12 Hours Part 2

The second half of my 12 hour ride…

Cruising the silent streets of San Francisco I arrive home about 2:15 am. What to do, what to do, what to do…stay up until 7am for the US vs. Algeria World Cup game or try to get a few hours of shut eye?

I spied a blu ray disc I rented from Film Yard Video and decided to feed it to the PS3 and watch Matt Damon in Green Zone. It’s an Iraq war movie about a rank and file army captain who uncovers a faulty intel plot/conspiracy in the search of WMD’s. It’s decent entertainment, I didn’t put me to sleep. In watching the bonus features I discover the movie is directed by Paul Greengrass, a British film maker. Greengrass has only been on my radar since last week. I was not familiar with the name until I rewatched the film Bloody Sunday, the 2002 definitive movie about the massacre of Irish protesters in their hometown town of Derry, Northern Ireland, by British paratroopers in 1972. It’s the Sunday in U2’s song, Sunday Bloody Sunday. Last week, after 28 years, the British govt. absolved the protesters of any wrongdoing and condemned the British forces for the killings. Bloody Sunday is in my collection so after hearing about the ruling I wanted to watch it again. I was curious about the director because the entire film is shot like a documentary. On perusal I find out the director is Paul Greengrass. I also find out he directed two of the last three Bourne movies. I had no idea he was the director of Green Zone but after watching it I was curious who made it because the style was familiar. Well, there you go.

I was not able to stay awake but amazingly I was able to wake up in time to go watch some soccer. I resuscitated at about 6:15am, after maybe one and a half to two hours sleep. I freshened up and was out the door by 6:30am. It seems that no matter where the World Cup is held, if you live in San Francisco you will find yourself in a bar sardine packed with people guzzling beers and cheering at the top of your lungs at some ungodly hour. It is rather strange when you start your night of drinking at 2:30am. The last time I remember watching a game at a decent hour was the 1990 World Cup which was won by West Germany (yes kiddies, there used to be two Germanys) winning out over a Maradona led Argentina. It was the first time I really understood the global power of the World Cup.

That summer I was working at Pepperdine University in Malibu, taking care of 92 European high school kids as part of an ESL program. The students all came from upper middle class backgrounds from around the globe (Tahiti, Mexico, China, India) but most were European. 60 of the students were split between Italy and France which became the two rival camps in the program, the historical animosity present even in these fresh faced students. These two groups kept me busy as I was playing the role of policeman in the dorm. While most of the students were polite and followed the rules the French and Italian students were always breaking curfew and making a ruckus. The difference was when I told the Italian kids to be quiet and go to bed they would apologize and be quiet but in no time at all they’d be loud again and not really giving a damn. The French kids on the other hand, when I tried to tell them anything they just completely ignored me. They were just too good for the rules. One thing was clear, the two groups did not like each other.

The first thing the students wanted to know was where they could watch the World Cup Games. Me and the other staff at first had a “whatever” attitude about them watching the Cup, we simply had no idea how into it they were but we learned quickly. It was the main concern of every student in the program. There was not one kid who was not a huge soccer fan. They begged and pleaded us so we found a space big enough to accommodate the group with a tv in one of the student lounges. When the games were on everything stopped and they watched the games. They were as hardcore as any Superbowl fan and I was impressed. I understood they had to watch these games so I made sure to schedule activities around the games. The Italian kids were devastated when Italy lost in the semis. We had a few German students so of course they were happy when West Germany beat Argentina for the championship. Most of the students were rooting for the Deutsch since they were representing Europe so there was a lot of good energy for the game but it was nothing in comparison to watching the 3rd place game between England and Italy the day before. They Italians were crushed just a few days earlier when they lost the semis but here they were, rabid as ever, cheering on their team to victory. It was way more exciting than the finals game. They tried talking me into buying them some champagne to celebrate and they didn't take to kindly to being rebuffed. At home they drink wine, beer and champagne but I had to explain to them in the US there were age limits to who could drink. They just couldn’t get over that, especially when we had a couple of 18th birthdays where it is tradition for Italians to drink champagne. Despite that, it was a ridiculous summer, as in, ridiculously good. I’d wake up from my dorm room to bright sunshine and walk out my door treated to a close up view of the Pacific Ocean. Pepperdine is on a hill and right on the Pacific Coast Highway so no matter where you are on campus you have an unblocked view of the ocean. It was like living in paradise.

