My photo
A San Francisco resident, I devote my time to experiments in the kitchen, volunteering, cinema and live music, and teaching. I love art as I do activism.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Quick Take: The Capitalistic Mind

I'm not a stout socialist, nor would I say I'm out-and-out against capitalism, but I have an issue with the impact that this corporate-structured, profit-driven, American Dream-fueled economy has had on the minds and perspectives on young (emphasis duly noted), entrepreneurial people in this country. Meritocracy, that is, the creative and practical approach to one's services or products, as applied to the design of a business, is now so overwhelmed by the need and desire to earn visibility and thus profit that, inevitably, the entrepreneur or producer compromises the integrity of either the product/service or his approach to marketing it to potential consumers. That essential dialogue between the value of the business and the potential or actual consumer on a personal level of interest is usurped and replaced by a megaphone-like glutting of visual and auditory avenues (via advertisements) towards simply grabbing as many people to take note by tangential, and consequently unrelated, means. It is the salesman selling the product more actively than the product can sell itself.

Note that this is not an attack, per se, on capitalism itself, but an aside about what I perceive to be a psychological effect of our sociological traditions in America.

Monday, August 8, 2011

the world is so curiously large


the streets of sf
are lined with red roses
and mad hatters
tell their stories
of the occupational landscape
over cups of java from a man
named Phil or a merwoman
who works for the Red Queen

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Space and Policy, Pt. II

I've recently made the move from Orange County to San Francisco. To adopt the lifestyle of Bay Area people, I decided long before the move to adopt public transportation as my primary means of mobility. But because my sister, whose place I am co-habitating at the moment, lives in Vallejo, it's entirely impractical to rely on buses and trains to get into the city. That being so, my sister and I made a compromise: if she could give me a ride into Emeryville where she works and when she works, I would take the BART the rest of the way. I would save her gas and time, and I would feel better about being one less motorist on the already-congested roads of San Francisco. I'm also unemployed at the moment and the thought of filling up a tank every other day to make the hour-long trip to and from Vallejo from the city to find work makes my head and wallet hurt.

It's Day Three of this Unbearable Lightness of Cash Income and my sister and I were, for the first time together, going through with our plan. We'd gone a little past her work to reach the MacArthur BART Station and because my sister relies solely on an automobile for traveling she wasn't sure where the station actually was, or how to get back to the Bay Street Plaza for work. Smartphone handy, I retrieved the route and we arrived successfully and briskly, bright and early at 8:45a. Pulling up to the curb, which was a red Bus Only zone, that encapsulates the station, I attempted to hop out of the vehicle to begin my journey into the city, but I was stopped. Not knowing how exactly to get back, my sister required my smartphone once more and for me to record the information on a pad of paper. We sat for all of two minutes as I pulled up the directions on my phone and wrote them down quickly, leaving out unimportant information and using symbols where appropriate.

Done and done, I opened the passenger door and threw one foot out onto the pavement. Upon making contact with the ground, I heard a sound on the other side of the vehicle, next to my sister's window. It was a traffic officer, a keeper of order and efficiency. I looked up from my transitional position between the car and the curb and saw right there a sign that said "Bus Only," then below to see red paint lining the curb. Windows rolled down to their bottom-most position, the officer began telling my sister that she was going to administer a citation for parking in a red zone. I looked around some more, now standing outside of the vehicle (it was all happening so fast and my body was already locked into a series of motions to get to the train) and started looking for any oncoming buses whose stop we were deterring. Nothing. Left and right, back and forth: nothing. My sister sat sheepishly but frustratedly, and I informed the officer that we were simply making a stop, hardly even a stop, more like a st--, so that I could be dropped off. We were NOT going to be parking, I said firmly. In fact, my sister still had the car in Drive and the officer had to command her to put the car in Park to administer the ticket. And there was no bus, I said to myself but loud enough for all to hear.

I followed the officer to the rear of the vehicle where she began recording the license plate number, which took as much time as it did me to write the directions for my sister, and reiterated that we were just about to leave, me on foot and her back to the flow of traffic, smoothly, calmly, and responsibly. No response. Panicked and feeling terribly about this turn of events, I turned to an emotional argument, saying that I was new in town and that my sister didn't intend to stop at this junction but that I had urged her to. Her rebuttal trumped mine, as the officer reminded me that my sister obviously wasn't new to the area since her car was registered in California and that the law regarding parking in red zones was applied all throughout. She misunderstood what I had meant, my apparently fool-proof puppy-dog-faced reveal that San Francisco was a new place to me and that we should be given a fair warning and a slap on the wrist, but I understood exactly what she meant. The law is the law: parking, stopping, lingering, pausing for a breath or a drink of water, stopping to blink or to fart, at a Bus Only zone is prohibited and always cause for financial punishment and emotional trauma. Even when a bus isn't there, or on its way, or possibly even in operation.

I had given up with the arguing, my shoulders sunken and my sights set on my poor sister who was now going to be running late for work. I got back into the car and shut the door, not really intending to but being locked into a series of motions that had become routine. I apologized and told my sister that I'd pay for the ticket, an offer she denied, which, I suppose, actually makes sense since I never told her to pull over at that spot of all possible spots. But going to the BART station and the DIY project of reducing my gas emissions were both my idea and I had imposed them onto my sister, so I insisted. Her face downturned with misery, mine with guilt, we both looked back to see the officer back in her own vehicle, waiting for us to pull out from the curb so that she could enter the flow of traffic. "Wait," I said. "Since we've already gotten the ticket, wait for a moment to get out and then I'll tell you when to go."

Out of the car I got. I looked back at the officer with a look of witchery and malice, then to oncoming traffic, then I closed the door and signaled to my sister to go. Just at the proper time, she entered the lane and drove off, and lo and behold came the bus, which now had to stop abruptly to accommodate the intrusive position of the officer in the Bus Only zone. Maybe I'm new to San Francisco, but I'm not new to douche-baggery.