My walk to work (block 2)
Feb. 3rd, 2004 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaThe house where the woman would buy a wheel of brie every year for the Open Studios days has been taken over by punks. They leave a Santa Cruz-based music zine outside in a little stand whenever a new issue comes out. Sometimes they leave their stuffy-apartment door open and I see them drinking cocktails. I picture them having a full tiki-retro living room with all the hipster accouterment. But really that’s just my imagination filling in the blanks from the little glimpse of something red and furry I get through the cracked door sometimes, and what looks like a full bar.
Between the two intersections were most of the drivers make illegal left turns, and across the N Judah tracks, there’s a house where a tenant held a protest vigil against the selling of the house he lived in. It was during the dot-com mass-eviction boom and when the apartment was due to be shown he stood outside with a picket sign and fliers, detailing how long he’d lived there and how he wouldn’t be able to afford anyplace in the city if he was evicted. I watched him try and talk to potential buyers and a lot refused to go even go inside and look at the place. Of course that probably meant he got a real heartless asshole as his new landlord. After a few months of this vigil I saw his apartment was empty and the "For Sale" sign was gone.
Church Street used to have massive street sales all the time until someone, probably my neighborhood association,* cracked down. I once found a bunch of Re:Search books there that I was quite willing to buy for a buck or two each, but the homeless salesman was nowhere to be seen so I had to take them for free. I asked a few passed out drunks, but no one knew whose sale it was.
There’s always an AA or NA meeting at the church there by the taqueria. The recoverers stand outside in huge smoking clots during their breaks, flirting with each other and ignoring those of us trying to walk through their blockade of sobriety. Death feels all around me right now so I’ll mention that was the last place I saw my almost-housemate Krystina. She was a smart and hot** Latina dyke who had "Working Class" tattooed across her back in gothic letters.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jactitation, anarqueso and I were about to ask her to move in when someone I trusted implicitly told us it would be the worst mistake we ever made. I don’t know whether or not she was clean at the time, but allegations of missing money by ex-housemates were on the grapevine for plucking if you knew who to ask.
It kind of broke my heart a little because I liked her a lot. Over the next few years she would always bring it up whenever I ran into her, which was often because she worked just a little farther down Church. "That was really weird, I thought you were gonna ask me to move in." But I learned to deflect it and we had a nice neighborly chatting-in-the-street/running-into-each-other-at-parties relationship. Despite the fact she was not in great health she was always telling funny stories and tasty community gossip. She died at 28 from complications of leukemia.***
Above the taqueria, lived my friend Mick and his kids. I didn’t know Mick until he came to the party Jactitation and I threw in the Mendocino Woods for our tenth anniversary. He came with another AK Press boy who I had invited and Mick brought his oldest daughter. He had her name tattooed on his neck and was preparing to get his newborn’s name next. He is one of the few people I know to leave AK Press on good terms, but that was probably because he quit to move back to LA before things turned bad. I miss seeing him and his friends and family hanging out on the roof of the taqueria and drinking beer. It was incredibly homey for such a busy street.
*The same one that opposed a queer youth center for a Boston Market years ago because the neighborhood was over-served by social service agencies and under-served by fast food.
**She was one the cover of "On Our Backs" once. Go back and check your porn collection.
***Ida Acton did a really good piece about her called "Beloved" but I can’t find it online anywhere.
Between the two intersections were most of the drivers make illegal left turns, and across the N Judah tracks, there’s a house where a tenant held a protest vigil against the selling of the house he lived in. It was during the dot-com mass-eviction boom and when the apartment was due to be shown he stood outside with a picket sign and fliers, detailing how long he’d lived there and how he wouldn’t be able to afford anyplace in the city if he was evicted. I watched him try and talk to potential buyers and a lot refused to go even go inside and look at the place. Of course that probably meant he got a real heartless asshole as his new landlord. After a few months of this vigil I saw his apartment was empty and the "For Sale" sign was gone.
Church Street used to have massive street sales all the time until someone, probably my neighborhood association,* cracked down. I once found a bunch of Re:Search books there that I was quite willing to buy for a buck or two each, but the homeless salesman was nowhere to be seen so I had to take them for free. I asked a few passed out drunks, but no one knew whose sale it was.
There’s always an AA or NA meeting at the church there by the taqueria. The recoverers stand outside in huge smoking clots during their breaks, flirting with each other and ignoring those of us trying to walk through their blockade of sobriety. Death feels all around me right now so I’ll mention that was the last place I saw my almost-housemate Krystina. She was a smart and hot** Latina dyke who had "Working Class" tattooed across her back in gothic letters.
jactitation, anarqueso and I were about to ask her to move in when someone I trusted implicitly told us it would be the worst mistake we ever made. I don’t know whether or not she was clean at the time, but allegations of missing money by ex-housemates were on the grapevine for plucking if you knew who to ask.It kind of broke my heart a little because I liked her a lot. Over the next few years she would always bring it up whenever I ran into her, which was often because she worked just a little farther down Church. "That was really weird, I thought you were gonna ask me to move in." But I learned to deflect it and we had a nice neighborly chatting-in-the-street/running-into-each-other-at-parties relationship. Despite the fact she was not in great health she was always telling funny stories and tasty community gossip. She died at 28 from complications of leukemia.***
Above the taqueria, lived my friend Mick and his kids. I didn’t know Mick until he came to the party Jactitation and I threw in the Mendocino Woods for our tenth anniversary. He came with another AK Press boy who I had invited and Mick brought his oldest daughter. He had her name tattooed on his neck and was preparing to get his newborn’s name next. He is one of the few people I know to leave AK Press on good terms, but that was probably because he quit to move back to LA before things turned bad. I miss seeing him and his friends and family hanging out on the roof of the taqueria and drinking beer. It was incredibly homey for such a busy street.
*The same one that opposed a queer youth center for a Boston Market years ago because the neighborhood was over-served by social service agencies and under-served by fast food.
**She was one the cover of "On Our Backs" once. Go back and check your porn collection.
***Ida Acton did a really good piece about her called "Beloved" but I can’t find it online anywhere.
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Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 11:46 am (UTC)And the idea that the U st. corridor is now a shopping district... it was full of burned out buildings from 1968 as late as 1990.
Amazing.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 12:43 pm (UTC)