Some say San Francisco is paradise which I will agree with but only on sunny days when the skies are clear and blue and the arctic summer winds have subsided. Leaving my apartment to go watch soccer at 6:30am it was your typical June morning, cold, overcast, and foggy. It had the feel of one of those days where there is no time. Without the sun it looks the same all day, 7am is indistinguishable from 7pm. I stop at the corner and enter Central Tea and Coffee, my local java spot and order my usual tall dark roast. I’m almost shocked to see Michael working behind the counter. He just played the Yoshi’s gig, just hours ago I had seen him schlepping to his car with his guitars and amp in tow. Usually he doesn’t open the morning after a gig but there he was, looking like he could use eight hours of sleep. On his advice he pours a shot of espresso into my coffee. Good call since the screaming is set to begin in 30 minutes, gotta be ready. I walk the eight or so blocks to Mad Dog in the Fog sipping my brew. I walk past another pub, Danny Coyle’s, and it is jam packed so I know Mad Dog will be just the same, even more so, since it is a more popular place and has seniority. I’m meeting my friend David who has one of the coolest surnames on the planet, Cervantes. You have to be born cool to have the name Cervantes and David certainly is. He’s Brazilian American so he has that Brazilian appetite for life combined with the cultural broadness of being American and it makes him an interesting guy. He has an astute mind and an impressive vinyl collection. He never made the transition to digitized music, one of the rare people who hasn't ( I guess there is no transition if you were born after 1987). When I go to his house he's usually spinning some classic jazz from the 40's and 50's. He's married to a French gal name Pascal and she‘s into grand prix racing, especially the Le Mans. He actually has to leave the game a little after half time because he’s flying to the south of France to do some vacationing with the wife and her family. Nice life if you can get it.

As I approach Mad Dog I can see a line and two guys taking money at the door. Cover charge? Hmmm, I could watch the game at home for free or at many other places nearby. I usually watch World Cup soccer at Kezar Pub, which is always packed for sports but they never have a cover charge. As I contemplate whether I want to pay to get in I catch a whiff of the deal. $10 get’s you in but you also get two drink tickets so I decide it’s not such a bad deal after all so I give up a Hamilton and enter the fray. The energy level is high and so are the patrons. Everybody has a beer, many double fisted, which in this case a is wise choice. It was worse than a rugby scrum trying to get to the bar. Once there it only made sense to cash in both your drink tickets since you didn’t want to have to drill your way through the crowd to make good on your second. I made my way to the bar while miraculously texting David. He was finding a parking space. I let him know it was crowded beyond belief and he wasn’t too keen on paying the cover so he suggested we meet next door at Café International. I agreed to meet him there but with beer finally in hand I had my doubts I could get back to the front door. Like a salmon swimming upstream I muscled my way through the crowd and after about 10 minutes I could see the glow of foglight that was the front door and I exited the place like a fetus being jettisoned from a womb.

Café International was full of people but not body-to-body packed like Mad Dog. There were tables and chairs and a small couch in the middle which had been commandeered by a laptop wielding college student. Having only one big screen television, it made the crowd more intimate as we were all watching the same game. Mad Dog has tv’s everywhere and were showing both the US game and the England game and there were plenty of people there to root for the English. David ordered us some food and a few beers. The food was actually donuts. I used to do the donut/beer combo a lot in my LA and Mexico days but it was not something I brought with me to San Francisco, mostly because San Francisco is the bush leagues when it comes to donuts and LA is a donut paradise, at least it was when I lived there. I knew places in LA where you could get donuts right off the rack, hot and buttery, melt in your mouth donuts. Getting them hot off the racks usually meant showing up at about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning. That just hilights a major shortcoming of San Francisco, the lack of 24 hour consumerism. In LA there was a 24 hour store for everything, usually with a drive thru attached. 24 hour places like Canter’s Deli and Tommy’s Burger were legendary. Donut shops, led by the homegrown donut chain Winchell's, were 24 hour a day places so no matter how hungry or lost you were in the wee hours of the morning in LA, you could always stop and get a donut and your bearings. Taco trucks, burgers, and donuts, it’s what you do after 2:30 in the morning in LA.

