Many Good, Some Bad, Some Just Flat Out Crazy...

San Francisco, CA USA

February 11, 2008
N 37°48.049
W 122°24.580

Now that our place is pretty much back together we’ve spent the last few days getting re-acquainted with our neighborhood. We took the time to visit our favorite shops such as Molinaris, Giordano Brothers and, of course, Café Trieste. The space on the corner of Vallejo Street and Columbus, which used to be Rossi’s Grocery Store, and has been vacant for nearly three years, has a new tenant moving in. North Beach Pizza is moving across the street to the south-east corner of Grant and the smell of stale beer and urine still linger on the street on a Sunday morning. It’s nice… our neighborhood still has a lot of the character and characters we’ve missed so much—many good, some bad, some just flat out crazy.

When we made our way down the hill to Trieste in the late afternoon we saw some of the ol’ neighborhood characters including Earl. Earl is a young man who lives in the neighborhood, sells “Earl Made” clothes and hats and has been in a bit of trouble with the law, mostly drug related or induced. Earl appeared to be in a “good place” when we left. He was exercising, making his clothes and I think he even had a steady job. Unfortunately, even though I was happy to see him make the change, I sort of missed the “old” Earl, and I also knew it wouldn’t be too long before “old” Earl resurfaced. Now, Earl spends the vast majority of his day standing across the street from Café Trieste, listening to his iPod, dancing, rolling and smoking cigarettes, soaking up the sun, and basically waiting for nothing.

Elvis Christ, another one of the guys in our ‘hood, writes his poetic tirades on masking tape and then tapes the words to the sidewalk. Every few weeks a new scattering of words will be taped along the sidewalks of Columbus and it will take a couple weeks to fully absorb Elvis’ rants. I am not sure if the self proclaimed Mr. Christ has ever been on the wagon, but he might want to think about straightening out a little bit; especially since he was arrested twice last Saturday alone. A simple drunk in public citation gets you tossed in the local North Beach holding cell for four hours, according to my sources. Then, you’re back out in the middle of Washington Square screaming to everyone in the park, “I’m Elvis “fn” Christ, the king of this neighborhood, listen to what I say and you can catch a Frisbee too!”

We relaxed in Washington Square for about thirty minutes, watched the dogs and small children run wild, listened to what Elvis had to say, and enjoyed the warm sunlight as dusk rushed in. We didn’t recognize many of the faces sitting on the grass and for a moment it felt like we were traveling again… what a gorgeous day and beautiful city.