Venture into Oakland: a photo essay

"Hey Shilpi," I turned to her as we leafed through the records I had salvaged from the discard pile at Rasputin, "I've really enjoyed hanging out with you for the last week, but we've really just stayed at your apartment the whole time. I feel like I just haven't risked my life enough. How would you like to visit the top city for homicides in the United States?"

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea, Ben. What if we get killed?"

"But there's a cool band playing a free concert!"

"Let's go!"

This is essentially the conversation that passed between Shilpi and I today as we debated what to do this evening.

Here we are entering the streets of Oakland:

We exist.

Clearly, by the expression above, as I emerged from the subway into smog-filled streets I was ready for battle. But I was in no way prepared for the grim view that greeted me:

  

Realizing that perhaps we had gotten ourselves into a situation that was more dangerous than we could handle but with nowhere to go but forward, Shilpi and I adopted our own modes of self-defense. My weapon of choice: intimidation. Here I am deterring potential assailants by adopting the persona of a gangsta:

Shilpi was not convinced. I tried a different pose:

While Shilpi would only concede a "better," her preferred mode of self-preservation could hardly be considered viable. She hoped to use camouflage by posing as a tourist:

While I suggested that perhaps posing as a tourist, which is something of a rarity in Oakland, would in fact make her a more likely potential target, she was quick to counter that, unlike gangstas, the police help tourists:

Not to mention, Shilpi pointed out, she kinda looks black. And I definitely don't. I had to concede that Shilpi was, in fact, smart. And that was final.

Eventually we made our way to Jack London Square.

Here, I posed on a railing at the dock pretending to be pensive. And then I crossed my arms and smiled while Shilpi moved onto the dock as well.

Oh look, there's Shilpi:

Finally, we saw what we came to see, the jazz/hip-hop group Shotgun Wedding Quintet:

That's right, for those of you who didn't notice, we saw a hip-hop band. Made up of only white people. In Oakland. That's all I have to say about that.

To regain some street cred (while searching for an ATM so that we could buy a CD from the band that was actually pretty good) Shilpi leaned against this signpost.

While we almost got run over by a train on the way (apparently, in Oakland trains just go in the middle of the street instead of having separate tracks), upon reaching the ATM, we discovered that while I had enough money in my account to pay for the CD, I didn't have enough to pay for the ATM fee. So we returned to the show where Shilpi managed to barter three dollar bills, six quarters, and a BART ticket with $1.75 left for a copy of the CD. Score.

Finally we headed back to the 12th Street/Oakland City Center BART station, where Shilpi went the wrong way and had to run back up the down escalator to make the train to which I had leisurely strolled. Another point to Shilpi.

Bye bye Oakland, hello Berkeley:

...not the homicide capital of the country. Mission accomplished.

A tale of seduction...or unrequited love?

When I first arrived in Berkeley I met up with my dear friend and U. C. Berkeley student, Shilpi. While I had just escaped the end-of-semester madness and was finally ready to enjoy what leisure and recreation the Bay Area could offer, Shilpi was in the thick of finals and in no mind to anything but study. Needless to say, as soon as I had stowed my bags in her dorm, she shooed me outside and locked the door.

But as a starry-eyed kid from a suburb of Phoenix, I was thrilled simply to wander the U. C. Berkeley campus in total awe at the splendor of its architecture alone. Soon, I came across a magnificent structure that seemed more like the Parthenon in all its glory than any sort of university building I had ever seen. The regal pillars, the stately facade drew me towards it. When I saw the words “University Library” carved across the top I knew I must enter. I walked through ornate iron doors and found myself swept up a marble staircase at the end of the room almost involuntarily. Here was the massive reading room: arched ceiling plunging into the sky, a sea of bookshelves lining the walls beneath multiple-storey windows, and desks, oh the desk, oh the rows of desks and lamps, words crumble in my attempts to describe! And here I was, the helpless victim of this deliberate seduction, I only meant to walk once around, but I could not resist the gold-lettered leather binding, I would just crack open a book, and suddenly I found an encyclopedia published in Spain during the Franco regime in my hands and suddenly I was sitting at a desk beneath one of those magnificent lamps – I couldn’t help it, I was fascinated, how did Franco-era depictions of controversial Spanish figures – Francisco Franco, Gabriel García Lorca – compare with what I learned in America today? – and my phone buzzed, a text from Shilpi: “are you alive?” (had that many hours passed already?) but I put it away, I pretended not to notice, I just wanted to find out, I just wanted to investigate, I just wanted to learn.

