Tolerance Part 2

...continued

Last weekend I attended the 60th birthday party of Tom Balk who is the father of my good friend Aubri Balk who flew in from New York where she now lives to surprise her father. I’ve been to several parties at the spacious Balk residence in the Castro. Aubri’s mother Michelle is usually the host and life of the party. She is quite a character, in another life she was probably a vaudevillian stage performer. There was a small open bar set up in the backyard offering champagne, beer, wine, and an assortment of proofed booze. The crowd was a little older and definitely more indulgent than parties I had recently attended. When a gaggle of gay neighbors arrived the energy of the party picked up a few notches. The straight men kept to themselves for the most part but the wives and gay men started partying like it’s 1999. They were hootin and hollerin and having a blast with Michelle being the main instigator of the madness. It was all in good fun. That’s how it usually is with parties at Aubri’s parents house.

Round midnight after getting liquored up pretty good Mickey (Aubri’s ex boyfriend), Rad ( a cool dude who I just met), and I decided it was time to hit the pavement. It’s about a 20 minute walk back to my neighborhood north of the Panhandle right through the heart of the Castro. On a Saturday night the Castro is like Mardi Gras. The sidewalks are packed and the bars are overflowing. Mickey had been dropping hints all day he wanted to hit one of the Castro bars on the way home. Mickey is a barfly straight up. He’s one of those people who can walk into any bar in any part of the City and know at least half the people in the place. It wasn’t too difficult to get Rad and me to comply. Mickey steered us to a bar called Moby Dick (perfect name for a gay bar) on the corner of 18th and Hartford. Moby Dick is a popular neighborhood bar that has been around for 30 years. I’ve biked past it many times but this is my first time actually going into the place. It’s a cavernous bar by San Francisco standards. The first thing you notice walking in is the huge fish tank above the bar. The neon blue illumination from the fish tank and the multicolor glow from the four large screen televisions provided all the interior lighting for the place giving it a disco feel but nobody was dancing. The place was wall to wall humid people, some playing pool in the back and most in groups of threes, fours, and fives, conversating and enjoying the liquidity. The mix of gender was about 70% men and 30% women. Mickey and I and one other guy were the only brothas in the place. We worked our way through the crowd to the bar front and center and bumped into four dudes that new Mickey. Of course I was not at all surprised. The guy is know in all corners. It turns out these guys work with Mickey and Rad. Introductions were made and the guys started talking shop. Since I wasn’t privy to the workplace details I spent my time perusing the scene and checking out the crowd. Being 6’5” as I am it is the logical thing to do. One of Mickey’s buddies pick pocketed his wallet and produced a crispy $100 bill. The pilferer looked at me with a big grin like the cat the got the canary and said “He won’t care.” and in the next 10 minutes ordered three rounds of Cazadores tequila shots on Mickey’s dime. I’m part agave, tequila is in my blood so the shots went down without a fight. Since I had been partaking of the nectar all day and I wasn’t looking for a date I decided it was a good time to say my goodbyes and head for the casa. The semi short walk was enough to sober me up. I reflected on my brief foray into Moby Dick and decided it wasn’t any different than many of the other bars I have been to in my life (quite a few). All that was missing was the skirt chasing rituals. I’m still not sure how that all plays out in a gay bar. Nobody at Moby Dick hit on me, grabbed my butt, or gave me funny or dirty looks. Gay men can usually tell straight guys from gay guys and they respect the boundaries. I could do a whole night of drinking and socializing at Moby Dick no problem. It had a fun and festive atmosphere and the people seemed down to earth and were enjoying themselves. When gay people get together they know how to have a good time. Overall I’d say generally speaking gay people have a better time socializing with each other than straight people do. In all my years living in San Francisco I have never met a gay person who was lonely or didn’t have a ton of friends.

The Castro like much of the City has been gentrified and has become more mainstream in its outward appearance. In my early days of living in the City one of my roommates was a waitress at Sparky’s Diner located on the east end of the Castro on Church street. Sparky’s was the place to go to get your grub on after the bars closed. The only other places to go were the Lucky Penny and Denny’s and those places were strictly for out-of-towners. My roommate worked the late night shift with one of the members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Sisters were a group of men who dressed up in nun habits and gowns, crucifixes, leather, chains, fish net stockings, and white Elizabethan face paint. They’ve been showing up at all the gay themed events in the City since the early 80’s. They’re a combination performance/activist group. They had lots of friends and imitators in and around the Castro who liked to hang out at Sparky’s during the witching hours. I would often see men walking around the Castro in outrageous drag, day and night. It was a normal part of the scene. The 70’s Castro dress code of handlebar mustache, tight t-shirt, jeans, and motorcycle boots of the Harvey Milk days is long gone and if you were to take one of the many tour busses through the Castro you’d be hard pressed to see any guys in drag. It’s even hard to find them in the Tenderloin which used to be Drag Queen Central. In the Castro it’s no longer Halloween 365 days a year. The Folsom Street Faire and the Gay Pride parade are still going strong but other than those few days the Castro looks like Anytown USA. Like many minority groups in America gays and lesbians are mainstreaming their look to gain greater acceptance from the Moral Majority. They want to get married and raise families like everybody else. Rapists, murderers, serial killers, Satanists, and Atheists are allowed to marry but our society doesn’t want to extend that right to gay and lesbian people. When you have been around gay and lesbian people and know them from experience it just seems ridiculous to deny them marriage rights. They are human beings, no better and no worse than other human beings. When are we going to get off the high horse?

Tolerance

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet)

Poeme sur la vie naturelle (1756)

In my humble opinion there is no legitimate argument against the validity of homosexual relationships. What is offered up as logic and rationale to invalidate homosexual relationships are really just excuses for bigotry, discrimination, sexism, and chauvinism. I don’t expect humans to be perfect. No doubt we are a flawed species but our flaws are not absolute. The greatness of leading a purposeful, prosperous, and generous life is recognizing, challenging, and overcoming our flaws. As social beings living in rigid, structured societies it has become easy to live behind the wall of mob mentality and groupthink. No experience necessary, just eat up the propaganda, digest it, and dump the load into the cesspool of intolerance. That’s the easiest and laziest way to deal with our ignorance. Just grab the lowest, rotting fruit on the tree.

For now let’s put that all aside. It’s not going anywhere. Its been with us since the beginning of time and we aren’t about to leave it at the doorstep. Instead let us look at personal responsibility, what we stand for as individuals and actual life experience. What we deem as our personal responsibility and what we construct as our individual system of morality is meaningless until it slams up against the reality that opposes and challenges it. It’s just petulant prose and pious theory, like words chiseled on stone tablets ready to be thrown into the fires of the condemned. Experience rarely validates the predisposed dispositions. Rather, experience liberates us from propaganda and intellectual bondage and illuminates the void of ignorance and superstition so that where we were once blind we are allowed to see.

