Gaspar de Portolà felt it too

San Francisco has been up to its little tricks again.

Hitchcock didn't choose this setting to unleash his little psycho-noir kingdom for nothing. Even the weather is smoke and mirrors.

I’m 12 years deep in this muck and still completely appalled with inspiration.

It’s funny how even your thoughts seem to mutate from one micro-hood to the next. It's sort of like a game of thought jenga; you start out with the most basic, most rudimentary ideas and stack your way to the shakiest ones before the whole totem comes splashing down. Thorazine and lifejackets are almost mandatory.

Maybe it’s the steep hills, the cracked pavement, and slippery street dialogue that bounces around echoing off of Muni busses until it feeds and grows into blaring sirens chasing itself around the city like schitzophrenic phantom banshees from long lost emergencies.

Culturally speaking, this place is like London after the Nazis developed those channel-hopping V2 rockets. Startling next 'it things’ declare themselves with a bombardment of new and explosive ideas, sights, sounds, and sunglasses- all of which will have immediately vaporized into charred ruins by the time you can stick your toe in.

Everybody’s cooling notions of just (what the fuck) are frequently bumbling and stumbling through booby-trapped tripwire detonations of powder-kegged wonder, shit-showering bliss, and agonizing scene disintegration.

Who can keep up with this hot mess?

And then, just when you’re about to throw in the towel, nod to the hangman, and make your final escape into religion, drugs, or suicide, the subtle magic of it all catches you completely off guard.

There you are walking past Dolores Park on a warm San Franciscan night and the arid slopes are filled with everyone watching the Wizard of Oz projected high for all to see. The whole park claps with giddy elation over the munchkin's dance and screams with terror over the wicked witch. And in one of those infectiously reflective moments, you stop and look around, take a deep breath and realize you’re just happy to be with everyone.

Just happy to be in San Francisco....

Artificial Disco Intelligence

I would like to get a few of these in a room together and study the effects they might have on each other. Isn't this how the terminators get started? Soon their intelligent beats will destroy us...

www.youtube.com/watch

Indian Love Call

www.youtube.com/watch

Much like Biz Markie’s evocative ‘Just a Friend‘, or the visceral tremors in Adam Freeland’s controversial mid-period, the haunting yodels of Slim Whitman’s ‘Indian Love Call’ also transport me back to a place I’ve long forgotten but somehow feel as though I might’ve worked there for a stint. Clerking maybe. Perhaps for a tender sweat and an honest wage I too was somehow happy within the crying glass tears of a pedal steal guitar. Somehow I too could hear that Indian love call ringing so clear.

As I sit and listen to the delicately seared passion screaming through the creases of it’s simple country-western disguise, I’m buried beneath time and echoed through eternity.

Also I’m wondering why there’s no picture of Slim to go with his bio on wikipedia. Can somebody with an account do something about that? Show some integrity people.

Post Playa Voodoo Dreams

They're kickin' in pretty good for me this year. They're usually at their most potent within the first few weeks that succeed being out there.

Last night I dreamt that there were deep, dark, cavernous caves underneath the playa built by some long vanished primordial civilization.

The entrances to them (sprinkled around the perimeter of the playa) had modern facades with painted tiling and cement steps leading down into the ground (like subway stations) but the further you descended into them the less broken bottles and grafitti you saw and they became more dark, eerie, and primitive.

Nobody really knew how far down these caves went or what might lie deep within them. Even the BORG LLC wasn't exactly sure of how to harness the strange psycho-magnetic currents that sizzled up from out of their depths.

And there were all of these archeological groups involved in a bunch of messy litigation, all vying to win bids on who got to explore, excavate, and ultimately make a lucrative museum out of the whole mystery.

Meanwhile I had a flashflight and just sort of poked around in them. I kept finding ancient artifacts of furry bmx bikes left from burns that happened centuries ago.

For Sale or Just Personal

I randomly ran into Tom Waits last weekend. I actually ran into him twice in the same day in two separate towns. What are the odds?

The first time we were both standing in an old second-hand junk store in Bodega staring into the same old display case. There were old antique ashtrays, daggers, belt buckles and such, everything reeking with that musty last-of-the-Mohicans presence. I would have never even recognized him if he hadn’t of started asking the owner a few questions about the stuff in the store.

“Are all those up there for sale or just personal?”

That haunting, gravel-blown voice stops you dead in your tracks and you feel like all of sudden the whole ragged pantheon of smoky characters from his long and twisted catalogue has just fallen out of the ceiling and are dusting themselves off all around you. Confetti from decades ago still faintly twinkling.

“Oh, they’re just personal… okay….”

