Tenderloin Reading Series: Litquake Edition

TLRS is honored once again to be invited to take part in San Francisco’s famous Litquake literary festival. We have a stellar line-up of performers planned for this occasion, and we sincerely hope you will join us! We will release details as the event draws closer. You can also check the event out on Facebook

PETER BALOGH: URBAN SURFACE SERIES 1 NO. 2

San Francisco, 2011

ABOUT THE URBAN SURFACE SERIES:

The Urban Surface Series is a photographic narrative project by Tenderloin resident and artist Peter Balogh. Using an old-fashioned wooden pinhole camera, Peter has provided a visual soundtrack to his personal musings on interactions with Tenderloin residents and characters. He has kindly allowed TLRS to repost this series. You can see more of his work here.

She looks like a grandmother who ended up living on the street.

She is always by the entrance of the same store, sitting on the sidewalk. Unless she is going somewhere, she takes her shoes off and puts them by her side. I don’t know, why. Her stomach looks unnaturally large, but this is because she carries all her things stuffed under her sweater.

I don’t know what to think about her. I have seen her having a normal conversation with people, but other times she just blurts out random things at everyone who pass by. I have seen her eating a pile of rice off the sidewalk or emptying her bowels on the curb, but also having a good laugh with people, in a genuine way.

She was just walking around when I asked if I could take a picture of her. She said “Okay”, and sat down. I told her about the extra time I will need with my camera, and then set up quickly across from her.

While I took the first picture, she kept turning her head and body away, then back. I asked her to be still, but she didn’t stop, as if she couldn’t decide to be in the picture or not. I tried to take a second picture, but she simply turned away.

I didn’t want to disturb her too long. I gave her some change and wished her good luck.

“Thank you”, she said, and smiled. Her face had sharp, distinctive features.

-PB

…

Zero 135 camera by Zero Image, Kodak Professional 125 PX film

Farewell To Koko Cocktails

It’s been an amazing run. For the establishment, for TLRS, and for all of us. This reading would not exist were it not for Justin, Lori, and Chris. We are so sad to see them go, but hope that you will all join them again up the street at the future Hi-Lo Club on Polk. We’ll post a bulletin about its opening when that information becomes available. The last TLRS at Koko was a special night for all of us, and for those who would like to relive it the generous words of Nicole McFeely at Litseen encapsulate the end of an era for TLRS. There is video as well. The Tenderloin Reading Series will live on, at a to be decided new location. For now, we have once again been kindly invited to participate in the annual Litquake festival Litcrawl on Saturday October 15, 2011..details of that reading are to follow shortly. We have a very special holiday event planned for December, and more on that to come as well.

If you have been following our progress you’ll note that tenderloinreadingseries.com has continued to expand the content we regularly post; drawing on a number of now-regular contributors, as well as expanding the scope of Tenderlogues. Expect more of this as well. For now, here’s my fond farewell to the bar that started this all:

THE MAN WHO WOULD WAKE TOMMOROW

The man who would wake  tomorrow

Would arise tired and hungover

With a vigilant tingle of last night’s wine

In the space between his teeth.

The sun would enter

Through the curtains he would leave drawn open

Before going to sleep the previous night

And there would be a parade of garbage-men

In noisy vehicles following him

From the tail end of his dreams

Into the morning light.

There would be a late night he could vaguely

Remember with a woman he had known

So clearly, had sketched out a mental picture in the

The boozy fog of last call and now seeking to recollect

 

And there would be businessmen erect, walking power points

Next to street urchins erect and unsheathed at the 38 bus station

Waiting on the long L that winds from downtown towards the ocean

 

And he would pour his morning coffee

And he would top it off with whiskey

And he would watch, when there were

Birds that congregated in the eaves of the adjacent buildings

And would remark to himself on one thing or another

And at some point the crowd would disperse

And he would let his eyes traverse the messy amalgam of

The Tenderloin streets again.

 

If there was a summer it would start to be felt

In the streets on that day

The man who would wake up tomorrow would walk down

To Sing Sing and smoke cigarettes in the backroom

Watching Vietnamese talent shows and playing slot machines

And stubbing smoke butts into the leftovers of banh mi sandwhiches

And would take an ice coffee as thick as engine oil and feel it flutter

Down the chamber of his gullet as Ellis Street began to stink of human waste

And crack smoke and spilled liquor with brand names like college baseball teams

 

And he would wander the dollar stores

And stop to talk to women in doorways

Of single room hotels whom he would gladly take home

If it weren’t for the fact that

He has no idea what home is anymore

 

He would wander toward the edge of Union Square,

And the corporate portrait of the city would be enlarged

Long enough for him to grow weary of the tourists who also wandered around

Their heads all detached from their bodies

As though they were searching for a sign

From a place beyond the Cheesecake Factory.

