San Francisco Discourses

Coop and I arrived in San Francisco in the summer of 1978 without a place to live, but with his old friend JD arriving in a week to share an apartment, Coop’s job was to find a rental in the new city. JD had arranged for us to stay with a college friend of his while we looked. Dwayne Brigsby was waiting for us in his apartment on the great Geary Way atop Cathedral Hill not far from downtown San Francisco. Coop and Brigs had spoken several times but had never met. We had no idea what Brigsby would look like, knowing little more than that he had been JD’s roommate in college in Chicago, and that he worked for an insurance company. Neither of us were quite prepared when we were greeted at the door by a debonair dark skinned African American of great height - a Malcolm X look alike to be honest if the minister had dressed in bespoke Armani. 

San Francisco remained alive, though something was amiss that I could not quite put my finger (ehr paw) on. The few natives you would meet would tell you that the city was undergoing a huge demographic transformation - again. You could almost feel the change on the streets. 

Brigs and Coop were becoming fast friends. JD drove in from Chicago a few weeks later and the three friends went looking for an apartment to share. Before finding what we were looking for, we experienced the underbelly of California, that belied the outward image of a diverse, happily integrating community but instead hearkened back to  the times of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment, racially restrictive covenants, and the zoot suit riots. 

JD and I, following up on a lead provided by a rental agency, toured a charming apartment south of downtown. The landlord, an Asian gentleman, along with his beautiful 18 year old daughter, a student at nearby San Francisco State College, toured the apartment with us, offered us a rental contract, and nodded approvingly as his daughter openly flirted with JD. We thanked him, but informed him that, while we loved the place, we’d have to bring our third roommate in the morning, to obtain his approval, before we could sign on. 

The prospective landlord took a good faith deposit of first month’s rent to hold the place with a right to rescind for 24 hours. We showed up right on schedule the next morning with Brigsby, nattily attired in a beautiful navy pinstripe Hart Shaffner Marks 3 piece suit, expecting a simple formality adding Brigs’ signature to the lease agreement. We were not prepared for the hostile reception we received. Our prospective landlord, so accommodating the day before, flipped 180 degrees. Taking one look at Brigs, and after quickly consulting with his wife, he returned with our check, hemming and hawing, clearing his throat several times, he then informed us he had rented the place to another party last night.

JD and I wanted to sue, or at a minimum lodge a complaint with the city’s housing authority, alleging discrimination. Brigs, who responded far more coolly (though completely in character as I would learn over the years), kept calm, and after digesting what had just occurred, told us to move on. Why would we want to rent from a landlord who clearly held some retrograde views on race?

It all turned out for the best, as within days of the depressing trip through the past darkly with the atavistic racist, we scored with a lovely Nob Hill Victorian on Clay Street, a few blocks from both Chinatown and the gay leather neighborhood centered on Polk Gulch.

The front sitting room, separated from the long entrance hall by beautiful sliding doors topped with leaded glass, looked out on the city through a large bay window. I had a great spot to observe the comings and goings here in Baghdad by the Bay, while Coop, JD, and Brigs were at work or school. 

My outings in the fog shrouded city were magical. The boys played tennis in Lafayette Park at the top of Clay in the late afternoons, allowing me the freedom to explore the neighborhood. On the weekends we made our way over to Russian Hill for some pickup basketball. While they took on all comers, I had freedom to wander or simply to enjoy the views over the bay to Angel Island and Alcatraz.

JD, whom I knew well from our high school days in Jersey, after four years at an elite private university, still fashioned himself as somewhat of a radical man of the people, a Thomas Paine in 20th-century garb - a persona he perfected at the University of Chicago. Brigs is far more conservative, as befits an up-and-coming corporate executive. Coop is somewhere in the middle, more a green with democratic socialist leanings than the hero of the dispossessed proletariat, as JD presents himself, in their unending political and social debates. It certainly was entertaining. 

On the particular evening I relate here, after a walk up Clay to the Park, we were making our way over to California Street for groceries. Slowly hoofing our way up Nob Hill, approaching Julia Morgan’s elegant Fairmont Hotel - destroyed by the 1906 quake shortly after opening, but like the city itself, rebuilt after the consuming fire - the debate was in full throated spleen splitting mode. JD was assailing capitalism in general and the insurance industry in particular, in a clamorous sardonic diatribe in which he made the case for a French-style takeover of the economy, much to Brigs’s increasing displeasure. 

Brigs at first tried the reasoned approach, well researched in the Chicago School of Economics, arguing that “insurance is necessary to spread risk so that markets can function.” 

JD sputtered some irrelevant quotes from Das Kapital, Lenin, Mao, or maybe Abbie Hoffman, which were lost in the clattering of the California Street cable car that had come chugging by, loaded with noisy tourists. When it had safely passed, JD tried again. “As the common man,” he began - and got nothing else out as Brigs and Coop both erupted in laughter. I had to control myself, as I was guffawing so loudly, I almost gave away the fact that I could understand every word. 

“What a twat,” I muttered. Because he dresses like a hobo, he thinks he’s the common man? Oy vey iz mir!” 

Brigs went in for the kill. “The common man! You have an undergraduate degree from a private elite university initially funded by robber baron-in-chief, John D. Rockefeller! You’re enrolled to get a PhD in some esoteric subject at another. You read Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, and Antonio Gramsci for fun! You barely know how to drive, and you’re a flaming atheist. You room with an African American and an agnostic Jew! You are as much the common man as I am the Grand Cyclops of the Ku Klux fuckin’ Klan!” 

With that, Brigs and Coop nearly collapsed in fits of laughter. JD, nonplussed, recognized instantly that he had made a tragic error, one that would follow him for a lifetime. But that did not stop him. He continued ranting about capitalist dystopia for another five minutes, and only stopped when we were accosted by a naked homeless man in front of Safeway warning of the coming apocalypse. At that point JD realized that our continuing laughter was making it difficult for him to get across the finer points of his well-honed discourse. 

When we crossed California in the parking lot and the laughter had subsided, Brigs stopped dead in his tracks looking perplexed.

“Coop, I know this will sound nuts, but I could swear that Cal was following our conversation. It even sounded like he was speaking Yiddish!”

JD pitched in, “you say I’m nuts! You think the dog can understand economics and speaks Yiddish? Wow, too much time figuring out which legitimate claimant not to pay, my friend. You need to get out more.”

Coop could not resist. “He’s a Great Pyrenees, Brigs, he’s pretty smart, but Yiddish, no chance. Now if you thought you heard him speaking Basque, I might entertain the thought.” 

And with that, they all laughed, though Coop a little uncomfortably.