LitCrawl in Clarion Alley

Last Saturday night, I was lucky enough to get to be a volunteer for LitCrawl in San Francisco's famous Clarion Alley. For those who might not be aware of it, San Francisco has had LitQuake since it was founded by book lovers in 1999 as a week long read and fun fest! It wraps up with the LitCrawl, which combines a bar crawl with talks and readings by authors of all types.

I got there early because I'm compulsive and anxious and love knowing where I'm going before I get there. I was supposed to be there for 3:30 setup and got there at 1:30. I had to figure out something to do with the extra time and discovered Cafe Prague. They are a Czech cafe between Clarion Alley and Sycamore Street on Mission. Great food, great people, and an opportunity to try Czech beer! I had a salad, which sounds healthy enough, with HUGE chunks of hot bacon in it which was maybe not as healthy, and beer. I had huge hopes for the beer since I've read that the Czech Republic has the highest per capita beer drinking rate in the world. I had a dark Krusovice which was really quite acceptable. Not as much complexity as I really want, but nevertheless, not a boring beer.

When I had sampled the beer and food enough (what am I a restaurant critic?) I went back out on the street and saw that violence was about to break out. It seems that a fellow was doing business in an area that some others felt proprietary over and they had come en-mass to talk to him. Imagine the scene. The poor guy is standing on the sidewalk with his back toward the buildings. He's been surrounded by six or seven guys, a couple behind him, a couple at his sides, a fellow standing in front of him explaining his mistake, backed up by a couple of more. They're basically filling the sidewalk and I want to go by. The tension is so thick that the air has almost solidified into a rubbery crystal clarity. Some of the fellows are watching their leader talk to the interloper, some are looking around for trouble, one guy looked really stoned and was picking his nose waiting for things to be over. I've been around things like this before, too often, and see that things haven't quite reached a head yet, so I slide through the crowd with that I'm not really here attitude. Really, I'm not sure that they even noticed me drifting through their obstacle course. I wasn't the main attraction! As I'm walking by I hear the leader telling the poor fellow that there's nothing to worry about, nothing's going to happen to him. I see that he wants to believe it, but you could see that he didn't, not really. Not any more than I did. As I walked away I waited--1--2--3--and then from the gasps and reactions around me I knew something had happened. I stepped up against the building so that I wouldn't be in the way of anyone fleeing the scene and saw--Good! They just knocked him out. He's laying--well, I'm not going to say face down because you have an impression of what laying face down means. This guy was out cold and spinning as his face hit the sidewalk. His face is kind of smudged out on the street, he's all twisted up, and one of the guys that had been standing behind him was trying to straighten the poor guy out. It's hard to move an unconscious person. You have no idea. He finally flops him over and pulls him back toward the building. It's obvious he's trying to make the guy look less conspicuous lying there. Maybe dragging him against the building will make him look like a drunk passed out. I don't know. Was he being a good samaritan? He obviously was embarrassed about what had happened. There's all sorts of victims when violence happens, I wish it still bothered me like it once did. He was obviously impelled by fear, looking all around, jittery, then whoosh, he bolts and leaves the guy. Meanwhile the leader is walking by me saying, "We've been done running shit around here!" Strange how odd language can get and still communicate clearly. The victim is starting to come around already. It's hard to knock someone out for very long. Most knock outs are only for seconds. He gets up and staggers off the opposite way. There's a couple of street people by me telling each other how they didn't see anything. They looked like they'd just seen an act at the circus they were so excited. Maybe they did.

So I go into the alley and talk with some artists who are doing some new work, and some others that are fixing their older work that's suffered the depredations of taggers. If you don't know Clarion Alley, then you are probably saying, "Art! What art? I thought this was going to be about literature!" Clarion Alley is filled with murals. CAMP (Clarion Alley Mural Project). I went in on some food from El Toro, at 17th and Valencia for one of the artists who spent his only money on beer and said that being hungry made him a better artist, but now he'd hit the downside of that and was running down.

After awhile people started showing up to set up so I introduced myself and got to work. Pretty soon I was asked to set up the barricade at the Mission end of the alley and then stayed there pretty much from 3:30 until 7:00. It was great fun. I'm bilingual (Spanish and Texan), and was able to get in a lot of great conversations while waiting for cars that had to be let in or out of the alley. Across the way were some drug dealers who were doing a brisk business. It was surprising to see some of the clientèle. Looked like nice moms.

The saddest thing I saw was a whore who was gone in despair and drugs and booze. 21 going on 97. Her face wore a map of her experiences. Way too thin young blond, dirty and raggedy. She was wandering lost, walking down the street out of habit, but you could see she didn't really know where she should be. Somebody sent another hooker to collect her and take her back. I said, "Lookin' good hon!" You'd think it was a pity comment, but it wasn't. Just one human being acknowledging another. You could still see that under all the decay and debris there was something there. What she really needed was a hug without a sub-text, but as compassionate as my heart is, my needs don't include rescuing every victim on the street. When she heard my greeting, she lit up and stood a little taller and then her attention just kind of drifted off down the gutter and she was gone.

I got a lot of the fliers that had the map of all the venues, and then started schmoozing everyone that walked by. Got several groups out for an evening that didn't know about the event all excited and sent them off with maps. I mean, if you're doing a pub crawl anyway, why not add in literature and the chance to follow a treasure map, right? No brainer.

