The Big City

Big cities are not exactly my favorite kinds of places — I’m pretty much a country bumpkin at heart. There are many things about big cities that I just plain detest. But some things about them are downright wierd, and sometimes even funny.

This morning I got up around 5:30 AM (late for me!) and headed down to my hotel’s lobby, where there was a Starbucks. I bought my coffee and a pastry, and sat down at one of the high tables on a ridiculously tall stool. My plan was to sip my coffee and read the news online (I had my laptop, and the hotel has a free WiFi service). As I was waiting for my laptop to boot, a very scruffy looking fellow — a homeless guy, I think — hailed me as if I was his long-lost buddy, and immediately started in on a lengthy discourse about Ethel Merman. Clearly he believed this was the most important topic in the universe, and nothing I could do or say would dissuade him from this belief.

At first I tried to be polite in my attempts to disengage, but eventually I ended up just telling him directly “I’m going to read my news now, and I am not going to listen to you or respond to you.” And I sat down to do that. My scruffy guy was completely unfazed by this — in fact, my disengagement seemed to give him new energy in his Ethel Merman monologue marathon. So I listened, unwillingly, to his highly detailed knowledge of Ethel Merman’s childhood on Long Island, while I tried to read the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

It was challenging.

After my coffee and pastry, I walked outside and immediately down to the train station — the “Muni”. It’s a subway, really, with big stations that aren’t very crowded. The train ride from my hotel to work is only a couple of miles — and yet on that short ride this morning, I saw more unusual people than I’d see in a couple of years in the country area where I live. Hell, probably more than a lifetime in the area where I live!

The odd folks that I recall include:

— A man who appeared to be in his 60s (or even older) was stationed in the Civic Center train station, playing an unrecognizable tune on a guitar with only two strings still intact. He hummed along with his guitar playing, and his humming was missing a few strings, too. He had short-cropped white hair except for a long ponytail that was dyed a brilliant, almost neon orange; his face had the good cheer and wholesomeness of a Santa Claus. He didn’t have the appearance of someone who was impoverished or homeless — he had nice clothes and looked healthy enough — but he had a little sign next to a plastic bucket that said “Your coins are my salvation.” Thing is, that sign was done at some kind of professional graphics outfit — it looked like a piece of classy marketing literature.

— A pair of young women were on the train I climbed into, dressed identically and sitting together; their outfits and makeup seemed calculated to make them appear older than they really were. They spent the entire train ride (thankfully it was a short ride!) pointing to various riders and loudly discussing whatever they felt like discussing. Usually this involved speculations about sexual orientation, sexual experience, sexually transmitted diseases, or…you get the idea. Most people just ignored them. I won’t repeat what they said about me. The little old Chinese lady sitting next to me laughed and laughed at all their ranting, and kept begging to be their next target.

— A pair of young men (late teens, most likely) dressed in the current fashion: pants with a crotch at knee level, pant leg bottoms all gathered at their ankles, and their waistbands lowered to mid-butt level with a few acres of their loud boxer shorts showing. They were speaking to each other in what appeared to be a hybrid of English and grunts, using many more gestures than one would ordinarily see. I was just a few feet from them, and could hear them clearly, but I could not understand a word they said. Whatever it was, it was serious stuff, to them, at least. But it got a lot less serious when one of them somehow got hung up on his clothing as he tried to get on the escalator — he fell and his trousers ended up entirely around his ankles. That got an appreciative chuckle from all my fellow commuters within sight.

— A middle-aged fellow with a distinctly professorial air, unless you happened to be walking behind him. He was wearing dress pants and a dress shirt, cardigan and a bow tie, with dressy loafers. But as he walked, and his soles became visible to those behind him, you could see in big, neat white letters “EAT” on his left sole, and “SHIT” on his right. Classy.

— As I exited the Embarcadero train station and made it back into the sunlight, an older man pushing an old-fashioned ice cream cart came to a halt in front of me. Right in the path of the commuters streaming out of the station, he set the brakes on his cart, and opened up the freezer compartment. Inside, I could see, there wasn’t any ice cream — just a collection of junk that was uniformly bright and shiny. Pieces of brightly colored bottles, polished bits of metal, some ribbons from gift packages, and so on. He rummaged about for a moment, then closed the freezer, unset his brakes, and moved on along. The entire incident took perhaps 45 seconds, and accomplished nothing whatsoever that I could see. But the fellow seemed to be happy with the world…

And that’s just one trip!