some 70s stuff

A

little girl snuggled close to her mother at a display counter in the cosmetics section of Saks Union Square suddenly begins tugging at the blouse, wide eyed, pointing down the aisle.  ``Mommie,'' she squeals, astonished, ``Look! ''

Preening in the wide main aisle two counters over is a pair of black men in tawdry drag, short leather skirts, ripped magenta fishnets, leopard spike heels, enormous false eyelashes, one daubing makeup on the other from the floor samples, arching back the long painted nails of fingers that hold the brush.  ''I think you need a little more right HERE!''

The newly annointed leans to inspect the result in a countertop mirror and the other steps back to proclaim as heads turn, ''Dahl ing, you look fab ulous!''

The mother has already looked and takes the daughter's hand, ``Yes honey, I see, now let's just go over to this other counter right over here.''  They walk away through the odor of perfumes and powders as the little girl continues to swivel and gawk, her face still turned as they round a corner.  Then she looks up and confides, ''Mommie, I'm not sure I'd like to live in San Francisco.''

T

wo young men with their arms around one another wait for the light to change at the corner of Powell and Geary by Union Square.  The red bandanas in opposing back pockets of their jeans flutter and twist in the gusting August wind.  One leans closer to the other with a nudge to indicate another couple also waiting, a black man holding hands with a white girl.  He lisps to his partner, ''I don't care what you're supposed to think, I'll just never get used to that.''

I

n the hallway space on the fourth floor of Macy's between the doors marked ``Men'' and ``Women'' a woman pulls a resisting twelve-year old boy by the arm toward the door marked ``Women.''  He keeps announcing loudly, ``I don't like this, I don't like this one bit.''

``I don't care,'' the woman snaps as she pushes open the door.  ``As long as you're my son you are not going into a men's bathroom alone in San Francisco.''

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T

he Pacific squall that shook the window frames and slapped rain hard against the panes during the night had passed through and now in the morning the wet streets gleam in the sunlight and are littered with twigs and small branches that show the new green of spring.  Jack has the car window down to breath the cleansed air as he drives to Irving Street to check out the junk shop Auntie Mame.  He needs an armoire as there is no closet in the room he's been relegated.  The radio warns that a small craft advisory was still in effect on the Bay until noon.

The guy at the register nods as Jack enters the shop and turns back to conversing with his friend.  Tables, low dressers, random chairs formed a maze he has to traverse to reach the far wall where the tall lacquered wood cabinets are lined.  He passes an open doorway to a second room with a "No Admittance" sign strung across the opening.  The person standing just beyond asks if he needs any help and then says let me know if you do.

Jack opens a few doors and looks inside but the interior space seems so tiny for their large form factor.  Before backing out he scans the framed pictures and beveled mirrors lining the wall and then wends his way to the front.  All three guys are standing at the counter now and Jack smiles as he nears the door.

``That was some rainstorm we had last night.'' one says.  Jack nods in agreement.

The guy at the register turns to look directly at Jack and adds, ``Yeah, there sure was a lot of blowing going on.''

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O

ne summer the medical library at SF General was allowed to hire a teen from the minority community and they got Lisa, a sweet, shy, studious black girl about 14 or 15 years old who lived in the Bayview.  She quickly learned to properly reshelve books and put out the new journals each day and fell easily into the casual pace of library work, humming softly as she pushed the cart around the stacks.  Every week the staff went to lunch as a group to one of the inexpensive restaurants around the hospital and on this occasion they ate at a Chinese place.  Lisa stared at the menu and told them that this was the first time in her life she'd ever had Chinese food.  Then, as more of an admission, that this was the first time in her life she'd ever had a meal in a restaurant of any kind.  The Bayview was a reality quite removed from that of the glossy tourist brochure San Francisco.  Lisa fumbled with the chopsticks, giggling embarrassed as she dropped one before she used a fork, she was bemused by the fortune cookie, was it serious? and the experience would've been pleasant if she hadn't had an adverse reaction to the MSG.

