"I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring."
... but of course there is no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. it's the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons. why not pink, purple, rainbow, gold? what color for a biker bar on 16th, near the highway? plum. plum. the light that is so strong and right that corners are clear, crisp, all glass blinding- stilts and buttresses and turrets- the remains of various highways- rainbow windsocks- a sexual sort of lushness to the foliage. only intermittently does it seem like an actual place of residence and commerce, with functional roads and sensible buildings. all other times it's just whimsy and faith. just driving to and from marny's, in the castro, is epic, this hill and that hill- oh, the sorrow of flat, straight illinois!- this vista and that, always the hills, the curves, the maybe our brakes will fail- it's always a kind of adventure in faded technicolor, starring a vast cast of brightly dressed losers."
