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mallorys_cameraThe freeway dropped us off on upper Mission Boulevard, a concourse dominated by auto parts warehouses, cheap furniture outlets and vast empty bunkers that had once held manufacturing significance. No foot traffic unless you count the occasional vagrant pushing a shopping cart.
But when we cut over to Valencia Street, it was a different scene. Things were hopping.
“Fuckin’ tourists,” Genaro snorted, squeezing his dented Camry into a vacant stretch of red zone.
Every year, the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau published a brochure warning tourists away from Valencia Street. Every year, the tourists ignored it, with the predictable result – to any local at least – that half a dozen or so of them ended up in the headlines, robbed at gunpoint of cash, credit cards or expensive cameras. Sometimes even dead.
The lure was those tiny restaurants in the maze of alleyways off the main drag whose cuisines reflected the shifting tides of the Mission District’s immigration waves, fly-speckled windows plastered with ancient in-flight magazine reviews promising exotic gastronomic delights at exceptional value. San Francisco's most deep-pocketed tourists think of themselves as serious foodies, see. Just mutter the words “yaki soba” or “anticucho” in front of them. They’ll follow you into the very bowels of hell.
Rising like a watchtower over the alleys was the Pink Palace, San Francisco's most notorious public housing development. The Pink Palace was no longer pink. It got the nickname back in the sixties when federal grant bucks were plentiful and some high level Beltway asshole got it into his head that all you really needed to lower San Francisco’s murder rate was to make the people who did most of the murdering think they lived in Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. That was a long time ago, when the murderers were mostly home grown. But the name stuck.
These days, according to Genaro, most Pink Palace inhabitants were immigrants, survivors themselves or related to survivors of bloody civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, the Honduras. Members of MS-13, the notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang. You could recognize an M-13 banger by the intricate tattoos on his face, pentagrams, devil’s horns, the numbers thirteen and eighteen; by his gang colors, blue and white; and by his choice of weapons – the machete was preferred to the M16 as these gangsters had a real jones for hacking people up into little bits. Sometimes they killed people for turf or revenge or money, but mostly they killed people because they enjoyed it, a type of performance art or an exercise in PR.
Genaro usually crossed the street when he saw one coming. Sometimes he even crossed himself.
A retail hub had sprung up around the Pink Palace, a medina of sorts, different from the one on the main drag. Its businesses were ones that catered to the needs of the project's residents. Mexi-marts, Laundromats, all-night check cashing joints. The Botanica San Simon was one of these, a shabby storefront behind faded red curtains.
“After you,” I told Genaro with a fake flourish as I held the door open.
“Fuckin’ tourists,” Genaro said again when we got inside.
The place was your standard cinderblock box stinking of incense, ceilings hung with fluorescent tubing, walls painted bright green and lined with shelves from which an assortment of tapers, votives, icons and potions offered themselves as cures for even the most existential of woes. But instead of being empty as such places mostly are, this place was packed. I had a feeling Santa Muerte would have felt out of place though. Not a teary-eyed mother petitioning for her son’s early release on parole in the joint. Practically every person oohing and ahing over the quaint little hoodoo trinkets was a refugee from second seatings at the restaurants down the block.
“Oil of cinnamon,” a woman in a camel hair coat and a diamond eternity pendent called across the room to a man in a Hawaiian shirt. She squinted at a small bottle with a glass dropper. “Oil of sandalwood, oil of myrrh, pyrite –“
“Fool’s Gold!” said the man.
“Oh get this! It’s for success in gambling!”
“Pick up a couple for the next time we’re in Vegas!”
They laughed heartily.
“So where’s the Moshymon?” I asked Genaro.
He elbowed me hard and pointed with his chin.
One person stood out from the crowd, a very young man – a boy, really – in blue sweats and a white shirt, his face barely recognizable under elaborate inkwork. “Por Vida” in Gothic lettering across his forehead, “1” and “3” on his cheeks with a fuck-you finger configured to look like the hand of Fatima. Over his right eye, the word “game”; over his left, “over.” Kid was nervous but trying not to show it. He stood in front of a doorway closed off from the rest of the room by a fringe of beads. He was pretending not to be glancing over his shoulder.
“Right,” I said. “I won’t hit him up for spare change.”
“No, in there. The Maximon. Can't you hear it?”
Dimly I became aware of a droning noise coming from the broom closet. A voice chanting.
“That’s the shaman,” Genaro said.
“How do we get in there to take a peek?”
Genaro shrugged. “The line starts there.”
The beads rattled. The kid slipping into the darkness behind them.
“So? What are we waiting for?”
Genaro shook his head. “Not me, man. This place smells like trouble. I’ll wait for you in the car.”
“Oh, don’t be an asshole –“
“Fine. I’ll leave. Call a cab when you’re done.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the problem?”
