All was quiet on the train ride to work this morning, as if the sunny, warm weekend left every rider rested and content to sit in silence. Not even one note slipped from beneath headphones.
The bus was also particularly serene. I sat next to a small Latina woman with close-cropped hair, a pretty smattering of freckles across her lined face. She looked worried — very worried — which I suppose accounts for some of the wrinkles at he corners of her mouth.
She seemed worried about the fact that a man came onto the bus with three very large plastic, lidded storage boxed and an enormous plastic shopping bag that said BIG LOTS and was filled to the brim with something soft, like pillows or the stuffing that goes inside sewn animals. She frowned at his load. It did seem to take up the entirety of the aisle of the bus, but he had to get his stuffung and the plastic containers to store it in home somehow.
The man with the big lot of things got off the bus first when we arrived at 24th Street. I eased by him on the left side of the escalator going down with no problem at all.
On my walk to work after the train ride I kept hearing a bike bell. I use the bike bell ring tone for text messages on my phone, so I kept checking my pocket. I heard it again and again, looking behind me for the cyclist on the sidewalk, but there was none. Soon enough I discovered it was a jackammering hitting something metal that made a tinny sound, much like that of a bike bell.
It warmed up at least five degrees on my way from the front door to the newsroom. Seagulls were the last thing I saw before I ducked inside.
I played frisbee golf for the first time last weekend. The course was a gorgeous, but very difficult one at Stafford Lake Park in Novato in Marin County. After sucking super hard on the first hole (twenty or so tries and I still couldn’t get it in!), I gave up and just putted the rest of the day. Fine by me, because the views, they were stunning.
I am, I’m becoming pretty sure, gonna get a tattoo. It will not be huge, but it won’t be small. It will be comprised of spheres in pastel and other light colors. The colors are what I am really wavering on. The placement is still totally undecided.
I tell you this because I will need someone to put my tattoo on me, since I failed that prison tat class. I have done some googling about where to go, but am seeking advice from those in the Bay Area about artists I might look into. The piece will not be complex, so am not overly concerned about price, as it should take under two hours.
In my anticipation of San Francisco living, I was really hoping to be near a Muni light rail line. BART is great and all, but I got to ride it plenty when I lived in Berkeley, and wanted to try something else. Something faster than a bus. Which is why I was thrilled to discover that the J Church line is a six block walk from my new place.
This morning, my first day back to work since my move, I locked up the apartment, walked down to Mission, crossed the street and continued toward Dolores Street. Once at 30th and Dolores, a J line stop, I saw the Muni sign on a street poll. It read: J Church to Balboa Park. I’d discovered the outbound stop, but where I was to get on in order to ride the J downtown was beyond me. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I decided to punt.
So, I trotted back down 30th to Mission where I saw a bus headed my way. All I needed to do was get to the 24th St. BART station. I knew the 14 and the 49 went there, but wasn’t sure about any of the others. I squinted and made out a 67 on the front of the fast-moving bus.
Quickly I texted Ian: “67 goes to 24th St. BART, yay or nay?” I hit send just as the bus hissed to a halt.
I waited until all the rest of the riders boarded.
“Does this bus go to the BART station on 24th?,” I asked before I mistakenly fed the machine a buck-fifty. The driver nodded, so I climbed aboard. Things were looking up, but I held my breath when it made a left onto Valencia. That wasn’t the way to the BART stop. Deciding not to freak, I checked my phone. “It may turn right at Cesar Chavez,” Ian had replied. Sadly, it did not.
Once the bus made it to Valencia and 24th I hit the yellow button signaling the driver to stop. It wasn’t far too hoof it from there to the trains.
“You are going to the BART station, right?,” said a kind, balding man who looked a little like Craig Newmark. I nodded at him.
“He’ll make a right here. Your’s is the next stop,” the Craig look-alike informed me. I thanked him repeatedly, as San Franciscans don’t offer up unsolicited transit advice all that often.
Sure enough the bus stopped just in front of the BART station. I climbed off and descended the stairs, happy to be back on schedule and using a mode of transportation I’m entirely comfortable with.
The Internet tells me that I can take the J line to downtown from 30th and Dolores. Tomorrow I plan on going back there to figure out where that inbound stop has run off to.
“The Bay Area is so beautiful, I hesitate to preach about heaven while I’m here. ”
~Billy Graham
Tonight I saw the sun set in a spectacular purple haze over the twinkling lights of the Bay Bridge. Earlier I’d stepped over a man who slept, sprawled, beside everything he owned. The stink of his urine-soaked clothes invaded my throat.
I have been in the Bay Area one year today. In that time I cut my hair, started seeing a shrink, fell in love, slept beside the crash of the Pacific Ocean, saw A’s and Giants games, met amazing new people, made two super close friends and lost approximately 20 pounds.
