Another 40th Birthday

Saturday night I went to a 40th birthday for an old high school friend but first I had to use my nature skills to avoid getting skunk-sprayed. I took the 49 and cut through upper Ft. Mason to get to the Ft. Mason Center*. It was dusk and the moon was shining on the Bay. I love the combination of natural beauty and huge man-made structures. Damn this city is beautiful.

The staircase I would usually take was chained off so I had to backtrack uphill to the long staircase that is about 50 yards of straight downhill concrete. No big deal except about 10 steps down I realized that a skunk was heading uphill, right next to the stairs, in my direction.

I stopped and stomped a little. Skunky stopped and raised his/her tail. I stomped some more. Skunky walked onto the stairs, luckily still 50 ft. away, and stopped, daring me to keep coming. I shuffled my feet loudly. Skunky raised tail again and turned around. Stalemate.

I kept making noise, not willing to walk a quarter mile back to the main street and taking a roundabout route of a few blocks. However, even though I was going to a party of ex-punks I wasn’t willing to go with that strong a stench. My day-of-working-with-cheese smell was quite enough already. “Hey Skunk, I have no problem with you personally. You just go your way and I’ll go mine,” I yelled.

I stomped some more and eventually Skunky jumped back off the stairs and slowly walked perpendicular to the stairs. I started down again and every time I’d take a few steps Skunky would stop and raise his/her tail. We went on like this until I reached the bottom. I felt we had reached an understanding and appreciated Skunky letting me pass.

The party was at the Firehouse (not the old club at 16th and Albion) and it was all the good things a 40th birthday should be, especially when the birthday girl hasn’t lived in the Bay Area for over a decade. There was sushi, meat on a stick, a grown daughter of people we grew up with, and music we never would have listened to at the time.

In fact, as Elton John’s best song, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”, played I thought about how many more times we had seen Verbal Abuse play that song than we had listened to Elton singing it. Of course, when Verbal Abuse played it at the tail end of the violent side of the ‘80s punk scene, The Farm would often break out into a sea of drunk brawling.** I don’t miss those days and the violence but it sure had a lot more feeling than a punk scene of bored, gently nodding kids wearing backpacks. Oh yeah, and you kids get off my lawn!

Anyways, as always at these events there are memory flashbacks and things you can’t figure out how you ever forgot. A slide show ran constantly of Niki pictures from the last 40 years… kiddie pics from before we met, drunken 4th of July parades, pictures of dead friends, pics from the party where our friend pulled out a gun “as a joke” but where no one died, bad fashion, parties with occasions that didn’t matter, weddings of the now-divorced… you know… life.

This was my favorite picture, taken in 1986 at one of those weddings. Niki is mourning that we had run out of champagne.


I can’t believe we’ve known each other for 25 years. Happy Birthday Niki!



*geez, is this one of the worst homepages ever for such an amazing resource?

**A couple of the sound that I really like
Are the sounds of a switchblade and a motorbike
I'm a juvenile product of the working class
Whose best friend floats in the bottom of a glass
Indeed

*** I briefly dated the woman on the far right in 1987. On our first date I gave her a Mohawk. Hott.

****The remnants of my Marin County punk scene will be coming together for Joan Jett at the Marin County Fair on July 2. There will be three of us.

*****and happy birthday goodbadgirl!!!