Charles
Journal
Charles
 In today’s modern world, a few bookstores still dot some city street-scapes like portals of past. Survivors of the info/internet age and amazon.com, they continue to thrive and grow. Along with great books by fine authors like Baldwin and Bronte and Hemingway and Steinbeck and Anne Rice, I enjoy meeting the store’s resident cat.  In Aardvark Books on Church Street at Market next door to a bar, Pilsner Inn, that serves well drinks for $4 all day every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I sat down to re-read the beginning of a childhood favorite, James Hilton’s Lost Horizon...a reading that, at first, did not last long since Owen, the cat, jumped into my lap without warning.  Owen is one of those big beautiful orange tabby cats like the infamous Morris the cat in American TV commercials, but Owen is smaller, slimmer than Morris and is such a charmer he’d melt your heart the moment he jumps into your lap and arches his back for your hand to stroke his silky fur. Once that happens he begins to purr...softly. Soon, Owen is so comfortable he climbs meticulously up your chest and pushes his furry head up against your nose. After a kiss, he slips back down into your lap and reclines into a ball; then stretches one paw up your shirt, the other rests at your waist. His purrs are soothing as he falls in and out of sleep the way cats do, and I smiled happily, and continued re-reading Chapter 1 of Lost Horizon and then another book I would buy for $12.50 John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.  Owen the cat, Aardvard Books  Aardvark Books, 227 Church Street, San Francisco, CA 94114
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 South Carolina advances to Sunday's East Regional final. (MADDIE MEYER/GETTY IMAGES) In NCAA college basketball bracket for 2017, I picked South Carolina Gamecocks to loose in the first round to Marquette on the fact that Marquette had a tradition for winning in basketball and Gamecocks previously did not have that kind of reputation in basketball for more than four decades of not being part of the college basketball big dance.
I am shocked and proud of Gamecocks success being a native born South Carolinian after the Cocks beat Marquette, then powerful Duke and #3 region ranked Baylor whom the cocks destroyed to move into the Elite 8 for the first time in school history and probably in state history for any of its college basketball teams. Though, I believe, Clemson Tigers made the Elite 8 back in the 1990s when they were on par with their ACC North Carolina school counterparts (Duke, North Carolina, Wake Forest, and North Carolina State) but that was as far Clemson or any SC school ever got in college basketball. I don’t expect this to happen. But what if ....? What if those Cocks go all the way to win it all? That would mean, State of South Carolina, the Palmetto State, the Rebels without a cause, is a good place to be right now particularly for major college sports like football, basketball and baseball. Of the 3, South Carolina has 2 reigning national champions:: Baseball (Coastal Carolina), Football (Clemson) and, TBD, in basketball. Go Cocks! This now California boy is pulling for you.  There is much rain in San Francisco today...and I've turned up the heat in the office because it is cold or so I am colder than ice. Good, I didn't put off Ocean Beach yesterday when there was no rain...just the usual grey but mild weather that is typical San Francisco...
[Image: Stop at the Waterfall below Prayer Book Hill and a Cross, John F. Kennedy Drive, Golden Gate Park...] En route to home downtown last night and cycling mostly up hill (makes a one speed bike feel like the back tire is flat, so your legs work harder and your legs are shapely and calves good and hard afterwards) and through the park on winding curves of woodsey JFK Drive--which now has Street Humps to slow down speeding car drivers--, the perfume smell of blooming flowers were overwhelming but wonderful...Best to travel in a group of other bikers when your lights suddenly don't work as I did. Two hearts. Two chocolates from St. Petersburg's Mr YsL who came over to thank me for the birthday card and while he talked with more of a highly educated American accent and not Russian or European I wondered had his fingertips gingerly touched each one he set up so impeccably on a paper plate... Today, YsL wore a blue sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans and his rather square-shaped handsome face, particularly the jar reminded me of an animated Superman, was unshaven with stubbles of blond hair that rose, too, all over his arms as fine as his blond locks that he kept pulling his fingers through and the hairs on his arms were yellow blond and erect in the light streaming through the glass. I don't think I've ever seen or noticed or stared at strawberry colored lips as plush as YsL, and they are damn attractive... As attractive as he is when he grins and leans over and stares at me with those marble blue eyes ...  2 chocolates from YsL for his birthday. WoW! My request has been met! I've decided I no longer want to work full-time...but the company wants to keep me...so they agreed to my reduced hours ..which means more time in NEW YORK CITY!!!, and writing/storytelling. Thank you!  