The open door and the beckoning stair
Month: June 2014
Triumph and Recrimination
Whatever day you had today, you didn’t shank the final penalty kick off the post to be eliminated from World Cup competition. Gonzalo Jara, in the moment which will define him for posterity.
An eighth of an inch adjustment on the downswing of the foot, and the ball bends left, flutters the back of the net, and 150 million people watch you circle the pitch like Achilles, arms extended like a hawk, hair bouncing in super-slo motion on the Man-glam cam. But for that, you’re now the answer to a trivia question. You’re that guy. The guy who could have deep-sixed Brazil on their home field, but biffed it instead. I think of the numerous 1/8th of an inch adjustments I’ve made in my life, and how so many of them could have gone differently, even tragically. Moments like this make me grateful for everything I have in my life. Even if it’s a stucco box in Van Nuys.
Springbok, 10 AM
I spent the Ghana-USA match chatting with a guy from Guadalajara, now an American citizen, who candidly told me he had a public breakdown, with tears, on the patio of Springbok in 2010 when Mexico was eliminated. In the round of 16. If they got past the quarterfinal this summer, he couldn’t be responsible for himself.
Both Mexico and USA have advanced to the knockout round. Only Belgium, Argentina, Netherlands and Greece stand between the joy of the past two weeks and a city-dividing, household-dividing, bullets-in-the-air, flags-on-trucks, beer-bottles-in-the-streets test of loyalty in the semi-finals. What then? A moment of truth for Los Angeles.
Mexico 3, Croatia 1
The hometown team prevailed in a wild second period, advancing to the knockout round. Neighbors take to the Boulevard to make their pleasure known.
In the milky June twilight
In Dogpatch
Family drama summoned me back to Northern California this week. Driving through the Dubai on the Pacific that is now San Francisco, I wondered: are there any remnants of old, industrial SF anywhere, which are still….sort of, functionally industrial? Then I remembered this neighborhood across the freeway from Potrero Hill, down by the waterfront, which I used to drive through on the way to Giant games at Candlestick, and made a detour. Fittingly, it not only now has a name, and a trolley stop, but a historical designation.
Dogpatch used to be a neighborhood of shipyards and loading docks and warehouses with simple, inelegant (by Victorian standards) clapboard houses for the families who worked there, often built by the owners themselves. Because it survived the 1906 earthquake and fire intact, it has some of the oldest housing stock in the city.
They are put to different uses today. The love labor of John Swan, shipbuilder, now hosts something called Uncanny Communications. As well as something called theLab:
But what of all the old ship and ironworks? Within the carcass of those buildings, someone, somewhere, must be doing something with their hands down there.
Most of the original buildings simply no longer exist, however, having been razed and replaced by live/work condominia. Work which perhaps involves frequent trips to Piccino. I type in envy.
I kept walking. Between two gravel yards servicing the many big crane projects in the nearby China Basin/Mission Bay area, a narrow street descended down toward the waterfront. I followed it around a corner and came upon a cluster of brick buildings which once belonged to the old Union Iron Works. They were cordoned off with chain link and barbed wire.
Venturing beyond, I came to this vast warehouse, open and unlocked. I wandered in, thinking perhaps I had found what I was looking for.
I followed the conduits down from the ceiling to this service panel. Here I reached the end of the journey. But where was I? According to Google, the former Plate Shop of Bethlehem Steel. But why was it empty? No one was writing code here, or designing hemp shoes of making fair trade cacao-based desserts.
On my way out, I found the answer to the riddle. The last industrial space in Dogpatch is, fittingly, a food truck rodeo.
Ready to launch
Two months after rescue from the feral cat porch, the box of kittens are ready for adoption. Literally, they’re climbing the walls. Available at Glendale Humane Society this weekend.
Conjunction of desire
Barbecue and plastic surgery. Fatburger and plastic surgery. Big Gulp and plastic surgery. Just to the lower right, and out of view, beer and snack foods…and plastic surgery. There is no ‘Or’ in this tableau. The American Id is unrestrained. I want to eat what I want to eat when I want to eat it and I want to look like the people in the ads when I’m when I’m washing it down with carbonation. And why can’t I, dammit? Billboard riddle: why is ‘acne’ highlighted here? Has Van Nuys been profiled by the cosmetics industry as a bad skin neighborhood?
Luck will find you
Up on Fryman Canyon
