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STAGGERING_SAN_FRANCISCO

                                        April 29, 2007

     "There is no sense to the Presidio, its area of raw
     forest, unkempt baseball diamonds near
     million-dollar homes, but of course there is no
     logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with
     putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored
     construction paper.  It's the work of fairies,
     elves, happy children with new crayons.  Why not
     pink, purple, rainbow, gold?  What color for a biker
     bar on 16th, near the highway?  Plum.  Plum.  The
     light that is so strong and right that corners are
     clear, crisp, all glass is blinding -- stilts and
     buttresses and turrets -- the remains of various
     highways -- rainbow windsocks -- a sexual sort of
     lushness to the foliage.  Only intermittently does
     it seem like an actual place of residence and
     commerce, with functional roads and sensible
     buildings.  All other times it's just whimsy and
     faith.  Just driving to and from Marny's, in the
     Castro, is epic, this hill and that hill -- oh, the
     sorrow of flat, straight Illinois! -- this vista and
     that, always the hills, the curves, the maybe our
     brakes will fail, the maybe someone else's brakes
     will fail -- it's always a kind of adventure in
     faded Technicolor, starring a vast cast of brightly
     dressed losers.  Always there is something San
     Franciscian reinforcing all everyone has come to
     think about the city, The City, they say -- the
     homeless people wear bathing suits and do handstands
     on the sidewalk, and shamelessly defecate,
     unmolested, on busy street corners.  Activists throw
     bagels at police in riot gear, bicyclists are
     allowed to choke Market Street traffic but are
     arrested for trying to ride over the Bay Bridge.
     The first time we visit Haight Street a man staggers
     past us, bleeding profusely from the head, followed
     ten seconds later by another man, also bleeding from
     the head, yelling, apparantly at the first bleeding
     man.  He is holding a tennis racket."

             Dave Eggers,
             "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"
             p. 296

                              STAGGERING



                  jon_winston
                  on sfgate
                  May 19, 2010:

                  "I've lived here for
                  thirty years this
                  summer and I have
                  NEVER seen anyone
                  defacating on the
                  sidewalk."

                  [ref]


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