 

And he would have stopped in the small grove called the Tenderloin National Forest

With a brown bag and the fading daylight and been content

With a day spent in precisely the way he pleased

And as the sun would go down he would remember some one

Who on the previous night seemed to know him so well

Starting at the Edinburgh Castle, to the Geary Club, to Frankies 21, Ha-ra

And ending where he would now return

To recall with the bartender last night’s avails

In the dim-lit corner of Koko Cocktails

And the bartender would remind him that all went well

That he remembered to tip

That she seemed like a nice girl

That he should consider calling her

If she had made that much of an impression

And all of this might have happened

Precisely in this manner

Were the man who would wake up tomorrow

Been able to stroll from the doors of his apartment

Up the corridor and into this room

One more time.

THE POETRY OF WILLIAM TAYLOR JR

William Taylor Jr. is the greatest poet that I know. I feel fortunate to have raised a glass with this man, whose words have reached some silent part of me and stayed there since I first had the good luck of being introduced to him. His work is powerful, insightful, and worth every second of your attention. He has been kind enough to allow us to re-post the occasional poem of his here on the TLRS website. You can read his contribution to the Tenderlogues project here.

THE FACES AND THE VOICES AND THE REST OF IT

I wake up
and call in sick to work
because some days the faces
and the voices
and the rest of it
are just a bit too much to face
and time is needed just to stare at walls
or get righteously drunk
or do nothing at all
which seems to be a dying art
in a dying world
it is a Sunday afternoon
and I walk along Geary Boulevard
until I find a bar that has no name
just a doorway to a darkened little room
an escape hatch from the day
I duck in there
and the bartender is kind
I order a beer and she gives me that
and a shot of something on the house
I look up at the television screen
and see the city of New Orleans
underwater
and a voice says hey Elvis
I turn my head
and at the end of a bar
a blonde woman old enough
to be my mother
flashes her tits
I smile weakly and buy her a beer
glad to have found
a new place to hide.

PETER BALOGH: URBAN SURFACE SERIES 1 NO. 1

San Francisco, 2011

ABOUT THE URBAN SURFACE SERIES:

The Urban Surface Series is a photographic narrative project by Tenderloin resident and artist Peter Balogh. Using an old-fashioned wooden pinhole camera, Peter has provided a visual soundtrack to his personal musings on interactions with Tenderloin residents and characters. He has kindly allowed TLRS to repost this series. You can see more of his work here.

I’ve seen him many times before.

He is always in the same place, sitting in a folding chair, wearing the same hat and poncho, reading a book. I have an old picture of my dad reading a book like that.

He seems very organized, polite, and in great physical shape. He might have some military background. He never asks for money; instead, he has a cup on a string with a small fishing pole, for those who want to help.

When I walked up to him, I was nervous. He wasn’t. I asked him if it was okay to take a picture of him, he simply said “Yes, of course”. He only got excited once he saw my wooden pinhole camera. “It looks old”, he said. I told him it’s an old method that takes about ten seconds to expose the film, so I would need him to be very still. “No problem”, he said.

He and his friend beside him were watching me quietly as I placed my camera down on the sidewalk about ten feet away. A third man, someone they apparently knew, walked up to me and tried to start a conversation. I didn’t mind, but he kept walking into the frame as I tried to take a shot.

My guy must have seen my frustration because he told the disruptive man to stand to the side and let me do my thing. I rolled the film forward and took a second picture. It was a success.

I said thank you to him and put some money in his hand. Some of the others began talking to me again, very fast and excited. I couldn’t really understand what they were saying.

“Don’t mind them,” he said, “it’s the drugs. I don’t do drugs. I drink, but no drugs.”

“It’s all good,” I said, “I drink, too.”

We smiled and I wished him good luck.

-PB

…

Zero 135 camera by Zero Image, Kodak Professional 125 PX film

TENDERLOGUE: JOEL LANDFIELD

I SAW YOU ON THE BUS DOWNTOWN AGAIN TODAY (HELLO STRANGER)

WITH APOLOGIES TO BARBARA LEWIS

I moved across a bay

to escape

your memory.

 

But the last time

I climbed on to

a bus downtown,

it was the most

crowded

bus

I’d ever been on,

People pushing and shifting,

 

tidal,

 

like the front row of the Danzig show

we went to

that time you lost your skirt,

 

or cattle on a train.

