Bellingham by the Bay, June 2007, from San Francisco Northside

The continuing saga of the John Barleycorn continues. The popular Nob Hill tavern's owner, Larry Ayres, had another look at his lease and found that he can hold onto the Barleycorn through the end of September. The new property owner, Luisa Hanson, was apparently going to evict the pub people at the end of this month. John Barleycorn devotees have not given up. They had a small street barbeque one Saturday last month, with a motorized cable car on hand to carry the patrons and the word to Save the Barleycorn.

"I met my husband here 32 years ago," recalled Martha Holtzman. Her 24-year old marriage is still going strong. Barleycorn booster Cynthia Fine chuckled, "I broke up with a lot of men in this saloon." No regrets. "We've collected about 3,000 signatures for the Save the Barleycorn petition," reported Thor Ivar Ekle. "We have another meeting with Sup. Aaron Peskin this month to see how we might convince Luisa to leave the place alone."

No word from Hanson. If what happened to The Front Room pizza restaurant next door is any indication, then Barleycorn is on the precipice. As The Front Room was about to celebrate forty years at 1500 Calif. St., Hanson told Front Room proprietor Lori Laghaci that she and her staff had two months to get out. The indefatigable Lori moved the restaurant down the street to 1500 Calif., between Larkin & Polk, and she's slowly getting her customers back.

"Our biggest problem is getting the word out where we are," Lori said. ...


The Lumiere Theater, which shows indies -- they used to be called "art films" -- is just down the block. The other night I shambled by and caught out of the corner of my eye, a summary of one of the movies, Zoo, which is a documentary about "one of the last biggest taboos -- people who have sex with animals," and revolves around the story of a 45-year old Seattle man, a Boeing exec, who died after "voluntarily being sodomized by a horse." Kid you not. It gives new meaning to "feeling one's oats." Sorry, but this is one taboo that should stay that way. Boeing, Boeing, gone.

I can't imagine what Walter Farley, the author of The Black Stallion series of books, would say about this -- but he'd certainly be proud of his niece, North Beach artist Blandina Farley, who brings her splashy, scintillating portraits, "Farley Girls," to Patricia's Casa del Arte y Fiore at 1101 Mason at Clay, Sun. June 17 from 3-7 p.m.

Herb Gold's a regular customer at It's A Grind & The Crepe House, both wi-fi hot spots. Herb wrote a terrific piece the other day in the Chron about Henry Miller, who's been discovered by yet another new generation. Herb described the difference between America and France in the 1930s. America struggled with the hopelessness of the Depression while French citizens drank and danced and had "accepted multiple simultaneous love affairs as part of the deal since the Garden of Eden had been closed down due to lease violations."

So that's what they mean by "insouciance." Nice, Herb ... Henry Miller loved women, as we know, and he loved Walt Whitman, albeit from a distance. "Whatever there is of value in America Whitman has expressed, and there is nothing more to be said," said Miller. "The future belongs to machines, to robots. He was the Poet of the body and the soul, Whitman. The first and the last poet. He is almost undecipherable today, a monument covered with rude hieroglyphs, for which there is no key."

Whitman is being demystified by John O'Keefe at his first-rate, one-man show, Song of Myself, at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia at 22nd St. through June 30.

Lifetime Books on Polk has breathed its last.

The 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love brings home thoughts from abroad for writer Mark Miller, who's now in L.A. One of his heroes, Rod McKuen, whose Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows brought him fame, is also there. When Mark comes back to S.F. he recalls his young years: "I cannot ever cross over McKuen's Stanyan Street without feeling a slight buzz about the enormous impact of that poetry collection. I remember when it appeared. I was still at Stanford, driving my old VW Beetle up to the Haight-Ashbury whenever possible, just to marvel at the life there, such as it was ..."


Christopher Caen has introduced a new magazine, Aware, which really is an extension of Generocity, his former magazine that extols philanthropy. Chris has enlisted some good writers for his venture, including the legendary author, filmmaker and radio raconteur Pete Laufer, who goes back to the days of free-form radio of the San Francisco of the storied 60s & 70s. Tim Gaskin, who, with Christopher, founded the other magazine about philanthropy, Benefit, is no longer at the helm there.

