They have been digging up the sidewalk outside the office for some weeks now, installing a new water main. I looked into the hole when first they dug it: layers of folded chert, pushed up off the deep sea floor, covered with bay sand, then scraped and paved and mantled with adult theatres.
The feisty strikers at the hotels have won a cooling-off period. Their unintelligible but stirring chants will come back in 51 days. An innocent seasonal children’s diversion at the Embarcadero shops bore the hand-lettered sign: North Pole Dancers.
Everything is too close. The room divider, the monitor, the houses on the hill above the office. I long for Ivanpah, for Saline and Eureka, for broad flat valleys that can fit four rainstorms abreast without wetting the mountains at either edge.
When I walk through that neighborhood, I always think of the Gold Rush era ships buried in the dirt beneath the buildings and the streets. I suppose thinking of that might only add to your urban claustrophobia, though.
I know this’ll get me in trouble, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my head for “pole dancers”.