Onward to the Castro! Ground zero for the homosexual community’s never-ending war against mom, apple pie and everything good about America. As a conservative, I was entering occupied territory. I was a little worried; would they sniff me out as a Republican? Would they pick up the telltale scent of a McCain voter? Ultimately, I decided that my life-long appreciation for musical theater would protect me.
Castro was…not quite as gay as I imagined, actually. I know that I’m horribly bigoted for saying that. It’s true, though; it looked like a quaint little neighborhood, unusual only for the number of rainbow flags lining the street. Of course, every now and then you would pass a guy wearing fishnet stockings and a miniskirt, in case you forgot where you were. I do have one complaint, though. The restaurant prices are situated somewhere between “absurd” and “ludicrous.” Our hardy band of interns wandered for twenty minutes in search of a reasonably-priced place to eat. Finally, we came to Escape from New York Pizza, where you could get a large NYC-style slice for a mere $25.00. Pepperoni cost an extra $12.00. It was the best deal we could find.
Like any neighborhood, big or small, Castro had its own little flourishes to add personality. In some neighborhoods, “personality” comes from the crazy guy down the street who yells at passing cars while dressed only in his underwear, or from a particularly nasty pothole that claims thousands of hubcaps each year. Castro, thankfully, has a milder—and much quirkier—kind of personality. I admired the Castro Theater, which boasts perhaps the world’s last marquee. You don’t see those kind of things at your local Raleigh mega-cineplex. The theater was showing Joan Crawford’s “The Woman,” not, I assume, for any artistic reason, but because it had Joan Crawford.
We passed through a little street festival supporting…some cause. A guy tried to force a flier into my hand, but I, jaded city dweller that I am, waved him off. An old-time brass band, complete with straw hats, sat smack-dab in the middle of the road. Traffic had stopped; people gathered ‘round to watch. The bandleader announced that they were going to play an old minstrel number called “Dem Golden Slippers,” or something similar. He said it was a precursor to modern musical theater. They launched into the song with a good deal of oom-pah-pah-ing. I liked it; I could close my eyes and imagine I was in Bavaria listening to the local Kapelle play old German beer-drinking and Jew-hating songs. We didn’t stay long, though, as we were in a hurry. Hurrying where, I didn’t know, but young people are always on the move.
A taxi ride brought us to Twin Peaks. It was quite thrilling, actually. It took two taxis to carry all of us, so for the first time in my life I was able to tell a cabdriver to “Follow that car!” It was a scene right out of Mission: Impossible, if someone had taken the screenplay and dulled it up twenty notches. After a thrilling slow-speed pursit through the streets of San Francisco we arrived at our destination, a pair of hilltops overlooking the city. One rises a little higher than the other. Most tourists cluster on the lower one, which has a couple stone overlooks, a few coin-operated binoculars, and the world’s most hateful bathroom (more on that one later). Braver souls can climb the long and winding path to the top of the upper hill where, in exchange for skin-blistering winds, they can enjoy an even more panoramic panorama of the city. I am not a brave soul.
I don’t think I missed too much, though, because the view was excellent nonetheless. Below, I could see the zig-zagging road we had just driven up. Beneath that came row upon row of houses, most painted pastel yellow or pink in the San Francisco style. Then, still further down, the whole city spread out glistening and gleaming. The skyscrapers of downtown jutted upward in the distance; beyond them, out in the bay, I could see Alcatraz. The Golden Gate bride was obscured by fog, by distance, and by an obnoxious little finger of land. Some large hills humped up in the middle of the city—they looked like gargantuan green whales breaching the waves. I stood admiring the scene for more than a few minutes. Then, of course, out came the camera, followed by an orgy of picture-snapping.
Then there was the bathroom. What a nightmarish thing. Not that it was disgusting; indeed, that was exactly the problem. The sign on the outside bragged that it was a “self-cleaning bathroom”; after every visitor, the walls sprayed a stream of water over the floor, sanitizing it for the next occupant. Good in theory, horrible in practice. Each cleaning session lasted a minute. So someone would step out and the next person would have to stand there, waiting, while the bathroom went through its meticulous cleaning process like a janitor with OCD. I stood in life for fifteen minutes. When I finally got inside, I expected to have the best damn bathroom experience of my life. For a wait like that I wanted nothing less than soft, plush towels, soothing bathroom Muzak, and a soda dispenser. Instead, all I got was a damp floor and a sink that didn’t work. Sometimes I think the Luddites got a few things right.
Our little excursion ended with a jaunt through Haight-Ashbury. Say Haight-Ashbury to most people and they’ll look confused. Say it to a hippie and…well, hippies always look confused, but you’ll see some happiness mixed in with his blissed-out bewilderment. Haight-Ashbury is Hippie Central. In the late 1960s it was Ground Zero for the Summer of Love, during which thousands of hippies, drawn together by the irresistible gravitational pull of their own stupidity, descended on San Francisco. The Grateful Dead had lived in Haight-Ashbury; so had the Jefferson airplane. So had countless other crappy psychedelic bands whose names are, thankfully, lost to history. Remember, this was a genre that tried to introduce the sitar and bongos to rock n’ roll. Bongos are to music as horseradish is to food; it ruins everything it touches.
Even today, a few hippies cluster in Haight-Ashbury, waiting, I assume, for the second coming of Jerry Garcia. They squat on street corners, looking very depressed for a bunch of people who are all about peace n’ love. Of course, these are all neo-hippies. None of them are older than twenty-five. The real hippies, the ones who got stoned while watching Moby Grabe play at the Fillmore in ’67 (it was aaaawesome, man), all got fat, went bald, and opened boutiques on Haight Street. There, they make money selling off heirlooms from the short-lived hippie kingdom. You can buy tie-dye shirts, “Impeach Nixon” buttons, and “the authentic Jimi Hendrix Line of t-shirts.” You can also buy a lot of bongs. One store had an otherworldly collection of bongs that looked like it had been assembled by a hippie Indiana Jones.
I had to stop at a record store. It was Haight-Ashbury; I felt obligated. I found a place way down at the end of Haight Street, a dusty little shop with vinyl in front and CDs in the back. I passed right by the vinyl. I had spent enough time struggling with records as a DJ at WXDU. Never again would I subject myself to that absurdity. I browsed for fifteen minutes, while the other interns grew more and more bored. Eventually they just sat down on the floor, while I, oblivious, flipped through rack after rack of albums. There was music playing softly in the background. Right before I left, a bizarre spoken word piece started up. As I approached the counter, new Oingo Boingo album in hand, I asked the clerk, “Is that Allen Ginsberg?” Er, no, it wasn’t. So much for being Mr. Music Buff.
Next: Fourth of July, only two weeks late!
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