The Best Walking Town Ever

Nice shot, huh. I was working graveyard shift at the St. Francis Hotel and just lived about 5 blocks away on Leavenworth near Sutter. My wife was working the day shift. I was never able, in my numerous years of working graveyard, to shift to sleeping nights on my two days off. So I would be awake all night at home while my wife snored in the next room. After doing some writing, watching TV, & reading, I would slip out for a walk. San Francisco at night is a very interesting place. Especially at two in the morning on a week night. Saw a guy with a long beard in an evening dress with gloves (like Barbie). This was before AIDS and all the guy bars overflowed on to the sidewalks with leather and chains. There was a little Buddhist storefront in China Town that was manned by a little round Tibetan Monk in flowing robes all night. There was a used bookstore about a half block from City Lights that stayed open 24 hours. And there were donut shops filled with the lost. A few times I walked up and around Coit Tower- which was cool in the middle of the night.

 Generally, I would go up Sutter to Polk and follow Polk down to the Pier and then go round through North Beach and China Town and end up in the Business District at dawn and then climb Sutter back home. To this day most of my memories of living there have to do with the night. My oldest was born there and we did walk the stroller up and down the hills of Nob Hill. But I left felling I didn't really connect to the city or the people there. It was hard making friends when you have to go to work just when a party was starting. There was a Writer's Group that met at the Public Library run by a very weird guy that had his face disfigured by a botched plastic surgery and had spent the rest of his life trying to get it fixed and treating the world like it was everyone's fault. I didn't get to meet real creative people. I wrote a long boring first draft of a novel there about New Orleans.

I wish it had been different. I still love the feel of the city. How you can walk for hours and its always interesting, There were these three people (midwives) that helped my daughter into the world that I appreciate and still think of fondly.