I
am inquisitive by nature, my parents imbued me with the urge to quest. My father also trained me to be a leader and
a technician, which my college tutors reframed into being a scientist.
I
was mostly living in San Francisco during my mid-life crisis thirties. Single, secure in employment, earning too
much money compared to the prior two years of graduate school in Tucson. I ran across a once in a lifetime deal for
living quarters.
The Stanford Court
Apartments had had changed hands and the new owners were phasing out existing
tenants over a 2-year period.
In
the meantime they were offering one-year rentals at reasonable rates. It was still steep – for me. I enlisted my parents, who were visiting San
Francisco once a month anyway and had been thinking about having an apartment
in SF. We agreed to share the place – we
rented furniture, huge amounts that still rattled around in the place.
Probably
3,000 square feet. Multiple bedrooms,
living room, dining room, pantry, kitchen, maid’s quarters, multiple
bathrooms. An elevator entry area that
we shared with only one other apartment on our floor. A box-shaped, 4-sided building, 8-stories,
two apartments to a side per floor.
After
a few months of taking care of furniture and utility hook-ups and acquainting
myself with the neighborhood, I became a regular at Blum’s at 11:00 pm when the
Chronicle early morning edition hit the streets. I did family dinners at Alexis.
It
was when I tried to employ someone to be the maid, that it occurred to me to
examine the maid’s quarters. What I
found was that they had their own kitchen and bathroom and an anteroom, which
led to a back staircase.
I
went down – I was third floor. All the
keys were made just after the ’06 quake, way better than skeleton keys, but
still, old brass. There was a key to get
out and back to this stairway, and I couldn’t get into any other
apartment. There was an amazing openness
when one arrived “below ground”.
There
were two levels: B1 was the laundry and other machinery level, B2 was the
storage level, where each apartment had several storage rooms for seasonal
changes of furniture and the normal detritus of living an acquisitive life.
B1,
to my great surprise, was alive with the hum of activity, people doing laundry,
but also just congregating, fixing things, making dates for events, prepping
for departures. The corridors were
completely open between the various upper apartment levels, that is I walked
from my “entry point” all the way around a four-block corridor, with my side
and corner labeled so I could find my way back up. There were no elevators for maids, which
included service men. Stairs on the four
corners.
I
only wish I knew then what I know now.
It was an historical moment, and I was lapping up sundaes at
Blum’s. I actually went up once, to the
roof top. Boring to me at the time. Fantastic views of the City. Oh that I knew about photography then. Why does it take a lifetime to acquire all
such knowledge?
Steinhart
Marine Aquarium
I
had a bout with cancer in this era; Steinhart was one of the therapies in the
end.
I
was no longer a part of the lingerie store, but I needed a secondary outlet for
my “post” mid-life crisis besides computers.
I
opened a book store, ”Fiddler’s Green”, at 24th and Noe. My partner was a classic book seller,
disheveled, disjointed, and with a dog that was the carrier of all fleas –
mother flea dog, appropriately named, “DOG”. Douglas brought 8,000 arcane books
about Nazi conspiracies and WW-II weapons.
His books never sold – not online – not off the shelf – not by secret
letters. I last visited him in Fort
Bragg on my way back from Hayfork. I was
a novel reader and not planning to go into competition with the big guys.
I
started playing chess at the coffee house next door. I would invite people back to the store, and
eventually set up a few tables for people to play chess. I added some chess books, then a few more
tables. Then I started subscribing to
Russian and Latvian chess periodicals, and stocked more chess books, from all
over the world.
Then
I started a weekly prize money Speed Chess tournament and since many players
from the Bay Area had come to know this place, it got to be a big thing. World famous USCF rated players
attending. I became a legitimate
tournament director and held frowned-on tournaments: women masters, fledgling
masters, and youth masters. USCF invited
me to be the regional USCF director, next step national.
My
Friday night Speed Chess tournaments had become legendary across the country
and the world. I formed a team – we
challenged the New York City, Marshall Chess Club to a telephone match. . It was a draw. But soon thereafter Leonid Shamkovitch and
Anatoly Lein, two of the top ten rated players in the world, who had defected
to the USA, joined us.