I no longer smile at strangers when I pass them on the sidewalk and my never-heavy Southern accent has all but stolen away.
Tourists now ask me for directions. Five times out of ten I can help them. That they ask at all tickles me silly. This weekend I was called a “BART expert.” I anticipated that the lady hogging the escalator with her drag-behind suitcase would make a left turn toward the ticket machine, so I took a hard right, swooped through the gates and got us on to a Dublin/Pleasanton train just before the doors closed. We’d have had to wait another eight minutes. Obviously, this was unacceptable. When the words expert were attached to me regarding my BARTing abilities my mind shot back to those first rides to work under the bay after I moved. I marveled at how anyone could nap and still make their stop. I craned to hear the station announcements, fearful I would end up who knows where. I would imagine my body inside the 10-car train, a speck amongst hundreds of sleeping or reading or ipod listening specks, shooting forward like a rocket under the waters of the bay that is this region’s namesake. I would imagine the deterioration of the tube if an earthquake occurred. I would wonder whether I would drown or suffocate. Now I don’t think about that at all.
I have skills now I never would have gotten had I not moved. I don’t have as much street smarts as I’d like, but I’ve learned how to walk through sketchy neighborhoods at night without too much fear of harassment. I can almost always hail a cab, provided they are available, and after some time I’m finally able to tell the driver which route I prefer. “Mission or the freeway?” Now I know, depending on what time it is, whether or not it’s Critical Mass and if there are any protests planned, which way to tell the cabbie. (A surpisingly large number of SF taxi drivers do not know where shit is.) After some time, I know when riding in the back of a speeding cab when to brace myself. Sitting in back, the taxi taking jutting hills at break-neck speeds, I find my breath trapped in my lungs. Sailing over the crest of the hilltop, all my air is tight in my chest. Sometimes I swear the tires leave the pavement. But sometimes after topping one of San Francisco’s notorious summits the bay waters will spill into sight. Then I exhale.
Sunday I went to Golden Gate park to enjoy the 75+ degree November weather with some friends. As I rode along in the back seat I watched row after row of attached houses fly by, wondering the last time I saw a red brick home with even a slice of a yard. Just then the tips of the tops of the iconic Golden Gate bridge pop into my view. The sight took my breath away, quite literally, if only for a second. In this place I am constantly holding my breath.
When I lived in Tennessee I worked at an Outback Steakhouse for a long time. Too long. An embarrassingly exceeding amount of time. The large, industrial, melt-your-face-off dishwasher in that kitchen was made by Hobart. It said it really big on the side: HOBART. For whatever reason, the dish washing area of that kitchen was called Hobart Land. But no one ever called it “the dishwasher (area).” Always Hobart.
There are some stairs that sit above one entrance to the Montgomery BART station. The don’t go up to anything–they are sitting steps. They are the steps where Ian and I very often meet after work. Sometimes one of us has to wait five minutes or more on the other, but I never mind because there is, in the form of a building, a giant piece of art for me to gaze upon. I don’t know a damn thing about architecture besides what kind of Roman columns are which, but I love this building so much. Just before dusk it is in optimum light. It sits, a stunning beacon between shadowed skyscrapers. I like the dichotomy of the structure. The top half (if you segment it horizontally) is ornate, shaped very much like one of the famous bay windows seen in Victorian homes in the area. It is rounded and the embellishments are intricate. Especially when contrasted with the smooth, flat, angular slab that it sits upon. It’s such a handsome building. It is distinguished and classy. It is the Hobart building, and a far cry from the stinky, dank dish washing area of the chain restaurant where I spent year after year after year.
I don’t really know how to write about the change that my life has taken. I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss the comforts of home, always knowing which way to go and how to get there. I flip out every day as this fish out of water who is slowly, surely, becoming a part of this beautiful landscape. I feel like an adventurer in this place, studying its history, learning its lines, consuming its exquisite good looks. And with every new door crossed I am grateful to be where I am right now.
In January I’m moving to San Francisco like I always wanted. I can’t wait to call The City, finally, my home.
It has been asked, by local media mavens and anonymous assholes alike, what the hell I’m doing at CBS 5. A comment I made in response to someone who asked me why I wasn’t doing any “newsgathering” at the station perhaps can clear that up:
[M]y role here is to read, promote, highlight and otherwise cover the local blogosphere. We have a bevy of talented and tenacious reporters and producers on staff who do a fantastic job at newsgathering. By having someone reading hyperlocal blogs in house, CBS 5 can be aware of myriad local issues that no news team can thoroughly cover 100% of the time. Thanks to blogs like Claycord.com, and CBS 5’s willingness to listen to area bloggers and have a relationship with them, newgathering can be a symbiotic process–not to mention a new and exciting one. I like the notion that a news team is listening to local citizens who might just know better than they do what is going on in their neighborhoods. It shows respect for the viewer and a real concern for the community.
