beetle gets trodden on. Feet miss him, and then when our eyes are turned he gets flipped upside down and chopped in half by an errant booted foot. We look up in horror, and meet eyes with a girl who shares our morbid amusement - the funniness of sharing apparently over-sentimental emotion.

Walking home, coming face to face with a raccoon.

*

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