Washington Street (P.O.O. #2)

The Psychogeography of Old Oakland #2

The Flaneur walks on the occasionally wild side of a truncated street. As always, sturdy shoes are recommended.

1.

Washington Street by Night

 This is Washington street where it begins

the old Swan's marketplace

 

 It's a part of the City

where darkness can fall rather quickly

out of nowhere

 In its brief passage Winter sunlight elongates the dusk

Chinese bric-a-brac jumble shop

never seems to be open for business,

in sepia gloom existence itself seems frangible

 It's often a puzzling place,
perhaps even a transporting place

Entirely in the mind of the beholder

When days are the shortest

Kris Kringle appears

hand-carved hand-painted

 

 Some see Buddha's skull 

in the window of the old Bodhisattva Club

 Come as you are, 

as you were, as you want me to be

 You may need those reading glasses
 with headlights on them

After midnight

 civilization's maze-work

always a bit haunted

 The Rooster awaits the morning people,
as the children of the night evanesce

In the shadows of the control towers,

  tonight we shoot out the cameras

December 2013- 2014

 2.

Washington Street in the Sober Light of Day

 Summer 2013

Temescal Dig

 A primordial glade.

The Flaneur interprets some occult findings in a section of Oakland undergoing metamorphosis.

1. 

I haven't driven a car in the last ten years. It's also been ten years since I had to go the DMV to get a new driver's license. One likes to keep one's options open, however, for whatever emergency may arise in the always soon-to-arrive end times.
They thumbprint everyone now. In the name of the security state, everyone who wants to drive now has to have his or her fingerprint print available to the FBI data base. Nice.

Afterward I ambled across the street to entered a zone where no cars go.

An ancient mortar and pestle 

Melded into the rock for evermore.

Eucalyptus are an introduced species in California. 

This specimen with its multiple-personalities 

appears to have been an early arrival 

A right of passage for local youth. 

Dig the Warholian rendition of the 7-UP logo.

Newspaper reports say that it's going away
 like the old porn palace next door--
demolished decades ago

for fenced-off vacant lot vacuousness,
with the ghosts of Soul Brothers Kitchen 

Under the spreading chestnut tree,
something mediaeval about a blade shop

Nature and its double,
some see a crow in this image

15 July 2014

2.

Cultural Archaeology

Temescal and me go way back. That's where a place called Ollie's used to be. Ollie was an old-fashioned bull-dyke who ran a bar for ladies with its entrance on Telegraph. She rented out the back room to a group I was associated with calling itself CAVAN (Commitee Against Visual and Audio Numbness, I think it was.) All our bands performed there--Negativland, Fake Stone Age, and my own duo at the time the (original) Red Aunts (name later used by an all-girl Drag-strip Punk rock band). As well as the likes of Ian Underwood, Pell Mell, and, memorably, The Meat Puppets. We had trouble getting people to show up and the night the Meat Puppets were to play it poured and they were late. Most of the small audience had fled but nonetheless they played a scorching 45 minute set for those of us still there.

Had friends who lived in an artists-only house nearby on Rich street. And the Negativland studio/ apartment of my old colleague Don Joyce is right there on Telegraph,; his building newly festooned whimsical murals. Have recorded and brainstormed there many a night in its nicotined precincts.

 I recall when all this quaint roadside Americana
was still open for business

Amazing how old signage can survive
long after a business has closed down

 Well, this place is still in business
get all the carbon you can out of those old fossil fuel burners

July 2013

Birthday Weekend

An unusual three days distinguished by monsoonal moisture and the return of MK Ultra.

1.

Saturday 26 July 2014

Strolling the sunny streets of Berkeley, 

attending to a few matters in a carefree manner

There's a crack in everything

that's how the light gets in

Tee hee, Naked Ladies

everyone is fond of them

an aroma dainty and narcotic

Sidewalk culture

it's free for the taking

Flowers new to me

for the cognoscenti of color

2.

Sunday 27 July 2014

The Berkeley Kite Festival

Kite fest!

A favorite moment for me 

crossing the nature preserve

people flowing in on foot

first sighting of the kites

Hmmmm... he's new to the festival

America's global reach

 Wrangler rhymes with angler

the bush league and the Bay

easy to launch a kite in wind so constant

It's all happening,

I scored a kobe beef hamburger

from an "Apps" outfit

they mistook me for a likely sucker

Look, a frog girl showed up

Can a frog man be far behind?

Hail to the magnificent cephalopods

Maybe it's time to hit the old dusty trail

Time to roll up the circus wagons

Approaching the pedestrian bridge,

a breath-taking cloud stream

over this recently man-made hill

3.

Monday 28 July 2014

Splendid day on the San Francisco Bay

Set sail for my usual dockside haunts

The monsoonal clouds reached

extravagant expressive beauty

in mid-Bay

Nature records its expressions 

through human beings,

never forever, always changing

Observing the coastal fog

Mount Tam under wraps

These boats seem to follow you around the room

And a round room it be

a panorama 

of the National Historic Maritime Park

 Roundness suits the subconscious mind

and pleases the soul

Time to dive down this deco hatchway

Build me a boat

that can carry two

and both shall row

The woods are filled with wardens

-Jack Kerouac

A moment's meditation

in a wind-sheltered spot,

the respiration of the sea

Some manly amusements,

Pleasures fleeting and slight

before my appointment with the oceanic

hi-ho, hi-ho

it's stoned to home I go

All my excursions are circular

ending where they begin

26-28 July 2014