after getting a new sister-in-law in las vegas, this morning i signed a lease on my new apartment. i have someone lined up to help me move on sunday. i told wayne, who again congratulated me. i then set out on preparing for the new place.
i changed my address with the post office. i set up a pg&e account for myself. apparently, if i call it an electric bill, nobody has the first clue what i'm talking about.... so, i will conform. i changed my address with the ca dmv. i re-registered to vote. i changed my billing address for t-mobile. i am working on changing my mailing address for my paystubs through my job, i am going to change my address at the bank after work. i also paid my deposit and my first month's rent.
after this, i just need to set up an internet connection, move-in and get some things so i can organize my place. not necessarily in that order. anyone have any comments on wireless vs. cable modem and what company i should use for these things? or any other addresses that i should change?
current music: Charles Mingus - Better Git It in Your Soul (I like this one)
Monday, April 30, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
From Today's Chronicle
Tenderloin mourns an original
Legless panhandler known as 'Skateboard,' killed by mail truck, lived life on the edge
C.W. Nevius
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The requiem for "Skateboard" Holmes began Tuesday night on the cracked sidewalk on Taylor Street. Residents of the Tenderloin community turned out in fits and starts, leaving doorways and tiny hotel rooms to pay their respects.
Few of them would have been able to tell you that the legless, homeless man who rolled the streets on his battered skateboard was named Monty Holmes. Nor that he grew up in Oakland and lost his legs in an accident on the train tracks when he was 6 years old.
But they knew that something needed to be done to mark the passing of the 48-year-old panhandler. Flowers appeared, some of them with potting soil still clinging to their roots after being pulled from planter boxes. There were bottles of brandy (empty), religious candles and trinkets.
Behind the memorial, a concrete wall quickly filled with pencil scratchings and scrawlings from black markers.
"Bless you Skateboard," one of them said. "The man with the biggest heart in the street."
Skateboard's wife, Linda Thomas, stood Wednesday on the sidewalk in front of the wall. A world-weary woman with a nasty scar across her nose, she'd been at the corner of Third and Townsend streets Tuesday afternoon when the driver of a mail truck failed to see Skateboard in the crosswalk and ran over him.
"Skateboard is gone!" Thomas wailed. "I ain't never forget this day."
To be honest, it was not entirely unexpected that Skateboard was hit by a truck. He didn't cast much of a profile way down there on his board, and even his friends admit that he had a tendency to zip heedlessly into traffic.
Ahmed Ali, owner of the Tenderloin Market and Liquor Store, which was Skateboard's first stop on most mornings after waking up on the sidewalk, said, "He almost got hit a bunch of times."
And then, well, let's just say Skateboard had some other demons. As Joseph Kim, who runs the Liquor and More store on Third and Townsend, said, "Skateboard was drunk all the time."
So if you are looking to muster a lot of sympathy, this is an uphill battle. Skateboard was a reckless, homeless drinker who, after any number of close calls, finally got run over. Frankly, he was probably living on borrowed time. So it goes.
We walk past street characters such as Skateboard every day in San Francisco. The city's kind of famous for them. Sometimes they are chattering to unseen companions. And sometimes, like Skateboard, they panhandle areas with lots of pedestrians such as AT&T Park or the hotels.
Of course, we all know the drill in dealing with street people -- eyes straight ahead, keep walking and ignore them if they try to talk to you.
This is no surprise to those who sleep on the street. They've seen the looks. Up on Eddy, around the corner from Skateboard's memorial, I met a guy who would identify himself only as Mathias. He was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning up against a chain-link fence when I asked him if he knew Skateboard.
"He was part of the furniture," Mathias said. "He was one of us. We're furniture. We live here, on the street, in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in San Francisco."
But it is also easy to forget that in this small, street-hardened community, there are social conventions. Skateboard may have been a public nuisance at times, cooking his meals on a burner and skillet on the sidewalk, but that doesn't mean his neighbors don't feel the loss.
"I've known him for years," Cary Fisher said. "He was a very gentle man."
I told Fisher and Mathias that I'd heard more than one version of Skateboard's temperament. I'd heard that he was very nice, but also that when he and Thomas were drinking, he could be a rough drunk.
"Naw," said Mathias. "We're rough drunks. He was mellow."
