Gleaming hogs, chopped Harleys all, were parked in a precise row, south of the Cliff House. Sonny Barger, still Head Guy of the Hell’s Angels despite a stretch in the joint and his near inability to even breathe anymore, had made it down to the damper, firmer sand of Ocean Beach. At the waterline, he was conferring with the only English-speaking octopus that would still have anything to do with him.
So they tell me.
I was four and a half miles inland from the Pacific at the time, lightly engaged with other matters, like walking to the grocery store. It had been more than 15 years since I’d owned a motorcycle (first a 250 Suzuki dirt/street, later a too-fast Kawasaki 900, which skidded and dropped for the last time on a patch of oily Rhode Island dust). But I remained convinced, somehow, that I could still ride one, if necessary. First gear is down, that’s the main thing.
When making tracks by train through unfamiliar territory, for instance, I’d always looked for ways to manage the landscape that undulated past streaked windows, matching it with the jagged lines and lurid colors from the route map.
You can go deep into those solitary-journey pastimes: a secret agent with amnesia, maybe, nemeses in pursuit, confident he could identify the next town based on clues unveiled by its street signs, skyline, billboards, water towers, factory smokestacks, bricks, or soot.
Back home, at mid-day, January One, taking in air almost as laboriously as Sonny, there was no question this was San Francisco. But even as a stranger I’d have aced that traveler’s game, especially if we were playing the version where Time wins instead of Space.
As I shambled through the driving rain — warm driving rain, at least, powered by a tropical front — I spotted fat-bottomed blown-out champagne corks in the gutters. Obsolete evicted Christmas trees lay in state on every corner, denuded, deneedled, sagging and sad, a primitive crucifixion image at each base. Sap oozed where amputated trunks were nailed to crossed strips of plywood or one-by-fours.
The city gave off certain vague, post-neutron-bomb atmospherics, as if the populace was hiding, laying low, ashamed — which many, come to think of it, doubtlessly were. New Year’s Day, all right.
A hippie bus was parked on Gough Street. Classic VW van, painted inexpertly but exuberantly in folk-art acrylics, sporting all requisite regalia and runes — frolicsome bottle-nosed dolphins, daisies around the headlamps, ankhs and yin-yangs, peace symbols and smirking suns. Passing it, I saw there was a pink poodle piñata sitting in the driver’s seat (mounting the steering wheel, actually).
“Yeah, good luck, buddy,” I thought. “Party favor guard dogs won't keep them from stealing your stereo in this neighborhood,”
The supermarket linoleum had been transformed into a slalom course, boundaries delineated by pyramidic yellow cones. “PISO MOJADO” printed on one side, the cones bore graphic images of a wildly tumbling, handless, footless human. Were they more than a warning that the floor was wet? Patrons were navigating cautiously, it seemed, but that may not have been in deference to the cones.
At the checkout counter, I asked the weary clerk if this day seemed any odder than the others.
“About what you’d expect,” he replied, dragging my goods across the laser scanner. “We had an incident or two. Around noon, a customer decided it was time to party, end of Aisle Six next to the beer coolers. So he lit a cigarette, popped the tops on a couple cold ones. He seemed pretty relaxed back there when the security guard went to visit with him.”
“Guess he figured he’d go to the source.”
“Probably so. Paper or plastic?”
At that very moment, the third incident got underway at an adjacent lane. A ragged, leather-skinned woman with Ben Franklin spectacles and a pewter-tinted Sid Vicious buzzcut, had evidently wheeled her own shopping cart into the market, although it already overflowed with personal effects. Her prospective purchase was four squares of individually cellophane-wrapped caramel, which is offered in bulk and weighed at register by the cashier,
“That'll be 20¢,” announced the checker, The four tan candy cubes sat forlornly on the scale.
“That's the wrong answer,” said Franklin Vicious, in the clipped intense sort of delivery that immediately sends up a brainpan red-flag, “I’m not sure just how much you know, but I am convinced you know why that is not the right answer,” she warned.
The checker was a serene-demeanored middle-aged black woman, who wore an elaborate vinyl and polyurethane brace on her favored forearm, like an archer or pro bowler. That had to be to guard the wrist and elbow against repetitive motion stress injuries. She had a more acute occupational hazard to deal with now.
“Ma’am, that’s what the scale says. If you want to buy these candies, they are going to cost you 20¢.”
“Candy is not the issue,” barked Franklin Vicious. “The issue is one of trust. Which is why you are going to reweigh those.”
“Ma’am, if you feel that you can’t trust me, I would recommend you choose another checker.” The other checkers, watching this drama unfold, shook their heads wildly, waved their palms before their chests, or drew their fingers histrionically across their throats.
“Not the answer. Not the solution. Because it’s you that I can’t trust, Marble.”
“What’s that you’re calling me?”
“Calling you your name. ‘Marble.’ Probably the code identity they issued you at US Customs, or the World Bank.”
“My name is Mabel, ma’am. M-A-B-E-L. Like it says right here on my ID badge. Now, this position is closed.”
Mabel slapped a grimy plastic “Next Register Please” barrier onto the gray rubber treadmill, stepping back from Franklin Vicious and away from her quartet of controversial caramels.
“Apprehend her!” shrieked the woman with the pewter spike-job and the pre-filled cart. “Departure without prior authorization! Failure to reweigh!”
I displayed a discreet Boy Scout salute to my own checker, indicating “New Year’s Incident Number Three.” He raised a brow and nodded in resigned acknowledgment.
Rain had been falling, at various intensities, consistently throughout the final months of the year. This version was so steeply angled it was almost parallel to the pavement, slashing in hot and heavy from the Southwest. My umbrella was extended like a lance, en garde as a fencing foil. The hippie bus and its pink poodle were unmolested. No one had busted any windows or pinatas. Yet.
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