Summer at Solstice

Tonight I am writing from a neighborhood restaurant bar called Solstice. I brought my pen and notebook so I could write in real time. Not long ago Solstice was a jazz joint called Rasselas. Rasselas offered Ethiopian cuisine but mostly it was about the jazz. Live music was played every night and the clientele included quite a few black folk. It was one of the few places in the City you could walk into and there would be more black faces than you could count on two hands. I always had the feeling it was something left over from the old Fillmore district, a place of lore I never experienced but have lived in the City long enough to have an idea. The new Fillmore is where Rasselas is now as a matter of fact, in the trying-to-resurrect-itself jazz district. More than a decade ago then Mayor Willie Brown claimed that the Fillmore jazz district would be reborn. It’s a lot cleaner now with the new Yoshi’s serving as anchor with it’s massive vertical marquee on the corner of Eddy and Fillmore. Passing through recently I walked past a bus stop with about a dozen Asian and perhaps Persian students milling about with their uniforms and Ipods doing what kids normally do while waiting for the bus. Not too long ago you would have seen a lot of black kids milling about but now they are nowhere to be seen. When I first moved to the City this is the neighborhood I worked in so I knew it well. It had a rep, it was the part of the Western Addition you didn’t really want to go to hang out which is San Francisco doublespeak for saying, “there are a lot of black people there.”

Solstice is just on the edge where the Western Addition gives way to Pacific Heights. Some people might call the area Pacific Heights, some people might call it Laurel Heights. There is always somebody trying to rename or claim the border town neighborhoods in the City. The place feels a bit gentrified (compared to the old Rasselas). I’m here to hear some guys I know play some live music. Michael C. of Kat Delic, Black Quarterback and a plethora of other bands and musical tandems is on the guitar and David B. of the Broun Fellini’s, Kat Delic, Black Quarterback, and long time member or the San Francisco music scene is on the saxophone. I wonder how they are feeling tonight after having played three days ago with Parliament at the Regency Hotel. I missed the show unfortunately but from the pictures I saw on Facebook it looked like the usual P-Funk All Stars sideshow insanity with people everywhere and the stage filled with too may people to count. If you wanted to be in the band you could have probably just stepped on the stage and started doing your thang and nobody would know better. When I walk in Michael is strumming his guitar gently, like he’s just getting warmed up. His head is down and lolling back and forth like a true bluesman. David is leaning back on his stool and staring into space like he’s totally somewhere else, like he’s got something in his head that is only for him to be aware of, at least for the moment. They are the ambient sound for the evening. Their job is not to take the joint over but to enhance the dining experience. The people in the restaurant don’t know how lucky they are because these guys can play. They are professionals who earned their spurs and badges in the City long ago. They represent a vibe the City used to have before the dot.com tidal wave hit and washed away many of the artists and musicians that populated the small theater groups and the low to no cover clubs and bars featuring live music every night in the Haight and the Mission districts. Most people are here with work buddies or friends to have some food, knock back some drinks, and talk talk talk. It’s a yack fest. The music moves under and around the conversations providing its own sustenance and if you are here for the music the voices start to fade away. The bar always has 5-10 people who, like the diners, are mostly yacking away, they just chose to forgo the grub and get straight to the libations. The physical space is all dark wood with subdued track lights, ceiling fans and a candle at each table providing the place with the kind of atmosphere that allows you to get lost in food, drink, or sonic sweetness. Working behind the bar is this young brotha named Sean. He’s got that million dollar smile and he makes the people at the bar feel at home. He’s a local and he’s been running the streets of San Francisco since his days as a school kid. He always treats me proper. What more could you ask from the person who’s pouring your brews and whiskies?