When I moved to San Francisco from Los Angeles 18 years ago I was neutral when it came to the gay community and their mission of achieving the human rights of love, marriage, and community. Like many I was one who would give lip service to the cause but I wasn’t willing to stand on the front lines and fight the good fight. In a sense I was blind because what I believed was not based on any kind of reality or experience. My beliefs were challenged the day I splashed down on the shores of the City by the trifecta of home, work, and community. My first set of roommates were all former graduates of Cal Arts. It was a household of quintessential San Francisco equilibrium; two men and two women, two black and two white, four artistic individuals expressing themselves through distinctly different mediums. All we needed to be a true prototype San Francisco family was homosexuality which we lacked as we are all straight heteros, breeders by another name. We had a four bedroom flat with two bathrooms. The bathroom split was not based on gender as it is everywhere else on the planet. Ours was split by our ethnicity. I didn’t make the rules. I was just the new guy following along with the way things had been established. Truth be told there was no Jim Crowe angle it’s just how the math worked out. As a matter of fact if I had to choose a bathroom partner I would have chosen Pat anyway. Pat was a sista who over time became the spiritual big sister I never had. We kept a spartan, minimalist bathroom. Between the two of us we had no prescriptions and barely enough hygiene products to fill half a medicine cabinet. The other bathroom bonded to Sten the stoic Swede and Fraulein Alexis the cabaret singer was like a bohemian sanctuary adorned with half melted candles, fruit flavored incense, potpourri, varying sizes of orange plastic prescription containers with adult proof tops, multiplying bottles of hair and skin products, and enough knick knacks to have their own booth at the Haight Street Faire. When Pat or I had to use the bathroom we did our business without much fanfare, in and out. With Sten and Alexis a trip to the bathroom was more like an excursion. It was a combination of personal hygiene and communing with the gods.

Pat’s best friend Susan was a lesbian. She was the first gay/lesbian person I would get to know. Often on a Saturday or Sunday we’d go out to breakfast at the Pork Store, Ella’s, or Crescent City Café with Susan and her partner Mary. Susan was the feminine one and she was all blonde hair and smiles. Mary was the masculine half. She had short dark hair and she dressed in muscle t-shirts with Marlboro Reds rolled up the shoulder sleeve, 501 jeans, and black work boots. After getting to know Susan and Mary I realized that the roles of masculine and feminine were just a masquerade. When you got past the look what you had were two authentic and good hearted human beings. They talked about what everybody else talks about, their jobs, their friends, their relationships, their neighbors, politics, religion, shopping, and they also talked about starting a family. Why wouldn’t they? They are human beings. Why would they not have a strong desire to have a family? It would be like not having a strong desire to breathe, eat, or make love.

My first job in San Francisco was working for the Buchanan YMCA across the street from Japantown in the Western Addition. The YMCA of San Francisco was an association of branches spread throughout the City serving the various neighborhoods and districts. Each branch was a reflection of the district it represented. The Metropolitan branch was the administrative entity for all the branches and it was located in the Financial district. On the eight floor of a highrise the Metro staff wore urban professional clothing, dark suits, ties, and dresses in contrast to the branch folks who wore polo shirts emblazoned with the YMCA logo and branch name. Metro had quite a few gay and lesbian employees, mostly concentrated in the Personnel and Finance departments. As a Program Director these are the departments I usually dealt with when making my pilgrimages to the downtown offices. As a new employee I found the gay and lesbian staff to be the friendliest and most welcoming. If you were a branch person you could feel the air of superiority when entering the Metro offices which I guess was inevitable given they were the head of the association. It was all very formal. Suits and dresses zipping to and fro ready for the next meeting armed with manila folders, leather briefcases, and stern faces. The gay and lesbian staff stood out because they were the ones who would acknowledge your presence and treat you like a relevant human being. They’d chat you up and try to get to know you as a person while most of the straight staff exhibited the business-as-usual stone faced bureaucracy. Each branch of the YMCA is made up of its staff, its members, and its army of volunteers. The Western Addition due to its cheap rents, diverse neighborhoods, and proximity to the Castro district attracted a lot of gay and lesbian people and that was reflected in Buchanan’s membership and volunteer base. Each department of the Y had a volunteer committee that acted as advocate and a good number of citizens on the committees were gay and lesbian. As a director I worked directly with the committees and I found the gay and lesbian committee members to be the most reliable, dedicated, and hard working. They had a strong desire to contribute to the community they lived in.

After six years and three different roommate situations I found myself living on Grove Street a half a block west of Alamo Square and half a block east of Divisadero. I lived in a studio apartment in a nine unit building. Half the people in the building were gay or lesbian. My neighbor across the hall was a Jewish lesbian. On the first floor lived a gay couple, one black and the other white. They were two buffed out little guys who had a couple of teeny toy dogs. On more than one occasion after coming home from the bars past 2 am I’d run into one of them dressed only in bun hugger briefs and flip flops walking the toy dogs in the hallway with plastic bag in hand. Neither one had any issue being practically naked and letting their toy dogs drop loads on the hallway carpet. They’d see me and smile and ask me how my evening was. I didn’t trip because for San Francisco this was normal. In some other part of the country this scenario would play out much differently. It could be perceived as shocking or distasteful, even immoral. It would come down to perception because the reality is its just someone walking their dog and taking care of nature’s business. I could take issue with the dogs shatting on the carpet but they were tiny dogs who shat tiny, dry shats that were easy to pick up and didn’t soil the carpet. If it had been some huge bear of a dog with loose bowels well then I’d have to call 911 or something as that would be just disgusting by anyone’s standards. It’s something I find truly disturbing on the sidewalks which unfortunately in San Francisco is an everyday occurrence. It’s a dog loving city and there are some things you have to learn to tolerate. Living in an urban community one must learn to tolerate because all around one will find things that are slightly to very annoying but one learns to live with it because we all do at least one thing that is annoying to our neighbors. That is the nature of the urban beast. This is something a lot of just-from-the-suburb new homeowners don’t quite understand. They spend top dollar to purchase their dream shack and then get frustrated because the neighborhood won’t bend and adapt to their suburban sensibilities. This is the true cause of friction between home owners and renters. Homeowners want a dictatorship and renters want to live and let live. I know because I have been on both sides of the equation.

...to be continued

Bukowski

Dinosaurus, We

by Charles Bukowski

Born like this

Into this

As the chalk face smiles

As Mr. Death laughs

As the elevator breaks

As political landscapes dissolve

As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree

As the oily fish spit out their oily prey

As the sun is masked

We are

Born like this

Into this

Into these carefully mad wars

Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness

Into bars where people no longer speak to each other

Into a country where jails are full and the madhouses closed

Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

Born into this

Walking and living this

Dying because of this

Muted because of this

Fooled by this

Used by this

Pissed on by this

Made crazy and sick by this

Made violent

Made Inhuman

By this

The heart is blackened

The fingers reach for the throat

The gun

The knife

The bomb

The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god

The fingers reach for the bottle

The pill

The powder

We are born into this sorrowful deadliness

We are born into government 60 years in debt

That soon we will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt

And the banks will burn

Money will be useless

The will be open and unpunished murder in the streets

It will be guns and roving mobs

Land will be useless

Food will become a diminishing return

Nuclear power will be taken over by the many

Explosions will continually shake the earth

Radiated robot men will stalk each other

The rich and chosen will watch from space platforms

Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground

The sun will not be seen and it will always be night

Trees will die

Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men

The sea will be poisoned

The lakes and rivers will vanish

Rain will be the new gold

The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind

The last few survivors will be overtaken by new & hideous diseases

The space platforms will be destroyed by attrition

The petering out of supplies

The natural effect of general decay

And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard

Born out of that

The sun still hidden there

Awaiting the next chapter

Published April 1, 1992, The Last Night On Earth Poems

How do you feel after reading that?