“MS-13 and Maximon? It’s a bad combo –“
“Oh, come on,” I said.
But Genaro was already pushing his way past two ladies in fur coats.
"PETA member," I told them as I shoved them a second time.
I caught up with him just outside the front door.
“What the fuck, man. This was your idea in the first place. I could be doing other things –“
Genaro laughed nastily. “Like what? Eating some rich gringa bitch’s pussy so she won’t notice when you sell her a piece of shit and jack the price tag up five grand?”
In spite of myself, I almost laughed. Genaro watched a lot of television and one of his favorite shows was something called The Real Housewives of Orange County. It was his dream to some day end up in bed with one of these housewives, goddesses artificially blonde and tanned, breathing testimonials to the magical properties of Botox. "I bet even their pussies smell good," he told me once mournfully.
"Sure," I said. "Why not? Wanna watch?”
“I tell you before, Hazard. Watch your fuckin’ mouth –“
And then somebody slammed into my back. Hard.
It was the baby gangster racing out of the botanica.
"Fuck!" I felt as though someone had just thrown me up against a brick wall. Hard.
I staggered for a second, bending my knees, dropping my head, trying to catch my breath.
On the sidewalk in front of me something glinted.
“See?” Genaro crowed. “Trouble. Just like I say.” He was in a good mood now.
The kid didn’t apologize. The kid didn’t even appear to notice I had gotten in his way. He ran to the curb and stood there scanning the street for a couple of seconds. Back and forth, back and forth, hand cupped over his eyes. Evidently he didn't see what he was looking for and that was making him even more nervous than he had been before. When he grabbed his cell phone from his pocket, his hand shook like a leaf.
Genaro thumped me on the shoulder.
"Ouch!" I said.
“Maybe next time you listen to people who know more than you. Come on, pussy. Back inside.”
“I thought we were leaving –“ I rasped.
"Problem's gone, Jack," Genaro said, glancing at the kid at the curb. "Move your skinny white ass."
"Wait a sec," I said and scooped the shiny thing off the sidewalk.
It was a religious medal of some sort, a millagro.
"Hey, buddy, I think you dropped something," I called to the kid. But he was too busy to hear me, pacing and chattering in a language that was not English and was not Spanish.
Fuck him, I thought and slipped the medal into my pocket.
Rose to my feet, followed Genaro back into the store.
© 2007 p.a. dilucchio
But when we cut over to Valencia Street, it was a different scene. Things were hopping.
“Fuckin’ tourists,” Genaro snorted, squeezing his dented Camry into a vacant stretch of red zone.
Every year, the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau published a brochure warning tourists away from Valencia Street. Every year, the tourists ignored it, with the predictable result – to any local at least – that half a dozen or so of them ended up in the headlines, robbed at gunpoint of cash, credit cards or expensive cameras. Sometimes even dead.
The lure was those tiny restaurants in the maze of alleyways off the main drag whose cuisines reflected the shifting tides of the Mission District’s immigration waves, fly-speckled windows plastered with ancient in-flight magazine reviews promising exotic gastronomic delights at exceptional value. San Francisco's most deep-pocketed tourists think of themselves as serious foodies, see. Just mutter the words “yaki soba” or “anticucho” in front of them. They’ll follow you into the very bowels of hell.
Rising like a watchtower over the alleys was the Pink Palace, San Francisco's most notorious public housing development. The Pink Palace was no longer pink. It got the nickname back in the sixties when federal grant bucks were plentiful and some high level Beltway asshole got it into his head that all you really needed to lower San Francisco’s murder rate was to make the people who did most of the murdering think they lived in Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. That was a long time ago, when the murderers were mostly home grown. But the name stuck.
These days, according to Genaro, most Pink Palace inhabitants were immigrants, survivors themselves or related to survivors of bloody civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, the Honduras. Members of MS-13, the notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang. You could recognize an M-13 banger by the intricate tattoos on his face, pentagrams, devil’s horns, the numbers thirteen and eighteen; by his gang colors, blue and white; and by his choice of weapons – the machete was preferred to the M16 as these gangsters had a real jones for hacking people up into little bits. Sometimes they killed people for turf or revenge or money, but mostly they killed people because they enjoyed it, a type of performance art or an exercise in PR.
Genaro usually crossed the street when he saw one coming. Sometimes he even crossed himself.
A retail hub had sprung up around the Pink Palace, a medina of sorts, different from the one on the main drag. Its businesses were ones that catered to the needs of the project's residents. Mexi-marts, Laundromats, all-night check cashing joints. The Botanica San Simon was one of these, a shabby storefront behind faded red curtains.
“After you,” I told Genaro with a fake flourish as I held the door open.
“Fuckin’ tourists,” Genaro said again when we got inside.
