Friends

Tall and dark, their food was spiced differently and they spoke of a place called Yugoslavia that sounded exotic and sad. But it was all just texture for the aunt, uncle, and two cousins I grew up with. And it didn’t matter at all that instead of a genetic link of ancestry, we shared a history of morning drives towards afternoon picnics before evening dinners and piling into the streetlit car worn out and over-ready for bed. I referred to them as my “parallel family.”

Castle Rock with friends

We’d been family since before I was born. Back when our moms were college roommates. So I showed up for university with eyes wide for the first glimpse of the people who would someday be uncles and aunts to my own kids. No pressure. But impossible expectation is a supplementary explanation for why I am not in touch with anyone from my college years.

Within weeks of school starting, I was in a relationship that devoured most of my hours. Waking and sleeping. I basically lived in her apartment. (Is 15 years too late to send an apologetic fruit basket?) They were seven good years, but when they were over, they were gone with the girlfriend.

That was always my way. My romantic relationship had absolute primacy. Where I spent my time. If my She was unavailable, then I’d call up a friend. Familiar story, tragic mistake, but comfortable in the meantime.

So as I entered this phase of my life (single for the first time since...elementary school?) I resolved to do it differently. I just didn’t know what that would look like.

My turn

It looks like Mondays on rock climbing walls with East Bay friends. Tuesday Lebanese burrito in Dolores Park with my brother and his crew. Wednesday climbing with an amplified set of San Franciscans, before Thursday with my old roommate and his fiance. Friday’s Happy Hour will be well named for the company of friends from middle school, and Saturday we’ll socialize in the farmer’s market sunshine.

And the weekends? Driving to Point Reyes for green hillsides and ocean vistas before watching the sun set into my beloved Pacific Ocean, whose eternal beauty complements mortal friendships, whatever their scale.

Or drive down to Castle Rock to rappel down a granite slab then climb back up, sticking fingers in arachnid crevices and unknowable mammalian dens.

Or up to Tahoe, maybe snowshoeing, or a social maelstrom of mullet wigs, karaoke, and the conviction that no matter how weird the conversation gets, that’s cool.

Tahoe. Made sense at the time.

None of this is a shocking revelation. That friends are good. But that doesn’t lessen their importance. In our Social Media Age, murky medium of social isolation, I want to shout my gratitude for real human contact out into this inhuman ether, knowing it will reach the eyes of friends I’ve never met (yet?), and maybe even stir an additional gathering of friends or two.

Because whether we share genes or not, met in college or on the wall, with smiles or fonts, our lives are made richer by our Parallel Family.

One of those days

And the bicycle goes where, exactly?

Yesterday was just one of those days. Tasks taking longer, lung-based cold draining further, nothing going forward as fast as I needed it to. (And also, of course my health insurance company messed up the automatic billing and cancelled my coverage just in time for my first doctor’s visit in two years. Why wouldn’t they?) Large scale worries and small scale misfires just sort of leached the feeling of effectiveness from my abdomen. Not a terrible day, just the kind that feels like a low slow growl.

But then! Then I was headed over to the city for Korean happy hour appetizers with three dearly beloved friends. The fresh air of bicycle motion was already soothing, though the day’s misalignment continued as every single stoplight turned red at my approach.

You can go, as long as you don't enter.

I’ve ridden from my house to BART (the subway) approximately seven quajillion times, and I well know that one stretch is the most dangerous. An American-style street of two busy lanes on the left and slanted parking spaces on the right, bikes are advised to float ten feet off the ground I guess.

After merely two mazillion passes, I’d developed an automatic habit of scanning for reverse lights to make sure none of those parked cars wanted to put a windshield between me and my destination, but the sheer normalcy of the passage, splattered with deeply-felt frustration, helped me not notice that the first parking spot was empty.

I don’t know if the driver signaled, since I was alongside them, but it doesn’t really matter. I should have been aware of the possibility of that right turn, crossing right in front of me, if not on top of me.

As it was, they pulled right, so I pulled right, and we both entered the space together, factory-shaped automobile metal somehow not impacting DNA-made me meat, with a good five inches to spare. Good five inches.

I looked at the driver, who looked back at me, both waiting to see if the other would rage and threaten. I love neither of those, so just sort of went around and back on my way.

See now the Dutch, the Dutch
know how to run a bike lane.

Air moving again, limbs still intact, I felt two tugs for interpretation. One, I could be overwhelmed with the frustration and fear of the moment and the day and the week, pour it all into a Republican-style rage of blame against another. Or, I could take that startling moment as a gentle but clear reminder from the universe to get my perspective in order. Sitting on hold while I stress at a long To Do List? Not that bad.