The Lone Stranger Part 2

…continued

In my previous entry I was writing about some of my favorite neighborhood places and how things have changed in the Western Addition along the Divisadero corridor. Café Abir, the Bean Bag Café, and the Film Yard Video are all still kicking but there are some other places I have to speak of, some still standing, others gone for good.


Preceding the establishments already mentioned is the legendary Eddie’s Café. Café is really not the appropriate word to describe Eddie’s. Greasy spoon soul food diner would be a more fitting label. Eddie’s was one of the first places I started frequenting when I moved to San Francisco in 1991. I have no idea how long Eddie’s has been in existence but from the looks of the place I’d say about a thousand years. The place was clean but it had that ancient dirt, grease, and grime that tends to build up in the nooks and crannies as the decades go by. The place was small and cut up by a half small to medium sized booths with classic red/white checkered cloth tables and red vinyl covered seats. The focus of the place was the old wooden counter that was long enough to accommodate 7 red vinyl covered bar stools. Five across the front and the coveted two on the wrap around end by the large plate glass windows looking out to Fulton Street. Across the bar was a set of wooden cubbies topped by a stainless steel counter that separated the kitchen from the restaurant where all the food came up. That’s where all the action was. From the counter you could see the cooks cooking and you could see clean dishes being stacked in the cubby holes and you could see the transaction ka-chinging on the old push button cash register located at the end of the counter. On the walls there was a plethora of old stickers and hand made posters usually advertising some local band or event, all of them outdated by at least 10 years. To round the place out there was a coin op rotary phone and a massive juke box that looked like it survived the 50’s playing soul music featuring much of the music I grew up listening to in the 60’s and 70’s featuring legends like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and the Temptations.


I started going to Eddie’s because it was in the neighborhood and it was one of the two or three places in the City that served grits and other soul food staples like catfish, collard greens, and ox tail. Eddie’s closed at 3pm so usually one went there for breakfast and Eddie’s featured the typical breakfast menu of eggs any way you like, pancakes, sausage, bacon, hash browns, biscuits, and grits. What made Eddie’s special was less the food than the colorful clientele that frequented the place and the group of fantastic people that worked there. There was a bond that existed with Eddie’s regulars and the never changing staff. Walking into Eddie’s was like walking into the Western Addition of yesteryear when the neighborhood was predominantly black. It was one of the few places left in the City outside Bayview/Hunter’s Point you could walk into and find a place filled completely with black people. You had old timers setting up at the counter with the daily paper as well has young hip hoppers and aspiring rappers who’d probably been dining on Eddie’s food since they were knee high. Everybody got along like one big family. Eddie’s had that working class chic that many newcomers to San Francisco would stereotype as ghetto. When I moved to the City the Western Addition was considered a dangerous area to be avoided. Being from Los Angeles to me that was absolutely laughable, even ludicrous. For the regulars Eddie’s was a home away from home. Everybody knew each other and it was the kind of place you could speak loudly as some black folks like to do or engage in counter-slapping-from-the-gut laughter which was always prevalent. Conversation flowed freely from barbershop style debates to the daily “whatcha been up to” community reporting. What made this all work was the crew at Eddie’s. You might expect the workers to be all black (which they once were) but the reality was they were all Korean. The formerly black owned Eddie’s was run by a group of Koreans who inherited the customer base as well as the restaurant. They didn’t change the menu or the ambience, they just kept it going while adding their unique brand of friendship and service. I don’t think the group was blood related, they seemed more like a bunch of friends who got together to operate a restaurant. The were all about 40-50 years old in age, three women and five men. The men manned the kitchen and the cash register and the women took care of the customers. One woman handled the counter, another handled the booths, and another handled the dishes. It was the same people everyday doing the same job, never a change in duties and never a change in the people doing the work. They were on a first name basis with all the regulars and treated them with dignity and respect, like a family. Walking into Eddie’s was like walking into a family affair. To these African Americans Eddie’s was the neighborhood hangout. You could tell by how well the people settled into the place, like they had been there since eternity. People felt welcomed and that is an important feeling for black people who have a history of feeling “unwelcomed”.


At some point in the mid 90’s just before the dot com takeover began Eddie’s was “discovered” by the newly anointed and mostly white slacker crowd. This crowd was representative of the wave of people that came to SF after the Loma Prieta quake drawn by the cheap rents of the Western Addition and the anything goes lifestyle. These were the first of the tatooed and pierced brigade that still smoked heavily and lived for the moment. These were the people that gave birth to Burning Man and Critical Mass. Eddie’s became popular with this crowd because it was the perfect place to with a group of friends to relive the previous night of clubbing and partying. On weekends there’d be a dozen or more people waiting for a booth to open up sipping on coffee acquired from across the street at Café Abir, ready to stuff themselves with cheap eats and exchange stories of the previous night’s debauchery. The regulars though present, relented graciously to the weekenders but they were still the people Eddie’s catered to first and foremost. I became semi-regular and I always enjoyed walking in and being recognized by name and taking my usual spot at the counter. I didn’t even need a menu. If I sat down and started reading the paper they knew what to bring me; two eggs over easy with grits, hash browns, bacon, biscuits, and a large milk, all served with a warm and friendly genuine smile. They would always ask me how I was doing at home and on the job and they would always ask about my mother who I treated to breakfast there on one of her visits. The people working at Eddie’s always remember when you bring family there to dine. It’s what they are all about, family.


In America often there is talk about the strength of diversity but a lot of the time that’s all it is, talk. Eddie’s was the real deal. Everyday two separate and distinct sub-cultures became one, the sum of it’s whole creating something greater than it’s parts. That has been my experience of life in the City. My San Francisco friends have come and gone but while were together it was like family and each of them left something with me that has made me a better person.

You can't go back home to your family-

to a young man's dream of fame and

glory

to a country cottage away from strife and

conflict

to the father you have lost

to the old forms and systems of things which seemed

everlasting but are changing all the

time

Thomas Wolfe

You Can't Go Home Again (1940)

The Lone Stranger

All of the Utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels

Fyodor Dostoyevski

Diary of a Writer (1873)

On this clear-as-water Tuesday night I am penning my thoughts in the 821 bar located at 821 Divisadero.  It's a feast or famine type of bar.  Last week I was in here with my good friend Libby and other than the Colombian bartender Juan we were the only one's sucking air in the place.  The music was low and Juan put on a show charming us with is megawatt smile and samples of concoctions he was inventing behind the bar.  Tonight the place is fairly full.  There are two semi-large groups anchoring the bar.  One group is here to suck down some brews and watch the Giants who are absolutely clobbering the Rockies.  The other group is here to celebrate someone's birthday as evidenced by the raucous happy birthday serenade just delivered to someone in the group.  The place is earplug loud.  Everybody is at top volume with conversations jostling like a game of Jenga.  At times some of the women are actually shrieking in that fingernail-across-the-chalkboard manner.  Not exactly music to my ears but I will survive.   My buddy Libby is sitting next to me chatting it up n Spanish with her companion for the evening Enrique.  We didn't arrive together we just happened by chance to pick the same place to hang out.   She probably thought it would be a nice quiet place to practice her Spanish.  NOT!   The volume of the music is way up challenging the crowd for the Master of Decibels title.  Juan's movements are robotic.  He's laboring to make sure all whistles are wet.  The cheshire cat grin is temporarily in storage but he's a born charmer so he musters up some energy to sweet talk a duo of ladies drinking Chardonnay at the bar.  I'm not too sure if the crowd are locals.  I don't see any tatoos, body piercings, unique hair stylings, funky clothing or transgender types.  Maybe it's me.  The neighborhood is always changing.  For most of my existence here in the City Divis has been an urban gulag attracting all varieties of fringe type people.  This crowd seems more mainstream, more like dressed down suburbanites than born-to-be-wild transplant San Franciscans. 