It wasn't the life many of us might have chosen -- and probably not the one he had in mind in his earlier years -- but in his own way, Skateboard was maintaining his lifestyle. Ali said Skateboard was a fixture at Giants and 49ers games.
Skateboard made bundles at baseball games, Kim added, when cheerful fans could always spare a buck or two for the guy on the skateboard with no legs.
He sometimes rolled into Kim's store with a stack of ones, looking to buy a bottle of Jack Daniel's.
"He was a good guy," Kim said. "No trouble at all."
In fact, it is entirely possible that Skateboard was on his way to the store Tuesday when he was killed. Kim didn't see the accident, but rushed out as soon as it happened.
"I was glad that he didn't have any pain," he said. "And I hope he goes to heaven."
Legless panhandler known as 'Skateboard,' killed by mail truck, lived life on the edge
C.W. Nevius
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The requiem for "Skateboard" Holmes began Tuesday night on the cracked sidewalk on Taylor Street. Residents of the Tenderloin community turned out in fits and starts, leaving doorways and tiny hotel rooms to pay their respects.
Few of them would have been able to tell you that the legless, homeless man who rolled the streets on his battered skateboard was named Monty Holmes. Nor that he grew up in Oakland and lost his legs in an accident on the train tracks when he was 6 years old.
But they knew that something needed to be done to mark the passing of the 48-year-old panhandler. Flowers appeared, some of them with potting soil still clinging to their roots after being pulled from planter boxes. There were bottles of brandy (empty), religious candles and trinkets.
Behind the memorial, a concrete wall quickly filled with pencil scratchings and scrawlings from black markers.
"Bless you Skateboard," one of them said. "The man with the biggest heart in the street."
Skateboard's wife, Linda Thomas, stood Wednesday on the sidewalk in front of the wall. A world-weary woman with a nasty scar across her nose, she'd been at the corner of Third and Townsend streets Tuesday afternoon when the driver of a mail truck failed to see Skateboard in the crosswalk and ran over him.
"Skateboard is gone!" Thomas wailed. "I ain't never forget this day."
To be honest, it was not entirely unexpected that Skateboard was hit by a truck. He didn't cast much of a profile way down there on his board, and even his friends admit that he had a tendency to zip heedlessly into traffic.
Ahmed Ali, owner of the Tenderloin Market and Liquor Store, which was Skateboard's first stop on most mornings after waking up on the sidewalk, said, "He almost got hit a bunch of times."
And then, well, let's just say Skateboard had some other demons. As Joseph Kim, who runs the Liquor and More store on Third and Townsend, said, "Skateboard was drunk all the time."
So if you are looking to muster a lot of sympathy, this is an uphill battle. Skateboard was a reckless, homeless drinker who, after any number of close calls, finally got run over. Frankly, he was probably living on borrowed time. So it goes.
We walk past street characters such as Skateboard every day in San Francisco. The city's kind of famous for them. Sometimes they are chattering to unseen companions. And sometimes, like Skateboard, they panhandle areas with lots of pedestrians such as AT&T Park or the hotels.
Of course, we all know the drill in dealing with street people -- eyes straight ahead, keep walking and ignore them if they try to talk to you.
This is no surprise to those who sleep on the street. They've seen the looks. Up on Eddy, around the corner from Skateboard's memorial, I met a guy who would identify himself only as Mathias. He was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning up against a chain-link fence when I asked him if he knew Skateboard.
"He was part of the furniture," Mathias said. "He was one of us. We're furniture. We live here, on the street, in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in San Francisco."
But it is also easy to forget that in this small, street-hardened community, there are social conventions. Skateboard may have been a public nuisance at times, cooking his meals on a burner and skillet on the sidewalk, but that doesn't mean his neighbors don't feel the loss.
"I've known him for years," Cary Fisher said. "He was a very gentle man."
I told Fisher and Mathias that I'd heard more than one version of Skateboard's temperament. I'd heard that he was very nice, but also that when he and Thomas were drinking, he could be a rough drunk.
"Naw," said Mathias. "We're rough drunks. He was mellow."
It wasn't the life many of us might have chosen -- and probably not the one he had in mind in his earlier years -- but in his own way, Skateboard was maintaining his lifestyle. Ali said Skateboard was a fixture at Giants and 49ers games.
Skateboard made bundles at baseball games, Kim added, when cheerful fans could always spare a buck or two for the guy on the skateboard with no legs.