 

I looked up, and there you were,

(Hello Stranger)

holding Addy,

both of you smiling down

at me from

just above all of our heads,

nestled

between an ad for a

personal injury lawyer

and another

for

City College.

 

Both of you

smiling down on me,

(Sh-bop sh-bop my baby)

like a spotlight

just on

me,

(Sh-bop sh-bop my baby oooh)

even in

the late afternoon

sun,

 

taking me from

there,

 

all the way back home.

 

But no.

Just a photo.

 

This ain’t no fucking metaphor,

it wasn’t a woman that looked like you,

it was a picture of you.

(Seems so good to see you back again,)

Stock photography,

taken from way back

then

(how long has it been? A-ooh)

and put on this city bus,

a spot for

women’s services.

 

“I never hit her,”

I wanted to say, to explain,

(It seems like a mighty long time)

“I wouldn’t!”

But, of course,

they couldn’t know,

wouldn’t care.

Just some woman

 

and a little girl

in an ad on the bus.

***

(Oh my my my,

sh-bop, sh-bop my baby)

***

I had almost forgotten the

incident until

today. I got on

the bus, downtown

again.

 

I looked up,

expecting to

see you there again

and

(seems like a mighty long time)

sure enough,

there was

 

your

(I’m so glad

you stopped to say hello to me,)

face,

your faces. Smiling down

on me.

(remember that’s the way it used to be?)

***

You told me

you’d like to see it sometime

(Sh-bop sh-bop, my baby oooh).

Well meet me

downtown, Baby-Girl.

We’ll ride the bus.

Tenderlogue Submissions

The Tenderlogues Project is now openly seeking submissions. If you have stories or poems about specific experiences or periods of time you’ve spent in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, we’d love to see them.

There are no length requirements, but please use your best judgment. We’ll publish a chapter, but not a novel. Your piece must address an experience, a period of time spent, or a topical exploration into some aspect of the Tenderloin. You will then be contacted to set up a photo shoot with Julie Michelle. A short bio is welcome too.

Please send submissions to: tenderloinreadingseries@gmail.com

Can’t wait to hear from you!

Yours,

Jonathan & Julie

TENDERLOGUE: JONATHAN HIRSCH

(Photo Courtesy of Julie Michelle @ iliveheresf.com)

DEAR MS. TENDERLOIN

Dear Ms. Tenderloin

Monday morning.

The sun hasn’t

Shone in my window

In a week.

The other night there was a flash of light,

Then an explosion on O’Farrell Street…

Later gunshots

This is not

A social commentary.

Dear Ms. Tenderloin

Drinking a bottle of Andre

On a Saturday night

When a fire broke out

In front of the bar

With the password

And the dress code

I went out there in my sweatpants

And a to-go cup

Just as the firefighters were

Winding their hoses up

And all the suits

On the manicured corner

Of Jones Street

Looked like they were

Trying to avoid the gaze of a ghost

As they stood outside the bar

Puffing their cigarettes

Into the cheap air

Fixated on some arbitrary point

In the distance

Like trained performers

Did we smile together there? It felt like old times.

Dear Ms. Tenderloin

I thought you were mine

But last night I saw you dancing

With cocaine in the doorway

Of the Lincoln Hotel

His powdery lips bunched up against yours

His vim in your bloodstream

Like sperm swimming upstream

Can you hear me when I talk to you like this?

Sometimes I think you can,

But it has been so long since I felt at home

In your arms.

I was younger, this is true

And I quickly became enamored

With everything about you

I spent my sunrises on your floors

Picking out a tune

That the neighbors on the other end

Of the air shaft sang along to

Sitting on their kitchen floor

And I walked out the front door

As you slowly came to

Your arms tattooed

With cross-town traffic.

Dear Ms. Tenderloin

I shoveled pizza into my face at 1:30 in the morning

I spun around on a smoke blanketed dance floor

Bright dresses, buttoned collars in the bomb shelters

Of backroom clubs

Made love to strangers

With the graceless ineptitude

Of a virgin

All to be nearer to you

I thought we had an understanding

And was so relieved to return to you

After getting hustled out of a twenty

For a bag of weed I never wanted

By a bus boy in Chinatown

Whose remaining teeth

Must have been erected on landfill

Before the big earthquake hit

And my lover and I sit

Leaning out on a ledge

Overlooking Shannon Alley

And I watched you slide your sad fingers

Up the shirt of an old girl

In a goodwill miniskirt

With embroidered pearls on it

And you gave her a panged relief

That was feverish and bittersweet

A covenant of madness

That made it easier for her

To spill her guts back out

Onto the street

And you sponged them up

Propelled by the heavy rain

They swirled down the drain

Into the bowels of your wide belly

Stop yourself if you’re thinking of telling

Me that everything and nothing is the same

I know this is true, but I’m not a tourist

And somehow still I am not a part of you.

