Grab Bag #021

Nancy and I went to the Joe Goode Performance Group show “As We Go” on Saturday. To call it a meditation on aging would be weak tea. The whole evening, which is mostly presented by fit, flexible and powerful dancers, is about decline and death.

Joe gives us some positivity (as he is wont), advising acceptance and embracing of change, important attitudes somewhat trivialized when each audience member received a lollypop at the end of the show like we were kids at the doctor’s office.

You get poked; you might get a bit of sugar. That’s life.

It’s not Joe’s fault that we age or that we die. I appreciated the reminder and I am always thinking about change, as one does at 57 years old.

Driving home on Geary Boulevard we passed tribes of young people marching east. The Outside Lands music festival had finished for the day, a foggy one. In the diffuse glow from the mist and headlights of slowly moving Ubers, sequins shimmered and reflected among the walkers who decided not to wait for the 38 Geary bus.

These were “kids” born in the 21st century, yet bewilderingly of legal age to drink—how did that happen? There was a face lit in the fog by the light of a cell phone, laughing and shouting, and a million years away from dance vignettes about perceived irrelevance, disassociation, loss, and grief.

“Likely never in history have the distances between generations been so vast. I am thinking about the deep gaps between generations, determined by the development of artificial intelligence and the avalanche of changes in the access to information. It would seem that human society has stratified into generational zones that differ from each other in terms of their approach to the world, to knowledge, the way of using and the quality of language, skills, mentality, type of political engagement and modes of life.”

So says Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk. I also can fall into the trap of thinking about technology as a dividing line, spikes at a parking lot gate that can be driven across only one way. Once a generation goes over, there’s no going back and no one will ever read a novel or write a letter again.

I acutely feel my membership in a generation which reached adulthood without a computer in the pocket, one whose community couldn’t be virtual. We were dinosaurs working not-at-home, needing coins to make a call, learning about the world from paper. While we can play-act those days, we can’t spin the world backwards like Superman.

Even the pope is all up in his feelings about this:

“The idea of promoting a different cultural paradigm and employing technology as a mere instrument is nowadays inconceivable. The technological paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do so without its resources and even more difficult to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic.”

So, love it or lump it, says the pope. We’re trapped in Charlie Chaplin’s gears. You’ll never understand those alien kids, says Olga. We’re all on our own median strip, stuck in traffic, and the light will never turn green. Joe Goode pulls us into a cheerful existentialist group-hug. Breathe in acceptance, he says, breathe out expectations.

I work in history not because I long for the past (although I sometimes do) or feel it has lessons for how we should live today (although it sometimes does), but because I am fascinated by change. I love stories and every story is about change.

I work in preservation because every old building, every somehow-still-alive family business is a story of how the world changed, but this thing wasn’t lost, didn’t die. Sometimes it’s trivial, sometimes it’s significant, but if it says something to me about San Francisco, I am interested.

Falling into the trivial category must certainly be my interest in building address typography, something good folks like @shabbyfrisco and @VulcanStairway delved into frequently on the dumpster-fire formerly known as Twitter.

The neighbors on Clay Street in the photo above may have different masonry tastes, but their newish address numbers aren’t very different. The entrance door to my grandmother’s old basement apartment on Lake Street had an unfortunate update a few years ago:

Does the beauty of addresses—proper spacing, interesting fonts, taking the care not to resort to a reflective sticker—mean anything about our city, the times, the state of our world? Is this meaningful change, good or bad? Maybe not.

On the more significant side to me is that every event I have been a part of at a neighborhood movie theater in the past year has sold out. Here is the crowd at the Vogue on Sacramento Street a couple of weeks ago:

What we are told, over and over, is that these movie theaters are obsolete and dead as a door nail. Killed by streaming content, the pandemic, etc. So we need to turn the Castro into a nightclub to “save it,” allow the Clay theater on Fillmore Street to be turned over to some clothing chain even though a theater operator offered to pay the owner exactly what he said he wanted for it.

If we rely on the old top-down movie distribution model then maybe the naysayers are right. But the right offering—in this case bringing film-noir aficionado Eddie Muller in to chat with SF Heritage’s Christine French and show how San Francisco has been the star of so many classic movies of suspense—will fill the hall.

Things change, yes, but let's not give beauty and community-gathering spaces the bum’s rush.

Another Telephone Temple

Last week I wrote about a unique telephone exchange building, an early example of the Chinatown Renaissance style, which incorporated the look of a Buddhist temple into a secular building. The Chinatown exchange wasn't the only Pacific Telephone & Telegraph exchange to imitate a religious structure. Check out this crazy one at 871 Page Street near Scott Street:

Egyptian temple mashed up with some Spanish Colonial Revival. You can still see this crazy place today, with very few losses to the facade:

My friend Bill Kostura wrote about at a few interesting Pacific Telephone buildings back in 2018. Maybe you all can encourage him to do a part two.

Closer to Solving a Mystery

In the last Grab Bag, I shared the story of found slides from the 1960s and 1970s which David Gallagher (F.O.W.) was scanning. A search was on for the other two-thirds of the collection, as well as the identity of the talented photographer.

Peter Hartlaub wrote a great article about it all. He and David did some detective work using the San Francisco Chronicle archive and, like in a CSI episode, they triangulated photos to get “a visual” for our guy.

Thanks to the Chronicle story, the mystery man has been identified! The search for the remaining slides continues...

Engine on the Hill

When I wrote about Jobson’s Folly I mentioned a fire alarm bell that once stood on top of San Francisco’s old City Hall at Portsmouth Square. Mike P. (F.O.W.) has some relevant ditty lyrics stuck in his superb SF History brain:

“I am reminded by your latest article of an old firehouse tradition I heard of years ago. It mentions the bell atop City Hall. The guys would sing it, ever mindful that fire could strike and some would lose their lives, as so many good fellows did over the years. I think it dates back to 1865 or so.

Come laddies, and draw up your chairs
Let’s have a nice sociable time
We’ll talk of the past, for it may be the last
Ere we hear the old City Hall chime.

But before we begin with our chat
Just see that your glasses you fill
And we’ll drink a good toast, to the Pride of the Coast
Our Engine that’s housed on the Hill.

Engine on the hill, eh? I likely have some fire department history friends who can figure out which company we’re talking about. Thanks Mike!

Woody Beer and Coffee Fund

Does not have to be beer or coffee. I want to be clear that if you prefer to have a hot chocolate, a wine spritzer, or a shot of wheat grass, it is A-OK with me. The point is we sip and chat and spend some time together like hominids do. (I am not sure if gorillas drink coffee...) Chip in to the Woody Beverage Fund and let me know when you might be free!

Sources

Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio), “Laudato Si'” Encyclical Letter, May 24, 2015.

Olga Tokarczuk, “Ognosia,” translated on Words Without Borders