I chose, wrongly perhaps, to keep my mouth shut and just move along. I typically don’t like to bother anybody. Plus what the hell are you going to say to Tom Waits? Let the man tinker. But you can imagine how stunned I was to see him again an hour later outside of a country grocer in another town ten miles away. He pulled up in a black Lexus station wagon caked in dusty mud. This time however he seemed somewhat antsy and worried. He picked up the pay phone outside the liquor store, glanced around, then hung it back up as if maybe he was supposed to call somebody or supposed to be somewhere but he couldn’t quite recall who or where.

Can you imagine living in a little rural Sonoma town where Tom Waits is running around like a fugitive, slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s, ducking and dodging around town trying to avoid his own scary little puppet show?

Almost makes you want to leave the city.

One Big One

I keep getting these 'tags' from people wanting me to divulge 5 things about myself that most don't know. I figured I'd just give you one big one instead. You'll like this one though. Pull up a pillow.

After graduating college with a degree in cognitive philosophy I moved to San Francisco and immediately got a job as a night clerk in a downtown porn store. Big twist for me. I could explain Wittgenstein but I had never even held anything like a vibrator, a butt plug, or a dong (let alone something the size of a 'Shindler's Fist'!). I was infinitely entertained. And curious. How well could a guy like me sling dildos and anal lube? What kinda characters would I meet there? Could I actually be around all this crap for eight hours a day? I mean- skin flicks constantly goin' off hot and heavy from TV screens in every corner of the joint. I'd only seen about a dozen porn flicks in my life. And I mean Total.

Needles to say, comedy ensued immediately.

As some of you know, Frenchy's is on Geary down in the Polk Gulch area. Yeah it's still there. I don't know about now, but it used to be sandwiched in between a homeless shelter and a methadone clinic. Above it was one of those trans-pacific sex slave trade massage parlors and right across the street a tranny dive bar with a thriving gay hustle circuit right out front. Bukowski himself couldn't have found a more sordid block of realstate. And of course, being a young and naïve whiteboy, I found the whole thing adventurously compelling. No more reading about theories on the human psyche, time to see it in the field, up close and personal, warts and all. So I signed up, got hired, climbed in.

Now Frenchys mostly rented porn videos and sold adult novelty items, but they also had a dark labyrinth of XXX arcade booths in the back where cracked out hustlers turned tricks with the chicken hawks who loved them. Having to police that circus was a tiresome aggravation that was often dangerous and always disturbing. So to take my mind off of that zoo I became immediately fascinated with the voluminous library of porn up front. I couldn't believe how many movies there were. To be honest, familiarizing myself with them started to feel like grad work for me. As if channeling the recent inertia of my college study routine I went to work picking apart the porn industry as if it were my new major. I read all of the industry mags, tried to watch most of the flicks, and basically just did my homework on all the actors and actresses so that I could be a premium aficionado. Why not? I was 23 and needed something to do.

Now I admit, I couldn't physically watch every movie in the store (it all just sort of churns into blurry shades of flesh after about the first 50 hours). So I studied the industry rags instead. I read all the reviews, bios, editorials, anything I could find. It was all there in front of me just waiting to be gleaned. Like finding a hidden vault from some strange and distant civilization. I spent countless graveyard shifts learning the history of it all; finding out exactly how it all came to be. What were the origins? Who were the pioneers? Who were the contemporaries? I learned all about who the up and coming directors were, who finally quit the biz, who filmed the classics, who shot only video, who won best new starlet, who won best new stud, who got signed to this, who got busted for that, who got dissed, who got dumped, and who finally went double-anal.

I stayed right up to speed on it all. You ever hear about Quinton Tarrantino working in a video store before he hit it big as a director? Supposedly his knowledge of films was so extensive that a customer could bring any title up to him and he could give them the full 411 on it. Well that was me with porn.

"Oh yes- of course we've got Christy Canyon videos… Now were you looking for her classic stuff with GVA, her mid period, or stuff from her later work with Vivid?"

And on those rarest of moments when I really didn't know my shit I would just make it up. It always worked.

"Uhhhh yeah…. I've seen New Wave Hookers 5. That's the one where they put her in the… and then the clowns fuck her with the…. and she sucks all the…yeah…some great talent in that one. Not as good as volume 4 but definitely worth viewing....."

Soon word of my geeky passion began spreading and customers began seeking me out for advice on which titles they should rent, buy, or just stand around marveling at. I loved it because it turned an
otherwise shamefully subversive retail gig into a convivial public symposium of animated discussion.

