STORAGE SCHEME RECALL THROUGH REQUEST OF THE MUSE
Yerba Buena Cove, 4/20/16 – Images bounce out, strike the eye from displays on walls, graffiti, paintings, billboards.
It’s a big and vital market, once named for the herb cultivated in the shady spots along the sandy shore of a shallow cove on its eastern edge where goat herders grew their grass.
You get your passport when you reach dotage. They grant you a discount on the muni railway – unlimited rides for $24 per month. I do remember the Muni was a dime when I arrived, and later went up to fifteen cents for a period before it reached the astronomical sum of a quarter, but that was long ago.
Icons of the City remain in revolutionary terms. Bill Graham’s countenance leaps out of a litho pinned to a bakery shop wall in Polk Gulch.
One remembers his confrontation with a Fire Marshall one night at the Fillmore where he stood beside the barrel of apples and shouted from his perch on the stairs, pointing finger leveled at the man, “You! You will not do this to me. I walked across Europe; I was born in a fucking concentration camp; I drove a cab on the streets of New York, and you – you…”
Words failed him. He walked away in desultory defeat, only to return from his office when the coast was clear, ushering people inside with conspiratorial glee. “That’s all right, come on in. No fascists are going to stop us now. No way. Get your ass in here, by God. We will rock it, tonight.
And then came the day at John Wayne international Airport in Ontario’s Inland Empire when a friend put me on a jet to the north forty and I got a seat next to Mr. Graham and his lady. He talked rapidly, non-stop, all the way to the City about I know not what while the woman in his life gazed out the window.
When we deplaned, he looked at me and said, “Where the hell you think you’re going? You even know? You look like you’re stoned out of your fucking mind, man. Come on, get in the car, we’ll run you into the City.” He let me out where I could catch a ride to Bolinas and the tree house on the reef that Wally built.
It was an ordinary day.
Filled with magic.
Today is not any ordinary day. It’s the first day of the rest of the revolution, and it heralds a truth none of the big shots want to acknowledge.
Should you get a marijuana medical card? Should the states legalize and tax the good herb in order to create badly needed cash flow?
Badly needed by whom? For what?
And then the thought hits like a ton of bricks. What if they just left us the fuck alone to do with our heads what we wish? Would it harelip the Governor? Good God, I hope so. Anything would improve that dude’s looks.
OUT OF THE MIDDLE CAME A LADY. SHE WHISPERED IN MY EAR SOMETHING CRAZY – SHE SAID, SPILL THE WINE, TAKE THAT GIRL. SPILL THE WINE, TAKE THAT GIRL. SPILL THAT WINE. SPILL THAT WINE. DIDDY-WACK, DIDDY-WACK, DIDDY-WACK, SPILL THAT…
Down another corridor, there is a place where we all sat on the hill one morning, taking the sun, and three little soul brothers came along with a bag of reefer – skipping school – trying to roll a joint, talking trash, until two San Francisco cops came out of the eucalyptus grove on trail bikes and another rode up on one of the city’s fabulous Morgans.
The cop from the horse jumped down, shouted to the head little dude, “What’s your name – MOTHERFUCKER!”
My man said, “Tyrone…”
“Where did you get this reefer?” the cop asked, rolling the bag between his thumbs, opening it and taking a whiff, checking out the buds.”
“My brother.”
“He sell it to you, or what?”
“I be done stole the shit, man.”
“OUTSTANDING!”
Then he flung the bag in the middle of a little smoking circle of a half-dozen of us who sat watching in fascination. We started away in a panic, and he shouted at us:
“STAY WHERE YOU ARE! AS YOU WERE! SMOKE THE WEED. I WANT IT ALL GONE BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE PARK. NOW GET BUSY!”
Down on the conga line, by the bench, the soul brothers had stopped drumming. They, too, sat in silence, digging the scene, until an old grandfather with a white beard said, “Shee-it!”
Then they started back up drumming again and the cop told the kids, “Get the fuck out of here! I suggest you go back to school, where you belong.”
As they slunk away, the cops mounted up and split.
It wasn’t a minute before our smoking circle had expanded to at least three times its size.
THE TOWN IS A TOTAL CIRCUS. DON’T REMEMBER WHEN IT WASN’T
This is the way it sounded:
When you arrive at the intersection of space and time, ask them where you may find the the hill. THE HILL. The one in Golden Gate Park. Be there.
Need to bring some grass? A Medical Marijuana card will cost you $60 following a visit to a practitioner’s clinic for evaluation. A local dispensary on Market Street called The Apothecarium sells one-eighth ounce doses for prices of $40 to $55. After three visits, a patient is eligible to buy one ounce twice daily at the price of $300 to $400.
So mote it be.
- The Legendary