The place was your standard cinderblock box stinking of incense, ceilings hung with fluorescent tubing, walls painted bright green and lined with shelves from which an assortment of tapers, votives, icons and potions offered themselves as cures for even the most existential of woes. But instead of being empty as such places mostly are, this place was packed. I had a feeling Santa Muerte would have felt out of place though. Not a teary-eyed mother petitioning for her son’s early release on parole in the joint. Practically every person oohing and ahing over the quaint little hoodoo trinkets was a refugee from second seatings at the restaurants down the block.
“Oil of cinnamon,” a woman in a camel hair coat and a diamond eternity pendent called across the room to a man in a Hawaiian shirt. She squinted at a small bottle with a glass dropper. “Oil of sandalwood, oil of myrrh, pyrite –“
“Fool’s Gold!” said the man.
“Oh get this! It’s for success in gambling!”
“Pick up a couple for the next time we’re in Vegas!”
They laughed heartily.
“So where’s the Moshymon?” I asked Genaro.
He elbowed me hard and pointed with his chin.
One person stood out from the crowd, a very young man – a boy, really – in blue sweats and a white shirt, his face barely recognizable under elaborate inkwork. “Por Vida” in Gothic lettering across his forehead, “1” and “3” on his cheeks with a fuck-you finger configured to look like the hand of Fatima. Over his right eye, the word “game”; over his left, “over.” Kid was nervous but trying not to show it. He stood in front of a doorway closed off from the rest of the room by a fringe of beads. He was pretending not to be glancing over his shoulder.
“Right,” I said. “I won’t hit him up for spare change.”
“No, in there. The Maximon. Can't you hear it?”
Dimly I became aware of a droning noise coming from the broom closet. A voice chanting.
“That’s the shaman,” Genaro said.
“How do we get in there to take a peek?”
Genaro shrugged. “The line starts there.”
The beads rattled. The kid slipping into the darkness behind them.
“So? What are we waiting for?”
Genaro shook his head. “Not me, man. This place smells like trouble. I’ll wait for you in the car.”
“Oh, don’t be an asshole –“
“Fine. I’ll leave. Call a cab when you’re done.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the problem?”
“MS-13 and Maximon? It’s a bad combo –“
“Oh, come on,” I said.
But Genaro was already pushing his way past two ladies in fur coats.
"PETA member," I told them as I shoved them a second time.
I caught up with him just outside the front door.
“What the fuck, man. This was your idea in the first place. I could be doing other things –“
Genaro laughed nastily. “Like what? Eating some rich gringa bitch’s pussy so she won’t notice when you sell her a piece of shit and jack the price tag up five grand?”
In spite of myself, I almost laughed. Genaro watched a lot of television and one of his favorite shows was something called The Real Housewives of Orange County. It was his dream to some day end up in bed with one of these housewives, goddesses artificially blonde and tanned, breathing testimonials to the magical properties of Botox. "I bet even their pussies smell good," he told me once mournfully.
"Sure," I said. "Why not? Wanna watch?”
“I tell you before, Hazard. Watch your fuckin’ mouth –“
And then somebody slammed into my back. Hard.
It was the baby gangster racing out of the botanica.
"Fuck!" I felt as though someone had just thrown me up against a brick wall. Hard.
I staggered for a second, bending my knees, dropping my head, trying to catch my breath.
On the sidewalk in front of me something glinted.
“See?” Genaro crowed. “Trouble. Just like I say.” He was in a good mood now.
The kid didn’t apologize. The kid didn’t even appear to notice I had gotten in his way. He ran to the curb and stood there scanning the street for a couple of seconds. Back and forth, back and forth, hand cupped over his eyes. Evidently he didn't see what he was looking for and that was making him even more nervous than he had been before. When he grabbed his cell phone from his pocket, his hand shook like a leaf.
Genaro thumped me on the shoulder.
"Ouch!" I said.
“Maybe next time you listen to people who know more than you. Come on, pussy. Back inside.”
“I thought we were leaving –“ I rasped.
"Problem's gone, Jack," Genaro said, glancing at the kid at the curb. "Move your skinny white ass."
"Wait a sec," I said and scooped the shiny thing off the sidewalk.
It was a religious medal of some sort, a millagro.
"Hey, buddy, I think you dropped something," I called to the kid. But he was too busy to hear me, pacing and chattering in a language that was not English and was not Spanish.
Fuck him, I thought and slipped the medal into my pocket.
Rose to my feet, followed Genaro back into the store.
© 2007 p.a. dilucchio
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-01 03:59 am (UTC)you're making me see these places you're writing about.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-01 05:47 pm (UTC)I figure it's terribly boring and one by one my LJ "friends" will drop me. But at least I'll have accomplished something!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-01 06:09 pm (UTC)same thing. you knew to pause there to let us have our 'don't pick that up' thought outburst.
heh. as you were, then.