 A couple of doors down in between the tatoo parlor and Cafe Abir is the neighborhood video store the Film Yard.  It's the place to go if you want to see tried and true locals.  We are fortunate in the Netflix-digital download era to have the Film Yard.  It's a throwback place with that funky SF vibe and hand written signs by the employee's of suggestions of movies you should watch that you probably never heard of.  On any given day the owner Andrew might be working the counter.   Andrew is a hulk of a man who's size belies his graciousness.  He loves to play computer games and would rather talk to you about that than films.  I've had several lively conversations with him about the latest shooter or rpg.  That's how all the establishments in the neighborhood used to be, owner operated.  There used to be another video store two blocks down just below Hayes owned by a Korean family.  Alice, the matriarch of the family ran the place 24/7.   She would always be accompanied by her young son who would behind the counter playing with his latest action figure or crayon drawing super hero extravaganzas.  I remember when he was just a toddler barely able to walk.  By the time they closed up shop he was well into grade school and I would always marvel at his super hero drawings she would post on the walls.  The kid definitely had talent.  Like many Korean shop owners Alice was super nice and spoke in a sing song style of English.  On some occasions during off hours I would walk in to drop off a movie and she would be on the phone gossiping with friends in her native hard accented and guttural Korean.  As soon as she would see me she would switch back to her high pitched, songbird American voice and give me a warm greeting.  I always got a big kick out of that.  

Half a block up from Alice's video store was the Bean Bag Cafe on the northwest point of Divis and Hayes run by two of favorite neighborhood people Mo and Luba.  The Bean Bag opened up in the mid Nineties not long after the ever popular Cafe Abir.  It was the place you went to for peace and quiet in contrast to the shake and bake, seen-and-be-seen scene at Cafe Abir.  I started going to the Bean Bag whenever the line at Cafe Abir would get backed up and start snaking out the door.  A brotha shouldn't have to wait in line 12 deep just to get the morning java.   Like many places I frequented in the neighborhood I became a regular with priviliges at Abir.  I could make eye contact with one of the baristas and they'd pour me my usual large coffee and I could bypass the line and just throw a couple of bucks on the counter, grab my coffee, and be on my way.  When I didn't feel like doing that I'd just walk down two blocks to the Bean Bag where there was never a line and empty seats aplenty for me to stretch out and do my daily perusal of the San Francisco Chronicle.  Another reason I liked going there was because of the sparkling personality behind the counter named Kristian.  In the early days before Mo and Luba became fixtures Kristian single handedly held the place down.  He was a jolly lad who had short dyed blonde hair and crystal clear blue eyes. Kristian had a twinge of an accent, perhaps German or Dutch.  He was from the neighborhood and everyone who came into the Bean Bag was treated like a best friend.  He may or may not have been gay, that's something I never ask people I meet in the City.  He was definitely gay in the sense that he exuded happiness and good cheer about 99.9 percent of the time.  

After a few years of existence and finding it's niche the Bean Bag made a name for itself by expanding its food menu from the usual croissant, pastries, crepes, and deli sandwich to adding appetizing burgers and fries.  They extended their hours and started serving delicious and cheap pasta dinners and got a few beers on tap.  It was rumored that a chef from North Beach had defected to the Western Addition and was the creator of the distinguished list of pasta meals now gracing the menu.  For $4.99 you'd get a pasta dish that could last two meals and hefty slice of cheesebread.  This was right about the time the dot.com was getting ready to rearrange the City's priorities when everybody I knew was still living on the cheap.  The scrumptious pasta dinners for under $5 was the deal of the century so I was hittin it about 2-3 times a week, always call in/pick up which any wise San Franciscans know is the only way to go.  As the word got out and the price creeped up a few bucks the Bean Bag transformed itself into a place where you could actually go to sit down and have a meal.  This is when Mo and Luba came on the scene.  Mo was the proprietor.  He was a handsome, well mannered guy who wore his long black hair in a ponytail.  You could tell Mo worked out from the muscles straining under his black tight fitting t-shirts.  He was dark olive skinned and had that Mayan look.  He was a traveler and always had a tale to tell from his latest adventure in Thailand, Brazil, or some other exotic place beyond our borders.  Mo was the owner but it was Luba who commanded the place.  She was a sexy, robust woman with straight long bright blonde hair and had naturally tanned glowing skin which was always on display.  Day or night, winter/spring/summer/fall she always looked like she just arrived from a backyard cookout with her casual attire of shorts and tasteful tank tops.  She was a double-taker, the kind of woman you'd walk by and have to look at twice... or three or four times if you were a dawg like me.  She had the force of a field general but was also personable in a way that could draw you into conversation and the next thing you knew you'd be telling her your life story. Whenever I would pass by the Bean Bag even if I wasn't planning on getting anything I'd drop in and talk to her for a bit.  Mo and Luba worked from early afternoon to closing at 10pm when the Bean Bag transformed itself from standard cafe to neighborhood restaurant extraordinaire.  It was my favorite place to eat for years.  At the high point of dining there I used to call Luba and tell her I'd be there in 10 minutes.  When I arrived there'd be a table in the back with a glass of red wine, a crispy salad, and a hot piece of cheesebread waiting for me.  I always came at 9:30ish for the last half hour when the place would almost be empty so I could have Luba all to myself.  She'd entertain me with gossipy conversation while I dined and on quite a few occassions I got to be guinea pig for new crepe desserts.   When I was a real good boy I'd get my whole meal on the house and I was a real good boy quite often.  It was as good as it gets, why would I even bother eating anywhere else?  