He sometimes rolled into Kim's store with a stack of ones, looking to buy a bottle of Jack Daniel's.
"He was a good guy," Kim said. "No trouble at all."
In fact, it is entirely possible that Skateboard was on his way to the store Tuesday when he was killed. Kim didn't see the accident, but rushed out as soon as it happened.
"I was glad that he didn't have any pain," he said. "And I hope he goes to heaven."
New Life
Life seems to be starting anew. I am moving and will likely be completely moved in about 2-3 weeks. I have just finished a translation job for a law firm for $150 from English-German. My brother is getting married in 2 days. Crazy. Goodbye Muni transit. No longer will I be a slave to your horrible service. I'm gonna walk! Everyday to work.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
gunshots
Oh, and there were gunshots outside of my window followed by sirens on Friday night. The story:
ABC News
"The shooting was reported at 9 p.m. at the intersection of Divisadero Street and Golden Gate Avenue (my intersection), in the Alamo Square neighborhood. One victim was found suffering a gunshot to his right arm.
The victim was walking along the street when suspects, described only as two black men, drove up in a car. The victim began to run and one of the suspects got out of the vehicle and shot at the victim, striking his arm. The victim was transported to a local hospital in stable condition.
Police are continuing to search for suspects in the shooting."
ABC News
"The shooting was reported at 9 p.m. at the intersection of Divisadero Street and Golden Gate Avenue (my intersection), in the Alamo Square neighborhood. One victim was found suffering a gunshot to his right arm.
The victim was walking along the street when suspects, described only as two black men, drove up in a car. The victim began to run and one of the suspects got out of the vehicle and shot at the victim, striking his arm. The victim was transported to a local hospital in stable condition.
Police are continuing to search for suspects in the shooting."
Moving
Although it is not official yet, I am moving to a new neighborhood. I am waiting to hear on one place, and if it does not work out, I will keep working til I find a place in the neighborhood. There are a lot of vacancies, so it'll work, it just may take some time.
The neighborhood is sandwiched between other interesting neighborhoods and is only developing its own identity now. It is east of the Polk Gulch/Village (the old gay center of SF, now a mixture of transvestites and rich people. It is north of the Tenderloin, the notorious skid row of San Francisco. I work in this general area and regularly see people smoking crack on the street. It's a very high crime area, but it's also mostly drug-related crime. Lots of cheap food and dive bars. Open crack-smoking on the street abounds. It is west of the Theater District/Union Square. This is the true center of the city, where the tourists flock, the cable cars run, the expensive massive stores are and the best theater scene in the west is based. It is south of Nob Hill, the old-money center, where the Big Four, including Leland Stanford built their mansions after finishing the railroads to the city. I am looking for places closer to the de facto Nob Hill area than the Tenderloin and about halfway inbetween the Polk Gulch and Union Square. The place I am currently in the running for is due north of the Indian/Pakistani center of the Tenderloin, that some like to call the Tandoori-loin. People are quite imaginative.
So, the names of the area are plentiful. Some people will call it Polk Gulch, Theater District, Nob Hill or the Tenderloin. The city designates it officially as Nob Hill. Real estate developers call it Lower Nob Hill. Young people mockingly call it Tenderloin Heights, because it's on a hill, and many neighborhoods are called Heights (Dolores Heights, Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights). Nobody takes this name seriously. The most fun name, and a very common name for it, is the TenderNob. Haha. Somebody online quipped, "I thought a Tendernob is what I get after running 10k with no underwear." Sorry for the dirty joke. I like Lower Nob Hill or the TenderNob. Some people call it "The Nob", or even the "Trendyloin" (although the last more refers to the Tenderloin proper).
The district looks like my impression of New York more than of San Francisco. All buildings are 5 stories and above. It's full of cafes and bars and restaurants and hotels, but it is also fairly quiet. It's not as hectic as many other places. However, there is nowhere else in the city that I could afford, where I could walk to the Tenderloin or the Polk Gulch for cheap food, to Union Square for big city life, to Chinatown for cheap teas and food, North Beach for Cafes, all in 10 minutes. Work is less than 10 minutes away.
Lastly, I leave some impressions from the internet:
"I've lived in this area of San Francisco since 1991, in two different apartments, during two different sub-lives. It's definitely a district of its own, yet it has not yet been recognised as such on any map. Perhaps someday it shall be.
