Cole Valley
Saturday morning
***
There’s something about this place….something about how little cable cars climb big hills…something about how every house is it’s own piece of art…and something about how escaping to the parks or the other side of a hill puts you in a wonderland far from the city you have come to know.
I leave town every week and come back just for this place and the people it holds. I’m fortunate enough to meet new people on their way to visit the city, or on their way home from a weekend trip. Some of the ones who stand out are…
The couple who had never left Texas …when they boarded the plane, they had their rental car picked out and all the places in fisherman’s wharf to visit. When we landed, they had cocktail napkins full of my writing, listing places to see in Pac Heights, Haight Ashbury, the Presidio, and the Sunset…and promised me they would cancel their rental car.
Another woman, from Toronto, started crying in-front of me on her way home when she realized something was calling her back. She planned to go home, pack her bags, and head west. Though it was her first trip, she felt a calling to come back.
Like me and many of my friends, we don’t know what finally pushes us to move here, all we know is that once we got a taste of the city, our minds remained 100% preoccupied with being here. It’s a city that requires a leap a faith, detachment from high heels, scarves in the summer, and an open mind. But once you arrive, you won’t go back.
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5 comments:
beautiful thoughts
Her smile IS pure sunshine. Love that confluence.
I did it again...I forgot to look at the photos before I submitted the comment. Oh well, now there's even more comments...who cares if they're all mine? j/k
I. LOVE. LAUNDROMAT. PICTURES.
Don't know why. It's utterly illogical. I don't even GO to a laundromat. I have a poem I carry around that I love but I have no idea who wrote it. I will share. It seems it may actually be from SF.
YESTERDAY
a long laundromat our, an old fade,
a familiar slide of time;
soap in boxes, machines of it;
a sign begs, "keep this place clean."
outside, the bars are so wetly lit in their
silent huddled storefronts;
electric buses pass by in the rain
with their peculiar leviathan sound
noising the night.
electricity hums along wires
strung above the street, fine web of wire.
i wait to be inhabited. smoothing laundry,
feeding the tumbling with coins, buses swim
along the street, sighing those metal sighs.
there isn't a thing i do today
that does not have your name written, sounded into it;
sounds like something maybe looking for air,
breaching above the wetness,
maybe calling a name
out into that dark, folding sky.
She makes me more excited to board the plane tomorrow for my first trip to California ever and so glad I picked San Francisco to visit. She also fills me with fear that I will arrive and never want to go home.
Oh, and her smile...infectious.
Wow CB, so much fun you are and what a photo shoot. Love it! I don't know how anyone CAN'T smile from your chosen pic. Nice write-up too... unique perspective!
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