Ms. Tenderloin

Perhaps you have endeavored to love us all equally

You are San Francisco’s statue of liberty…

But sometimes I look at these streets

And feel like the runt of the litter

Clamoring to feed on the busy sacrifice

Of your defeated body

Do you hear that?

William Bell

Is singing

To a two-step

Out of

The speakers

Facing the window

Of a

Twelve story

Tenement

On Geary

Street:

“You don’t miss your water, till your well runs dry”

I’m not altogether sure

If I’m hungry anymore

Exiting the liquor store

I spill my change onto the street

And don’t pick it up

TENDERLOGUE: PAM BENJAMIN

(Photo Courtesy of Julie Michelle @ iliveheresf.com)

 FAITH IN HUMANITY

Faith in Humanity

Sometimes the planets align in just the right manner,
and the air is clean and cold,
and the stars seem brighter,
and things are just too perfect,
and my limited faith in humanity is refilled.
Filled to overflowing
with the generosity of strangers.

“I’m Mary. This is my partner Joseph.” We squeezed into their boundary at the bar hoping for a space to put drinks down.

“Get this, Get this!” Whit screamed hands waving dramatically, “He’s a carpenter!” She was the first to hone in on the bar stool with a wink and a smile to Mary; they were hugging within minutes of introduction.

“I don’t believe you. This is a clever ruse you two perform at bars to hustle strangers. Do you juggle too?”

“No, but he’s trying to convince me to name our first child Jesus. It’d be just blasphemous enough. I could yell, ‘CHRIST! Jesus! Get the HELL in here!’ when he was playing in the street or something.”

Joseph had a thick red beard, lumberjack style. “I sort of have a thing for Lumberjacks.” He pulled out a picture of himself atop a 50 foot tree.

“Funny enough, I WAS a Lumberjack before I traveled around the country with The String Cheese Incident.” He spoke eloquently with Bostonian accent, a juxtaposition that almost caused cranial aneurism, while his friend played poster child for the Massachusetts Accent Council with phrases like, “Wicked retarded, kid. Wicked pisser.” Which came out phonetically as, “Wikkid Reeetahhded, kitt. Wikkid Piissahh.”

We laughed and talked and yelled and danced and made fun of accents and admired beards and drank and smoked listened to the juke until Mary said, “You guys should come over!”

Now, I usually don’t go home with strangers upon first meeting. I live in the Tenderloin. I have trust issues. I don’t have faith in humanity. I don’t have faith. I get in these mindsets where I think that everyone is evil and after me and that flying monkeys are going to descend from the sky and steal my bus pass or my keys or that someone is going to slip a roofie in my beer or lace my bowl with PCP, that wild dogs will tear my throat out on the street and I’ll be found days later by a top-notch CSI team going through my purse pulling out empty baggies and scanning my body with black-lights, heads shaking, muttering to one another in hushed tones, “She had too much faith in people”.

You could say I carry an unhealthy dose of paranoia in my personal baggage.

You could say I have a lot of undiagnosed fear.

You could say that my desire for adventure is often overshadowed by my limited viewing window to reality.

I had none of these feelings around Mary and Joseph, genuinely good people (No, GREAT people), when they invited us into their home.

As we stumbled down the darkened streets of Hyde and Ellis, Whit picked up their accents screaming, “You drunk! You pahhked your cahhr in the bahhr!” and continued butchering the noble Boston sound to impossible levels of absurdity as we fearlessly ping-ponged down the alley to their apartment.

My cup overfloweth.

