If I had my choice of what, or whom, I could grab by the tattered sleeve and pull from the grave, it would not be anything over the loss of which this blog has previously lamented.
It would be my friend Jesse Morris.
I wonder if he knew how much he would be missed, if he would have changed his mind and stayed.
The world is emptier without you, Jesse. I hope you’ve found peace.
Dear readers, I know I’ve been away for a while. And in my absence, much has changed. The beloved Eagle Tavern has closed for good, along with the Ace Cafe, both apparently falling under greed’s mighty axe. St. Mary’s pub has been sanitized to a hipster friendly sparkle, and Skip’s Tavern has been reincarnated as The Lucky Horseshoe.
If one can make a horseshoe lucky by simply stripping off the rust, shiny San Francisco should have good fortune to spare.
But I’m not so superstitious.
The following pictures are just three out of the thousands of photos of San Francisco taken by my mother, Anita Davis, during the mid 80′s and early 1990′s.
She taught me everything I know about photography, and I’m thankful for the chance to share her work with the world.
From her office window, she had a great view of the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway.
Here’s a blurry shot of some fellow marchers in the 1992 St. Stupid’s Day parade. In case you can’t make it out, the man on the left is sporting an awesome ”Free Pee-Wee” t-shirt!
This sweet ride was photographed near the long-gone graffiti mecca once known as Psycho City! Remember when there was graffiti in San Francisco? I miss that shit. I miss the wild places with broken windows, the feral weeded lots and crumbling brick…I miss the shopping carts and the overpass…
I miss the city, and this city’s missing soul.
I would like to share with you today a great fucking song about my beloved city by the infamous Black Randy, off the album “Pass the Dust, I Think I’m Bowie.” The vocals are a little hard to understand at times, (like good punk should be,) so I have posted the lyrics below. Enjoy!
SAN FRANCISCO
Golden Gate and I’m ready to jump
San Francisco, you’re playland at the dump
Cable cars gone to rust
Skinny faggots smoking dust
Many boys on Castro Street
Lumberjacks are fun to meet
Late at night they like the Stud
Buffet suppers, foodstamp crud
10 to 12, at the disco
12 to 2, fetch the Crisco
Some of them are masters
Some of them are slaves
Some wanna do it in freshly opened graves
All the drugs I bought did not get me high
Til I met a guy at the Mabuhay
He was very kind, he gave me some green pills
We saw the Avengers and part of the Dils
Ran into a guy with lipstick and a beard
When he took me home it was everything I feared
He lived in a house, it was runs by ferns
We sprayed their leaves and we polished their urns
The ferns were anarchists quoting Chairman Mao
Now I want to leave but I don’t know how.
. . .
-Me neither, Randy… me neither.
So long ago I fell in love,
that night I turned my back upon the ocean
and placed my throat between your ragged teeth,
heart left bleeding at your feet.
The night, your voice, a broken promise of just one more second chance
to waste upon us no-accounts, us two bit good for nothings
who long to hear you speak,
if only empty words.
Such shining moments, these table scraps,
and I, a shameless scavenger.
So long ago I fell in love,
when you were all there was of home,
lighting the faces of late-night ghosts with thousand-year stares
made hollow by loneliness,
when you would shine from their vacancies
like sodium lights,
like sickness.
So long ago I fell in love
with my city of imperfect danger,
damaged and blighted,
rust and iron in war.
But the streets, now sterilized, have grown silent and sleep,
while I struggle to remember
just how long ago it was you left me
and became this bloodless stranger.
Have you ever said to yourself
“Boy! I wanna show that (awesome) girl Jenner some support and check out lastcallsf.com, but reading is so hard and booooorring!”
Well ya know what kid? Writing’s even harder. So if you’re like, angry at words cuz there’s like , too many of them and stuff, then haul your illiterate butt on over to http://lessergods.wordpress.com/ and let your eyeballs do the walking through the pages of Lesser Gods, my new photoblog.
Updates will be frequent and irregular!
(All pictures are the property of Jenner Davis, chemicalcleaner@gmail.com, please do not use without permission.)
Greetings my Dear Reader(s!)
It appears as though there are more of you! This warrants an update. Last Call, San Francisco is now on Twitter! http://twitter.com/LastCallSF
I don’t post on a set schedule, but thanks to the magic of Twitter, you can receive instant notification of all updates!
You can also tune in to the transmissions from the Last Call SF Band Name Generator and be inspired to rock!
Whatever you do, remember
For the word on the streets, follow my Tweets!
I am often asked by recent transplants where they can find the real San Francisco.
And I will always lie.
Giving them instead the names of a few mission bars where they can bring their friends from back home, and appear
“in the know”.
“The Starlight Room?!? oh no no no. We’re drinkin at Bender’s!’
so Pabst in hand, they will show the little country mouse where the real party is, and fill the tip jars of the true local color.
But the true San Francisco..
well, that’s a personal matter. And personally, MY true SF is just that.
Mine.
If you go to the corner of 24th st and 3rd, and walk towards the water you will find a little park that has absolutely no business being there at all. Officially , it is know as warm water cove. Owned, though anything but maintained, by the park and rec dept, it consists of a strip of beach overlooking the bay. Surrounded by an industrial landscape, a belching smokestack dominates the view, its thick grey plume the only sign of life in this desolate end of the earth. But the surrounding fences covered in epic graffiti , like an urban Lascaux, bear the immortal signatures of those who stood here before.
Welcome to sunny Tire Beach.
It is lonely here.
The soil is volatile with accumulated run-off from the neighboring dry dock, and hundreds of illegally dumped tires form an expanse of the shoreline. Known also as toxic gulf, it was once the site of an ancient foundry and has served as the final resting place for a fleet derelict Muni railway cars. But unlike it’s super-star super-fund neighbor, Hunter’s Point Naval Ship Yard, Tire Beach has never undergone a clean up, with the exception of the complete removal of all graffiti. It was a strike against urban blight in a remote and deserted area, spearheaded by members of a community located nowhere near there.
But thankfully, and predictably, due to the nature of graffiti, their efforts were futile, and this uptight citizens brigade only succeeded in making themselves look like jerks.
I will always be thankful for being shown this special place when I was 15, and to the complete stranger I let take me there. A Gutter punk named T-bone who I ran across in the wee hours out on the streets, a fellow refuter of the concept of “bedtime”. We partook of our partake-ables, and embarked on a cross town adventure, arriving at tire beach just in time to see the sunrise.
I am a connoisseur of sunrises, and you will see none as glorious as you will from Tire Beach.
Here is a list of other things I have seen and done that could have been experienced nowhere else.
- Burned down a pier while setting off a model rocket
- Held a conversation about the benefits of bathing in acetone with a man who had a dildo tied a round his neck.
- Performed fellatio on a giant portrait of Franz Kafka painted on the asphalt.
- Repainted aforementioned mural when it began to fade.
-Played the bass at a punk rock generator show when the bassist couldn’t make it.
-Saw a man turn a heaping pile of rubber coated copper pipes into a screaming, toxic, bright green flame cannon, simply by lighting it on fire.
- Ran away when a man standing in the middle of the street required my assistance with his paper towel suit.
- Scattered the ashes of my mother and father.
It is a place of unearthly beauty, and I always feel privileged when I meet someone I care about enough to share it all with them.
If we meet someday, dear reader, perhaps I’ll take you too.