Like many of my all time favorite city hangouts it is all just a memory now.  Back in 2006 Mo started selling beer on tap for $1.29 a pint after 3pm everyday.  Yet another deal of the century at the Bean Bag.  During the day the Bean Bag was populated by the wi-fi crowd.  The free wi-fi made it so popular that the local snatch-and-run laptop gangs were punking unsuspecting customers about once a week.   One gangster would walk in and cause a diversion while one or more cohorts would bogart a laptop and break for the door and bolt in any direction the wind could take you.  Now the bargain basement brews started attracting the young and restless who would come in groups of four, five, and six or more and liquefy themselves to their hearts content.  They weren't exactly neighborhood people so the atmosphere changed and it became more like the Zeitgeist bar on 14th and Duboce  which I'll have to tell you about in another entry.  Mo and Luba were seen less and less and at present they aren't seen at all.  Some hired hands now handle the mostly beer drinking afternoon/evening crowd.  On my way to the 821 bar this evening I walked by the Bean Bag and it was overflowing with twentysomethings  chugging beer in plastic cups.  On the outside tables I noticed a few people smacking on Popeye's chicken (which is right across the street) washing it down with their Stella Artois and Prohibition Ales.  That's the difference between now and then.  In the beginning you had loyalty.  It's the loyal people that make an establishment a second home and provide just enough business and population to keep a place from going under in the first years of business.  Once a place gets popular and established and becomes the latest cool place to hangout you get the people who are just looking to be part of the in-crowd or those looking for the latest in bargain dining.  I was loyal as man's best friend to the Bean Bag as I was a frequent flyer, even after the the formerly $4.99 pasta had breached the $10.00 mark and the takeover by the beer hall crowd.  As I have learned painfully, time and time again, nothing good in San Francisco lasts forever....

...to be continued.

Second Class Citizen

I know that I am a black man in a white world... I know I never had it made.

Jackie Robinson

On paper the United States of America is a very attractive place. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights champion the protection of rights of individual citizens. Although originally absent, through amendments the idea of equality has joined liberty and freedom as the foundations of our country….on paper. Things tend to always look better on paper than in the real world. Even though our country is over 200 years old tens of millions of Americans are still second class citizens. Being African American and an individual who is always traveling perpendicular to the status quo I am keenly aware of my second class citizenship. I ride a bike instead of driving a car, politically I’m what most people would call a radical, I wear my hair Mohawk style, I’m a straight guy who wears ear rings, I don’t subscribe to any of the major religions (I consider myself an Agnostic Humanist) and I believe that people are more important than allegiance to nationalism, patriotism, and international and national imaginary boundaries. To top it all off I live in San Francisco, a place many Americans see as subversive and out of touch with the rest of the country.


Progress does not just happen organically in the United States. The status quo has to be challenged, in the streets, in the courts, and in the hearts and minds of Americans. Without The Struggle things would never change. Plans are made and people make sacrifices, sometimes they must sacrifice their lives for the possibility of a better tomorrow. When progress is made it is not an end, there is always the fight that remains against those that would usurp and undermine that progress. In the history of America Africans have spent more time in bondage than in freedom. Africans started out as chattel with bellies to the ground in shackles and the boot on the neck. There were rebellions and revolts that history books have chosen to ignore. With emancipation Africans were freed from bondage but cast into the world of segregation and Jim Crowe with little protection from the law. The new freedom came with a heavy cost, terrorism. Africans were hung from trees and burned at the stake in front of smiling crowds of men, women, and children. Sometimes these events were advertised in papers and people traveled in packed trains to see the reckoning. Even after World War II, after the exposure of the Nazi death camps the reign of terror continued. Through the federal courts Africans won the right to an equal education and to ride on the front of a bus but the mandated protection of the National Guard was needed to protect the children. Even the children were not safe. Emmit Till was brutally murdered just one year after Brown vs. Board of Education. Not only was his life taken, his body was disfigured, his skull split in half. His crime, whistling at a white woman. His murderers were known but they were found not guilty by their peers. Emmit‘s peers had no say in the matter. The murderers sold their story to Life magazine for $4,000. They were heroes in the same way Joe Wilson has become a hero. What kind of citizens were Africans that their children could be murdered in cold blood and not be offered equal protection under the law?


African resolve was not broken. African Americans made America accountable for its self proclaimed ideology and self appointed leadership of the free world. We boycotted, we marched, we sat-in, we organized freedom rides on trains and buses, and we challenged the laws that inhibited where we could work, where we could live, and who we could marry. We challenged the laws that inhibited our right to vote and seek representation. We were met not with open arms but with guns, Nazi dogs, batons, fire hoses, and fire bombs. We were set upon by law enforcement and ordinary citizens. In the year of my birth four little girls were murdered when some ordinary citizens bombed a church. These men who called themselves Christians fire bombed a church of Christ taking the lives of Christian children. If you were not safe in a Christian church in a god fearing Christian country there was no place you could call sanctuary. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wilson were innocent, young, beautiful, Christian girls. Their blood is on the hands of America, forever. We had come to far and suffered too much to turn back and our vigilance resulted in the passing of the Civil Rights Act that would bring the possibility of first class citizenship not only to Africans, but to every other group of people suffering from oppression, discrimination, and terrorist violence at the hands of the law, institutions, and the citizens representing the status quo. Still we had to fight. Our leaders were assassinated in attempt to kill the body by cutting off the head.


Today we have a black President. Even though his mother is white he is considered black. In the world of Judaism if your mother is Jewish you are Jewish. In America it doesn’t matter, if you have one drop of black blood from either line you are black, ask Tiger Woods. It is unbelievable that we have a black President in my life time. I drank two bottles of champagne on election night but I was sober by the next day because I know how it works in America. We are still fighting to be first class citizens and the election of Barak Obama has only intensified the battle. BART officer Joe Meserhle shoots unarmed black citizen Oscar Grant in the back and many people see him as a hero. Joe Wilson calls the President a liar and he is a hero. I see the rabid faces of the mostly white crowds, some of them toting guns, opposing Barak Obama’s policies and it is all too familiar. It’s the same faces we’ve seen at lynchings, the same faces that pardoned sinners for murdering black children, the same faces screaming, threatening, and beating college students at the counter of a diner. The past is the past, the past is the present, will the past also be our future?

In the Moment

Carpe diem, quam minimus credula postero.

Seize today, and put as little trust as you can in tomorrow.

Horace

Odes Book 1 (35 B.C.)

It’s not the usual Saturday morning. It’s wet, foggy, and lukewarm outside which is par for the course for the City but not for September, not for Indian summer. This morning’s fog and wetness was precipitated by some serious thunder and lightning, not your garden variety thunder and lightning, but the kind of thunder and lightning that lead people in ancient times to create the gods. The predawn sky was lit up better than any 4th of July fire works show and the thunder was earth shaking. On average the City might get thunder and lightning about once over 7 or 8 years and usually the weather folks and their satellites and the weather itself prepares you for it. Not this time. It literally came out of nowhere. When I called it a night at about 2am it was the usual nightly wind blown fog outside my window. I could see the trees in the backyard doing their nightly dance and the glowing aura of the street lamps obscured by the fog. Cozy in my grog of sleep I heard a rumbling and spasms of light illuminated my room. Am I asleep? Am I dreaming? CRACK! KABOOM! Awake I am! There is no denying it now, this is real, as real as it gets. A reign of silence is followed by growing numbers of pelting rain drops smacking windows and sills in a disturbed rhythm. The rumbling is now in the distance and the syncopated rain lulls me back to sleep.

