7 - Apts - SF - Noe Valley

Around 1980, while I was still working at PBT, (see The Book Business) Ari moved out of the building we shared in Japantown. But I soon heard from him again when he tired of the place he had found in Noe Valley. He was always a man of manias. One month he would take up weaving and the next gardening and the next ceramics. He was talented in all of these things and the gardening and ceramics things actually worked for him. He had located a better place a block over in Noe Valley and passed his original place on to me. I would live there, in another funky space, this time under a house and behind a garage (but on the main drag of a then charming and now trendy village-within-the-city), for the entirety of the ‘80s -- the longest time I had ever lived in one place, up to that point.

My landlady was an elderly Irish widow who lived upstairs. She had grown up in the neighborhood back when it was predominantly Irish and recalled playing outside the cable car barn where the local market now stood. She could also remember the price she paid for everything she had ever purchased in her life. If one of her stories happened to include an African American he was always, "as black as the ace of spades."

I started walking, or more frequently taking the bus, over the steep hill to PBT, then to The Bookplate on the north side of town, but finally got a job at Cover To Cover just down the street in Noe Valley.

Noe Valley was just on the other side of the hill from The Castro (technically Eureka Valley). But where Castro society was dominated by horny gay men (and a lesser contingent of horny and persnickety lesbians -- Susie Bright  had worked at PBT for a time), Noe Valley was Breeder Central with stroller gridlock in the aisles of our store. (Though it did seem that half the store clerks on the street were lesbians.) At any rate, the character of the street and the store were about as different as possible from what I had been used to. The odd thing about both living and working on 24th street was that there were times when I would suddenly realize I hadn’t left the Valley (the physical watershed that defined Noe Valley) for many months. It was like living in a little village that just happened to be smack in the middle of a city. We had our own (monthly) newspaper, markets, boutiques, restaurants, and (still, in 2013) only one traffic light. I still go back there to get my hair cut and my teeth cleaned.

My career shift from the retail book business to Multimedia in the late ‘80s (see Programming & Tech Writing) was a bit of a culture shock. Bookstore clerks (and assistant managers) are not well paid. I started out at the Apple Multimedia Lab making about four times more than I had ever made before -- and I was just doing my hobby. The Lab rented space in a building in a very posh part of town (Presidio Heights) and on occasion had “off-sites” to places like Sonoma Mission Inn. (An off-site is where everyone is uprooted and transported to some expensive resort to work for several days without the usual constraints of daily life. You’re basically living at work, but everything is deluxe and paid for by the company. Sometimes off-sites follow a period of intense effort and sometimes they are a period of intense effort. In either case, sleep deprivation is going to be a factor.)

For me this period was a lot of fun -- the work and the people were interesting and I fell in love twice. Plus, my Social Security rate is still determined by some of these peak years.

A few words about the “Pretty Big One” -- the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake -- before I wrap up the ‘80s. I was at home with the preliminaries of game two of the World Series (SF Giants vs Oakland A’s) on the radio when the room started shaking. My then girlfriend jumped up and ran to the bathroom doorway while I jumped up, realized my (still original) Mac was running and that I probably hadn’t saved my work, and ran over and held on to the computer to prevent it from being jostled. As the bookcases fell around me and T___ screamed at me, I held on for dear data. (I think I did lose some data when the power went out but the hard drive was un-damaged.)

We only lost power until Midnight -- but we still had gas so we could cook a generous candlelit dinner before any of our food when bad. We had already enjoyed free ice cream from the parlor down the street (Double Rainbow) that also was without power. (People in neighborhoods where the power was out for days hosted lovely parties to get rid of all their defrosting food.) 

Shortly after the quake T___ and I had split up to gather emergency supplies -- batteries, water, ice cream -- and before we reunited at my place I joined a group of people huddled on the sidewalk in front of a neighboring house. It was dark now and all the lights were out but it was a warm, calm evening and someone had a battery powered, black and white TV up on the stoop. We sat on the sidewalk and watched the news coverage of what we were experiencing. The TV studio only had backup power for essential equipment so they were using flashlights and candles for lighting. Mostly they showed the fires blazing in the Marina district (near where The Bookplate had been located) because that was all the cameras could see without lights.

Sitting out on the sidewalk in the pitch dark, with a bunch of neighbors you don’t know, on a lovely October night watching your city burn, is about as surreal as it gets.

If you weren’t smashed under a collapsed freeway, a crumpled building, or a fallen brick wall, it was actually pretty wonderfull. (See also: Don & Clark, MacWorld SF, On the Road - Europe, Programming & Tech Writing, Working For Apple. Next: 8 - Apts - SF - Fox Plaza.)