Homeless

It's really hard to feel too sorry for yourself in this city. For one thing, it's just a fun place to be and I feel lucky to be here (crappy bookstore job aside). For another, there is always someone worse off than you trundling up the street with a supermarket trolley full of plastic bags, thrift store clothes and glass bottles. Homelessness is a terrible, scandalous problem. Desperate people beg at intersections, holding weathered cardboard signs explaining that they are wounded veterans, or AIDS patients, or simply hungry. They congregate in the Tenderloin (the city's worst neighborhood, the place where the cheapest prostitutes do their business) and near City Hall, and along Market St and down by Fishermans Wharf.
My drive to work takes me under a freeway overpass where there is a homeless community (carboard boxes, dumpsters, blankets rolled up and waiting for occupants), a heaving mass of suffering, but the person who breaks my heart is a thin woman who appears to be in her 50s and shakes constantly. She has a pair of sunglasses which she wears whatever the weather and she doesn't approach cars like the other folk. She just stands on the median strip and quivers from the cold, or DTs, or Parkinsons, and holds onto her dignity as best she can.
It's not just the "bad" neighborhoods that attract the homeless. We live in a very affluent area, home of yoga mommies and Bentley daddies and some of the most beautiful, manicured homes I've ever seen. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lives here. The Korean embassy is here. And there are homeless people here. I often see a woman with a cart (I think those are the lucky ones; they can amass belongings) when I am walking to the gym or the video store. She wears so many clothes and hats you can't actually see her face. There is a mute man who sits outside the boutique-style grocery store down the road with a clean cup outstretched. I always give him a dollar and am rewarded with a smile, a wave, and what seems like an attempt to make a sound. He is very sweet and I worry about where he goes at night.
We have taken to carrying dollar bills everywhere we go because it is too horrible to be caught short. I don't even really care if they are collecting the money to buy crack or beer. Who am I to decide where they seek comfort? It is awful enough seeing stray dogs wandering the streets, but humans who live out there -- some in wheel chairs, with crutches, one amputee who rolls through the traffic in his chair like someone who just doesn't care anymore -- it is not acceptable in a wealthy, First World city.

The secret of my ennui

Gosh that Sylvia Plath is a downer. The Bell Jar is fantastic -- wish I'd read it years ago -- but I'm afraid I identify with the main character a bit much. I really like her, I'm sure we could be friends, and now the poor chook is being sent for electroshock treatment.
I was feeling a bit Plath-like last night as I drove across the Bay Bridge towards the bookstore. Esther (the electroshock girl) has got to the point where she can't be bothered changing her clothes or washing because she knows she'll just have to do it again. And again. And again, until lights out. On a lesser level, I have got to the point where I just wear the same thing to work over and over again because there is absolutely no point in dressing well when you are going to be squatting at the base of bookshelves, dusting, lugging huge carts this way and that, and dealing with sticky children. I do wash my clothes, however.
I continue to be amazed at the success of The Secret, the book that purports to condense centuries of wisdom into one teeny little book that will change your life. It is flying out the door. They literally can't keep it on the shelves. Oprah plugged it on her show and the whole country has gone bonkers for it. It feels like a very American phenomenon to me. As far as I can tell, the secret is that you draw to yourself whatever it is you are sending out into the universe. So if you are sending out vibes of satisfaction and success, that is what you will reap. Clearly I am sending out great waves of mediocrity and ennui. And yet I can't seem to stop. What is a girl to do?

Chunky toilet hair

Because we are yet to land “proper” jobs that will net us enough money to live comfortably in San Fran, we are on a tight budget. This has been interesting, in an academic sort of way, because neither of us have had to worry too much about budgeting for the past four or five years and we are starting to realize just how incredibly lucky we’ve been. On a practical level, it’s a pain in the ass because every time we want to go to the movies, or buy takeaways for dinner, we have to think about it. That dash of spontaneity enjoyed by professional childless couples is not something we experience too often. Still, there are plenty of free/cheap things to do in the city, so it’s not like we’re bored, and we’re eating well, we’ve managed to furnish the apartment, and I have discovered several fab consignment stores, so really we’re fine. But my hair is a disaster.
Last week, despairing at my scraggly, multicolored mop – untouched by a professional’s hands for nine months and dry as kindling after three at-home dye jobs – I decided to bite the bullet. I handed over $15 to a nice woman with not a lot of English in a clean, comfortable salon in Fillmore Street, home of West Coast jazz. It’s a groovy little neighborhood; we do our laundry there. I throw a couple loads in the machines, sink my quarters into the slots, and bounce out onto the street to window shop.
My favorite consignment store is in Fillmore St. Treasure to date: two pairs of fancypants jeans, a pistachio colored merino sweater, a groovy little fox necklace, and a pair of gorgeous Donna Karan heels topped with feathers and diamantes. (I needed some dressy shoes for a Waitangi Day party at the Golden Gate Yacht Club.) So Fillmore St is a happy place for me.
Anyhoo, about 25 minutes after I walked into the salon with my scraggly nonsense of a hairstyle I walked out with a poorly layered bob – still multicolored cos they don’t do permanent dye jobs at this salon, for some reason that is not clear to me because of the language barrier. I like the length but the layers are so thick they hang together like worms and stick out at eccentric angles. There is no subtlety to the cut. When I pull my hair into a ponytail it looks like a toilet brush. And when I blow dry it and use my velcro rollers, to give it some volume and disguise the layers, it looks like one of those flouncy crocheted toilet roll covers beloved by old ladies and people from the South. I have toilet hair.

What, what, what have I done to deserve this?

Yesterday the Green Day bass player was in the bookstore. He bought a book from my counter, but I wasn’t there. I was in the kids department, shelving books and sneezing from the dust. It’s worth noting that earlier I had to lead storytime, a job reviled by other booksellers. I read two torturously lengthy stories to a brooding 10-year-old (who clearly was killing time until he could go to the gaming store next door) and two toddlers who could not have cared less about Officer Buckle and his police dog Gloria, or the duck who became President. They didn’t even want the cookies I had been instructed to hand out, just stared at me as if I were one of those embarrassing performance artists who hang out at Fishermans Wharf.

Don't throw your shoe at me

Imelda Marcos visited the bookstore last night. She came marching up to my counter and demanded to know why a cookbook she’d bought the day before had since been marked down by 40 per cent and she had been “tricked” into paying full price. Was furious and told me how the auction house Sotheby’s did exactly the same thing when she was buying “jewels” from them… Okay, so it wasn’t Imelda but looked just like her and had the attitude to match, and she really did make the remark about her jewels. We haven’t had any real celebs at the store since we’ve been there, except David Lynch, who was hawking his new book, a self-help transcendental meditation thing that talks about his admiration for rotting flesh, among other inspirational tidbits. I missed his book signing but apparently he was very charming and had a fantastical quiff hairstyle.

Slice of Lime

I have been trying to upload a photo of Lime, Vodka and other San Francisco icons to the site but I’m a techno-moron. Lime appreciates the emails re. his wellbeing and all around fabulousness. He has recovered from the latest round of fisticuffs with Vodka and is just now napping in his sand bowl. He is supposed to rub the sand through his hair to control his fur oils but he mostly uses it as a loo.

Just heard...

Bono was in the Bay Area today -- in Oakland. We work in West Oakland. In the past seven or eight weeks we have barely missed appearances by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Al Gore. Crapit.