I awake at about 8:15am and instead of the bright sunlight I have been gifted the last 3 or 4 days there is just the glow of morning fog coming through my bedroom window. My brain is engaging itself, starting up for the day. I stare at the ceiling trying to decide if I had a really awesome dream and the gods spoke to me or did Mother Nature make a cameo. The deep rumbling I began to hear confirmed that I had not been dreaming. The growling was in the distance, perhaps coming from the west, from the great Pacific Ocean. It grew closer until it seemed it was directly over head with only my roof separating me from the uneasiness. It was happening again. I could feel the energy building up. Being completely awake this time I was able to feel the full effect of the sonic boom when the thunder released its supreme energy. I can not recall the last time I felt a force this powerful that only earthquakes could rival or surpass. Instinctively one knows this is a force of nature not to be confused by something conjured up by humankind. My bedroom walls shook and my curtains vibrated. My heart bolted and adrenaline flowed through me like a bursting dam. Physically I had not moved one iota but on a spiritual and mental level I had been transported to the heavens in the kind of way you can only get from a natural high. This blast seemed mightier than the one preceding the dawn. Like some shamanistic nature junkie I lay there hoping it would happen again. The force moved from above my roof and traveled east as I could hear the rumbling drifting away. Again came the rain, this time gentle and rhythmic, like a peaceful afterbirth.

Stirred by the reverence I rose from the bed and hopped on my two wheeled steel steed and headed for Golden Gate Park. I wanted to see if the Peace Festival, the free concert in the park and the antidote to the recent and costly Outside Lands, was still on the agenda. I was happy to see many San Franciscans in the moist and mist camped out on towels and blankets in front of the stage ready for the music to start. Good, now that I know it’s on I just need to get back to see headliner Michael Franti close the festival out at 5:00pm. I headed down the bike path south of Speedway Meadow to check out a friend who I had not seen in over 20 years. I learned through Facebook he would be running in a cross country race in the park. I thought it would be cool to show up at race end surprise him. Not long after I arrived I saw him sprinting to the finish with a pack of runners. I managed to get a blurry photo of him as he crossed the finish line spent and exhausted. We chatted a few minutes asking the usual questions and I went on my way. I had to get home and change into my civvies and hop on MUNI to meet a good friend and work comrade for lunch at the Metreon. That is where I find myself now, in the back of the usually sardine packed 21 Hayes bus typing on my netbook. There is plenty of room on the bus this morning. I can only hope the day continues as such in this live-for-the-moment kind of day. Somehow I think it will.

The Truth is Out There

All great truths start as blasphemies.

George Bernard Shaw

Annajanksa (1919)

8 years after the horrific events of 9/11/2001 there are still many unanswered question about how and why the events of that day happened. So many people in America and around the world are not satisfied with the official story presented by the 9/11 Commission that there now exists a 9/11 Truth Movement. The chorus of voices is not abating as it grows and grows each day. The main stream media has come up with a sound byte to describe people in the movement as “Truthers”. The main stream media tends to paint all non believers with the same brush keeping with their tradition of dumbing down the news to 7th grade level. I like to look at the movement operating in a very similar manner to the X-Files. Like Fox “Spooky” Mulder and Dana Scully, the truth movement seeks to uncover a conspiracy and approaches it from two distinctly different viewpoints that sometimes support and sometimes are at odds with each other. One the one hand you have the Mulderites who tend to make leaps of faith and speculate wildly and on the other hand you have Scullyites who tend to only go as far as forensic evidence and scientific deduction will take you. The 9/11 Truth movement makes for strange bedfellows. Charlie Sheen recently wrote a 15 page letter to President Obama requesting a new investigation. Even though his father played the President on a popular tv show Sheen is known more for his predilection for high priced hookers than his political views. But what Sheen is asking for is exactly what groups like Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and whole slew of military officers, scientist, politicians, and medical professionals are demanding and that is a new inquiry. If you want to know who these people are and what they are saying check out this website: http://patriotsquestion911.com/

The 9/11 Commission report stands as the official story. The only reason we even have a report is because the families of those killed demanded it. They had to petition the Bush administration to get one. You would think that one of the greatest crimes in the history of the U.S. would have had a thorough investigation as one of the first orders of business. It would be almost a year and a half before an official investigation commenced. The original appointed head of the commission was Henry Kissinger. Kissinger had to step down when the families investigated his background and discovered that part of his clientele included the Bin Ladens. The Bush administration gave the commission a budget of $3 million which is chump change by government spending standards. The Republicans spent $40 million trying to impeach Bill Clinton over a blow job. In the aftermath of the commission report a majority of the commission including the bipartisan co-chairs won’t even stand behind it. They feel they were stonewalled by the Bush administration, the Pentagon, and the CIA and they don’t believe they have the whole story. The Republican co-chair Lee Hamilton calls the commission report a “first draught”. The collapse of building 7 which was not hit by an airplane is not even included in the commission report. A New York city activist group called Coalition for Accountability Now (CAN) has managed to get enough signatures to get a referendum for a new 9/11 investigation on the New York ballot for the November elections. CAN is made up of 9/11 family members, first responders, and survivors. Those who tend to ridicule any questioning of the official story usually avoid going after groups like CAN or individuals with military or scientific pedigrees. They go after soft targets like Charlie Sheen or Van Jones.

Even though we are conducting war in two countries and tens of thousands have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the War on Terror only one person has been convicted in open court for 9/11 and that is Zacarias Moussaoui. The courts actually never proved he was part of the conspiracy, he plead guilty. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11 and four others have also been found guilty but not in open court. They were tried in a military tribunal in Guantanamo after being tortured. They also plead guilty so, as in the Moussaoui case, the convictions were based on self incrimination rather than forensic evidence. We are taking it on faith that these guys are guilty but too many questions remain unanswered. Why did building 7 collapse? Why did the BBC news report the building collapsed 25 minutes before it actually happened? How was it possible for three of the hijacked airplanes to reach their targets when there are security protocols in place to intercept hijacked planes? It’s a far stretch to say that our government planned and executed the attacks but it is not so far fetched to say our government was incompetent before, during, and after the attacks and that’s what the conspiracy is, to cover up incompetence. The FBI, the CIA, NORAD, and the Bush administration were empowered by the citizens and billions in tax dollars to protect the country and they failed miserably but they haven’t been held accountable. Our elected Congress instead of asking hardball questions and demanding answers walked lock step with Bush in going to war against Iraq, a country that has never done anything to us or made a threat against us. We The People have been duped once again. It happened in 1898 with the USS Maine explosion, the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, and the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. If any of you out there don’t believe our government and others engage in black ops and false flag ops do some research on Operation Gladio, a cold war secret operation that called for planning and executing terrorists attacks against civilians and blaming it on Communists. The Truth is out there… go find it!

