Nostalgia for Last Summer

 Super moonrise over Lake Merritt

Glimpses of a techtonic shift in perception, the Flaneur found himself embedded in Old Oakland. Here are the illuminations as captured by my former digital capture device, a real tin lizzy with some occasionally felicitous results.

The question seemed to haunt me

I found myself on the edge of Chinatown

just in time for the "Super moon"

An old and inscrutable part of the city

A heavy police presence prevails thereabouts

The night I walked around looking at neon

Police in riot gear were bivouaced across Seventh street

On Broadway, even the tattooed love boys
seemed a bit restless

There had been some trouble
a jury in Florida acquitted a right-wing vigilante

who stalked and killed an unarmed black youth

The obligatory windows were broken

Always liked this place

The venerable Fox Oakland Theater

Look who was playing-- that sixty-year old new wave guy

coupled with a twenty year gal--

sounds like a Scottish marriage,

None of the cool kids went

The Flaneur finds a dependable escape,

relaxing dockside at Jack London Square

With its regular ferry service to the Bay and beyond

A remedial course in exhilaration

Waiting for the fireworks

Independence Day in Aquatic Park

 This bombed Lady of Fatima is now gone

 A strange group bought the church
and added glowing sci-fi insignia

Something to celebrate,

The supreme court banned same-sex marriage bans

in the summer of 2013

Good old Ratto's survives to this day
lawyers and court apparatchiks
 bulge here at lunch time

The city is like a storage unit

for aging American dreams

Commemorating an emergent society

that never quite emerges

The public commons and the collective memeory

may seem a little threadbare at times

Yet everyday joy can be just a bus ride away

--Crown beach, Alameda

A honey bee visits a sunflower

outside the public library

 hope springs eternal

July-August 2013