So on Super Tuesday, I elected to vote against anger and fear, and helped myself to a serving of gratitude and serenity after nearly going through a car window. Enjoyed time with friends, determined to take my own advice not to be in such a g’dang hurry all the time, and am happy to be blogging about it today. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have hold music to listen to. And that’s just fine.

My Day In Court, Practicing Nonviolence

Too many names, outside the Alameda County Courthouse

“Appear in court on December 26,” they said. So I cut my family’s Christmas short to be back in Oakland, security-screened by 9:00 this morning. I try not to predict the future, but I was eager to hear the consequence of my peaceful protest. Dismissed? Fined? Charged?

The grumpus behind the glass pushed the words through her frown: “We haven’t received your paperwork yet. Go to the DA’s office to be rescheduled.” No resolution. My three guesses were all wrong. Instead, I have to call in every week for a year, to find out if they’ve charged me. I told the clerk I was going to be out of the country for the next couple weeks. “If we charge you and you do not appear, a warrant may be issued for your arrest,” and she went back to her desk.

Not an ideal arrangement for a traveler, especially one who plans to work abroad for weeks at a time. But also, I find myself reluctant to participate in any more demonstrations. They are pushing me away from the exercise of my Constitutional rights, and into...let’s call it trepidation. My government is engaging in Trepidationism against me.

Trepidationism for me, but make no mistake, the system engages in Terrorism against black people. Or perhaps people of color. Or perhaps the not-rich. When the police, George Zimmerman, and who knows who else, are allowed to kill black people with impunity? It’s time travel.

Because this is what Martin Luther King achieved. He took away the terror of being black in America, in a time when they could be charged with assault just for looking “recklessly” at a white person, or not taking off their hat. (Read this.) I’m reluctant to cite MLK, since I have lived with white privilege my whole life, and despite my best attempts at empathy, have never felt for myself the terror of living in a society that oppresses you this way, but when I see our country sinking backwards into a time of systemic terrorism, I am willing to reach for any heroes I can find.

The list of heroes includes all the civil rights leaders, from Dorothy Height to Claudette Colvin. Does it include Malcolm X? The man whose legacy is clear in our civil religion, the violent alternative to King’s nonviolence? Absolutely.

Some say King’s message only got as far as it did because the establishment looked at Malcolm X and saw the very real possibility of rage released in violence, so took the offered path of peace. I don’t know if that’s true (and though it’s inherently flawed to compare wildly different circumstances, I can’t help but notice that Gandhi had no violent counterpart...or did he? And Mandela?), but either way, the frustration and anger of those who have been too-long abused by this system are very real, and very strong. Undeniable.

The danger is that this possibility of violence, for all its rational origins, ends up being another face of the Terrorism that I denounce. When the system, through police or vigilantes, threatens violence, it’s Terrorism. But when they force those opposed to present the same threat..? That feels like a loss, understandable as it may be.

And then there’s the bloodsoaked example of the French Revolution punching us in the face. Violence to end oppression, that betrayed itself, consumed itself, and only led to another form of oppression.

So, I’ll spend the next year in trepidation, with the looming threat of a misdemeanor (oh my!) and people of color will live under the constant menace of assault, humiliation, exploitation, and outright murder. I don’t need any help with my vague discomfort, but the racial Terrorism in our system has to change. We just have to figure out how.

Oakland Protest, Night Four: What now?

I had my perception of the Oakland protests.

Night One: people upset over the state of race relations in our country, and police impunity in reflecting it, demonstrated in the streets with signs, chants, compassion and anger. It was the purest form of democracy left in our plutocracy.

By the end of the night, things got out of hand, understandable with that much emotion and the way crowds work. The police showed admirable restraint at first, and I thanked them for it. People were wrong to throw bottles, and the police didn’t need to respond with tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades against a civilian demonstration. I was disappointed to see the night end that way.

Night Two: perhaps a result of the prior mayhem, the crowd was smaller, and more militant, the message diluted in petty vandalism and burning garbage, faces hidden behind masks to enable counterproductive hooliganism. I’d seen enough, left the contested street and was waiting until I could reach my bike when one cop, maybe looking to make an example, maybe filling a quota, or scariest of all: having lost control and lashing out, had me arrested. I spent the next few hours with my hands zip-tied behind my back, seeing a side of the law that I thought was reserved for those who deserved it.

Night Three? I stayed home, angry at those I felt were damaging our desire for change. I felt I had my understanding.

But last Thursday the rhythms of a protest drifted in my window. I’ll go look, real quick, real careful, to see how things are going. I found a march, resolute and disciplined in the statement of their message, no mayhem, no excuse for police action, demonstrators I’m proud to have as countrymen. It felt good to see.