This is what happened. But I knew that words would be insufficient to convey what I felt. So a few days later I set out to recreate the experience for my readers through a photo journal. Here is my result:

  

 

Locked. Could this be a cold reminder of the true elitist nature of the academic institution: beautiful, but only accessible to the select few sanctioned to reap the plentiful bounty as the masses are left to wallow in mediocrity and pound their fists in vain against locked iron gates with bitter contempt – and I was one of those among the mob, shut out forever from the forbidden fruit of knowledge?

Or perhaps a suggestion to check the hours first.

A drink with a Brit

“So what are you doing here?” His tan complexion and curly black hair remind me of my Jewish 8th grade English teacher, but the accent is nowhere close.

“I have an internship in Berkeley at the high school.”

“Oh yeah? Teaching what?”

“English.”

He leans against the bar. “You know, they say you always remember your most influential teachers. And for me, even though I’m a scientist, it was my English teacher back in England. He was really about having you’re own interpretation, it was amazing how differently two people would read the same passage. That really impressed me. Of course, I don’t know what they teach here, but In England we read all British authors until the twentieth century. They said that starting in about the twentieth century, American literature really is the most influential, there are hardly any influential British authors in the twentieth century at all.”

“There’s got to be some influential writers in the twentieth century…George Orwell.”

“Yes, but he wrote Nineteen Eighty Four in 1939. It was really astounding how spot on he was.”

“How so?”

“With one centralized government imposing hegemonic control.”

“Who would you say is doing that?”

“It used to be America. Right now I’d say China and Russia. I think it’s going to be Europe again soon.”

“But wait, I read Europe’s in the worst economic crisis since post World War Two.”

“That’s because you read American news. It’s damn annoying, but it’s not like anybody’s going to go bankrupt.”

“What about Greece?”

“No one really cares about Greece.”

“Oh, I thought of an influential British author--J. K. Rowling.”

“Oh, I don’t like her.”

“Why not?”

“When I was younger we used to discover books. We read to go into this magical world. One big author in England we were into, I mean everyone was into Roald Dahl.”

“I love Roald Dahl!”

And it’s like we really just discovered him, all of us. And for a while that was all we were into, like literally I used to look forward to coming home from school so I could read Roald Dahl, I used to fantasize about being in a Roal Dahl book. I get the impression that J. K. Rowling is trying to do that, but I already have that with Roald Dahl and nothing can replace that.”

“But you can enjoy more than one thing. J. K. Rowling doesn’t have to marginalize what you have with Roal Dahl.”

“No I can’t do it. It’s like, I’m a stones guy, the Rolling Stones I mean, and I can’t stand the Beatles. It’s either one or the other. Like Democrat or Republican. People try to pretend there’s a middle ground but there isn’t. You never see a Republican vote for a Democrat. Even if they don’t admit it, everyone picks a side.”

“Now hold on, maybe when it comes to politics, but in general I’d say everything is more of a gray area than black and white. Like we all have both sides to varying degrees.”

“Oh no, I’m a black and white guy. No gray area. At this point I think living in extremes makes life a bit more exciting. Who’d you vote for in the last election?”

“To be quite honest, I’ve never voted for a Republican. And I like the Beatles, not the Rolling Stones.”

“See, you’ve just proved my point. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go spend a penny.”

“What?”

“Relieve urinary pressure.”

And he’s gone.

Painted town

In the Mission:

Nice to see San Francisco graffiti artists promoting OSHA regulations:

The Sorcerer

I have communed with a sorcerer. Sat rapt as he synthesized figures from dust, carved civilizations from empty space, wove entire worlds from the thread of dreams and shadows.

I walked by him in the subway, he nodded as I passed. I could still hear him at the platform growling incantations to the deep strumming of his acoustic guitar when I realized I was no longer waiting for the train, I was watching from a distance as my body carried me back up the stairs, my volition no match for the persuasion of his desperate screams.

At his feet, my harmonica between my fingers, at my lips, and while I knew no spells of my own, I had merely to ride the sound of his voice and the electricity of his energy passed through the metal reeds in my hands. Two songs later and at his request I had run home for a keyboard. When I returned his empty case had transformed into a sea of fluttering green and I could see the gleam in his eyes at the potential exponential multiplication of his powers.

Now I was his apprentice, and as he taught me his mystical melodies, coins, bills, a packet of dark green leaves that he quickly pocketed rained down from the passing masses.