Pacific Heights is buzzing with word of another tell-all book from the social set. Linda Hale Bucklin, daughter of the late Prentis Cobb Hale and step-daughter of Denise Hale, has written Beyond His Control: Memories of a Disobedient Daughter, a damning account of fighting to free herself of an abusive, mercurial father, and the legal hassles with Denise, who wrestled the family fortune from Linda & her siblings. Linda's flipping mad with W Magazine which quoted Linda saying that "Denise is the worst role model since ... Dede Wilsey." Linda wants a retraction because she never said any such thing. It's true that everybody likes Dede.

If there's any proof to the notion that San Francisco residents get younger all the time, it was evident at Myles O'Reilly's Beer & Oyster Festival at Ft. Mason last month where 12,000 mostly under 30-somethings rocked out to Flogging Molly, one of Ireland's premier bands, and consumed 67,000 oysters, and beers too numerous to count. Meanwhile, the landscape at Polk & Bush is improving. Myles and others insist that Polk Gulch be called Polk Village now that things are looking up a bit. Myles' Holy Grail Pub & Restaurant there is the jewel of the neighborhood.

When Joe Bologna & Renée Taylor played The Plush Room last month, organizers of Trannyshack, the 13-year old drag show at The Stud at Harrison & 9th St., convinced the couple to be judges at the Renée Taylor as The Nanny Drag Show Look-Alike Contest, hosted by Heklina. "It was totally surreal," Renée reported. She did come away with high praise for Nicki Starr, whose big voice is garnering a lot of attention.

Michael Fedor, owner of the popular, aforementioned It's A Grind on Polk, has introduced live entertainment. Michael salutes Gay Pride Week by showcasing Miss Nix on June 10. The stix may nix hick pix but the urbane Miss Nix is never out-of-sync.

Andrea Marcovicci, that song seductress, returns to S.F on July 10 to play The Plush Room through July 29. "San Francisco feels like home to me," says Andrea, who lives in L.A. but is a living landmark in New York. She's too young to be a landmark but the legendary Algonquin Hotel recently named a hotel suite for her. So she joins an exclusive club with giants such as James Thurber and Dorothy Parker. Andrea -- whose looks are hardly laughable and anything but unphotographable -- is dedicating her show to Lorenz Hart, the "Poet of Broadway," and lyricist of My Funny Valentine, This Can't Be Love, It Never Entered My Mind, and other poignant masterpieces that he wrote to Richard Rodgers' music. Which brings us to Mr. Hart's nagging question: "Spring is here! Why doesn't my heart go dancing?"

Read Bruce Bellingham in the SF Northside .... www.northsidesf.com

If There's Anyone Here Who's Happy, Raise Your Hand

Happiness is not as easy as it looks. And, like cilantro, it's not for everyone. In fact, scientists even have a new term for "happiness." It's -- get this -- "subjective well-being" or SWB. Can you imagine? An acronym for everything. It seems the so-called developed nations have so much leisure time on their hands that the notion of happiness can now be analyzed and studied by the government.


I was astonished to read in the Christian Science Monitor that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has formed a "Department of Happiness," an agency that studies happiness, and how to get more of it. The British government actually has an advisor on happiness. He's Lord Richard Layard. He says, "There has been no upward trend in happiness, despite the fact that we are richer, healthier and have longer holidays." Lord Layard seems to be suggesting that the more we have, the more we have to worry about. The United Nations and the EU and The Economist magazine have rated happiness in Europe. The happier nations are Norway, Iceland, Australia, Ireland, Denmark, and Switzerland. The richest countries, Britain, France, and Germany, fared the worst.


Are we surprised? Not really. The U.S. would rank low, as well. That's because the bigger salaries come with more sacrifices. More and more people spend more time at work and coming and going to work. That means less time for the people we love -- or are supposed to love, if we ever get to see them.


I used to think that San Francisco had to be the happiest city in the country -- or even the world. I was much younger then, of course. I came here in 1970, and carried my dreams, my aspirations, and my hopes with me.I was sure I'd thrive in the most liberal, tolerant, pretty, sexy city anywhere -- and it had great restaurants. There were funky, intimate clubs to hear music. Artistes of all stripes came here to flaunt their crafts, their egos, and their lusty appetites.


I played music on the street with a group in the 70s -- a guitar, a fiddle, and a squeezebox (accordion). We made a pretty good living. All the buskers seemed to do all right back then by being street performers -- and there was a lot of real talent out there. The reigning king and queen of street artists were the famous mimes, Robert Shields and Lorene Yarnell. They practically owned Union Square. They drew large crowds of tourists who thought this was an "only in San Francisco" experience. Shields &Yarnell even got discovered. They got their own television show in Hollywood. They were married in 1972.