A few weeks into the summer Lisa came in to work on Monday with one arm slung in a cast, face scraped and scarred and a dark purple bruise on her brown skin around an eye.  Taking Muni home there was always a long wait at Evans to transfer to the 15 so standard procedure was to hitch-hike, if you got a ride before the bus showed you were that much ahead.  The guy that stopped last Friday was going to Bayview and she thought she'd be home early until he turned back toward the freeway heading away from Third Street.  Lisa sat there in the front seat and knew she was about to be raped.

At the end of the school term the San Francisco Department of Public Health had given a lecture with a film on the dangers of venereal disease to these kids as they entered their sexually active years and the talk had made an impression on Lisa.  So as the guy accelerated up the on ramp she pushed open the door and dove out of the car.

It wasn't the probability of being raped that scared Lisa, she could've handled that, it was the fear that the guy might have one of those diseases she'd been warned about and she didn't want none of that VD.

____________________________________________________________

being tested

E

arly evening he sat at the bar in the Elephant Walk and the guy next to him starts the conversation with a question, ``Where is everybody?  I lived here seven years ago, in '79 and you couldn't get in this place it was so packed.  I moved up to Oregon, this is the first time I've been back.  Where'd everybody go?''

He knew what the guy meant and it wasn't just people that were gone, something else was gone as well, a palpable joy among the customers at that time, the feeling that this was the best party ever.  And it wasn't only gays in the Castro, back then the singles crowd, the breeders, had filled fern bars on Union St. and the Bermuda Triangle and the bars in North Beach.  A guy dressed as W. C. Fields would move through those places some nights, tails and top hat, little cane, white gloves and white spats over his shoes, looked exactly like Fields, smiling at the gals, ``Hello, my Little Chickadee,'' the accent perfect, it really was W.C. right there in the bar.  Story was he'd even had silicon injected into his nose to make it more bulbous.  Richard Brautigan in a North Beach bar chatting up two girls and when they didn't know who he was he ran over to City Lights and bought them copies of his books with his picture on the back.

Now even in those straight bars that insouciance and exuberance which had filtered over from the Castro was damped down.  How else could he answer the guy in the Elephant Walk, he looked down at his drink and muttered, ``Don't think about it too much.''

``I know that,'' the visitor replied, ``I know what you're saying, but still, it can't be that bad.''

In a way the visitor sitting in this quiet, half empty bar at the corner of Castro and 18th in 1986 was right, it wasn't that bad, at least for those who weren't living in the midst of it.  For those who were, it was much, much . . .

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G

etting tested, the new form of commitment.  Larry and Doug had their blood drawn two weeks before and now sat in the waiting room of the Health Center on 17th Street.  Each would be called individually by number into a small office room and each would close the door and be told the results of the test.  Many would exit that door into a much different world than the one from which they'd entered.

Lore was that if you came out quickly you were negative, the ones that stayed in the room were being counseled, told what they should do in the face of this new information.  There were stories that some people had worried for so long that they were actually relieved on learning they were positive, no more uncertaintly about how their future was written.

Larry was called first and Doug gave his hand a little squeeze.  Larry knew what kind of life he'd led, knew where he'd been and what he'd done and he thoroughly expected the worst.  Friends had actually remarked with playful black humor that they were amazed he was still alive.  Doug stared at the closed door in hopes there was a prize behind it.

Minutes passed and the door remained shut.  Five minutes became seven and Doug finally couldn't stand it, he went to the door, knocked lightly and opened it.  Larry was in the chair facing the desk sobbing and the counseler was standing bent next to him holding his shoulders.  Larry craned his face around, his checks glistened with tears and blubbered, ``I'm negative!  I'm negative!''

The counseler had been trained for grief, not elation, and was at a loss as to what to do.

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Y

ou phoned to make an appointment, were given a date and time to show up and a six digit number, the only way you would be known.  The testing and the results were completely anonymous.

On blood draw day you went into a room where a nurse wearing rubber gloves would tie off your arm, slide a needle into the bulged vein and withdraw about ten cc of dark venous blood into a plastic tube which is capped, labeled with your number and placed in a rack with similar tubes of fresh blood.