But while his shattering song gripped and beckoned, the act of creation was in his words:

“How you feelin? … Love that dress. … ¿Cómo está? ... Hey, you a dancer?”

She shakes her head.

“Well, I’m makin a video and you look perfect for it. Even if you just kinda move back and forth.”

She smiles as she leaves, “Oh no, no, no!”

And finally to me, the teacher to his student, “See it don’t matter what you say, it’s just about making a connection. Then they remember you and next time they say, ‘hey, I’ll give 'im a dollar today.’ ”

After a reworked version of “Yesterday” that smashes my body into shards and leaves me a helpless crumpled mass on the floor he reveals the mission and mantra, the duty and obligation, the sacred creed:

“They might be running late, we gotta make em on time. They might be unsure, we gotta be consistent. They might be tired from a long day at work, we gotta make em feel like they just woke up. It’s our job to get those motherf---ers out of their pockets!”

And somehow I’m not sure anymore whether I’m the apprentice or the target of the greatest sorcery of all:

“You stick with me, we’re gonna be rich. I been looking for a piano player. Tell you what, we’re gonna record a record, you know in the nice studio over right here in Berkeley, I got all my own songs, and we’ll get ‘em copywrited, 25 dollars, and we’ll get em to make the CD’s in the factory, you know so people can’t copy em, and people’ll be like ‘why won’t it copy’ but it’s because it’s the kind you can only print in the factory. Now let’s see, today, I give you one third. Cause you’re just learning. And after you learn the songs you can make one half. Now you’re a professional, and this is just for rehearsal. Man, when we’re playing real gigs, at clubs you know, we’re gonna be rich. I’ll ask em for two hundred dollars for 45 minutes and three fifty for an hour. You don’t think so? That’s what I’ll tell em. And you can lead the band. Don’t like the trumpet player? You tell em not to come back and they’re gone. Oh yeah, we’ll have our own horn section and a drummer and a bass and another guitar. Man, only reason I’m not big already is I got mixed up in heroin, but that’s all over now, now I’m ready for the big time…”

And as he molds continents between his fingers and casts an ocean with the flick of his wrist and a galaxy with another I don’t want to reach out to test if they are solid or if they crumble into dust or shatter and evaporate into a cloud for another storm because they’re so beautiful, brilliant images suspended between us, scattered about the room, floating slowly into the afternoon sky. I don’t want to ask how he will pay for studio time, tell him that copywriting costs thirty-five dollars, that there is no factory-made CD that can’t be copied, that I’ve played gigs and no one pays what he says he’ll get, so many things I don’t want to ask, I don’t want to say. So I don’t.

He counts me twelve one-dollar bills and eight quarters.
I check my phone. Six. We started playing around four. "I'm making seven bucks an hour."
"Is that how much they pay you at your job?"
"No, well how long have we been here?"
" 'Bout forty-five minues."

He promises to call me tomorrow. 

He doesn’t call me tomorrow.

I see him as I walk by the subway a few days later. 

I don’t stop to say hello.

His favorite song:

Works Cited:

Unidentified ASU student strikes UC Berkeley classrooms

UC Berkeley students don't notice because it's summer break.

A lesson in something (at the People's Park)

Late afternoon, patches of sunlight peering through the trees, in the distance ragged groups of people and scavenged goods scattered haphazardly in the sun, and I’m hanging out with a hobo.

It certainly was not the hobos that drew me to the “People’s Park,” where once protestors of war sought refuge from the National Guard and now economic objectors are free to defy the Dow Jones. It was the art: murals, brilliant colors, psychedelic images.

Then I saw the jazz guitar in his arms, the broad round hollow body, the wood stained orange and red, a distant mellow twang.

 “Mind if I join?” I had brought my harmonica for just an occasion as this.

“Oh, I don’t know chords or anything, I just play by the spirit.” I couldn’t tell if his tan skin came from being Hispanic, Native American, or long exposed to the sun. There were only a few long white strands at each temple contrasting starkly among black locks. Two of the strings of his guitar were missing and a third flailed uselessly from the neck.

“Perfect, I don’t know anything about harmonica so it works out,” and I sat beside him on the bench.

So we played our makeshift duet. He seemed to use the limitations of the instrument as an advantage, moving around shapes that would be much more difficult if all six strings had been present, and drawing textures that seemed not only viable but genuine. I sucked. Both literally and metaphorically. Awkwardly stumbling across my brand new chromatic harmonica, I only somewhat successfully managed to pick out melodies over his chords.

