'Bred Crumbs
08.10.02
Exactly six years ago today, also a Saturday, I was making my second visit to San Francisco. At the end of a weeklong visit with Sam and Jennie in their new Daly City home, we celebrated Sam's birthday by going into The City. But afterward, when we got to the BART station to head home, we learned their were no trains going that way because of a supposed power outage. This was odd; the power wasn't out during our mid-afternoon meal and margaritas at Chevy's, but apparently it was true; big chunks of the city and Bay Area had lost electricity (because, we would learn later, of a failure in the Western power grid).
The only one in our party with a car, David, had gone before we found out about the problem. How to get home? All the cabs were full. We tried catching a MUNI bus down Mission to get back to our car at the Daly City BART lot, but the thing was packed. Facing a seven-mile-plus journey, we couldn't take the claustrophobia and bailed well before our destination. We tried to reach David at his home, which took a while because the outage slowed traffic. We finally got him, and he came and picked up Jennie, but since his car was only a two-seater, the rest of us had to wait for David to ferry Jennie to her car so she could drive back into town to get us.
Our waiting place happened to be the Safeway at Market and Church. We tried to pass the time as best we could. We went into the store, which was hit by the outage but still operating its registers and freezers on backup power, to experience shopping in the dark, but the thrill wore off quickly. For a while, it was amusing to hang in the parking lot and assess the clientele of the store, which seemed to be patronized almost entirely by gay couples and people with broken or damaged arms and legs. (The store is on the edge of the Castro, which I didn't realize because I didn't yet know San Francisco well. I can't explain all the casts, canes and wheelchairs, though. Hell, we even saw a dog in a cast.)
But after a while even the people-watching lost its charm, and we sat on the sidewalk, tired and dejected, surrounded by pigeons milling about pointlessly.
"You know," I said absently after a long silence, "if I had wings, I'd use them more."
Sam, bless him, cracked the hell up. He said that such a grand observation out of nowhere, utterly so matter-of-factly, just got to him. Our spirits lifted again, and soon Jennie arrived to get us back to their blissfully electrified flat.
So, I got stuck for a while in a crowded city experiencing its second big power outage that summer. And somehow, I wound up just being more charmed by the place than ever. Maybe I was infected by the earthquake- and AIDS-surviving city's spirit of joyous endurance, I don't know, but my determination to move here ratcheted up significantly that chaotic Saturday six years ago. I made the big journey three months later, and my life started happening.
On top of all that, today is also Dewayne's birthday. August 10, we salute you.
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