Now I know what you're thinking. It seems stupid right? What do these pervs care about these flicks? They're just going to take the tape home, fast forward through half of it until they finally cum all over the place and then return it the next day and never think about it again, right? Well in most cases yes. Definitely yes. BUT, like with everything else, you've got your eccentric minority who eat, breathe, and revel in the canon of their choosing. And in this case the canon was porn.

It took a little time for them to come out of the woodwork and stand up and identify themselves above the bashful hordes who just wanted to jack off. But they did. And I loved them for it. It was always interesting to see a new voice kick up from behind the gangbang rack. Or some collector in the classics section maybe. Typically they just had to fall within ear range of a heated discussion. Then they'd lurk anonymously as if to still be perusing the videos when really they were sizing up the conversation and planning their surprise bid to join it. Then that moment of truth would come when they could silence themselves no longer and would step up and say…

"Ahhhemmm…. Excuse me but Joey Silvera couldn't shoot quality Gonzo if his own cock was a damn beta cam. His whole series is lifted straight from Buttman's stuff!"

We knew we had another one. And so the polemics would continue.

And these guys knew their porn too. They knew every sound from every pound to every mound from the ceiling to the ground. They had the most uncanny acuteness when it came to their likes and dislikes. Fetishes that had been aged to perfection. Lifelong hunts for that perfect ideal scene. It was out there. It had to be out there.

Before long my counter started looking like a weekly book club with a gaggle of guys standing around for hours debating the merits of the latest release. They were from pretty diverse demographics too; everything from cab drivers to cooks to accountants, actors, bankers, lawyers, computer programmers, etc. They'd all drop in to talk shop. Obviously they had no other venue to air these particular opinions so the place became a kind of forum for this type of behavior.

Now remember this was the mid 90s and the internet had but a scant fraction of the content and capacity that it has now. You still had to forage in public for smut back then. And I tried to make that task as bearable as I could for those cursed with the addiction. If I was going to be involved I wanted it to have grace, dignity, and pride. I felt like Sam Malone at Cheers giving the Norms and Cliff Clavens of San Francisco a safe place to be candid. They were after all just like me. Just trying to find their way through life and everything. Like all of us. Just running with the hunted. Occasionally finding a place to catch our breath and pretend we're somehow leading the chase.

On Holidays I'd have Tommy's Joint cater and we'd feast on roast beef!

Of course by this point the store management found the whole thing a little worrisome and put me on the radar of the big wigs. They finally came in to survey what was transpiring and, while finding my motives a little suspect, decided that it was somehow probably good for the bottom line. After all, I was inadvertently creating public interest and in turn selling the stuff like hotcakes. I sold it to everyone. Including celebrities. I even sold a gang of tranny videos to Darth Vader one night (James Earl Jones). Which then meant that folks from the industry even started dropping by. I met most everyone who was anyone in the biz in those days; Chasey Lain, Janine, Jenna Jameson, John Leslie, Rocco, Buttman, everyone.

I sometimes miss those days and wonder why I threw in the towel after only one year. Sure I only made barely enough dough to scrape by on but I had a whole world of camaraderie where I had a voice of respect and authority. People sought ought my expertise and I delivered with a smile. It was all somehow strangely fulfilling. And then I just quit. That was it. Just moved on to something else the way we often do.

Nowadays on the rare occasion when I happen to step foot inside an adult store and take a look at the products an answer to the question of why I left almost instantly surfaces-

"Sheeesh…. This shit is ridiculous…."

Sentimental Testimony from an Adolescent Witness

Growing up I used to spend most of every summer with my grandparents in deep rural South Carolina. They were Jehovah's Witnesses.

Every Saturday morning my grandpa and I would meet up with others from the local congregation and go out proselytizing via ‘door to door service’ as they called it. I loved it because I got to carry a briefcase and look somewhat official about something. Plus, unlike in California, most folks would invite you into their homes to enjoy a cold jar of iced tea while you argued southern-fried metaphysics over an 8-track of Slim Whitman yodeling on a hot summer day. What a unique experience. Sometimes we’d even get chased off by some hell bent ruffian with a shotgun yellin' about how his own country preacher warned him that we'd be fixin' to come out and convert him. Usually after a couple hours of placing Watchtower magazines all over yonder we’d all meet up and go out and gorge on a huge buffet lunch at Duff’s Country Diner (which was like a Sizzler on steroids).

On Sunday mornings we made the weekly trip to the Kingdom Hall meeting. I still remember that fresh new carpet smell of the Hall’s modest, air-conditioned interior. I spent most of the sermons fantasizing about some intimate interlude with some saucy southern milf sitting a few rows in front of me. For hours I would sit there holding a bible over a boner while I imagined all of the sordid sex she and her husband must’ve sanctioned to produce such a blessing of kids.