March 15, or so afterwards, is when the new year should officially begin. By then, after two months of extravagance into the new year and just not giving a damn, you're ready to make changes, esp. on that day (in San Francisco) when the sun comes out in full glory and the sun is smiling and then you're not. After weeks of what we in California call cold (anything below 57 degrees) and there is no rain, and the sun is bright and hot and you're forced to discard winter layers, that is when you're ready to go on a major crash diet or make a change... because of what you suddenly see in a mirror that shocks your senses into what isn't a fake sighting. Vanity. It is I. What the hell is that unsightly bulge? Dear God! Who in heaven's name is that? And that thing...that rolling lump behind him? No no no. That's not what we used call stacked...the way Christoper's round booty looked that we liked to squeeze and kiss and all those things... You accept it anyway...cover it...without losing a button or hope no one really notices your belt is in the first hole and not the last one, which leaves no flap because all the width of your girth has multiplied into a dreadful pear shape. Immediately you start to eat correctly, which had not been the case or care in January - February when all we did was party and drink and eat as if there as no tomorrow and, then, that extra inch was hardly noticeable. But not anymore... Change.  Born 16 March in St. Petesburg, Russia, we wish Ysl the happiest birthday and many more returns...So long since I've bought a birthday card anyone. But today for YsL, I got him a card on good quality paper from Blink . . .    Here's the guy with best bone structure: Saleem Saleem  Coming home last night from the theatre and a bar where I drank a little bit too much, but didn't feel drunk, and up a hill I climbed looking up at the night sky in the east and saw the moon. I was awestruck at how close it seemed behind St. Boniface's tower.  United Nations Plaza at night I didn't have my tripod in my bag or even the right camera for shooting it but in the state I was in --all wobbly and not at all so steady on my feet and yet full of joy and adventure and capable of taking on the devil if we came face to face with bloodshot eyes-- I snapped as much of the moon I admired as I could. Later at home in that big empty space I have temporally moved into with a terrible view and no tall slender Hilton and the only sound I hear is the sound I make, I shared an image of my moon shot with my dear friend and realized that he knows he means more to me than it--the moon...though, I enjoy staring at the moon and wondering all kind of crazy things like how long would I last up there? All alone. On an empty moon and no air except a mask that could give out of oxygen before I could say or think "Sam Sam Sam...Samuel! Help me!" at any moment or before my mind would just completely crack up into total madness from the lack of air and loneliness from just a view of a blue earth far away in the distance...  Moon over San Francisco 12.March.2017  Monday morning office After hail and rain and a storm and glorious sunshine and somewhere over the rainbow, on Monday in the office let them have some cake...Today is a brand new day.
Coming this Wednesday, March 9 at Tenderloin Museum, a double feature screening of Gay San Francisco (1965-70, 30 mins) by Jonathan Raymond, and underground softcore rarity "Meat Rack" (1970, 70 mins) by Micheal Thomas. Michael Thomas will be in attendance.  Michael Thomas' softcore rarity Meat Rack was originally produced and released by Sherpix, the company that brought underground films like Lonesome Cowboys, Pink Narcissus, and Invocation of My Demon Brother to a nationwide circuit of art house theaters. Shot mostly on the mean streets of San Francisco, this is a gritty, brooding tale of a bisexual hustler who’ll go to bed with any man or woman who offers him enough money and sexual kicks. Using both sexploitation and art film aesthetics, Meat Rack is an essential and compelling artifact of pre-hardcore adult cinema.
Meat Rack’s then-21-year-old director saw the film as an opportunity to portray San Francisco’s increasingly vibrant gay demimonde; after this, his only film, Thomas would later go on to co-found Strand Releasing, one of the most important American independent distributors and a central force behind the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s. The strange tension displayed in Meat Rack—between its tortured protagonist, struggling with the vagaries of his own desires, and the burgeoning sexual freedoms of the city he finds himself in—now reveals itself as the emblematic conflict of a film about a community on the eve of liberation. Gay San Francisco by Jonathan Raymond, is a previously lost documentary depicting queer life in San Francisco five decades ago. Shot between 1965-1970, Gay San Francisco features a collection of incredible footage of San Francisco’s thriving LGBTQ culture, with a focus on the Tenderloin, San Francisco’s first queer neighborhood. Scenes from gay bars are intercut with fascinating interviews featuring gay men, lesbians, and trans women discussing issues from harassment to sex to job security. The film also includes a not-to-be missed Halloween drag show at On The Levee, one of SF’s many historic gay bars that closed their doors long ago. Filmmakers Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman unearthed Gay San Francisco while researching their Emmy-winning documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, which included footage from Gay San Francisco. The Tenderloin Museum screened this film for the first time in 30 years to a sold out audience. |
AuthorCHARLES PEARSON
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