If Beale Street Could Talk…the first thing it would say is that it isn’t Spear Street. And, no, you don’t have to be James Baldwin to know the difference. And not knowing that difference can cost you some time and some distance. It can even throw you into a sort of panic, as it did just yesterday morning, finding me frenzied, anxious and not adequately caffeinated on my way to, you guessed it, an adult-ed class at the San Francisco State University downtown center.
You need to get out more, I have been telling myself. And COVID-19 has been telling me something similar, actually more along the lines of get out for a while, while the getting is good. Molecular biology, after all, is not boding well in terms of pandemic. In fact, things do not look good for the winter. And I’m not talking about the midterm elections. Although those aren’t looking good either. But I digress. I was talking about my hunt for Beale Street. What could possibly go wrong?
First, what could possibly go wrong with BART? The regional subway line had managed to turn a 15-minute trip through the urban core into a half an hour. Not only was I late for my Rilke course, but I was late for my date at Philz, the Bay Area coffee chain which has a large and pleasant outlet near the Embarcadero. As the train rattled through the 16th St. station, I was mentally eying a Silken Splendor, small, with cream and sugar. And a chocolate Babka. Well, I was more torturing myself mentally over that. I mean how many calories? Whatever. I was going to have something. Until time, precious time was robbed from me, stop by stop. Five minutes stalled at Powell Street. Five minutes waiting at Civic Center. Montgomery another four.
And in the end, what was there to do but back out of the elevator and begin speeding toward Beale Street.
Which wasn’t where I was going, was it? The address was Spear Street. I had been there the week before. But somehow this reality had faded from my mind. In fact, I began to believe, everything faded from my mind. Because the mind itself fades, doesn’t it? Ashes to ashes. Brain cells to Republicans. That’s just how it is.
So, yes, didn’t I speed down Mission Street thinking that somehow I would find Spear Street? Which was being impersonated by Beale Street. And, let me point out the obvious. I had had neither coffee nor breakfast. No wonder I begin zoning out as we journeyed with Rainer Maria. And I mean we were all over Bohemia, parts of Germany and heading toward Paris, of course which should keep a normal person awake and happy. But I was missing my coffee. And I was also missing my sense of self-confidence.
Which is why I was really making the trip anyway. Because while it is true that I need to get out. I also need to look at the urban landscape. And these days it is amazingly barren. Downtown San Francisco isn’t. An area that was once the essence of urban, the Financial District, is now largely devoid of people. Salesforce, the enormous enterprise software company, is home. Or to be more precise, its workforce has gone home. Everyone knows this. But there’s something rather startling about passing shuttered lunchtime haunts, coffee places, sandwich shops. Everyone is elsewhere.
And after lunch I found myself elsewhere also. The redoubtable Ferry Building. Very few ferries, of course, but lots of lunch spots in the old place. And some even had a bit of a queue. Enough to make me wander around and find a faster way to pick up two shrimp cakes for dinner. Less dead here. But dead enough. Whither San Francisco?