“Sorry,” I periodically apologized for my flubbed chirps. I didn’t know how long he'd put up with me, but I didn’t think I could hold out for long.

He didn’t seem the least concerned: “Trial and error. That’s how we learn.”

So we played on by trial and error as I struggled to surpass my inexperience just enough to find the spirit that led him. After a few improvisations he paused to open and close his fingers. “I can’t get my hands around some of these changes, I’ve got arthritis.”

“Arthritis?” I asked, but it was the word “changes” that caught my attention.

“I’m almost 50. But that’s no excuse.” And he’s back at it.

So now I’m officially hanging out with a hobo. But I can’t picture him lounging on a streetcorner with a sign or jangling a cardboard cup in the face of passers-by. No, no, this man belongs beside a campfire in the woods, or perhaps resting beside a river, strumming contentedly for the pleasure of the people or the birds or even just the trees.

As our session nears the end he turns, “Yeah man, thanks for that. I wouldn’tve thought of that on my own." Here I’m almost feeling guilty for subjecting him to my beginning harmonica and he’s thanking me as though somehow I’ve taught him something.

We stand, he now towering over me. He introduces himself as “Russel” and invites me back anytime (would’ve given me his phone number, he says, if he owned a phone). I thank him, and he wraps both of his massive arms around me in an enormous hug that forces every trace of air from my lungs until he finally lets go. Now he’s off to find a beer and I’m off to wander someplace else.

 (Russel with his guitar)

Long Day’s Journey into Night (And that’s not such a bad thing) Part 1: Day

Today I paid a visit to San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where the main exhibit explored the audience as a subject:

(photo courtesy of http://www.ybca.org/audience-subject-part-2-xl)

Photographs of swarms of bodies immersed in frenzy, films of soccer fanatics turning to riot, of masses pulsating in unison, of hordes jeering an empty ring from which the images of the boxers had been removed, of people all over the world expressing their religious (without understatement) devotion to a British punk band—and as I moved from piece to piece all I could think was I don’t like crowds. Taken from their context and put on display, it all seemed absurd and somewhat unsettling.

We all want to fit in, but we all want to be special:

For contrast, the other exhibit in the Center was a solo exhibit about the experience of an artist, which was likened to that of a lone traveler in the Arctic:

Pinned between the crushing anonymity of the audience and suffocating isolation of the artist, I decided it would be best to go outside to the Yerba Buena Garden and lie in the grass:

 

As I lazily enjoyed the afternoon, someone mentioned something about an eclipse. Of course, I had forgotten, I read in the paper the night before that there would be an eclipse today! I set right to work:

Three-ring notebook doubles as pinhole camera:

A view of the sun through protective glasses (thanks to a friendly and informative fellow lawn-occupier who works at the science center):

Obscured by the moon, the sun’s rays seemed devoid of warmth and contrast between light and shadow became harsh, creating a sense of artificiality. I felt as though I was in a movie studio lit by spotlights and at any moment a mob of stagehands would swarm in to rearrange everything at the cue of the rotund director’s “cut!"

And the passing of the eclipse behind a building signaled my move indoors for a concert by the Brad Mehldau trio. Suddenly, here I was: the audience--the very anonymity I had scorned! Look at us self-righteous jazz fans, speaking in code, talking as though we were the chosen people paying homage to our little-known but all-powerful god:

“Oh yes, let me make as many references to obscure jazz musicians as possible.”

“Absolutely, not only do I own album on which the song you just mentioned appears, I’ve seen him in concert twice.”

And the worst part of it all was I knew these references too. Determined to have no part in this, I fought back the urge to respond with a comment to show that I belonged in this exclusive club as well and sought refuge in a book while we waited in front of the empty stage for the band to finish looking at the eclipse:

 

It was astounding watching him at the piano, his movements, contortions more like, so strained, so tense, so exaggerated, so forced, but yet the sound he drew from the instrument—at times so pure and light and delicate, and others complete exuberance and freedom. It was as though the sonic world of music was his deliberate rebuttal to the physical realm of objects and things and movement. After a few songs:

“Thank you. Thank you. We opened with “Hey Joe” made famous by Jimmy Hendrix [applause] and we followed with a Charlie Parker blues, an original composition, and a Sonny Rollins tune. I just looked at the sun. That was really stupid.”

To be continued. . . .