You want to know something? I’m a shitty newsgatherer. Hard news is not my bag. My degree is in magazine journalism, a certificate I got in hopes of writing long-form profile pieces, or maybe film criticism. This blogging in a newsroom thing fell into my lap, but never once have I ever stated that I am a reporter. I am not. I don’t even consider myself a journalist.
Because I publish for a news station, people want to box me in to what *they* think newsroom employees should be. I’m the first to admit that an opinionated blogger in the newsroom is a jolt to an age-old system, but I’m just doing the job I’ve been asked to do. Which is to cover the local blogosphere the best way I know how–by blogging about it.
Here’s the thing, though: I don’t have to do any original reporting for the station to benefit. The Bay Area is crawling with people passionate about their communities. They have their feelers out, covering the legislature, watching their streets and otherwise covering the San Francisco-area like a blanket. In fact, there are so many awesome local bloggers out there breaking and reporting news that you need a human to point you to the best and most important stuff. This, my friends, is my job.
Sure, I could provide more and better original content. I could do longer, more thoroughly researched pieces. I have vast room for improvement. I am too often lured by the pressure to post more and more often, and my work suffers for it from time to time. I can be lazy; it’s true. But I don’t feel like the way I need to improve is by doing shoeleather reporting. There are better folks at that than me, and I’ve got other things to offer. I’m not the best writer in the world, nor am I all that funny. I’ll agree with you there. But I won’t agree that I need to be out “doing real reporting,” because my title is blogger. Not reporter. Let’s leave real reporting to the experts–the working journalists and the citizen ones who live and work and play in the communities they cover.
I never liked channel 5.I was always a ktvu kind of guy. But ever since I started reading claycord I’ve noticed they cover our area better than anybody else,and now I watch them every night and read their website everyday.
KTVU is #1 in this market. Sure, this is just one person’s account, but this is a new way of winning viewers in the digital age–proving your trust as a news providers in innovative ways.
San Francisco has an Indian summer they tell me. It gets warmer in September and October before winter, otherwise known as the rainy season, sets in. I arrived in the Bay Area to live and work in November. This means I haven’t seen anything resembling a summer season in a full year. And I’m not going to, I don’t think.
It was broiling hot a couple of weekends ago when I attended an outdoor party in the middle of the day, for which many people from the East Coast flew in, and the conversation largely consisted of, “It’s so hot. I can’t believe how hot it is. It’s never like this. Everyone is usually wearing jackets. Oh my God, I’m sweating everywhere. Hold my sangria, I’ve got to take this off.” But those handful of days came and went, and now fall is setting in.
The air lately carries the smell of crispness that happens that time of year when, in places that don’t have palm trees, leaves turn hillsides into a kaleidoscope of warm colors. Autumn is here, sort of, but in a way that seems far away.
I’ve been waiting for summer. Patiently waiting for that season that feels like pulling on wool socks after a long night with no blanket. I’ve been waiting for the sun to tan my forearms and lighten my hair. Waiting for September or October, for that late breaking warmth. But again today, like days in January and July, I wore a coat and a scarf.
I came knowing there weren’t four distinct seasons in San Francisco, like there are back home, where I lived my entire life. Logically, it all adds up. But my body expected sunshine. My skin expected sustained rays that paint on tiny freckles.
I wonder if when it rains again–it hasn’t since March–if it will feel like winter time.
I’m in Nashville. It’s the first time I’ve been back since I left. And it’s so very strange.
The air conditioning is odd to me now, and the overwhelming number of white people jumps out at me. I’m confused as to why everything is so spread out, why we drove 25 miles from one shopping center to another that looked exactly–and I do mean exactly–like the first one. With almost all the same stores. All the neighborhoods pretty much look the same; I haven’t seen red brick homes with columns in front for a while.
People seem to move a little slower than I remember them moving. And the number of baseball caps here in Tennessee, worn by women and men alike, is astonishing. People are kinder, at least outwardly. The syrupy Southern drawls are as plodding and charming as always.
I’ve noticed I’ve become much more direct in my conversations with people, especially family. The way Southern people, especially ladies, tip toe around what they want with their words has become an annoying attribute I now mostly eschew. My frank comments to my mother and sister about various things has left them each slack-jawed at least once.
The rolling hills and buttermilk biscuits and late afternoon showers are all like warm hugs from long unseen old friends. The lack of diversity, however, is striking. Moving to California has been 9 months of constant blur, and being back has been just about the same. Everything old is new again, and I’m relearning Tennessee’s curves like I’ve returned to a former lover. It’s been exhilerating and a little unnerving, but I’m glad for the experience.
Have to admit, though, despite that it happened while listening to crickets, when I saw photos of San Francisco on my Flickr stream just now, my heart whispered “home.”
