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
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