Like the Lower Haight, the TenderNob has become a district unto itself, in many senses. It is the Tenderloin and Nob Hill districts smushed together as if by a force which has blended the two very opposite neighbourhoods to the point where this blended region extends for blocks and blocks into both of the combined districts."
"Ah the TenderNob, great rent prices, and relatively safe. I get propositioned for crack, or tranny hookers from time to time, but never have I felt in danger. There's good food around, it's close to the heart of the city, and I don't have far to bike to get to school. Also, I hear the cool kids affix Tender to all of their favorite things in the area e.g. "Hey, let's go get some TenderCoffee." I don't know if that actually happens, but it should."
"I love living here. We have the best cross-section of people, i.e. prostitutes and yuppies, food, cool low key bars, and some cool South-North hills. I have one beef - I wish we were more accessible to the upper market area and the haight. Other than that we have the nicer hipsters (compared to the mission), the late night urban feel of NY, and the best locale for tourists to do what they came here for."
The neighborhood is sandwiched between other interesting neighborhoods and is only developing its own identity now. It is east of the Polk Gulch/Village (the old gay center of SF, now a mixture of transvestites and rich people. It is north of the Tenderloin, the notorious skid row of San Francisco. I work in this general area and regularly see people smoking crack on the street. It's a very high crime area, but it's also mostly drug-related crime. Lots of cheap food and dive bars. Open crack-smoking on the street abounds. It is west of the Theater District/Union Square. This is the true center of the city, where the tourists flock, the cable cars run, the expensive massive stores are and the best theater scene in the west is based. It is south of Nob Hill, the old-money center, where the Big Four, including Leland Stanford built their mansions after finishing the railroads to the city. I am looking for places closer to the de facto Nob Hill area than the Tenderloin and about halfway inbetween the Polk Gulch and Union Square. The place I am currently in the running for is due north of the Indian/Pakistani center of the Tenderloin, that some like to call the Tandoori-loin. People are quite imaginative.
So, the names of the area are plentiful. Some people will call it Polk Gulch, Theater District, Nob Hill or the Tenderloin. The city designates it officially as Nob Hill. Real estate developers call it Lower Nob Hill. Young people mockingly call it Tenderloin Heights, because it's on a hill, and many neighborhoods are called Heights (Dolores Heights, Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights). Nobody takes this name seriously. The most fun name, and a very common name for it, is the TenderNob. Haha. Somebody online quipped, "I thought a Tendernob is what I get after running 10k with no underwear." Sorry for the dirty joke. I like Lower Nob Hill or the TenderNob. Some people call it "The Nob", or even the "Trendyloin" (although the last more refers to the Tenderloin proper).
The district looks like my impression of New York more than of San Francisco. All buildings are 5 stories and above. It's full of cafes and bars and restaurants and hotels, but it is also fairly quiet. It's not as hectic as many other places. However, there is nowhere else in the city that I could afford, where I could walk to the Tenderloin or the Polk Gulch for cheap food, to Union Square for big city life, to Chinatown for cheap teas and food, North Beach for Cafes, all in 10 minutes. Work is less than 10 minutes away.
Lastly, I leave some impressions from the internet:
"I've lived in this area of San Francisco since 1991, in two different apartments, during two different sub-lives. It's definitely a district of its own, yet it has not yet been recognised as such on any map. Perhaps someday it shall be.
Like the Lower Haight, the TenderNob has become a district unto itself, in many senses. It is the Tenderloin and Nob Hill districts smushed together as if by a force which has blended the two very opposite neighbourhoods to the point where this blended region extends for blocks and blocks into both of the combined districts."
"Ah the TenderNob, great rent prices, and relatively safe. I get propositioned for crack, or tranny hookers from time to time, but never have I felt in danger. There's good food around, it's close to the heart of the city, and I don't have far to bike to get to school. Also, I hear the cool kids affix Tender to all of their favorite things in the area e.g. "Hey, let's go get some TenderCoffee." I don't know if that actually happens, but it should."
"I love living here. We have the best cross-section of people, i.e. prostitutes and yuppies, food, cool low key bars, and some cool South-North hills. I have one beef - I wish we were more accessible to the upper market area and the haight. Other than that we have the nicer hipsters (compared to the mission), the late night urban feel of NY, and the best locale for tourists to do what they came here for."
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