You returned to the same place to hear the results.  The waiting room had chairs along the wall, old magazines, random people sitting apart, a few couples, male couples mostly, sometimes a female couple, no one really talking.  The impersonal feel of a place where humans only passed through, where no one belonged or had reason to linger.

The door to an office opened and two men left quickly and he heard the woman holding the door call his number.  She went back to her chair behind the desk as he entered, closed the door and sat down across from her.  She ran her finger down the list in front of her and then slid it across the page, looked up and said blandly, ``You're negative.''

There was a moment while the information settled in and then he spoke quietly, more to himself than to her, ``I guess that means I get to watch it all.''

Her face took on a quizzical expression,  I just gave you the best news of your life!  She had heard him but his words didn't register and then after a bit she realized what he'd meant.

``Yeah,'' she said as he rose to leave, ``yeah, there are times when I think that might even be worse.''

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candles

W
ednesday evening before Thanksgiving Cindy came up out of the Muni station at Castro and Market to catch the bus home from work and found the plaza full of young men milling about.  Small groups huddled together trying to light candles that protruded through the bottom of paper cups and random people held small whiteboard signs on sticks as if it was a political rally.  She asked what was going on and was told this was the annual candlelight march for Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk who had been slain on this date in 1978.  Seven years ago.

''And the signs?''  The number of AIDS deaths in San Francisco, a disease that was all but unknown when everyone in America sat down three turkey dinners before, had passed one thousand and people here had written the name of someone they knew who had died.  Most of the dead had lived within a few blocks of this intersection and tonight those people would be carried in the march to the Civic Center.  Cindy got a blank board and put Roger's name on it and then wandered around in the light mist with her sign at a casual right shoulder arms.

She'd met Roger a bit over two years before when an old friend excitedly introduced her to his new lover.  Early thirties, tall, trim, big grin, dark hair and moustache, David could not believe how fortunate he was, or, as he confided to Cindy when Roger went to the kitchen, that anything bad could come of Roger having just been diagnosed with this gay disease everyone seemed to be talking about.

"I mean, just look at him!" David exclaimed.

Cindy froze, this slow dread filling her as she stared at the friend sitting there so happy.  David made light of too many things, once joked with a gleeful reminisce that the gay VD clinic was the best pickup joint in town because whoever you met there wouldn't have gonorrhea that night at least.  Sure Roger looked fine but nobody knew, that was the scariest part, absolutely no one knew anything.  Except that young gay men were dying in very strange ways.  There was the feeling that day-to-day reality was slowly dissolving, taking the quality of a dark and claustrophobic dream.  A party was winding down, the record player is skipping and most guests have coupled up and departed while your trapped in the almost deserted room with someone very, very creepy.

A young man had just walked out of the room and AIDS had moved into her life.

A few months later, in August, 1983, David told Cindy how Roger had gone to Washington, DC with the San Francisco contingent to lobby Congress for funding.  Roger was chosen to be one of the three that testified before a House Government Operations subcommittee about the disease.  Three young men in suits and ties stood with their right hand raised, solemnly swore, and then sat.  Each told his story in turn and answered questions from the officials.  They still had faith in the American system they'd all grown up under.

David's biggest thrill, ``Roger got his name in the paper!''

Cindy found the newspaper article and read the quote from Roger: ``I came here today in the hope that my epitaph would not read that I died of red tape.''

Two months later Roger helped organize an AIDS vigil in the Castro where the names of people in the Bay Area known to have died of the disease were read.  The small crowd gathered there heard one-hundred and eighteen names that Saturday night.  Across town in the bathhouses people were burning the safe sex posters and pamphlets given out by the Health Department, ranting about the self-loathing and latent internalized homophobia of those gays pushing for closure of these establishments.  They had not moved all this way to be confronted with the same middle-class morality they came here to escape.

The following year, as Roger's health deteriorated and the frequency of his medical appointments increased Cindy began helping care for him.  In just a few months he dropped twenty pounds, one of the first to engage in what would become a San Francisco tradition for gay men: punching another notch to tighten the belt. 

