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Published: December 26th 2009
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THE NORTH BEACH: THEN AND NOW
Breakfast on the eleventh December is of fruit, smoked salmon, and bagels; no sausages, no cream cheese, no hot chocolate, doubling down on my religious bets this Friday morning. Afterward, we drop a dollar fifty, total, for two seniors, into a cash box at the front of another cross town bus; and ride it along Stockton up to Columbus, where it tri-sects with Green, and where the Italian community has held sway since the late eighteen hundreds.
Looking south east down Columbus, the pyramidal outline of the Trans-America building defines the cityscape, in its role as tallest of the tall, its wings and spire reaching above all else. About a mile away, we choose it as the beacon to which we would gravitate as we sample other sites today.
In anticipation of the lunch trade, all enterprising restaurants have set their tables on the pavements, for dejeuner in al fresco mode, at a cool temperature, but with overhead heaters giving warm comfort. The hosts and hostesses, in sharp, eye catching attire, are also outdoor, providing enticing descriptions of the fare on offer from the kitchens within. It is tough to decline, but
with breakfast only half absorbed, we have no choice, so we forge on.
Columbus Avenue and its cross streets were home, in the fifties, to the Beat Generation; that which preceded the Hippie Generation. The performance stages of this district helped launch the careers of many names now familiar to us. It was routine for artistes of the Beat fold to engage in intense café conversations that formed the bases for their readings of the poetry and prose of passion, their singing of the inner self, their parading against the over-material, their painting of the dark sides of humanity and their satirising of the lifestyles of the time; indeed, their making of the case for a kinder, more spiritual take on life.
Many of the haunts frequented by the Beats are no longer in their pristine state and some are used differently now; but Penny and I saw enough of what still stands to be wistful of what could have been, if the Beats had prevailed. We peeked into “the hungry i” of significance to the early careers of Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Billy Holiday, Richard Pryor and Barbra Streisand, among others; the Purple Onion which hosted an
unknown Phyllis Diller; and the intersection of Fillmore and Union, where Allen Ginsberg read mind-wrenching poetry with Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas and Laurence Ferlinghetti in the audience.
To wit, Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Booksellers and Publishers still stands on Columbus. Proudly on its shelves is virtually every Title by almost every author who ever argued for societal rebalancing over the last sixty years. We went in, we just had to, and spent two hours there, becoming exhausted from the mere exercise of reading titles, forewords and prefaces; and almost yielding to the staff’s genuine urgings that we “sit down and read a book.”
Instead, we got ourselves a book and a poem to go, judging there was not enough time to read an entire book and still experience what was left to do and see. But we were pleased to accept their recommendation that we use Vesuvio, next door, for a bladder and refreshment break; this is the place where every Beat with anything worthwhile to communicate hung out and imbibed. Mark Twain, in an earlier century, wrote for a magazine near by; so its bohemian décor has firm roots and its architecture is of the pressed-tin genre.
The Beat scene quite adequately covered, we made off for our agreed upon beacon, the Trans America Pyramid at the foot of Columbus, there to take in a modern art exhibit in its lobby; then, outside, to puzzle over how a third floor was ever added to the first two of the original Trans America building across the way, flat ironed in shape as it is, and fully covered in delicate terra cotta. The Christian Scientists, who now occupy the building, invited us in; but did or could not address our inquiry about building renovation.
Retracing our steps, we sat on a bench in the ground floor café of the Columbus Tower, built on a triangular parcel of land at Kearny and Columbus, near to Pacific, munching cookies and sipping hot chocolate, Italian style; and looking out at this grand intersection, where all the world, in North Beach, seems a stage, upon which its various peoples act out their daily lives.
Pressing on, north west now, along Columbus, we picked up salamis, cheeses and loaves from Molinari’s, a delicatessen that would make Roman markets proud; this being a bit of advance planning to ensure fitting company for
our pre-dinner wine, on chill in a little black refridgerator at the hotel.
Our next stop of the day was Washington Square, a park serving this community since the mid-eighteen hundreds; today, old men speaking into each others ears, children weaving about, footballs at their feet and in the air, dogs chasing frisbees, wholesome activity, all of it. The square lies across street from the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, where we chose to spend some quiet moments, at the religious heart of this neighbourhood that seems so comfortable in its place in the San Francisco sun.
V. Ernest Ainsley
11.12.09
ps: happy holidays. v
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