Dreary Times in the City By the Bay

BECAUSE OF CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES, I had to actually drive across the bridge from Oakland and pick up a package in the city, the south of Market to be exact. I really hate driving to SF, not just these pandemic days, but all days because driving to the city is a burden, physically and mentally.

The endless traffic has become less tedious than in normal days but it' s still a pain. I don't like looking for parking spaces; I hate the dust and traffic; I hate the grime; I don't like the tight spaces which seem even tighter even though there's less people downtown these days. SF looks great in pictures but it's still painful to navigate the city good or bad times.

I wonder what Herb Caen would say about today's San Francisco? I bet he would say a lot. I bet he would shake his head and wonder aloud and in print how the city has changed for the worse. SF is a ghost town now with the streets empty and vast swaths of the town deserted as if all of its citizens left to escape the urban wasteland. It is scary; SF isn't alone but it is front and center because os the tourists and because the tourists are nowhere to be seen, the city is as quiet and dormant as I've ever seen in my lifetime. To walk downtown and see boarded-up buildings on Market Street and Union Square, complete with empty streets devoid of people is not only scary but makes one wonder, when will it all return to normal? One can only guess more years than months, scary.

This is all a Hollywood movie, right? Or a really bad dream. The thing is, it gets worse not better. The weather is a mashed potato sky--milky, faded white mush with heat, little fog, dangerous, unhealthy air and pollution run amok; the restaurants are already dying and the retail segment is already dead. What a life, even in utopia San Francisco which is now more dystopian as the heavens collide with humanity.

I don't know what tomorrow brings and that's part of the problem. If there was a finality to all this mayhem then at least we could pack for it, plan, take our losses and call it a day but the fear of the unknown permeates --a cruel trick from someone, sort of a God's Joker telling us all, don't screw with her-- as if Earth was being told who the real boss is and that was that. That is that and this is now. Yuck.

This is a party no one wants to go to and the bar is stocked full of empty bottles. Yeah, I wonder what Caen would have said.