T

he cab honked and she ran down the stairs from the second floor apartment and told the driver they'd be right out.  She left the rear passenger side door open and went back in building.  Roger was at the top of the stairs with a cane. ``Go on back,'' he called down, ``I don't need any help.''  She waited by the cab and then went to the door and looked up.  Roger was only halfway down the staircase.  ``I'm fine!  Just need a little time.''

When his turn was called at General she walked him to the exam room and then returned to the waiting area.  A little old lady in a chair along a facing wall smiled at her and asked, ``Is that your husband?'' and continued, not waiting for confirmation, ``You've got to start feeding him better young lady.  He's awfully skinny.''

Roger signed a waiver allowing his colonoscopy to be videotaped.  Sarcoma lesions on the interior colon wall might be worthy of a journal article and the information may be of help to surgeons who would be seeing things like this in the future.  Roger eventually became weary of the whole routine, the hope and optimism he'd had a year before had essentially evaporated.  Cindy was next to him on the hospital bed as support to sit up so the doctor could examine him.  He did a quick scan of Roger's mouth with a little flashlight and casually mentioned, ``Got a bit of KS in there.''  She was watching this from an angle, ``Those don't look like lesions, they look like holes.''

The doctor brought the flashlight back up.  ``You're right, those are holes.''  Some fungus had found a nice warm, moist place grow without an immune system to disturb it and was feeding on the roof of Roger's palate.

Around this time Roger decided he'd had enough, he was tired of being poked and prodded, he just wanted to be in his home.

T

he gray mist muted the colors of the shop lights along Castro Street.  At some point, as if an hourglass had reversed, people began slowly flowing away down Market, the candlelights separating and stretching into a ragged wavering line.  Others would fall in behind, each seemed to know his place.  Later, in the darkness at the Civic Center, after the speeches and impromptu memorials and the sobs from grown men they would put the placards with the names in a patchwork up on the wall of the Federal Building.

Just before Cindy was swept into the stream one more young man came over and looked at the name she carried.  Things had changed so much in just two years.  ``I was in the group with Roger in Washington in 1983,'' he said, ``All the rest are dead.  I didn't think anybody remembered us.''

___________________________________________________________

mala leche

For a decade or more there was a KFC at the corner of Valencia St. and Hill St. near 22nd.  Within a few months of its opening a hand-lettered sign on white butcher paper went up on the window announcing that rice and refried beans had been added as menu options along side the corn, mashed potatoes and cole slaw.  Valencia Street was still part of the Mission then and during the day you would see people that lived and worked in the neighborhood and in the night hear some great Latin jazz at the intimate club Bajones next door to the KFC.

Through the 1980s Valencia Street had a number of women's establishments, the Artemis Cafe at 23rd, Old Wives' Tales bookstore, Amelia's bar near 17th but so dispersed along the six block strip that the area did not have the cohesive feel as a lesbian district that the Castro had for gay men.  One by one these places closed as the gals moved south across Army St. to Cortland Avenue on Bernal hill.

The last night of Amelia's in November, 1991 there was a line of women down the block, saying things like, ``How can you close, this is such an important part of our community?''  To which the answer was, ``We were open every night of the week, where were you?''  Rikki Streicher remodeled the space into the Elbo Room with the prescience to target a mixed clientele.

That block was dominated by the shuttered Pepsi bottling plant across the street.  Surrounded by a chain link fence at night it gave the stretch a dark, forlorn look, a place to pass through quickly.  The gang members probably thought the Elbo Room was a gay bar when they sent the initiate in to verify that he had the guts to be one of them.  The guy slid through the door into the crowd, walked to the rear and then returned, picking up speed as he neared the front and he savagely pumped a knife into the back of the person who sat nearest the exit.  That person should have died instantly but his girlfriend had her hand inside his jacket caressing the base of his neck.  The blade went through her hand before entering him and that distance kept the tip from puncturing his heart.  At the ER the doctors said he'd probably heal completely while she'd never have use of her hand again.

The area perked up when the Mission Police Station moved to that lot and soon valet parking was available at a restaurant down the block, so that some locals ranted, ``Valet parking on Valencia Street—it's time to leave!''  The Kentucky Fried Chicken began getting complaints about the odor, about drug dealers hanging out in the parking lot and eventually was picketed by a vegetarian group protesting the torture of chickens.