I ran into Robert a few years ago, at Lefty O'Doul's. "Oh, Bruce, those days were magical," he reminisced. "Lorene and I would collect about $150 a day. Remember, we were renting a Victorian in the Haight for 200 a month. At midday, we'd saunter up to North Beach, have a huge lunch, go home, and make love. Man, we were so happy."


You said it. These days people have to work so hard to pay the high rents in order to live here, that there's not much time left to really live here.


Robert and Lorene were divorced in 1986. Robert is running a very successful jewelry and collectible business out of Sedona, Ariz. Lorene lives with her husband in Norway. Are they happy? I hope so. Lorene is living in the European country that rates highest for happiness. I actually know a truly happy person. She lives in Central America. But she could live anywhere, and be happy. That's because she truly knows how to give love, and requires nothing in return.
With all due respect to Lord Layard, I don't think we can count on the government to make us happy.

Our own Declaration of Independence does not say we are owed happiness, it says we should be allowed to pursue it. But we impose a lot expectations on ourselves, and they're often out of reach. The more complex life becomes, the harder it is to be recognized, to be heard amid the noise. That's why the Internet is abuzz with blogs. Nothing is more painful than to be ignored. At the end of the day, we may have collected a lot of things, but why do we still feel so empty? Once in a while we might have a huge lunch, go home, and make love. That means slowing down. Maybe we should just stop and smell the calamari.

Bruce Bellingham is the Arts & Entertainment Editor of this paper, and the author of Bellingham by the Bay. He wanted to call the book Spearfishing for Compliments but the publisher would have none of it.


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A Writer Requires A Good Pair of Shoes

I learned to read liquor bottles lined up in saloons even before I even saw the Weekly Reader. I do know my first introduction to civics and the democratic process began when my mother encouraged me, as a child, to vote for "Miss Rheingold" in the "beer garden" -- as she so quaintly referred to the tavern up the road near the New York state line.


I loved the "Miss Rheingold" adventure. In case you didn't know, back in the 1960s, the Miss Rheingold advertising campaign was a beauty contest by referendum which promoted the sales of a brand of beer, popular in the New York area. As a PR idea, it was brilliant. With faces of pretty girls in bathing suits displayed before me, I would gleefully scribble with a stubby pencil on beer-soaked ballots, decide which was my favorite girl -- you know, the one who really deserved to be Miss Rheingold -- and stuff the cardboard box at the end of the bar. We could vote as often as we wanted -- pretty much the way elections are held today. This kept me occupied while the grown-ups chatted, laughed and imbibed. It was a likely introduction to the opposite sex for me, too -- though it was a vicarious sort of encounter.


Another seminal experience in my childhood occurred when I saw The Rockettes at Radio City for the first time. That was psychically explosive. All those legs and all that perfume coming in clouds off the stage into the tender nostrils of a six-year-old boy. It haunts me to this day. In the realm of more mysteries of womankind, I have a friend who told me recently that she actually went to Cocktail Waitress School. Imagine that. I'm not going to disparage higher education. I'm sure she poured her heart and soul into the endeavor. Ah, the days when cocktail waitresses had hearts of gold. But it must be hard on the feet. As Elaine Stritch says about prostitution: "It's not so much the work. It's the stairs."


Isn't it amazing how much stress we put on our feet? Without them, how would we kick our friends? My feet have served me well. In fact, my middle name really is Walker. All my life, when I was in trouble I would go for a walk -- a long walk -- for miles. Here in San Francisco, I'm fortunate enough to have a waterfront to traverse, a windy shoreline where, with collar turned up, and black fedora pulled down to my eyes, I can strike the pose of a man alone, a troubled, pensive man. Sometimes dealing with my anxieties requires walking until my feet bleed -- and yet sometimes I'm disappointed that I have to stop walking. But often the problem that pressed on my mind passes when the walk ends. There's an exquisite weariness in walking for long distances -- particularly on city sidewalks.


Walking is a bit like writing. I came across this Strindberg quote last night. I'm reading him again to cheer myself up. Right. "Evildoers are persecuting me and reducing me to despair!" No, not that one. I think that one was on his Christmas cards. No, no, I was thinking of this: "Write the misery out of yourself. Then it will seem it never existed." Then, go for a walk.