Back to the music…. The guys have taken it up a notch, like a predator preparing for the killing strike. David is running up and down the scales with his sax like a man possessed, like something restrained that has become unbound. Then he brings it down, like a snake charmer on the streets of Calcutta calling up the spirit of the Cobra, hypnotic and mesmerizing. Tonight there is a special guest who has dropped in to lay down some licks on the bass. Ubi is his name and he’s a San Francisco icon for anybody who lived near the intersection of Divisadero and Fulton in the late 90‘s. Like David and Michael he was part of the early 90’s music scene in Lower Haight that produced Michael Franti. The Horseshoe Cafe in Lower Haight used to be the place to be back in those days but in the mid 90’s it started to get played out and a lot of that energy shifted to the up and coming Café Abir located at the intersection of Divis and Fulton. Before Café Abir opened its doors Divis was a kind of wasteland. There was the old Kennel Club, Brother-in-Laws bbq shack, Eddies soul food restaurant, liquor stores on every corner, and nail salons galore. It was my neighborhood and I loved it. Café Abir opened in 1992 and brought some long needed café culture to Divis. Many of the people in the Lower Haight frequenting the cafes, bars, and clubs actually lived off the Divisadero corridor so now instead of schlepping the 4-6 blocks to Lower Haight for your daily java or pint you could just walk one or two blocks to Café Abir. Café Abir had what I called the Café Kings. Those were the people who were daily citizens of the café holding court on the sidewalk spinning yarns about life and living. I always wondered how they pulled of this lifestyle because I had a day job. It turns out many of them were musicians and a variety of other artists. If you happened to get a seat on the sidewalk you inevitably would find your self in a conversation about politics, global travel, the latest book you read, or the local music scene. This was before wi-fi and notebooks took over the cafes and the conversations started revolving around IP’s, startups, and stock options. Ubi practically lived at Café Abir. He was a sidewalk guy, you actually never saw him inside the place. He had a way about him that would get your attention. He was on the small side and lean but he always wore large reflective sunglasses and he had a huge golden bronze afro that matched his skin in color so he appeared larger than life. There was some hyperactivity to the way he moved and he has the features of a hawk so his eyes, when you saw them, could be penetrating. I had not seen him for years. Café Abir is a different place now. The Café Kings are long gone. The place has been remodeled for the umpteenth time and it now has a more upscale look to match the connected sushi restaurant next door that at one time was a cyber café and before that was a magazine/cigar shop, and before that was an organic food market, all extensions of Café Abir. I am happy to say Ubi is still Ubi. His fro is now pulled back into a frizzy ponytail and he still has the trademark reflective lenses that he dons even at night. Ubi has discovered the new media and is very excited about showing how he keeps it all going with his G-Mobile phone and his handy hand held high definition video camera made by Sony. He can send mp3’s to other musicians with his phone and he can document on the spot whatever he is doing with his video camera and send it to YouTube or Facebook. That’s where the audience is now. Back in the day the most sophisticated device a musician had was a dat… now it’s an I-Phone or a Blackberry.

Getting back to the place… Solstice is located on the southwest corner of Divis and California and the place doesn’t really have walls as much is it has gargantuan plate glass windows. There are no curtains or blinds so anybody walking by becomes part of the show. There is a MUNI stop right out front behind where the band plays. Watching people get on and off MUNI is one of my favorite San Francisco past times. If you want to see real hardcore San Franciscans just hangout at a MUNI stop and watch the people get on and off the bus. People walking by or getting off the bus can’t help but notice the musicians playing. They can’t hear the music but they are drawn by the musicians’ body language. They are more connected to the musicians than most of the yackers dining at the tables or drinking at the bar.

They’re on the second set now and the place is thin. It’s perplexing because for the City it is a warm night and the moon is almost full. It’s the no sleeve kind of night that compels you to go out and be in the night air under the glow of the moon. In places like this the first set is for the diners but the second set is for the musicians and the peeps that came for the music. Now it doesn’t matter to these guys if the place was empty, they’d still be jamming because that is what they do. Ubi’s improvising on the bass and Michael and David are following his lead. You can tell the guys are having a good time. Michael is one of those rare musicians that when he plays he has this big smile on his face, and right now he’s full on ear to ear. David who has been playing from his stool most of the night is on his feet and once again in snake charmer mode. Its almost time to call it a night. Summer is almost nigh but it’s just starting for San Francisco. The gods of summer, for reasons unknown, cursed this city of hills and fog. June, July, and August are more like winter part two than summer… but when September rolls around we are blessed with warm days and blue skies right up to Halloween and then some engineer working on the behalf of Mother Nature hits that switch and the mercury drops, the clock is rolled back, night takes day, and the leaves start floating to the earth. I’m gonna put my pen down now and let the music float me up so I can return to the earth like an autumn leaf. I’m out!

Without music life would be a mistake.

Freidrich Nietzsche

The Skirmishes of an Untimely Man (1888)