Someone told a story of how in the early 1970s they'd sat across the aisle from Colonel Sanders on a plane flight.  He was their travelling ambassador, the little eccentric in white suit, white hair, white goatee, string tie and he never once broke character, he was The Kentucky Colonel.  His southern drawl was so infectious you almost wanted to join in, ``Why K'unnell Suh, Ah Do Dee'clare.''  He was able to deflect any question or topic change that might evince an opinion but they tried, they asked, ``Colonel, what do you think of these hippies?''  He looked over at them across that short space with his impish smile, ``Dey eats chicken don't dey?''

When the KFC finally closed the owners put a small sign by the doorway thanking their customers for the support all those years and wishing them well in their futures.  The owners didn't have to put that sign, it was just a little courtesy from people who had interacted with those in the neighborhood.

A bit later other signs began being plastered on the plate glass of the empty store front, mostly election posters but also one large graphic of some hens flocked together and the words "Mala Leche" underneath.  Implication being that the person who did it was a hip, politically savvy Mission District artist who speaks for everyone: We don't want you here, Colonel.

Apparently the meaning of ``Mala Leche'' was lost on those the artist wanted most to impress (it translates literally to "bad milk" or "soured milk" and colloquially to "tough shit") because the sign was soon replaced by a similar graphic but now with the words "Bad Chicken" in English underneath.  Across the street a restaurant had opened that serves "white folks" Mexican food, a bit overpriced, not quite authentic—tofu enchiladas, things like that.  On weekends there is always a gaggle of young people waiting outside and they could be the people outside a restaurant in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn or 6th St in Austin or around Astor Place near NYU, that generic post-campus suburban look.

At the KFC, the now gone Mission District KFC, because its customers used a different criteria for how their food dollar was spent, the only people you ever saw eating there were blacks and Hispanics.

___________________________________________________________

media training

Before they went on tour in Spring of 1988 they were given a brief media training session to see how each looked if interviewed by TV news.  In turn each sat before a camera under the glare of the key light and responded to hypothetical questions about their purpose.  Scott and Joey came across fine, casual and natural, Gert was told to defer to one of the others because if she didn't like the question or the person questioning her condescension came across like a hatchet; she wasn't going to play puppydog for the camera.  Jack became flustered and then flamboyant in explanation, his arms waving around as if capturing imaginary moths.  He was told to sit on his hands if interviewed: Jack, just sit on those hands.

In the San Francisco they would be leaving for the four month tour AIDS was a constant, a daily given that affected their every action but the rest of America was a huge unknown.  They had no idea how they would be met as they went from city to city taking a message about a communicable incurable disease.  Thus there was no identification on the box sides of Stella, the truck that carried the Quilt, no large graphic announcement, only a little brass plaque on the front: ``Friends of Dorothy.''  They remembered the country as it was in the 1960s, the thought that they might be singled out to speak on a newscast seemed totally foreign.  It was their action, the tour and what they displaying out in the open in front of the whole world, that would do their talking.

T

he September 2004 issue of the women's fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar  ran a story on the mayor of San Francisco with photo of him and his wife in elegant recline across an oriental rug in a Beacon Hill-style mansion.  In the background an enormous open window framed a marble balustrade and blue water bay outside as they were dubbed "The New Kennedys," implying the Camelot of the 1960s was in their future.  The story included the price of the clothes they were wearing and a quote from his hairdresser.

The young mayor seemed to have taken the article as prophetic (women's fashion magazines usually are) and began preparing himself for the larger political arena.  The power of television had been well known since the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon debates and Newsom embarked on a training regime that included in his own YouTube channel.  What were once photo-ops became city-funded practice sessions, not just the press conferences and State of the City reports but almost any little ribbon cut would find him facing a camera with a team of handlers and no need of a live audience.

The YouTube video touting the wonders of his Pavement To Parks program and Guerrero Park doesn't mention that the program was abandoned almost immediately afterwards, leaving the space he stood in during that filming an unused eyesore benefiting no one.  A few blocks north and a few blocks east were two legacy city parks falling apart for lack of maintenance but you don't get YouTube videos for maintenance.  San Francisco in the 21st Century: Rise of the Creepy Class—a different kind of people, these kind would never have made the Quilt.

