Last weekend, while rummaging through some videos in my gf's garage, I came across the Showtime miniseries based on Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. I remember watching the original episode on PBS about 10 years ago, but I never got to see the ones after that. At least until now. I remember first moving to the Bay Area in July, 1981after my career as a DJ in Oregon went up in flames. I'd also remember seeing Maupin's Tales of the City column in the SF Chron back then on occasion, reading it and getting a big kick out of it. Since then, I've read pretty much all of it. Watching the Showtime miniseries made it more clear to me that San Francisco musta been an interesting place during the 70s. I could only observe it from 500 or so miles south in San Diego and wish I was there. And while I do treasure the time I spent in college at San Diego State, occasionally I still wish I coulda been in SF back then.

At least though I am here now and have been for most of my adult life. For that I am quite grateful. I'm grateful too that I got the chance to move out of the wasteland called southern California when I was in college. From the time I was in high school, I knew I didn't belong there. I knew somehow there was life beyond the L.A. county line and I needed to explore it. And now that I live up here, I'm involved in 2 or 3 different "alternative" communities. I have a partner who is also involved in those same communities and is one of the most nonjudgmental and loving people I've ever known. I think if someone had told me 20 yrs ago what I'd be doing now, I would have told them they were crazy. So yeah in quite a few ways, I'm pretty damn lucky.

And yet I still get yearnings for my old home town. Whoever said you can never truly go home again was right on the money. You can't. The two or three times I've visited my old neighborhood were sad. Most of everything I remembered was long gone. It was like visiting an alien world. The friends I had back then are long gone too, either I've lost touch with them or they decided they no longer wanted to be friends. I do have new friends now and I guess that's what life is about, changing and growing. You change and grow or you die. I wonder if that's what happened to the folk I knew so long ago and what I would say to all of them if I did see them again. Would I be able to say to them that I'd found joy and excitement in the city by the Bay doing some cool alternative things? Would I smile and nod my head while they told me of their accomplishments? Or could I just smugly smile and realize that I'd gotten away while I had the chance and they stayed stuck in what they thought were their own lives. I guess I'll never really know. But I can take comfort in knowing the Golden Gate Bridge is just a drive away. Or that I can hop on a BART train and see the fog rolling into San Francisco an hour later. Or during the spring and summer months, I can watch baseball in one of the (if not THE) most beautiful ballparks in the country.

Pretty damn cool I think.