On one night, the US
champion, the Israeli champion, a NY Tal-like street fighter, and these two
world class champions, and seven others fought not for the $100 prize, but for
the privilege of playing in that ethereal crowd.
Twelve
people, double-round robin.
Everybody
had to play and complete 22 [5-minute] games, six tables going concurrently.
I
was working too hard; a computer project manager full time in the Financial
District, and a chess club and book store operator by evening and weekend. My health snapped. I developed a melanoma hidden away on my
back. I had recently started dating Gail
and she insisted I have the mole biopsied.
Gail
connected me with a holistic, Mill Valley health clinic run by Dr. Michael
Gerber. I spent a year under his care,
doing every -ology there was. Mediation
therapy was essential, so Gail bought me a fish in a small bowl to watch during
the day. I visited the aquarium section
of a local pet store and bought a few more fish and a bigger tank. I did meditate with the fish, but the hobby
of caring for fish also captivated me. I
started to visit Steinhart Aquarium and became familiar with all their
displays. By this point I had eight
aquariums going; I kept getting larger and larger ones. But they were all heated, fresh-water
tanks. I wanted to branch out into salt
water tanks, ocean fish. Steinhart had,
as a community service, a salt water
pump outlet, around the back of the place.
Steinhart pumped in ocean water from 20-miles out for their own
purposes. In those days people saved
those big 5-gallon Alhambra water jugs and I acquired a dozen of them. I would go out to Steinhart once or twice a
week to fill five or six. One day, there
was no pressure, nothing came out. I
went hunting around for someone to ask about this. It hadn’t ever crossed my mind that this pump
around back was a floor level under the public hallways.
I
walked down this hallway and into a lab room.
There was a friendly young guy who said he was a grad student working
there. He told me the system was off for
a while they were repairing something.
He didn’t know that I had come in from the unlocked loading platform
door. He said, “If you want to get
upstairs, just go up any of the staircases.”
I did and when I got to the door and went through, I was in one of the
viewing gallery rooms. The lighting was
dim, and when the door closed, it disappeared, to all appearances. Knowing now
what to look for, I spotted many black on black, hairline crack doors.
A
few days later, I said to my friend Bill, you’ve got to come with me to
Steinhart soon. We wandered the lab
hallways, looking for Dr. Jones.
The
Opera House
After
the Stanford Court Apartments, I rented a little efficiency apartment in North
Beach. I hated it. Rita talked me into buying places, two, on
the GI Bill. I did: 1615 Treat in Bernal
Heights, and a 3-apartment building on Guererro at 18th Street in
the mission. I moved into the basement
of the Guererro place for a while, but it was depressing. Nobody wanted to pay rent and being a
landlord didn’t work for me; I fell for every story, took food stamps. When one became vacant, I took it – “to fix
it up” – but I wasn’t a contractor either.
This experiment failed miserably.
I let the bank take it over. I
had no money in it – no Down GI loan.
But the Treat Street place had become vacant. I moved in.
Treat
is one block long and uphill, great for keeping in shape. It was just like my first apartment in San
Francisco on Telegraph Place. I was poor
now, starting over, but finally happy.
Completely unattached and care free, I socialized with my work mates
from American President Lines steamship company, as well as my new found
neighbors – Patty Hearst was a big topic at that time.
One
Saturday morning I got a strange telephone call, “Peter? This is Bill. I fixed the Triumph and I’m bringing it up to
you. I’ll be there tomorrow. How do I get there?” “Who?”, I asked. “Bill, Pattie’s brother. You guaranteed my loan on the Triumph. We worked together at the UofA.” Yes, he was the young man, a computer
operator, who I hung around with in the UofA computer facility, while I was at
grad school. I chased after his sister
Pattie, who never bought my spiel, but I was handy and took her and her 4-year
old out to dinner, and her younger brother thought I was cool, coming from San
Francisco and all. I did nerd-tricks on his
business computers while waiting for my time slots on the supercomputer. This impressed Bill.
“O.K.”,
I said, “Take the North Beach exit off the freeway. Stop immediately and ask for someone to point
you to Vanessi’s. It’s an open-air
restaurant and I’ll be having lunch at noon.”