T

he twenty-city tour they embarked on in 1988 took them south from San Francisco for displays in LA and San Diego then through the southwest to Atlanta and up to Boston where they turned back west.  In every city gay groups welcomed them like royalty, held dinners for them, showed them the best of their city.  In someplace like Detroit the group had been dined and entertained in yet another fabulously decorated home and they now sat on the sofa in the living room and heard yet again about how wonderful it must be to live in San Francisco, how their hosts visited there and loved it, how there was just no other place in the world like San Francisco.  The same things they always heard.  Jack was on drink three by now and unusually quiet, he should have been animated and loud with those hands of his flutterng toward the chandelier.  Gert leaned over and asked if anything was wrong, this was not like him.

Jack was from the midwest, Indiana, his mother still lived there and they were close.  ``These guys,'' he said quietly, nodding towards the room. ``They're obviously gay, they're not hiding anything, yet they're living here, near their families, near where they grew up.  It was easy to be gay in San Francisco, it didn't take any courage at all.''  He looked around at their hosts, seated or up quickly, let-me-get-that-for-you, ''These guys,'' he said, ''they're the one's with guts.''

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glory days

The Miracle Mile of Folsom Street was anchored on the west at 12th St. by Hamburger Mary's and extended east to around 5th St. and included the parallel streets and alleys in the South of Market.  In the 1970s the area was mostly dark empty industrial warehouses no longer necessary after container shipping moved the industry over to Oakland and made the dockworkers, the stevedores and longshoreman no longer necessary.  The shot-and-a-beer bars that seemed to be at every street corner no longer had customers.  Bars that could be bought cheaply with no neighborhood residents around to complain about anything.  Anything at all.  At night the little pink neon FeBe's sign above its doorway at the corner of 11th shined dimly, a last outpost before the pitch black expanse of a wide, desolate Folsom Street that stretched down the decreasing number streets toward the bay.

Hamburger Mary's was on the corner of 12th and the Stud was mid-block on the other side of the street.  On any given night an eclectic and inebriated mix of tall drag queens wobbling in heels, swarthy men in metal-spiked leathers, disco divas waving boas and moustached Castro clones would pass each other crossing Folsom between the two establishments.  Mary's initially had a disco, Cissy's, in the larger space adjacent to the restaurant area but the food became so popular that disco died and was replaced with tables.  Dancing moved exclusively across to the Stud, a mutually beneficial separation.  One night there a dancer leaped up under the uv light, twirled in the air and when he came down went completely through the rotting floorboards into the basement.  Folsom St. in the '70's, no rules.

There was a short burly guy who drank at Mary's during the daytime that stood out even there because he always wore the same custom leather outfit: chaps, vest, jacket, fingerless gloves and little cap.  The hides had been bleached and then dyed a pale yellow which gave the look that a banana popsicle was squating on a barstool.  He was president of the Golden Showers Association, the kind who keeps buying a guy beers and tells the guy not to go the the bathroom because he wants to get him home with a full bladder.

The bar at Mary's was in the second back room and as it was a hassle to get to the bathrooms in the adjacent section on busy nights the bartenders would stand just inside of a curtained supply area at the end of the bar and surreptitiously pee into an empty gallon wine jug.  Whenever the jug filled the guy in the yellow leather outfit would take it for whatever they did at golden shower meetings.

The further east down Folsom that one ventured the more black leather and macho posturing became de rigueur.  Names of the bars and sex clubs evinced a musky ethos of maculinity: Boot Camp, Barracks, Ramrod, Brig, Caldron, Catacombs.  A place could have a clawfoot bathtub in the middle of a room, plywood partitions with mouth-sized holes cut out at waist-level, rooms with slings and padded tables, men in uniform, men in jeans shirtless, men in nothing.  A thick metal collar around the neck of a bartender attached to a heavy chrome chain tethered him to the back wall.  A bartender is taking random swigs from a mayonnaise jar by the register during his shift and when asked replies that it's his lover's urine, keeps him hydrated in this stuffy, airless room.