At 6:00 or so Alvin joined me. Alvin was another volunteer and a high point of my night. This young cat lived a life so hard, yet he was kind and caring and quiet. Poverty hadn't broken him, it had refined him. He was signed up for the open mike at 7:00 and was wondering how long it took to read a page. He doubted my assurance that it's a minute a page for double spaced text, so I had him read me a page while I timed him. One minute. His stuff was edgy street stuff that I really wish more people would hear, stuff about getting the GA because otherwise you won't make rent, a story about collecting recycle out of the public bins, and how the old asian ladies get up awfully early so you'd better get up early too. He read well too.

At 7:00 I got released from the end of the alley for Phase 2 and could go listen a bit, interrupted by checking on my replacement and bringing him more flyers and beer. Got to hear Alvin doing his open mike spiel. It was well received. Did I mention free beer? Don't know where that came from, but I'll just say that people from Germany have a great attitude about beer. Thanks Wolf. Then Phase 3 an hour later, brought lots of funny talks and readings. I kept checking on my replacement's replacement and bringing more fliers.
I'm sure the volunteer party afterward was cool, but I missed it. Got on my motorcycle and headed back to San Jose. Next year!

Ahhhh! Pizza! There is, arguably, no better New York style pizza than that of Pizza My Heart. They start their dough the day before so it has time to rise properly. They throw their dough, their sauce is organic, their ingredients wonderful and fresh and if you can't appreciate them, you have no business eating pizza. But sad times, they are feeling the crunch, and they are telling their stores to cut down on the pizza available at any given moment to cut down on waste.

To understand the implications of this you have to understand that they are creative--no, not just creative, but creative with the abilities of angels behind them. They have created, over and over, amazing combinations of ingredients that how won award after award, and have made a point, over time, to always make premium pizzas available at their stores to educated the palates of the masses, and to satisfy the palates of the initiates.

Now, though, (and there should be dirge music playing through this part--I apologize for its absence), they are trying to cut waste, and normally when you enter into the inner sanctum of the pizza heaven, all you find are pepperoni and cheese. Don't get me wrong, these are amazing pepperoni and cheese pizzas, but if you think that these are all that is in the pallet of Pizza My Heart, you are a heathen.

Now, when you want a premium pizza, and I must tell you that the most premium in my NSHO is the Little Sur, you have to wait for the day of availability. That day is Tuesday for the Little Sur, but of course, today, Tuesday, I went into Pizza My Heart, and no Little Sur was available. Only cheese, and pepperoni, the pies of the masses. If Pizza My Heart is hurting so badly that they have lost their heart and soul, then the universe must cry.

To digress, I must tell you about the Little Sur. The Little Sur starts, as most of the pies here do, with the organic tomato based pizza sauce. To that is added cheese of course, and 40 cloves of roasted garlic, cherry tomatoes, portobella mushrooms, green onions, roasted red peppers, and herbs. This quotidian list of ingredients can in no way prepare you for the experience that is the Little Sur. It is heaven on earth, it is first love, it is your first ice cream. There is no comparison.

I used to be able to call my local Pizza My Heart, and ask them, "Is there any Little Sur up?" , and they would say, "No, but we'll throw some in." When I got there, there would be a half of a Little Sur pie waiting for me, beautiful, petulant, perfect. It only lacked augmentation with the beer of my choice to achieve perfection on earth.

Then, a week and a half ago, I was told that I couldn't have the pizza because it wasn't Tuesday. As I told you, Tuesday, under the new regime, is the only day you can buy a slice of Heaven/Little Sur. I waited, frustrated, enjoying the other pies as they were available. This morning, at 7:30, at a local coffee shop (Roy's which all should worship because it is to coffee what Pizza My Heart is to pizza), a barista mentioned to me that today was Tuesday, that I would be able to have Little Sur today. Heavenly anthems accompanied that announcement.

I waited all of the day, until finally, this afternoon, I entered, with great triumphal joy, Pizza My Heart, only to find no Little Sur. They told me that they had had some earlier in the day, but sadly, all they had for me was cheese and pepperoni. You can't imagine how crushed I was.

So, I'm sitting here, in Pizza My Heart. I don't know whether to tell you to go to Pizza My Heart, or to tell you that it's ruined. I love them. I wish them all the best, but it seems as if the economy has them on their last legs. It seems that perhaps they are about to fail.

Go see them if you can. Even their cheese and pepperoni are wonderful compared to everything else you've ever had.

Myself? All I can do is pray for them.

Patrick out.

The Fifties are Strange

I didn't think that my life would be so hard at 54, or that I'd be out of work, or that I'd feel like I was trying to find myself. There are a few things that I know about myself

• I'm a Catholic boy, that's important to me
• I'm smart, and I'd rather work on something hard with a lot of learning involved than on something easy
• injustice and poverty get my dander up, and although I don't think I much make a difference by doing it, I go and stand with signs talking about what I'd like to stop and I'd like to start
• In particular I'd like to see enough work visas issued for all the latin american workers we have slaving away in America. That would solve most of the illegal immigration problem. Why do we only want them working here if they're undocumented?
• Why does the United States have the highest incarceration rate in the world? China's second.
• Why is California incarcerating people at a rate of 1 out of every 113 people (in 2008 according to the US department of justice)?
• Are we so much worse than the rest of the world? I don't think so--we're just meaner.

Looks like I'm either going to have to get out of programming, or add to my skillset. Just being a kick-ass crazy good C++ programmer isn't enough to keep me employed. I hate not having a job. I love being a generalist able to jump in and quickly be productive in new problem domains, but it's getting harder and harder to get people to hire me. Maybe I should specialize in something. Any suggestions?