Then I looked left to a line of face-shielded police blocking a street, ready to arrest us...if we blocked a street? A cold feeling took root in my core, with cracks of anger and flecks of fear. Instead of cops doing their best, they seemed like ominous soldiers of suppression.

And every nauseous cell of my skin felt my white privilege. I had been inconvenienced for a few hours, my shoulders stiff and achy from being pinned behind me, and have to show up in court, once, for what I feel are unjust reasons. So many deal with so much worse, yet there I was, disturbed by the sight of the police.

What is it like for those who live under constant threat of police abuse? How the hell do we expect people to remain calm who have watched their brothers beaten, their fathers humiliated, their whole demographic thrown in prison (while the real criminals go marching on)?

A friend told me of his police ride-alongs where procedure is to stop (black) men on the sidewalk, handcuff them and sit them on the curb, THEN start to talk to them, ask what’s going on today. That has never happened to me, not in my white skin, in my relatively affluent neighborhood, where, despite being racially mixed, every driver I’ve seen pulled over since moving here was black or latino. Every single one. A few hours being treated like a dangerous criminal when I hadn’t done anything wrong and I was sickened; what’s it like when that’s your everyday reality?

So what do we do about it? Politicians are clearly not going to lead, and the police aren’t going to break the cycle of aggression by themselves. And the courts? In 2010, out of 162,000 grand juries, 11 did not result in indictments. 11 out of 162,000. Yet now we have two out of two deciding there’s no need to even have a trial. I see that as the courts declaring that it is not a crime for a cop to kill a black man. This cannot go on.

So again, what do we do about it? Smash Starbucks? Shake our heads and go back to watching Jersey Shore? Or maybe we, those of us with hearts and souls and self control, should spend some time in the street. Do you think it’s a crime to kill a black person? Do you want some punk smashing a window to speak for you?

So how do we affect change? Protest responsibly? Burn shit? Run for office? Do nothing? Vote on the vagabondurges.com version, here.

My San Francisco Giants

I couldn’t remember the last time I went to a Giants game, but we definitely had a different president. That ain’t good, for a kid raised on Will Clark, Robbie Thompson, and (my personal favorite, the player whose cards I collected as a grubby-fingered youngling) Brett Butler.

So, back in the Bay Area after a few years among the baseball-deprived, the footie-fanatics, the soccer-seeking-savages, who think ERA is a brand name and OBP a medical disorder, going to a game was on deck. When I heard two of my dearest San Franciscans were going to marry each other, I looked at that beautiful union and thought “There’s an excuse to go to a Giants game.”

The park of my childhood was Candlestick, dug into the edge of San Francisco’s worst neighborhood, a fortress of cement so ominous it looked more like a Soviet mining camp than a stadium. We always peered down at the field from the nosebleed seats, even before I quite understood what that joke meant, but nachos never tasted as good as they did with those fog-chilled fingertips, and a paper cup of sickly sweet hot chocolate was too good for the gods.

Now we sat in a much nicer ballpark, where the fries come soaked in garlic, and beer has moved from an odor to a flavor. So close to the action, I could see the extent of the season’s beards, as well as the ubiquitous advertising, and paused a nostalgic moment to remember the days before branding conquered professional sports, and when prices were less punitive. Then the national anthem finished and my San Francisco Giants took the field.

The uniforms and the energy were the same, and musical queues still provoked their clap-response without my conscious action. The four note “up-down-up-down/Let’s Go Giants” plays and my hands smack out clap, clap, clapclapclap of their own volition. Pavlov’s palms.

A baseball game is the perfect place to hang out. It’s dull enough to allow time and space to sit back and focus on the company of friends, but irascible enough that at any moment you might have to jump up and scream yourself hoarse as that long fly ball decides whether or not to stay fair, or your leadoff hitter digs for two.

And in a world that seems increasingly contrived, political campaigns and international debacles seemingly orchestrated months in advance, baseball remains reliably unpredictable, where the worst team sweeps the best and the rookie strikes out the All Star. And in this Twitter-headed age that requires constant tension, you never know if you’re going to sit through a 0-1 sleeper, or a 9-10 festival of offense. The drama is so much more poignant when it’s real, unpredictable, out of anyone’s control. And this year’s last couple weeks to play have drama to spare, as both my Bay Area teams juggle the Wild Card.

Our game was...beautiful. The first third was a pitching battle, with moments of teasing promise, then clenching danger, and sighs of release when both came to naught. Bottom of the fourth and good solid baseball put the Giants up by 1. High fives until your hands tingle, and the throat needs a drink to cool it down again.