TENDERLOGUE: PAUL CORMAN-ROBERTS

(Photo Courtesy of Julie Michelle @ iliveheresf.com)

TENDERWOMB

It all starts with me coming home from my telemarketing gig, off the BART station at eleven every night per always, and on up the Hyde Street wind tunnel for six blocks to the Serv-Well corner liquor pusher for an overpriced quart of milk at Ellis Street when a brother in front of me the size of a brick shithouse strolls five, maybe six paces out into Hyde, then whirls one hundred and eighty degrees on a dime at the sound of some shit talk and the bark of a forty-ouncer smacking off the sidewalk; another brother a quarter of the block down Ellis throwing down the corner liquor store gauntlet; two young men about to get it on in the heart of the one and only Tenderloin and adrenalin ripples out from the intersection, pushing uphill, rolling downhill and crawling toward the back of every alleyway evenly over a three block radius and it’s all going down in front of the Serv-Well Market and I gotta go, yesiree I gotta get myself right the fuck across this here traffic, right across this here street and never in my life have I been so happy to see the gorgeous desolation of O’Farrell Street while pistol shots don’t sound like they do in the movies (PA-CHEW! PA-CHEW!) but are a pop popping percussion that leaks around street corners and boxes in my ears while I hole in against a cleft in a brick wall only to find myself with an older, darker sister with canyon deep wisdom etched in her handsome jawbone croaks out “awshit, fools is gonna be dealin’ out they dyin’” right before taking a gi-normous hit off of a tiny glass pipe, then gripping my shoulders while throwing her left leg around my waist and thrusting her tongue deep into my tonsils, allowing her coke washed, E & J flavored crack-hale roll into and overflow my sinuses leaving me heated, swollen and eager; leaving me wanting nothing more than to pull this smooth slab of loving neuro-electric carboplasm, deep inside of me until my wet has somehow consumed her wet but my ears pulse with the bastard cosmic hum of the ether and the distant pop-pop-pop, which caresses me warm, safe and sexy in the piss baked concrete smell of O’Farrell Street where I dream the creamy dreams of the possible for a period of time I cannot measure, but which only ever ends with me prone and alone in front of the stark, steely gray judgment that is the entrance gate to my apartment building…miraculously with keys, wallet and change somehow still in place…miraculously with my cock still dry and comfortably secured inside still zipped up Levis…miraculously with the sickly orange streetlight pall of O’Farrell Street completely abandoned, and every storefront bolted down and tucked snug against each other till the coming daylight, including, I am quite certain, my quart of milk safely ensconced within the Serv-Well market.

I can’t see past the next brownstone-studio-live/work-office-loft-space-apartment housing the local non-profit, communally alternative shared living arrangement. Instead an urban backwash din soundtrack for this seething metropolis of street ghosts; the creamy, swirling hustle – the freak show roll call voices popping and bubbling in the thin wisp cauldron of consciousness designed and marketed for my ears.

Yeah, I see yo’ ass slidin ‘round the way, yeah slidin’ round up on the highway but da law of physics say you got to fall down brutha. The law of the Tenderwomb say you pick and choose how high you get by how you pick and choose how far you got to fall, ‘cause sooner or later you got to fall back down and I ain’t seen you fall yet. I ain’t seen you fall yet. I’m sure watchin’ you fall is a very beautiful thing my brutha. Shit, I wait around all day waitin’ to see you falls; I wait around right here to see you falls, ‘cuz you be fallin’ any day now. But I come back and watch you fall some other day, ‘cuz now I gotta go get high…igh…ay..ay…ay…ay…ay…ay…ay…ay…ay!!!!

And as fast as it comes the cackling madness melts back into the flow of O’Farrell Street and I think I’ve lost my marbles for good this time, yes I think they’ve rolled out my ears and down the grimy hills because there are wharf rats barricading themselves in my kitchen and flying Oscar-fish chewing up my wardrobe. I’m watching people have conversations with fence posts and doors and walls and other people I can’t see, which are not to say they’re not there right? These voices don’t come from disembodied spirits but from disembodied bodies. Except that one time when the old stranger whispered in my ear as I passed “how’s that play you’re working on going?” or when the lumped woman with the backpack sticker that says “JESUS HATES SEX” asked if I could see “Him” crucified on the bottom’s of 747s overhead, and why, yes look there, there’s the savior now, arms strapped to the bottoms of the wings and flapping his dick out all over the city.

It stops becoming them.

Listen.

Did you hear that?

There’s nothing quite like the sound of a shotgun blast in the ‘Loin. It’s a long, blissed out white noise like sheet metal no wanna-be industrial alterno-grunge band could ever hope to set free; a noise so pure and metallic that it does not die easily in the caverns of a thousand different alleyways. To know what is on the other side of that sound; to see it from out of the corner of up here is to connect ever so deeply with that splash that someone else made before the neighborhood’s landlord association’s steam cleaning contract come to wash that unique masterpiece away in a stream of brown chunks down into the corner gutter is not unlike biting down on aluminum foil and liking it; chewing with a clanging vigor that makes me realize if I never feel any of these sensations again, it will be much too soon.