Careening into Gay Midlife by James Daniel

Author:James Daniel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-01T14:43:13+00:00

CHAPTER 24 -

Frisco Revisited

The first empty box I wanted to check off after setting foot in San Francisco again was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge. After my tiring drive up the coast of California via Highway 101, I checked into a cheap no-name motel on Van Ness Avenue. I was still flying high on a fistful of No-Doz, so after throwing my bags on the bed of my motel room, I got back into my car. I popped my cassette of George Strait’s Oceanfront Property into the tape console and continued along 101 until I was over the bridge and in Marin County. The Golden Gate Bridge was far from golden. I would say it looked orange--burnt orange at best. I questioned myself, “Why didn’t I ever bother driving over the bridge when I was living here in 1978?” Perhaps I never did because there was nothing in Marin County I had wanted to see.

In 1987, there was still nothing I wanted to see in Marin, so I turned the car around and went back to my motel room as George sang, “I’ve got some oceanfront property in Arizona. From my front porch you can see the sea.” I loved the tongue-in-cheek cleverness of lyrics that was at the forefront of country music’s New Tradition.

So many stones had been left unturned when I had left San Francisco in May of ‘78. I had been in too much of a rush to get back to the East Coast before the beginning of the summer season. The trouble was that now in May of ‘87, I couldn’t find some of the stones from the decade that had been. The clones that lined Castro Street were gone. The bars Alfie’s and the Balcony on Market Street no longer existed. My saddest discovery was the absence of the Black and Blue bar in the South of Market part of town. The most vivid memory I had taken with me when I had left in ‘78 was the outside of Black and Blue, with the bar’s blue lights shining on the black-and-chrome motorcycles parked out front. Driving by the bar in the wee hours of the morning, on my way back from my waiter job in San Bruno, I had ached to enter, but I was under the drinking age of twenty-one, and my fear of being carded prevented me from even making an attempt.

However, some stones were still in the exact same place I had left them. I was so glad the Strand Theater was still open. South of Market’s Eagle bar, though not as impressive as Black and Blue, was still open. And the apartment building where I had lived was still standing.

Many “For Rent” signs could be seen in apartment building windows when I returned in ‘87, making unnecessary the need for me look at newspaper listings of rental ads. A building on Valencia Street, with a candle shop at street level, caught my eye. I rang the buzzer to the manager’s apartment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.