But top of the fifth, they tied it up with a solo shot to right; at least they earned it. More tension, pitches slapping into the catcher’s glove and cracks of the bat that open the eyes, but the side is retired. The seventh inning stretch must have relaxed the dugout too, because the bottom of the inning put us on top by one, again… But top of the ninth, they tied it up.

So. Here we were, in the sort of scenario imagined on playgrounds and vacant lots throughout the ages. Bottom of the ninth. Tie game. Two outs, one on, our star kid (I’m old now, I can call a 27-year old a ‘kid’, especially when he’s as fresh-faced as Buster Posey) walks up to the plate. He settles in. The sold out crowd stands. Fouls and balls, close calls and tricky takes, and it’s a full count. One more strike and we go to extra innings…

But instead it’s a high fly ball, going, going...veering towards the line...hard to tell from where we are...is it going to stay fair? The noise is already crashing when it lands in the seats, and the wave breaks. Beer is undoubtedly flying, somewhere, and no one cares. He rounds the bases while the bass vibrates our seats, and 41,503 people have both arms in the air, and a city is shouting.

We file out in the jubilant crowd, and I walk to the BART station in a steady flow of Giants jerseys, drifts of pot smoke, and the glitter and dance of the Bay Bridge’s nightly light show. Friends, my hometown, and a win for my team: it’s a mighty fine summer night in San Francisco.

"The Bay Lights" nightly show

Get out of my (maybe) house!

No pics of my own, these are from today's craigslist ads.
You get a lot of this around here

Everybody was there. A cluster of hyper-parents, their children brandished like banners before them, was extolling and declaiming the house’s suitability for the wet-chinned children hanging off their chests in imported Scandinavian harnesses.

A trio of uber-butch lesbians stomped from room to room in combat boots, glowering at my patriarchal heteronormative...face.

A pair of hipsters went to check the bathroom again, and paused for something longer than a glance in the mirror to monitor their ironic facial hair, their skinny jeans silent on the stairs. Experts in passive aggression, they effectively boxed everyone else out of the room while visualizing where to place their hat boxes and antique shaving kits.

A typically informative photo

Their cousins, the Silicon Valley tech upstarts, walked around with an Iphone3000 held up like a crucifix, giving a video tour to a member of their thinktank who couldn't attend. The building’s solar potential was a topic of hot debate, “Did I mention that's our field? A solar Start-Up in The City?” Yes, you mentioned that.

And Manny and me. He's a great roommate and I'm madly in love with his dogs, so we sought two bedrooms, preferably no carpets (dogs!), and secretly/blatantly hoped to find space for his muay thai kickboxing equipment.

We’d just looked at a cupboard-sized two bedroom for $2500 (because rent in the Bay Area is between preposterous and tragicomic), but then this place showed up. Four bedrooms, giant kitchen, living room, dining room, large yard, towering ceilings, all brand new, and a little garage in the back where one could punch, kick, and elbow without dripping sweat in the house. All for $2600.

Sure, it was in The Hood a bit, freeway overpasses above run-down houses with Escalades, and a mural around the corner of local kids who have been shot, but not that bad (and better than the place with the torn ziploc of mostly-used heroin on the porch).

Ooh! Getting artsy with it!

We could move in, have our gym, and find two more roommates to split the cost. But we weren’t the only ones who had ideas. It was Saturday, aka: Open House Day, and the crowds and claws were out.

The first time the techie swept his i-tour past me, he’d said “Yeah, it’s an open house, so there’s tons of people here.” I politely refrained from correcting his grammar. Now we coincided in the backyard, where he griped “The back yard’s not very big, yard sized.” As the phone swept past me I waved. He tossed his head in a silent scoff.

Behind him Manny looked at the garden shed. “Detached shed, that’ll be good for the sex dungeon.”

“I was just thinking that. We can add some insulation so the neighbors won’t hear the screams.” Our humor was lost on the other cadres. The techie tour moved back inside.

I considered asking the leasing agent if there was an additional fee to enter the gladiatorial combat phase of the selection process, but decided we’d already made enough friends. We filled out our applications, paid our fee, and went home.

Is this a selling point?

It was bizarre, wandering through other people’s visions of the future, impolite interlopers in their soon-to-be-home, trampling on each other’s dreams. If my days at my current place weren’t ticking down so quickly, maybe I could have just enjoyed the peculiar insanity of it all. But instead, we’ll wait to hear if we are the lucky ones, moving into our new palace of muay thai doggishness.

Visions for the future are a dime a dozen, but apartments? Those cost a bit more.