David and I are settled near the back of the International enjoying the game. England scored earlier in their game so the US had to score or be sent packing. For most of the game we had been treated to several “almost” scores. Soccer is the only sport where almost scoring is as exciting as scoring. Soccer goals develop so when a score seems imminent the anticipation of the crowd hits a crescendo that either erupts for a score or collapses mightily for a missed shot, the closer the miss the more dramatic the collapse. That is why 1-0 and 0-0 games can be terribly exciting. There have been three or four times when it looked for sure the US would score, so sure you already had your hand in the high five position, only to be let down by an errant or high kick. David had to bail about a half hour before the game was to be over and it wasn’t looking good for the US when he departed. It was 0-0 and neither Algeria or the US seemed like it would score as the game wore down. Algeria started playing for the tie as they kept most of their players back on defense. The US was getting more desperate because time was running out. Regulation time was over and now we were into Injury Time. Only a few minutes remained. For some unknown reason Algeria decided to attack and got a decent header shot but it was smothered by the American goalie. This gave an opportunity for the US to attack and the goalie quickly released the ball to teammates streaking down the sideline. A few quick forward passes later a US player was taking a good shot on goal which was deflected by the goalie, rebounded by a US player, and again deflected by the goalie but this time he had taken himself way out of position. For an eternity the ball spun around as frantic players tried to react and off screen out of nowhere comes Donovan to boot the ball into the goal, a clean shot the goalie had no chance to make a play on. The place erupted. It was fantastic. Most of the people in the place were thinking the WC for the states was soon to be over but in an instant everyone was reborn. People were jumping up and down, high fiving, hootin and hollerin, and hugging the nearest stranger. Pints were hoisted in honor of the goal and the win. It is a great feeling, it feels good to make the 6:00am wake up call and the breakfast beers seem worth the effort. I was feeling a bit delirious from the goal and the beers and I was loving every minute of it. When people combust spontaneously in a good way it’s like everybody gets high off of it. It’s the natural high, that’s why people love it world over, even us late-to-the-world-party Americans, who are finally catching on.

I headed back over to Mad Dog, I still had one drink ticket to dispense. The place was a mess but now path to the bar was clear. There were still a lot of people but they had spread out to the sidewalk in front and the patio in back. I saw a quite a few people with that happy stagger, them that enjoyed the game immensely but maybe had two beers too many. There is an afterglow in the place that can still be felt despite all the spilled beer on the floor. I drank my beer and watched the replays of the game on the dozen or so screens around the bar. On one tv there was a Wimbledon match being shown and I remember the score being 26-27. I thought that was odd because that was a ridiculously high score ofr a tennis match, and they were still playing! We were so into the soccer victory myself and the other people in the bar didn’t pay much attention to that score. Later on in the evening I found out the match would set a record for the longest tennis match of all time. It was so long they had to postpone it and finish it the next day. I stayed at Mad Dog talking to inebriated strangers about soccer and the chances of the US advancing to the quarterfinals. After a few more pints I decide it was time to head home. I wondered what we are all going to do for the rest of the day since we already shot our wad. It’s only 10:00 in the morning. There is still practically an entire day waiting to be lived. All I can think about at this time is getting out of the chilly fog and getting wrapped up in some blankets for deep sleep and dreaming.

As I lay me down to sleep I see that it is 11:00am. 12 hours ago I was starting one adventure and now I am ending another. It was a good 12 hours, all the fun and adventure made it seem like a vacation. 12 hours...you can change your life in 12 hours.

Drive By

Fortunately for me my brushes with the law have been few and far between. All my encounters with the police have been traffic related. Many times it was just a case of DWB but on a few occasions I have been stopped for legitimate purposes like expired registration tags, which in my younger days was the rule not the exception.


In my impoverished young adulthood vehicle insurance and registration were at times beyond my paltry budget so I took my chances and boy did I take chances. It wasn’t like I was driving some middle of the road, financed, upstanding citizen, blend into the void, kind of car… I drove a 1965 Rambler American. It was in good shape but it was a beater. It was a ska mobile that I bought off my most excellent friend Dan Parada who had decorated it with photos of the cast of the Big Chill on the inside passenger door, and with the words “Elvis died fat” printed on the dashboard under the radio. It was a four door that made for easy piling in and piling out of with the crew while wandering the streets of Los Angeles.


I must confess that I had many a reckless night in the City of Angels negotiating the freeways and mega boulevards for mile after mile from Pasadena to Hollywood, to Westwood, to Santa Monica, to Long Beach, Newport Beach, and back, even surviving the dreaded S-curve near the end of the Pasadena Frwy just before Ave. 64. The curve doesn’t have a name and people don’t speak of it but anyone who has driven that stretch knows the curve. Built in the 30’s and the oldest freeway in California the 110 Pasadena/Harbor Frwy had curves put in to make the drive “not boring” for the snail paced Ford Model T’s. making the drive from Pasadena to Los Angeles. Well “not boring” today is now “hair raising”. I was in the Rambler with my friend Dan P, on our way to Westwood to see “The Road Warrior” of all movies and we saw a VW go airborne and do multiple flips in the air right in front of us. The woman driving the Vee Dub didn’t hit anybody she just caught her wheel on the inside curb on the S-turn and up she went. I watched the car flip twice in the air, I thought it was going to land on us. She hit the ground, rolled once more and landed on her feet. We stopped about two feet short of her. Miraculously she was unhurt. Although physically she was ok, mentally she was scathed. She and the car were a wreck.


