Spending last Saturday wandering around San Francisco reminded me how much I miss the place; it’s just such a crazy, weird place, European in its bohemianess and American in its liveliness. On my way to the Civic Center I passed a transsexual, Asian hooker hugging a parking meter and chatting up a bemused tourist. It would have been a brilliant photo opportunity if I had my 70-200mm attached and being in a very dodgy neighbourhood prevented me from switching lenses without being a possible mugging victim. Shortly afterwards I passed two people smoking crack in the confines of a small car in the middle of the day on Van Ness. Again would have been a good photo opportunity but they may have shot me if I had tried. Discretion above valour is something I value.

Of course nothing beats my first trip to Shaky Town what seems eons ago in 2003. It seems like yesterday but Chinky Pinky, R and I were so different back then. R was just starting his obsession with PKS, I was coming off a 2 year relationship that ended up on an earth shatteringly sour note and I think CP was in the same boat. CP and I had driven up to see R and we decided to book a room in the City and party it up. With our absolutely non-existent local knowledge we booked a room in the Tenderloin district.

That first bus ride down to Pier 39 will always be one of my more fond memories of the City. R, CP and I planted ourselves at the back and started to have one of our usual random conversations. About five minutes in an overwhelming odour of urine started to permeate through the bus. Initially thinking that it was emanating from outside none of us paid any heed but the smell kept getting stronger and stronger and eventually we peered down the bus in consternation. 

Halfway down was an old Chinese man whose trouser leg was soaking wet and a puddle off pee dribbled around his shoe. Three of us exchanged slightly concerned looks, R especially with his lack of experience with big city crazies had a bit of a wild gleam in his eyes (I was pretty calm after having had enough of this kind of experiences after three years living in London). Things started to get a bit ugly then when a mean looking kalu baduwa in front of the old guy turned around and started cussing him out. She yelled at him for a few minutes and then got out at the next stop.

It was then that I had to start wondering what I had been drinking the night before. The old man started muttering to himself in Thai or Vietnamese. He continued getting himself more and more worked up and to top it off started spitting. What really gave us pause for thought was not that he was just spitting, but that his spit was green, a fluorescent green. I swear at that point R grabbed my hand in fear; I still hope to this day that it was CP’s hand he intended to grab and not mine. The crazy old guy continued alternatively spraying radioactive waste around and swearing incomprehensibly. A few stops later he thankfully shuffled off the bus leaving a mélange of odours and three very shocked brown people behind. 

I’m going to take a wild guess and say I would have been the one to break the silence with an inane comment but R and CP were too far gone to say anything. Of course after all this excitement one would have been forgiven to assume the rest of the trip would be sans too much more excitement. Alas, it was not to be. There was a chap in the front of the bus who could have been kindly described as being a bit overweight, well overweight somewhere in the region of a couple of hundred pounds. He was busy reading a paper which as the bus jolted to a stop he dropped. A few things then happened in rapid succession, he bent over to get the paper, the bus lurched again and his grey trackpants fell around his ankles. Unfortunately in his haste to get out the door in the morning Mr. Fatty appeared to have forgotten a vital item of clothing. So CP, R and I were treated to a real life San Franciscan, gigantic kalu ass. What was even more disconcerting was that he seemed more interested in picking up his paper than his pants.

At the next stop the three of us got off.