A Walk Along the Waterfront (The Secret of the Sea, Part IV, Chapter 1)

The Flaneur goes sight-seeing on the Barbary Coast's memory lane.

Crabs and mermaids rule 

 

Dine in art moderne style

 

Don't forget to bring your billfold

Of course there is fare to fit most budgets

It's eat or be eaten

Golden rule of the oceanic ecology

Old time street cars glide past,

Automobiles are discouraged

Groove to live music along Jefferson street,

The San Francisco sound has world renown

Representing the old Italian merchants,

I'll take a can of RAY TEX

New Wave art pin, 1979
Purchased at the Postcard Palace 
Columbus Avenue, North Beach

Cheap surrealism abounds

No more will Eminem rub shoulders with the Pope

The Wax museum has melted and concealed

It's doors stuck shut forever

Nautically inclined architecture,

The impression of a floating world

 Swim clubs enjoy a place of privilege,

In the middle of the National Historic Maritime Park

 

 You've got an "S" an "X" and an "E"

What can that spell?

Mermaids

 Did you ever hear a dolphin smile?

Cold water hash and a dunk in the Bay

 It's never easy getting a spliff lit on the beach

 

Nobody drops a dime,
Because the cops don't need you

And man they expect the same,

 This is San Francisco, California

U.S.A.

 Everybody's high

 People are left to their own devices,

Mind your own bee's wax

Be cool,

Not like you just got off a banana boat

 Cable car turn-around,

Clanging bells, sound of the tracks,

 A unique odor of heated metal

 This joint has the audacity to claim

It invented the Irish Coffee,

They're good here though

Galleries forecast Peak Dali in 2050,

Shortages are expected to follow

Coit tower and North Beach comes into view

 Looking back fondly at the Maritime scene

 from the fractal-like municipal pier

As far as we go,

 

 

As evening falls the Flaneur retraces his path

Nothing says Christmas like homicidal robots,

But he's had enough over-stimulation for one day

 EAT CRAB
 JOE'S
CRAB SHACK
indeed

Big neon fish,
Attracts businessmen in sharkskin suits,
Crucial to the food chain

Some of the money the City spent on the America's Cup

might have refurbished this historic signage

I recently watched the film "Birdman of Alcatraz,"

This rugged old neon fisherman had a cameo in it
A movie-star for over sixty years 

 

 Just enough time left

To side-swipe the Side Show

 Ring them bells

 Dusk settles like a pointillist painting

 We cast off from the heady hedonism

Of Fisherman's Wharf

 Into the liquid gold of the evening sky

2013-2014