The World is a Ghetto

Don't you know that it's true

That for me and for you

The world is a ghetto

War 1972

SPOILER ALERT!!!. If you have not seen the movie District 9 please do not read this as I will be revealing the entire plot. Ok, you still with me? First let me lay the foundation for where my perspective is coming from. Science Fiction is my first love. I have been reading sci fi books and watching sci fi movies since I was about 6 years old. The idea of beings from other planets or dimensions has always boggled my mind. As a kid I read every book I could get my hands on and watched every show I could about UFO’s and aliens. To really understand science fiction you really have to read books as opposed to watching movies. Jules Verne and HG Wells are recognized as being the fathers of science fiction. They didn’t write about aliens but they did introduce the foundation concepts for modern science fiction decades before film and television. Even they had influences. I would say that science fiction began with old world mythology before the advent of math and science when the knowledge of the world was based on nature, superstition, sorcery, and unbridled imagination. The mythology of the ancient Egyptians, the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Sumeria, and the Homerian epic the Odyssey could all be considered science fiction. The stories are populated with alien like humanoid beings who have supernatural powers, advanced technology, and come from far away unknown places.




Anyone who has read Joseph Campbell is familiar with the archetypes that exist in our universal subconscious and the hero quest, which is basically the story of maturation and transformation. Almost all science fiction is about a hero quest. Star Wars is a typical example with Luke Skywalker in the role of the hero. The hero usually has some type of mentor who helps guide his maturation or transformation. In addition to the mentor there is usually some kind of female or feminine entity that is either a Madonna to lead the hero to altruism and moral justice or a femme fatale to lead him to corruption and temptation. Science fiction allows you to get out of the box so transformation can go beyond the thought process, it can also be embodied in physical transformation. Paul Atreides the hero of Dune eventually transforms into a god like giant worm. The Mother of all transformation stories is of course Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. In Kafka’s story the transformation is immediate. A man (Gregor) goes to sleep and wakes up as a giant bug. Metamorphosis is not a science fiction story as the focus of the story is the transformation of Gregor’s family unit. In the world of sci fi the most famous transformation story is The Fly which is Metamorphosis with a sci fi twist. The focus is still on the family unit but added to the story is the theme of hubris and the danger of playing god. Playing god has become a major theme in science fiction in the advent of the nuclear age. Another basic tenet in hero stories is that usually the hero finds himself in events larger than himself that initially he may be reluctant to confront but ultimately becomes the harbinger and catalyst. Usually the events are revolutionary and aimed at changing the status quo. In Dune it is the awakening of the Fremen and the revolution against the Empire. In Star Wars it’s a rebellion against the evil empire aided by the mystical Jedi to restore a benevolent monarchy and republic.




If you are as old as I am it is hard to hear the word “Johannesburg” and not think of apartheid. The situation with the aliens is not exactly one of apartheid since they are the minority and they are outsiders, not people indigenous to the area, they aren’t even indigenous to the planet. They weren’t brought by force and they didn’t have their land and homes taken away. If anything they most resemble the Cuban refugees who came in boats to the United States in 1980 and were put into refugee camps. Maybe the planet the bugs came from was overpopulated and these bugs were part of the population deemed expendable. It’s not important to the film makers because the movie is about us not the aliens so they don‘t really bother with giving any specific reason as to why the aliens are here. At the center of the relocation movement is a typical bureaucrat named Wykus. Unlike the civil servant Sam Lowry in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, who is so numbed out by his job he daydreams of having large wings and rescuing damsels in distress, Wykus approaches his job like a crusading zealot. Because of his zeal for his work and his perceived middle of the road intelligence his superiors appoint him as top man in the relocation scheme. Rather than delegate the ground work to bureaucratic underlings he actually goes door to door with armed and itchy fingered soldiers to serve eviction notices to the aliens (knick named Prawns) who have managed to understand English enough to secure cat food, hookers, ill fitting clothing, and trade in small arms with the local warlord. It's at this point you think its quite possible the film is heading into Monthy Python territory because it all seems so absurd. Even the prawns think it is absurd as they don’t quite know how to react to being evicted. As expected violence breaks out (when you go to the door with guns drawn to give eviction notices to 7 foot tall bugs you know some serious violence is soon to follow). Wykus uncovers a shack which seems to house some kind of egg nest. He orders the shack burned and as the bug fetuses snap, crackle, and pop Wykus gleefully and wickedly describes the sound to the always present tv camera, as being akin to popcorn kernels exploding. In the midst of this madness we are finally introduced to an alien who is actually intelligent… they aren’t all retards apparently. He even has a name, Christopher Johnson (Crispus Johanssen would have been better). He and another alien mate have an elaborate lab set up in his shack and they have managed to produce a vial of liquid that has taken 20 years to develop and is the key to their salvation. Is there where the plot reveals that the aliens have been playing lame and the spaceship is a really a Trojan Horse? Nope. Wykus comes knocking on Johnson’s door to evict him. In a mad scramble Johnson and prawn buddy hide the precious vial, not under the bed but they might as well have. Trying not to arouse suspicion as suggested by his prawn buddy Johnson slams the door not once but twice in the face of Wykus. This only puts the soldiers in storm trooper mode so they burst into the dwelling searching for weapons (which is the basic pretense the local government uses for search and seizure of alien shacks). Wykus finds the not so well hidden vial and being the inept fool that he is manages to spray some of the stuff directly into his face. Inspector Clouseau could have not done better. He pockets the vial instead of putting it with the other evidence. Since it is obvious there is no alien cabal who have some long thought out and detailed plan to revolt or escape, anyone who has watched a lot of movies knows that Wykus is going to start changing into an alien. There had to be some reason he sprayed the stuff on his face right?




Wykus returns to his office to do his paperwork and of course he’s not feeling so keen. He tries to work through it like a good bureaucrat but after he starts bleeding green liquid from his nose he decides maybe he should call it a day. He goes home and walks smack into a surprise birthday party his family has thrown for him, looking like hell on a hot day and smelling like he’s been napping in the compost bin and he has his right arm in a cast after getting into a fight with Johnson and getting tossed about 30 ft into the side of a porta-potty during the eviction. The guests seem to only be there for the cake because despite his haggard and odiferous condition they badger him into cutting the cake and just as he is about to cut the cake he barfs green stuff all over the cake and the ear-to-ear-kool-aid smiling guests. His father-in-law who is always lurking about is present at the party and he works for the corporation, no, make that the evil corporation. Instead of some cool name like Weyland-Yutani this corporation is known as MNU… kind of rolls off your tongue, like “KBR”. MNU stands for Multinational United, a generic defense contractor in charge of housing and securing the prawns. You would think that the prawns would be in some Guantanomo type of security set up getting abused by enlisted women and water boarded daily but no, they are “housed” in the same slum with warlords, pimps, and gangsters run by MNU. MNU even has that first generation generic look. Remember when the first “plain wrap” goods were on the shelves in your local market and all they had were the white wrapping with the blue stripe, even the beer? Well that’s how all of MNU’s gear looked, even their tanks. I guess they were going for that NATO look. The prawns have advanced weaponry but only they can shoot it because the weapons are coded to their DNA. The weapons are badass of course making mince meat of anything fleshy. There is even a heavily armored mech suit that MNU storm troopers somehow failed to find but the local gangsters obtain from the prawns for a case of cat food. You know where this is all going. The corporation has been looking for a way to replicate the DNA formula so it can make a shit load of money on the arms market selling alien weaponry and father-in-law sees his son-in-law's arm which is now starting to mutate into a bug arm and calls up the corporation to take Wykus away under the pretense of medical care. Wykus is taken to the lab/hospital/corporate headquarters of MNU where he is examined and of course they discover he’s turning into an alien. The MNU doctors are salivating over the chance to vivisect poor Wykus who has become a weeping wreck. His arm is now completely bug. They take him to the 4th floor where the secret weapons tests are being conducted. The place looks more like a Texas slaughterhouse than a lab, as a matter of fact the hospital section wasn’t very high end either, more like San Francisco General on the worst of days. They strap Wykus into some type of turret and lock his bug arm to one of the alien weapons and force him to shoot by using electroshock treatment. Somewhere I can hear Charlton Heston screaming, “It’s a mad house, a mad house!”. First they make Wykus shoot a brick wall, then a large chunk of butchered meat, and then for the piece de resistance they make him shoot a scared shitless alien whom he blows into about a billion little pieces. He is so aggravated by this he breaks loose with his Steve Austin arm and makes short work of all the lab workers and makes his escape.




