She's So Pretty (Part Two)

She's So Pretty

I am a Public Transit Enthusiast

On Saturday, I rode the 38 Geary bus line from the Financial District to Outer Richmond. The trip took longer than I anticipated (45 minutes), but it was heartening as a reminder of the diversity and sense of community that can exist in San Francisco.

In cities of high population density, public transportation is used by everybody. San Francisco and New York City come to mind. Contrast this to Los Angeles, where public transit is used pretty exclusively by people who cannot afford cars. The 38 Geary line is used by hipsters and yuppie douchebags alike, families, students, professionals, bums, the young and the elderly, locals and tourists, people of all colors and stripes. Within this panoply of difference, there is an implicit sense of community trust. If the bus has to stop longer than usual for a wheelchair-user to board, nobody bitches about the wait. When an elderly person gets on, someone sitting will almost always volunteer his or her seat. When a tourist looks lost, a local will typically offer a guiding hand. In these simple acts of decency are important lessons for us all.

Being on a bus requires patience. No amount of rage will move the bus along its route any faster. When you board a public bus, you surrender yourself to a service largely outside your control. You implicitly accept the limits of your ability to manipulate time and space. You will arrive at your destination when the bus arrives, and you have to be okay with that. A dose of such humility would do us all well.

The exposure to diversity demands courtesy. In order to ride comfortably, you will have to address others with such phrases of respect as "Excuse me, sir," and "Thank you." Pushing and prodding might get you to where you want to go, but it is very obviously not the path of least resistance. You may well have to give up your seat for someone in greater need of sitting, but when you do, you will see your act not as personal loss but as social gain. In the setting of a bus, courtesy makes eminent sense.

For me, forty-five minutes on the bus really lifted my spirits. Decency between strangers is really great to behold.

Does it come as a surprise that a public bus served quite literally as a vehicle for social change during the civil rights movement in the United States?

A Sense of Place

1) My grand-uncle was born in Dong Shih, a small farming town in the central highlands of Taiwan. He grew up speaking Hakka, the dialect of his parents, and Japanese, the language of formal schooling during Japanese occupation. My grand-uncle has lived through colonialism, World War II, forty years of martial law and an economic miracle that saw Taiwan engage the global economy at unprecedented levels. While his beginnings may have been humble and provincial, his knowledge of the world is vast and his experiences diverse. My grand-uncle forged a career as a successful businessman, but as life would have it, his wife became ill at a young age and was largely confined to the house. He refused to leave his wife's side and never once left the country even as opportunities for travel became commonplace and it became clear that my grand-aunt's health would neither worsen terribly nor substantially improve.

A couple years ago, my grand-aunt passed away. So at the age of seventy, my grand-uncle left Taiwan for the first time in his life to go to Japan. Upon his return, I was eager to hear his impressions of the wider world, what it was like for him to step off Taiwanese soil for the first time. With a proud grin, he responded to my inquiries, "Taiwan is a great place to live."

2) A couple weeks ago, I participated in a tour of the Village Bottoms district of West Oakland, which for over half a century has been the object of systematic marginalization. I moved to San Francisco about a year ago, and I must admit that I know embarrassingly little about the Bay Area and its history. Fortunately for me, the leader of the tour, Marcel Diallo, a Village Bottoms native, intimated vast and deep knowledge of the neighborhood. Every block we walked he infused with rich history. For years, he has labored to revitalize the neighborhood for which he harbors obvious love. At a venue that Marcel has toiled to designate as a cultural space, there hangs a portrait of his grandmother. On the portrait reads a quote from Marcel's grandmother: "When I sat for this portrait in 1951, West Oakland was one of the few places we as Black folks were allowed to live. Today I wouldn't leave the Bottoms if they paid me."

3) I was talking to a colleague the other day trying to figure out how she landed in San Francisco after growing up her whole life in Michigan. She told me she had been ready for something new and wanted to experience for herself all the hullaballoo about San Francisco. Three fantastic years, she tells me, she has been in San Francisco. Now she's itching to move on to something new again. "You can only do Bay to Breakers so many times. You know what I mean?"

Bay Area Culture

A couple of weekends ago, I had a college friend come visit me here in San Francisco. On one of the afternoons that he was here, we walked pretty aimlessly around the city but eventually went to hang out by City Lights Bookstore in North Beach. After perusing the eclectic titles shown in the window display, we made our way towards Vesuvio, which is famous for having been a hangout spot for a lot of the Beat writers, including Kerouac and Ginsberg. Fittingly, the alleyway that separates City Lights and Vesuvio is named Jack Kerouac Alley. Well, in Jack Kerouac Alley, there was a street performer sitting up against the wall plucking away on his guitar a Dylan song and singing plaintively. Next to him, there was a group of four to five guys and girls dancing. Bodies and limbs were being flung every which way, there was a lot of stomping and stumbling as it was obviously free-form interpretive dance. One of the dancers saw that we were admiring the whole scene and beckoned us to join. He took a couple of steps towards us, stopped a second and then said, with conspiracy in his voice, "Right here. This is the energy that created the universe." We walked into Vesuvio and nursed a couple rounds of Anchor Steam beer.

Union Square

Walking from my apartment to Union Square...

past the sound of change rattling in a paper cup.

from a distance, a street performer blows lugubrious tunes from his tuba into the night.

Macy's, Neiman Marcus, The Cheesecake Factory, Victoria's Secret, Saks Fifth Avenue.

a crowd of professional-looking people gathered at the Weinstein Gallery, sipping on Sauvignon Blanc probably.

outside a hostel, two Japanese girls meet two Spaniards and are caught off guard by the besos laid on their cheeks.