Bruce Bellingham is also a columnist and the Arts & Entertainment Editor for the SF Northside. He's the author of Bellingham by the Bay, a collection of stories about San Francisco that were recalled during a series of long walks.

The Great San Francisco Flood

I wonder how many visitors will come to San Francisco this month, just to see where the Summer of Love happened. I hope they remember their sweaters. Perhaps fans of San Francisco history will also trace the steps of Dashiell Hammett, who wrote The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon. Or trace the steps of Hammett's fabled detective, Sam Spade. The tour would take them to the Flood Building on Market, where Dash Hammett worked for the Pinkerton Detective agency in the 1920s. His office was so conveniently located close to John's Grill on Ellis -- where a Hammett shrine can be found, though the recently-stolen replica of The Maltese Falcon itself is still missing.


The Flood Building, by the way, is named for James Flood -- an early San Francisco magnate, who made a staggering fortune -- not from gold -- but from silver. How did a saloon owner, a first-generation Irish boy from New York, become one of the owners of one of the richest silver mines in the world -- the Comstock Lode?


Just like he might have swung it today -- through insider trading.


Flood and partner William O'Brien came to San Francisco in 1840 and opened a pub. They were good listeners. They picked up stock tips from inebriated brokers, tongues loosened by liquor.
There was no Securities and Exchange Commission in those days. If there were, the commissioners would, no doubt, have one helluva bar tab.


Flood and O'Brien decided to become brokers themselves. The two did very well, bought into a Nevada silver mine speculation (on good information) and the rest is history. In the 1850s, Flood was making 500-thousand dollars a month. That puts him in the Bill Gates category of his time. (Out of curiosity, I called the Bureau of Labor Statistics to ask how much a half-million dollars in 1850 might be worth today. But there seems to be some kind of worker's walk-out over at BLS -- no one answered the phone.


I called the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco to ask the same thing. The information wasn't readily available. Then I asked how much a pound of flesh might be worth today -- compared to the time of Shylock, who ran a savings and loan in Venice. Here today, gondola tomorrow.


I was told to call Safeway and ask for the butcher's station. The Fed no longer deals in fresh meat as collateral, it seems.) James Flood later financed a project that diverted water from the High Sierra to Virgina City, Nevada -- center of the famous silver mines, called the Comstock Lode. Water in California was worth as much as gold or silver. Still is. Remember Polanski's film, Chinatown ?


Flood -- such an apt name for a water reclamation mobster.


There was a problem. Though plenty of water was flowing into town -- no one thought about how to get the stagnant water out of town.


The area was soon inundated with industrial, human and animal waste. It's still polluted in spots of western Nevada today. But Flood was too rich to worry about it. He could afford indoor plumbing. He built a mansion in Hillsborough. He built a mansion atop Nob Hill, designed by Willis Polk. Today, it's the Pacific Union Club.


Dago Mary's, the venerable Italian restaurant in the Bayview neighborhood that just closed, held pieces of furniture from the Flood Mansion at Hillsborough. The closing of Dago Mary's is, pardon the expression, a watershed moment. In the 1930's, Dago Mary's was a favorite of gangsters, cops, stevedores, pimps, gamblers, newspapermen, City Hall bosses, randy socialites, union officials, hookers, trenchermen and other colorful creatures.


Tourists now wander past the Flood Building and wonder aloud, "Flood? What flood? I've heard of the Big Earthquake -- but nothing about a flood..."


Tourists say the darndest things.


The legendary Powell-Hyde Street cable car -- launched well over 100 years ago -- turns around amid the less-than-picturesque public housing projects near Fisherman's Wharf.
"Imagine!" a woman scornfully observed. "Why would they put those pretty trolleys near those ugly buildings?"


It's true San Francisco has witnessed many disasters. But a flood is not among them.
"There have been all kinds of catastrophes here but the residents haven't been underwater -- not yet, anyway," stated Sue Nammi, with the U.S. Geological Survey. "The only big wave we've seen is the kind the fans make at Candlestick Park."


Quakes, fires, typhoons, typhoid, water spouts, downturns, updrafts, overdraughts, shipwrecks, sweat shops, assassinations, bad-acid rain, balcony collapses, nor'westers, squalls, squalor, errant schools of squid, pyramid schemes, colic, cholera, panic attacks, STD's, rip-tides, rip-offs, Ripple, rotgut, rents-run-riot, AIDS, mudslides, dueling publishers, hail, gas leaks, rats, sunspots, sinkholes, ozone depletion, road rage, cell-phone frenzy, margin calls, meteorites, tons of dead anchovies, intermittent drivel and fetid fog.