Now the movie has become The Fugitive. Wykus runs the streets of Johannesburg using a blanket for a make shift cape like the Elephant Man. He’s scruffy, dirty, and smelly like a lot of chaps you’d find on Market Street. The news is running some bogus story about how he had sex with an alien and has contracted a deadly alien venereal disease and is now an armed and dangerous fugitive. The only place he can hide is the bug shantytown so off he goes. Out of all the thousands of bug shacks he manages to take refuge in Christopher Johnson’s shack. Johnson isn’t too happy to see him but Johnson has a little son who is more like a side kick than a son and of course the little guy takes a shining to Wykus because they have the same arm. Johnson tells Wykus he can change him back to human but he needs the vial that was taken from his shack. Apparently the vial can fuel the command module that fell off the alien ship at the beginning of the movie to get it back to the mother ship where he can then reverse Wykus’s mutation. MNU confiscated the vial when they brought him to headquarters and Wykus is so desperate to reverse his mutation he talks Johnson into breaking into the lab and retrieving the vial. Wykus and Johnson arm themselves with some alien splat master rifles and assault MNU headquarters Rambo style. They get the vial and as they are blasting their way out they come across a room where scientists have been doing all kinds of horrible experiments Dr. Mengele style on the aliens and Johnson is frozen in disbelief, kind of like Ripley in Alien Resurrection when she stumbles upon the lab room containing all of the failed and deformed Ripley clones. Feeling gutted Johnson just stands there while gunfire erupts all around him. Wykus manages to get them both to safety after gunning down the MNU security soldiers with the always lethal alien rifle.




Being so disturbed and distraught about his alien buddies becoming biology experiments Johnson renegs on the deal with Wykus saying he will need all the fluid so he can go back to his home planet and come back to save his race. Wykus asks how long and Johnson tells him it will take three years. Wykus freaks out because he can’t wait three hours let alone three years so he bonks Johnson on the head, fuels the command module, and forces the alien kid to help him take off. MNU on full alert detect the module and easily shoot it down shortly after take off. MNU capture Wykus and Johnson but before they can leave District 9 they are ambushed and taken prisoner by the local Warlord, a guy in a wheelchair who wants to eat Wykus’s arm so he can have the power to use the alien weapons. The gang and warlord are portrayed as cartoon like over the top characters who are into some voodoo like magic and guns. It’s some pretty ugly stereotyping but I’m sure many who went to see the film probably got a big kick out of these characters. Just when all seems lost and Wykus is about to lose his arm and life the kid comes to the rescue. Being the little smarty pants that he is, from the command module he manages to activate the mech suit which just happens to be in the same room where Wykus is about to get a super deluxe machete amputation. The mech suit goes into Terminator mode, recognizes Wykus as one of his own and neutralizes the gangsters. The suit opens up and Wykus jumps inside Appleseed style. Stumbling outside he is immediately set up on by small and large arms fire from MNU forces. Not knowing the full capabilities of the suit Wykus tries to run away using his body to shield Johnson as they make their way back to the command module. After sustaining enough damage to hamper his movement Wykus decides to fight it out. After quickly discovering the mech suit has a menu of killing devices Wykus finishes off all the ground troops. Wykus and the mech suit are felled by heavy artillery blasts and Wykus crawls out of the suit looking even more bug like. All along Wykus has been hounded by Venter, a truly sadistic soldier who is in charge of the security forces. He is a man who loves his job which most of the time seems to be filling aliens full of holes with gun fire. At one point Wykus has him in his sights but he can’t blow the bastard away even though he has just splattered over a dozen soldiers who probably only joined MNU for the paycheck. Venter now has Wykus right where he wants him and that’s on the ground with his gun pointed at his head ready for the kill. Instead of just pulling the trigger he has to give a little speech about how long he has waited for this moment. That gives four aliens who were wandering by just enough time to grab Venter and tear him limb from limb leaving only a blood splat and some chunks of flesh. Johnson has returned to the mother ship in the command module and the mother ship slowly takes off with all the Johannesburg citizens smiling and waving good bye. No F-22 jets or Stealth bombers appear to blow it out of the sky, it just simply takes off into the blue yonder.




The movie ends with an interview with the wife of Wykus. During his times as a fugitive he called her on a mobile phone a few times to protest his innocence, it was the film makers way of trying to inject some humanity into the film and play up the Fly/Metamorphosis theme. It turns out Wykus was just a regular guy who loved his wife and got caught up in events bigger than himself. She wanted to believe he was still alive and out there somewhere. This was symbolized by a metal flower that was mysteriously left on her doorstep. The final shot of the movie is of an alien in a trash dump crafting a metal flower from spare parts of machinery found strewn among the garbage. So ends the hero’s journey, his transformation complete, from fetus frying beauracrat to lonley, melancholy, trash diving bug. Is the world different? Has anything changed? It doesn't look like it. The aliens still get relocated although their new digs look much nicer. The humans are relieved because the aliens are gone so the small minds are still prevailing. How about the aliens? As far as we can see they are still the listless bunch we encountered on first contact in the spaceship and the one of them with half a brain and an ounce of motivation is on his way back to the home planet, the only question is will he come back for the big rescue. So what was this movie about? The message of the story to me seemed to be that civilized human society is full of sadistic, racist, disgusting, greedy bigots and foreigners who come to these civilized places quickly adapt to these ways. The aliens were mostly wretches and the humans were mostly disgusting. All we have to balance the hatred, prejudice, and machismo is an alien kid and a weeping wife. Women really get the shaft in this film. I just don’t see how this film adds to the great stories that have emerged from the world of science fiction. It's missing that Rod Serling element it so badly needs, that moment when a light goes off in your head because you had an “aha!” epiphany that pinged your skull. I was left feeling empty, the same feeling I had after watching Cloverfield. Maybe it’s the embedded camera man way both movies were shot conjuring up fake drama and narrowing the vision of the film to a peephole. Sci fi is about the big picture and there just is no big picture here. It think the story would have worked better if there were no aliens and it was actual humans that were being oppressed, abused, and relocated. I guess that would be boring to some since that actually happens to people in the real world. If this movie left you wanting for more I suggest you read a book by Ursula K. LeGuin called Word for World is Forest. It was a book written shortly after and inspired by the Vietnam war that deals with the abuse of an alien population and the story is about a thousand times better than District 9. Check it out!