And the bathhouses.  Some people stopped in for a little warmup sex before going out to cruise for the night, other people stopped in for the whole weekend, breezing by home on Friday to pick up clean clothes for work Monday, checking in at the baths and spending the next three nights there, ordering food delivered, pizza, Chinese, maybe a towel as modest attire.

There was a green chalkboard next to the main desk where people could write a name and room number on entering plus some additional information, physical attributes, etc., e.g. Doug, twelve inches, or blond surfer, or a Cowboy Butt, sometimes the always popular ``have drugs,'' but more often ``request drugs.''  Passing the chalkboard on their way in Joey and friends would reach up, change a 'u' to an 'e' and add a 'y' so that everyone entering after them would see that in such-and-such room they'd find ``Cowboy Betty.''

The baths were a regular routine for Alex, many weekends he never saw the outdoors, and in late 1982, when gay cancer had become GRID and when five people he knew of had died Alex went to see a doctor.  He was healthy but felt like something was stalking him, no 32-year old should know that many people who had died in that short of a time.  Not in America in a peacetime.  After checking him over the doctor said there was no sign of KS and said that there was not a lot known and said maybe he could get Alex into a study at UCSF.  The main epidemiologic correlation at that time seemed to be number of sexual partners and the doctor asked Alex about that, how many he thought he'd had.  Alex was sitting in his underwear on the paper strip that covered the exam table in the little room staring down at his sock feet.  He raised his head and moved his eyes toward the ceiling as one does when counting.  After a bit he looked at the doctor and answered, ``You mean today?''

D

uring Sunday brunch lull at Hamburger Mary's the bartender went out back by the dumpster to take a couple puffs off a joint with some of the kitchen crew and when he returned a waiter came up with a glass of white wine and set it on the bar.

"Customer says this tastes funny."

Bartender looks at the glass, "Where'd you get this? . . . I didn't serve this to you."

"You weren't here so I went behind the bar and poured it from that jug by the curtain back there."

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the mission

Rock Against Reagan, Dolores Park, October, 1983

As  he crossed the 16th Street BART Plaza one mid-afternoon a couple glided past him from behind, both a bit pudgy, pasty, with unkempt hair, the guy in faded coveralls, the girl in sweatshirt and jeans.  So nondescript that if Joey hadn't overheard a snippet of their conversation they would have registered about as much as the shadow of a small cloud passing high overhead.  Two people that were purposely invisible, that did not want to draw attention to themselves.

The guy asked, ``So how long were you in for?''

``Three months.''

His voice took on a snide edge, ``Guess you cleaned up, huh?''

``Man,'' she said, ``King Kong didn't hit that hard.''

The BART plaza: people selling drugs, people buying drugs, people selling sex for the money to buy drugs, always at the periphary of your vision, you just had to not look to see it.  In the early evening Oakland hookers would be coming up out of the BART terminal to join the locals on Capp St. where all night long cars would circle the five or six blocks of The Track, most of the trade being done out of the vehicles.

When smokable free base cocaine began vying with heroin for the drug dollar in the 1980s the dealers at the Valencia Gardens projects at 15th stenciled ``Buy Crack Here'' in large letters on the concrete sides of the buildings so you would know.  Frisco Choppers was across the street, ``In the Ghetto,'' as the logo on their T-shirts said.  And ``Thank You for Pot Smoking'' as the sign over their cash register said. 

In the late 70s/early 80s some punk venues sprouted around Valencia, a West Coast mirror of the Bowery/East Village in NYC: the Deaf Club, the Tool & Die, Target Video; in 1980 a synthesizer band The Units even put out a song, ``The Mission Is Bitchin.''  The swell that had begun with hippies moving into the Haight more than a decade before and then carried into the Castro as gays arrived was now flowing into this western edge of the Mission District.  That wave receded when the scythe of the epidemic came down (imagine being able to see over a dozen 'For Rent' signs in windows during a casual 30 minute stroll around the intersection of Castro and 18th) and it was almost twenty years, as Y2K approached, before the tide rolled back.

