Need To Go Anywhere

I drove down Bush St. and found myself a city garage on Bush St.  8:15AM or so but there were still plenty of parking places. I needed to change my shoes.  These loafers that are easy to slip on and off will leave my hamstring hamstrung if I need to walk more than a block or two.  I laced up a pair of boots sitting there in the front seat, as new cars came in and took up the other empty spots.

I’d assumed I’d go and find a café to work in before ducking in to my 9:00AM meeting.  But I’d already had my coffee and my phone was happily charging in the vehicle’s port.  Alicia Clancy was laughing away as she always does during her “Morning Cup of Jazz” show, before throwing on some Christian McBride there on KCSM.  The phone provides a WiFi connectivity for my computer.  I don’t need to go anywhere.

I sent reminders to people whom I’d planned to meet, finding artful, disarming ways to essentially say, “don’t forget, you’d said you’d meet me today at such and such a time.”  I checked the map to see just how far it was I’d be walking to the first, and the second and the third meetings.  Certainly unlike Manhattan, I can expect to be able to walk to most of these downtown, SoMa meetings.

The stairwell down to the first floor reeked of urine.  I drew the connection quickly that it was an easy, unmonitored area to access for such a thing and didn’t that bode poorly for all my luggage in the back of the car?  Did this place have any security?  I walked along Sutter towards Market and considered all the San Franciscans going about their morning matters.  It seemed a more aching chasm than I’d recalled on this sunny day, between all the smart, young beautiful people and the homeless and the outpatients and the hopeless.   The density of New York somehow allows for more humanity in between the two extremes so the overall feeling is more diversified and more balanced.

Up on the thirty-fifth floor of a tower I couldn’t help but be gob smacked when I walked into my 9:00AM meetings office.  The city and the Bay was all laid out beneath me, glistening the way San Francisco does when the cutting sun hits the fog bath’s remaining residue.

Saturday 5/20/17