After the meeting the "Elders" would ask questions and the congregation would raise their hands to answer. A microphone would be brought around to amplify your voice. I always loved being picked to recite some edifying verse from the Holy Scriptures and hearing my adolescent voice echo over the comfy reverb of the Kingdom Hall's K-Mart-like PA system. My Sunday wasn’t complete until I got to utter something profound over Jehovah’s sound system. And sometimes the weekly housewife of my fantasy would turn and smile approvingly. I loved Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Does anyone know if they ever got their Armageddon and consequent eternal paradise on earth? I always hoped they would.

D' Accord

I’m going to get a little heady and whimsical with this one so if you’re not in the mood for nauseating drivel from self-absorbed travelers then pull the ripcord right here and now.

You sure?

Okay.

So…..

You ever hung out with an old hooker? I’m not talking about one that just looks old. Not one of those crack-charred husk with high heels holding up a bruised heap of horror at the broken age of 28. Not the ones dragging their empty shell pussy-first down the street fiending for the next fix. No. I’m talking about one of those ones who have kept it mostly together over the long haul and can still recall every sentence on every page of their epic journey with timeless antidotes and worldy witt that somehow lend a strange grace to it all. The ones who’ve been in every possible situation, slept with every type of person in all possible positions, gone on every kind of adventure with every kind of companion while consuming every kind of concoction and still somehow retained the wisest of beauty and the most unbreakable dignity despite the blows.

That’s the city of Paris.

As the crown flagship of an exhausted civilization, Paris now just smiles politely at all of our dramatic little ambitions. She’s seen them all at one time or another. She’s seen them ignite into fantastic flames that shoot through the sky and burn up the stars and then seen them fall back down to earth and crash into the gutters of despair. Having gasped at our wildest possibilities and sighed with our saddest futilities her smile is soiled wry from centuries of experience, like a mausoleum of our hopes, desires, pinnacles, and tragedies.

Humbled in her presence, there's nothing left to do but just sit and smoke with her.

Positive Vibes: An Empirical Inquiry

Positive Vibes.

I see this phrase offered, given, prescribed, and hoped for on Tribe every time I take a look at someone's blog, follow a thread, or read a listing. Typically I just glaze over the words while subconsciously translating them to mean something like optimistic thoughts, accessible demeanors, or inspirational behavior. But lately I've been a little more curious.

What are "positive vibes" exactly?

Are they powerful and compelling manifestations of human consciousness or just superstitious hokum of an antiquated folk psychology?

Are they part of a cosmic energy that we're only just beginning to comprehend (like Yoda and Lao Tzu allude to) or just glib and exhausted vestiges of a failed paradigm (like the flat earth theory or Dokken)?

As a good Wittgensteinian, I decided that the answers must lie somewhere within the common everyday utilization of this phrase. You know, like Dr. Lecter asks (and Marcus Aurelius before him I guess) What is their nature?

What are positive vibes witnessed to be doing?

Where are some instances of them?

And so I took some time to gather a little de facto field research on Tribe and get a better understanding of this ubiquitous and enigmatic enterprise.

A search on Tribe will yield 922 instances of positive vibes. Many of these instances are in people's personal profiles where folks often list positive vibes as what they're looking for here on Tribe.

Hmmmm….

I assume they'll know them when they see them.
But maybe not. You can't always exactly 'see' positive vibes, right?

Well sort of.

Some Tribe pics often depict folks either "giving off" positive vibes or being the targeted object of them.

Take a look at this first example.

people.tribe.net/essentia/...386e08f8aa

If not for the title I would've completely missed the boat on this one. I should have known it had something to do with malt liquor and avocados though.

In this next picture it's stated that the positive vibes had flowed from this art gallery exhibition. Take a look.

people.tribe.net/b61ae795-...24ace7e139

The individual in this next picture is actually listening for positive vibes.

people.tribe.net/dalehausk...c582e68edd

So, essentially, you can feel them, emit them, or even listen for them. The most popular medium according to my research however is "sending" them. At least 4 out of 5 positive vibes transactions on Tribe involve one party either sending them to another party or, in most cases, requesting that others do the sending.

"I'm sending you positive vibes right now" was the last example that I read. It was in response to an individual who had been having some trouble with an ex-lover and decided to air her misfortune. In this case, like many others, the positive vibes seemed to be administered as kind of a get well sympathy gesture. You'll sometimes read about people "directing" positive vibes toward someone who has endured physical, mental, or spiritual peril. Let me show you a common example:

people.tribe.net/45e59d96-...62dff93ad1

This is a classic third party request for positive vibes. It's unknown what happenned to Nick or why he needs the vibes, or even whether the requester actually knows him. Could be a random send.