J

oey lived behind 4 Wheel Brake at 17th and Mission in this era and one sun filled afternoon when passing Clarion he had idly stared a bit too long at four guys huddled a ways into the alley.  One of the four moved away from the group and stopped in a doorway to stare down at a little packet he'd obviously just purchased.  A guy saw Joey watching, turned fully to face him and advanced, ``You looking for something man?''  It took Joey a second to realize the guy wasn't challenging him, the guy was sincere, that if there was anything Joey wanted this guy was going to do his best to provide it.

Some years later, in August, 1990 a 29-year old Irish SFSU student, Paul O'Meara, had his cab pull over to the Wells ATM at the northwest edge of the 16th St. BART plaza to get cash.  It was just dusk, about 9 p.m. and four men loitering there put him in a chock hold with a baseball bat and pulled him around the corner and beat him to death.  At least six people witnessed this.

Because of the high crime rate around Mission/16th and because of the number of customer robberies at that ATM the bank had months before begun inactivating the machine each evening at 8 p.m.  Thus Paul O'Meara had next to no money on him when he was killed.

Area merchants had long clamored for a greater police presence so the SFPD set up a kiosk in the plaza apparently meant to frighten off criminals.  It sat there for many months about the same size and about as imposing as a State Fair corndog stand, it never seemed to be staffed and eventually it became grimy and collected wind blown trash around its base and at some point the police kiosk disappeared.  Six witnesses, no one was ever arrested or charged with the crime.  An Irish bar in Noe Valley had a benefit one Saturday afternoon to collect money so that Paul's body could be returned to his family in the Old Sod.

I

n the early 1990s bodies of Capp St. hookers began showing up in vacant lots by the water in China Basin.  Not unsurprisingly this spread a pall over the street workers but hey, a gal's gotta earn a living.  The increased police presence after those murders moved a sizable portion of the business to the other side of South Van Ness Avenue.  Eventually they arrested a guy already out on bail for sexual assault of Capp St. hookers because a 19-year old girl Jack Bokin thought was dead when he dumped her in the Bay had survived and identified him.

Lisa worked at the Rite Spot on Folsom when this all was going on and she was walking there in the dying light of early evening.  She was outfitted in the short skirt and combat boots style girls wore at that time which seemed to emphasize her cherubic cuteness, her big smile.  A friend happened to drive by and he honked and pulled over, bending to reach across the front seat and roll down the window.  Lisa went to the passenger side and leaned in and they chatted a bit but she had to get to work so said bye, her friend drove off and she continued walking.  Before she got to Folsom this black gal popped out of a doorway, tight pants, spike heels, very red lips and said, ``You was right not to go with him!  I been round here a long time and they's plenty of weirdos—I can spot 'em!  That there guy was sure one!  You done the right thing not to go with him.''

Then the black woman stepped back a bit to bat her false eyelashes and assess Lisa, ``You new here, I ain't seen ya' before.''  After she looked Lisa up and down the woman smiled and gave her approval of the street: ``You gonna do O.K.''

D

uring daylight hours hookers made the stretch of 17th around Thrift Town into their little cloister.  They would stand on one of the street corners between Capp and Hoff and announce themselves by making a flamboyant show of lighting a cigarette, taking a drag and then swinging their arm in an extravagant arch while exhaling a long smoke stream up into the air.  A censer to ward away the evil spirits: ``No officer I'm just here waiting for my boyfriend, ain't no crime in that is there?''  These were the ones that needed money early, dayshift here was end of the line, the decrepit seeking the desperate no matter which way you looked at it.

Joey was on his way home one afternoon and notices this young girl walking ahead of him stop on the sidewalk and hunch over briefly to light up.  She didn't have that girl next door look, not for the girls in this neighborhood, she looked like some nerdy innocent kid maybe come over to check out the bargains at Thrift Town.  Joey considered saying something, a little word to the wise, if one of the gruff Mexicans propositioned her she'd probably collapse in fright, but what was he going to say?  As he passed by she looked over at him and smiled as if she could sense his concern.  The innocent looking nerdy girl said, ``Hi, . . .  want a date?''

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