Thanks be to gods unknown I was never involved in an accident while driving a car… a bicycle yes, but never in a car. Part of my job working for the YMCA was transporting children in vans and busses which required me to have a Class B commercial driver’s license and certification from the California Highway Patrol so I had good driving skills. I may have been an irresponsible driver at times but I was always a safe driver. Before moving to San Francisco the only moving violations I had was a speeding ticket I acquired in law abiding South Pasadena for going 40 in a 35 mph zone. On the DWB stops I never had to ride in the paddy wagon because my name always came up clean on the computer search as well it should as I am a good citizen. That all changed when I moved to San Francisco.


My first month two months living in the Bay area were spent living in Oakland although I worked in San Francisco. My boss let me use the YMCA van to get to work and back until I relocated to the City. He didn’t like leaving the van in a the YMCA lot because it was a target for vandalism. I was so busy working the new job that for the first two months I didn’t go out and since I had no friends I hadn’t gone out to any bars in San Francisco or Oakland. My first night out at a bar in San Francisco would prove to be unforgettable.


My first night out at a bar was on Halloween night, 1991. Me and the youth staff at the YMCA had just finished doing the annual Haunted House fundraiser which was a smashing success. I was invited by one of the staff to go celebrate. We went to a bar called the Covered Wagon located on Folsom street in the South of Market area of SF. I was tired from a 16 hour day at work and I had not eaten but I was in a festive mood because I had just pulled off my first major event at my new job so a little celebrating was in order. Over the course of three hours I had 4 pints of ale. When I left the bar I didn’t feel drunk but I was feeling very tired. I hopped in the van to make the drive home not thinking twice about my condition. I made it across the Bay Bridge and was just about to get off the 580 freeway at MacArthur when I saw the red and blue flashing lights in the rearview. I wasn’t speeding or swerving so I was wondering what I was being pulled over for. The CHP officer said he pulled me over because I was straddling the line. He asked if I had been drinking. I said I had a few beers. They made me do the drunk tests, you know, stand on one leg, follow the finger, touch the nose, etc, etc. I thought I did well but the officers had other ideas because the next thing I know they tell me they’re taking me in for possible Driving Under the Influence. They were a couple of polite chaps so I went with them without argument, debate, or struggle.


Being handcuffed and put into a police car was a new experience for me. I had only been in a police car once in my life before this and that was in Rosarito Beach when me and my buddy Wes were pulled over one midnight in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. They told us we were speeding but we knew that was bogus, they just wanted to search us for bribe material. The Mexican cops put me in the back of the squad car without cuffing me. I knew the situation wasn’t that serious because they didn’t cuff me and in the backseat there was basket full of freshly done laundry. These guys weren't hardcore shakedown artists they were just bored and looking for a score. They searched the VW van and found a roach in a box of Marlboro reds. The maddening part about this was that neither Wes nor I smoked cigarettes and neither of us had brought any herbage for this trip because we couldn’t find any. The Marlboro reds had been left in the van by another friend weeks ago and the herb was homegrown which in LA is practically an insult. That roach ended up costing us $50 each. They wanted more but Wes beat them down on the price thanks to his well honed negotiation skills that he had developed haggling with Mexican vendors and store owners over the years. Here I was in the US of A where haggling for a DUI was out of the question. They drove me to the Oakland city jail where I was booked and put into the community cell. I never spent much time imagining what the inside of a jail looks like. We have all seen jails in movies and television shows but when does that ever measure up to reality? Courtrooms are always so beautiful and dramatically lit in the movies but every court room I have been in has been drab, rundown, and uniformly lit by harsh fluorescent lights which is the typical look for cvic offices and buildings that deal with the masses. The Oakland jail feels subterranean because there are no windows and everything is bland off discolored white brick, painted grey metal, and 1960’s green tiled floor. They gave me the Breathalyzer test and I came in at .09. Just my luck California had just lowered the drunk standard from 0.1 to .08. A year earlier I would have been legal but now I was considered legally drunk. I was photographed, fingerprinted, and put in a cell with about a dozen other men, all black and latino.