Sort of like a traffic cop, you might send some out to Dan, maybe direct a few sideways toward Michelle, but then save the core of your cache for a whole group of peeps who really got screwed up somehow.

One tip you might want to keep under your hat is this:

Whatever you do, make sure your friends and acquaintances keep a little stash for you too. It sounds selfish but I can't tell you how many requests I read by folks who were desperately trying to procure positive vibes from anyone who would listen.

I even read one request for positive vibes "all around".

Wow.

Wouldn't that be something...

Sunset Sex Salon Confidential

So I'm reading the April issue of San Francisco magazine on the L coming home from work the other day and what should I feast my eyes on but an FBI surveillance shot of my local barber, Yuen Poon, and this big article about how the feds raided her brothel on 19th Avenue.

Just when you think the Sunset is dead...

I've been going to get my haircut at Poon's Hong Kong Hair Salon on Taraval at 17th Avenue for years. Poon never really gave me that great of a cut I guess, but hell- it's only $9.00 and quick. At first I never really thought anything was too out of the ordinary at the salon. The staff was always friendly and they always had an issue of Jane for me to thumb through while getting my haircut. Sure they were always yellin' at each other in Cantonese, but I figured they were just family.

Sometime around 2001 a visiting friend of mine returned from the salon with some suspicion that something was "going on in the back". I had never even realized that there was a "back" to the place. But sure enough I too started to notice some peculiar behavior every time I went in for a cut. For one, everyone in the joint seemed startled every time I walked in. Sure I was the only white boy to seemingly step foot in the place, but there was an air of something peculiar in the way they greeted me. Then I started to notice more and more older Chinese men coming into the salon, some even bald, blurting out abrupt chunks of old Toisan tongue and being motioned to scurry into the back room.

For a longtime I conjectured the scenario to be something as benignly traditional as an illicit gambling den where gamers laid around high in a dreamy fog of opium trying to focus on their cards while hired "company" doted on their every wish.

I was partially right. Upon one visit I actually got a glimpse of the inner world when a young Chinese girl appeared out of the back while I was sitting in the barber chair. She looked as though she just stepped out of an 80s Prince video. I was immediately beguiled by the lack of creative fantasy amongst middle-aged Chinese men. But just as sudden as she had appeared, Poon yelled something impetuous at her and she receded back into her lair.

At that point I just came to the obvious conclusion that some sort of 'happy ending' massage situation was transpiring in the back and that's how I left it.

Well dig this.

As it turns out, Poon was running her own little ho house in the back of the salon and turning a pretty penny in the process. Apparently the operation blew up so big that the little walls of the salon could no longer house the madness and she had to expand the ever-growing enterprise into a 3-bedroom house on 19th Avenue (right around the corner). She was making bank as local johns paid visit day and night to have a sample of the latest product that had been trafficked into the Sunset via a vast and complex sex slave network with roots stretching all the way to rural Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

Bling Bling off the Chinese Caligraphy.

But, as often is the case in the biz, Poon got a little too confident with the success of her pimp skillz and her bucket started getting holes in it. Neighbors started getting suspicious, some downright incensed. It wasn't long before someone started whispering in the ear of SF Vice and before you knew it investigators were snooping
around Poon's trash wondering what kind of beast was producing this size payload of condom rappers and empty lube bottles. On a dreary day in January of last year a team of feds decided to find out.

Poon got raided and arrested on charges of housing prostitution and human trafficking. They also arrested 4 naked girls who were just chillin' in the joint. Some couldn't even speak a lick of english. They uncovered all kinds of craziness, including 120K in cash and about 12 johns who happened to be paying a visit at precisely the wrong time.

Everybody got hauled down to Bryant street and when the smoke cleared and the story finally surfaced it was more nefarious in scope than anyone (especially me) had fathomed. We're talking massive pan-Asian sex-slave operation involving a battery of clandestine recruiters, hundreds of regional managers with parlors and bordellos peppered all over the united states from here to Atlanta. Thousands of young women sucked up from all over the eastern pacific rim and shuffled into a pachinko machine-like trafficking industry that confiscates their passports (most of them fake anyway) and drops them into a blurry maelstrom of stealthy sex-crazed destinations where they're forced to turn conveyor belt-like tricks and watch reruns of Seinfeld in the downtime all day every day until they can pay off their "debt" and then move out to the Bunny Ranch in Nevada and marry some dim-witted bartender.

Yep.... it's a living.....

Needless to say, I'm looking for a new barber.
I typically like to keep it under $15.00 a cut.
Any suggestions?