An adventure on a foggy summer Saturday morning, a culinary sort of ramble about in the city, found me walking rather hurriedly down a south of market alley. The alley was a surviving textured surprise not expected to be in the mix of soulless neo-mid-century buildings, the sort that can be anywhere in the urban world, boring office-condo-retail-garage things, squat whole city block buildings, a study of uniform awfulness and arrogant purpose. That purpose chiefly being quick profit over architecture that celebrates the human condition and singleness of place, light and air. The glass and steel dreck gave way via a quick turn to a half block of surviving brick buildings of an earlier century. All left with exterior marks of previous use and age. Loading docks, metal door joints rusted, rolling doors sodered shut. The intent of mixing old with the new failed dismally in providing relief to the yawning nothingness resultant when everything within two miles is b built within three years time. The tastes of planning commissions with mandates to impose style-less non-choice fails to achieve much more than preservation of some of the skyline and light. The boom of the turn of the century, long gone, another boom come and bust and still a third whispered about where those trading in office space gather, "the next tech boom as big as '98" ,- reminds me of the NEP men in Rand's Russian works, trading brick a brac and worthless shares in a speculative frenzy amongst the tsarist ruins of pre-Stalin Soviet Moscow. Get it while you can bub there will be a shortage soon. The shortage is mostly in urbane taste. The destruction of the patina of the city is criminally evident in redevelopment projects such as these. How Chinatown has escaped is more an exercise in racist neglect than oversight but there around the edges the undertow of redevelopment pulls at the fabric of the city's culture.
Mid- alley I came upon three very fit young white men, milling about, just across from them a half dozen very obese, very made-up young women lounged about the dirty loading ramp of a former warehouse. Briefly it seemed like the South of Market of my 20's- 40's, handsome young people kicking back, still tripping from the nights alcohol and drugs consumption, sobering up outside a massive club in an old warehouse. The lack of both seedy sexuality and decadence caused by an assembly of spent handsome men wearing completely destroyed couture clothes, prevented the scene from being a reduex of 90's SOMA clubland. So too the absence of coupled off shirtless bi muscle men.
I waited for the most sublimely handsome of young men, the sort that holds their very masculine sexuality a little too close for too long, to step aside before peering into what was the cause of the alley way crowd. EUREKA! This was no sex club or illegal after hours spot but a breakfast takeaway stand carved out of warehouse's brick wall. Those overly made up obese women ween't dealing drugs they were eating grits! I got some game, much as I would have a dozen years past at a club s admission rope and stepped up to the butch girl employee. Maintaining my "been hipper longer than you have been alive" old guy stance, I asked for a moment, than with all the bravado I used to have ordering a Tank and Tonic down the block at a long demolished disco, I ordered the deep fried chicken breast and waffle. I'd gone southern.
Amongst the newly homogenized nothingness of destroyed former clubland and industrial San Francisco, now overflowing with utterly uninteresting 20 -30 somethings, mostly transplanted from elsewhere USA, working at the wrong other end of the train line that services Silicon Valley, all studies dressed in anti-fashion fashion merchandised by smarter merchants, was an honest soul food take away stand. There it was the there that Stein found lacking in her hometown across the bay. A place to celebrate. In quick time I was handed Sherman's booty, a choice southern meal. The portion sizes were frankly daunting. I walked away with a takeaway box containing enough calories and carbs for two meals. The waffle was a revelation of what a waffle should be and was before moms began passing toaster waffles off as a hot breakfast. The deep fried chicken breast was fresh, tender, moist, hot perfection.
The alley, the handsome men, the game on kid overly made up simply huge young women, gave the whole experience a feeling more like the end of the first date I had with a U.S.N Sailor in dress whites, you knew your mom might not approve but was it too much fun not to take a bite. Like that first date that one bite led to an experience that was a wholly satisfying one. I felt a little naughty too but my goodness what could be more wholesome than a date with an American sailor in dress whites? Only a hearty breakfast of southern breakfast staples consumed leaning against a brick warehouse wall in an alley on a foggy San Francisco morning that's what! Come to think of it where was that first date with Chief Stern?. I decided to be naughtier and double up on the sweet ice tea and syrup. Until fleet week returns this is the only reason to be in an alley.... alone.