I surmised by the body language I was the only newcomer there. The cell was all hard surfaces with one metal bench, one dirty metal toilet, and one dirty pay phone. The phone was in constant use but nobody went near the toilet. Men were stretched out on the floor catching some z’s or or sitting against walls nodding off. I wouldn’t say that they were comfortable but they seemed used to the conditions. I was the only one standing up looking around checking everything and everybody out. Nobody in the cell was talking. All seemed quite content to pretend that the others didn’t exist. It was relatively quiet. I could hear the officers joking around with each other like people do on any job and I could hear them processing the perps. About every 10 minutes or so one of the inmates in another cell would start belting out the song “Somewhere” with a voice that eerily sounded like the lead singer from Blood, Sweat, and Tears. The Oakland jail was the last place I would expect to hear someone singing a song from West Side Story but since I’m a huge fan of that musical I found the singing rather comforting plus it's difficult to feel like you are in a hard place when some gravelly voice down the hallway starts belting out, "There's a place for us! Somewhere a place for us...!" The irony, which escaped cops and inmate alike, put everything into proper perspective for me. For this night the Oakland jail was my place of existence and a place for me to make up for past transgressions and pay my dues.


I chose to forgo making a phone call and trying to post bail because I was too embarrassed. I figured I messed up and needed to take my punishment like a man which meant staying the whole night in jail. After they let me out I would go retrieve the van and go to work and try to act like nothing happened. In my mind I was set to deal with whatever fallout that would come from my debacle. That actually put my mind at ease so I stood there in the cell just taking in the jail experience. More men were brought in over the course of the night. Sensing I was not a regular a few of the guys struck up conversations with me. I don’t know if I would call them conversations, they were more like confessions. It was like all of a sudden I was the cell priest or psychiatrist. Guys were telling me stories of remorse and how they ended up in jail…again. One guy I remember in particular because I really felt bad for him. He had been in jail for three or four years for armed robbery and all he wanted to do was get straight and see his kid who had just been born right before he went into the slammer. He was back in on parole violation. He said he had only been out a few days when he borrowed his brother’s car to go see some old friends. He was spotted and pulled over. He gave consent to check the car and the police found some crack cocaine underneath the driver’s seat. He said it wasn’t his but if you are a black man with a record there is no way the cops will give you the benefit of the doubt so here he was back in jail. I believed him. He had no reason to lie to me and he seemed really busted up about not being able to see his son. Most of the guys I talked to were back in for parole violations. The most common violation was hanging out with friends who were also known felons. These aren’t the smartest guys in the world to begin with but the way the system is utilized by law enforcement these guys will be in and out of jail most of their lives. I felt sympathy for them. I don’t know how they were on the street but in the cell they were polite and cordial. There was no fighting, dirty looks, or signifying. They were just quietly biding their time until release. Nobody was coming for them they just had to do their time.


I was released at about 7am. I retrieved my belongings and it felt good to be free once I hit the streets of downtown Oakland. I hailed a cab, picked up the van and drove home. I cleaned myself up and went to work. I told my boss what happened. I didn’t know what to expect. I felt bad because I let him down. He recruited me to come to work in San Francisco and I had impressed his superiors so this was definitely going to be a blow to my image. It seemed my worries were unfounded because he supported me 100%. I wasn’t proud of getting the DUI so I didn’t tell anybody, not even my parents. I just made a vow to do everything that would be required of me for the DUI, like paying the $1500 fine and attending the 6 weeks of DUI classes. For me it was a lesson learned. I wasn’t mad at the world or even myself. I made a mistake, plain and simple. The best thing for me to do was deal with the consequences without pity or apology.


About two weeks after the incident I finally received mail from the City of Oakland. I figured it was my court date notice. When I opened the envelop and read the letter I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The DUI charge had been dropped with no explanation. No further action on my part was needed. I didn’t have to go to court, I didn’t have to pay any fines, and I didn‘t have to attend any classes. Sometimes in life you get lucky and this was one of those times. Even though I was not a religious man I thanked the Lord for my fortune. I’d had plenty of misfortune in my life up to that point so I guess in the end it all balances out. In life sometimes you are up like a hang glider riding the thermal winds as free as a bird and other times you are down in the dumps with no way out. Sometimes it is by your own hand and sometimes it's just how the world turns.


Even though the charges were dropped my license was suspended for a year. I could only drive to and from and during the course of employment. That was not a problem for me since I only drove to and from work. I had been riding my bike as my main mode of transportation for five years so driving was something I only did for work. A few weeks later I moved to San Francisco where I have lived in various sections of the Western Addition for the last 18 years. San Francisco is the perfect place to live if you prefer to ride a bike over driving a car. It is the one thing that has kept me here for all these years. The City is so small geographically all you need is two feet and a pair of working legs. You don’t even need a bike. If you have too much to drink you can just walk home. It’s my preferred way to travel after leaving a bar or party. You never know what you will see or who you will meet and best of all I don’t have to worry about getting stopped by the cops for DUI or DWB. That’s something a brutha can live with.