All kinds of disasters -- but nary a flood.


Well, maybe just the flood of tourists, here to see the city that produced the Summer of Love. Well, I guess we hope so.



Bruce Bellingham, author of Bellingham by the Bay, is also a columnist for the Marina Times, and a contributor to Rod McKuen's website, Flight Plan. Rod, who wrote Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows, remembers the Summer of Love as if it were Suddenly Last Summer.

Some Come Here to Get Lost

I did not get here in time for the Summer of Love, which occurred forty years ago. I got here just in time for the Summer of "I'm OK, You're OK" -- and we know that's not quite the same thing. I got to San Francisco when the celebrants of the Summer of Love were still crashing from that high from the three preceding years. Comin' down hard. I was at the St. Francis movie house on Market Street when the Hell's Angles took over the theater to tell their side of the story of how murder and mayhem happened on their watch during the Rolling Stones show at Altamont. The Summer of Love was officially over. The Haight-Ashbury, once the nexus of flower power, eventually became a repository for human driftwood. So many came to San Francisco to find paradise. Every utopian experiment through the ages has failed.


A fellow at the Medical Examiner's office once explained why it is often difficult to identify bodies that end up in his purview -- persons with no friends, no known relatives -- wrapped in a shroud of uncertainty and in a sheet purchased by The City.


"Some people come here to get lost," observed Alan Pringle. Why is San Francisco a landscape of souls who desire obscurity and anonymity -- this cool, grey city of forgetfulness?


"It's true in my experience that people from all over the country come west to shed the lives they had," Pringle said. "That includes family and friends -- everything." He was unceasingly amazed by what his research told him about people who end up on the tables in the coroner's office.


"At times, you're stunned by what they have run away from, never to look back."


Oscar Wilde noted, while visiting the City-by-the-Bay, "It's an odd thing, but anybody who disappears is said to be in San Francisco."


Pringle agreed that old Oscar was on to something. Invariably the Golden Gate Bridge comes to mind, particularly to the mind of the Medical Examiner For some. it's the end of the line. There's something attractive about the notion of vanishing and perhaps starting all over again. But for over the 1,500 persons who have jumped into the cold, swirling waters of the Golden Gate, there might have been the realization we take ourselves with us wherever we go -- including our psyche, our sentiments and our sadness.


But it never crossed our minds in the summer of 1967. The message came in the music, and there was so much of it -- the Jefferson Airplane ... the Grateful Dead ... The Charlatans ... Moby Grape ... The Beau Brummels ... Janis Joplin & Big Brother. It was all so intriguing that George Harrison came here with his girlfriend, Patti Boyd, to see it for himself. He was shocked. "I went to Haight-Ashbury, expecting it to be this brilliant place." Harrison said. "It was just full of horrible, spotty, dropout kids on drugs. It certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug culture. It wasn’t what was I thought of all these groovy people having spiritual awakenings and being artistic. It was like the Bowery, it was like alcoholism, it was like any addiction." George was so horrified that he swore off drugs. He was surely one of the who few came to San Francisco and got straight. Years later, he and Ravi Shankar held a concert to raise money for the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic.


Ah, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I have to think with affection about the great adventurers of the time in this great experiment called the Summer of Love. (Remember when we would "experiment" with psychedelic drugs, and "experiment" with all sorts of sex? Well, perhaps you don't) There were the counter-culture adventurers, countering a culture of greed, militarism, and prejudice -- Wavy Gravy ... Chet Helms ... Emmett Grogan, founder of The Diggers ... Allen Cohen, founder of The Oracle, the newspaper of record in the Haight. For the most part, they meant well. It seems attractive in some ways now. Peace and love were apportioned for awhile but reality soon rolled into town. Multitudes came to San Francisco that summer in 1967, as pilgrims once came to the New World, to find fame and fortune -- maybe even to get on the cover of Rolling Stone. But, above all, the goal was freedom. They came here to get away from a life that they were eager to leave behind. They came here to connect with a new family. It doesn't always work out, though. Many simply got lost all over again.



Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay: Bit, Bites, Adventures in Radio and Real Life. He's also a columnist for the SF Northside.