He showed up, we parked the bike next door and had lunch. He wanted a job, in the computer field. I said I’d help. We parted that day. Months later, I got him hired at Crown
Zellerbach, where I then worked. He
eventually gave me the Triumph.
So,
Bill and I became friends – I was still at Treat. We both loved music, both loved Chess. I got to know all the street chess patzers. Bill and I built a Hi-Fi speaker system – a
top performance quad-amplifier system – over two dozen speakers. I collected records. We didn’t do drugs or alcohol; coffee was our
thing when we did get together.
We
each had private lives in this era. Both
heterosexual men who loved women and tried to keep them private and apart. This was self-preservative, since we often
switched women over the broader spectrum of time. This occurred half a dozen times.
So
we only “checked base” with one another once a week, plus or minus. Often this might be Saturday night – girls’
night out for our partners. Our budgets
at this point, no longer able to afford to buy a house, did allow us to have a
take-out dinner and often listen to the KDFC-FM radio presentation of the San
Francisco Symphony Orchestra. In those
days the premier presentation was Friday night, at the San Francisco War
Memorial Opera House – tickets only. But
the more popular performance was Saturday night, which was also broadcast on
KDFC.
Bill
and I both followed the Orchestra and their schedule. Like I think Mary claimed last week, we could
tell who was playing, as the virtuoso, by their unique styles. I heard a critique many years later that
claimed that what we all heard that was so different was their mistakes. These old masters had been through so much,
they hadn’t had the opportunity or time to continue to practice, so they all
had their foibles, but everyone gave them a pass because they’d made it through
the 30’s alive.
So
we would buy tickets, and double-date, once or twice a season. It was important for us, and the ideal was
center lodge for best acoustics.. Time
and schedules permitting, we would occasionally go down on Saturday morning and
watch an open rehearsal. If you know the
music, mostly by heart, then these are a fine way to enjoy the symphony,
especially to sauce out the guest conductor.
We each also tried ushering to get free seats. One of my ploys when Bill couldn’t make it
was to be the one to buy the two tickets, and then turn them in to the box
office on the night. Sometimes no one,
sometimes a nerd, like me, and sometimes an interesting woman, which sometimes
worked out for at least a dinner.
An
equal number of times, however, we would be doing nothing, but listening to the
radio, maybe wiring a circuit, maybe playing chess, and one would say, “Did you
hear that? “Ozawa is guest conducting tonight,
and that was fabulous.!!” And the other,
“We’ve got 3-4 minutes until they hit intermission, can we get there by second
call?” “No sweat, it all depends on parking”
“Let’s Go.”
And
we went. We knew the spots that SF police officers didn’t tag, it was City
Hall, lots of protected spots. If we
were early, there would be crowds
milling about – many people attend, often simply for others to see them
attending. The half-time break is an
easy exit to still make dinner at a reasonable hour. Forty percent of the crowd disappears on
Saturday night, “for a more complete evening’s itinerary”.
Men
threw their ticket stubs on the floor, into waste receptacles, or handed them
to ushers. They were of no value to
them, at this point. To Bill and me,
they were liquid gold. Jascha Heifetz would
still get 10% to 20% leaving after the intermission. The seat #’s didn’t matter, once we were
in. We were legal, just maybe not in the
right seats, we never argued – we moved.
We tried, though, for the best seats in the house.
On
a whim, one Saturday after an open rehearsal concert, I said to Bill, “Let’s
explore”. I was his mentor at that
stage. And we went wandering, up higher
to practice rooms and preparation rooms.
We went lower to set storage rooms for operas, so many of them. How does the manager decide what goes and
what stays? My friend Alex used to paint
sets for the NY Met. He adored Maria Callas.
I wonder if any of his sets still exist.
It
was overwhelming – 2/3 of the space at the Opera House was not for performance,
but for preparation and/or staging. The
movie “Moonstruck” always reminds me of the important focus on set arrivals and
preparations for Madame Butterfly.
* * *
Twenty
years ;later, some of these characters re-appeared for the Black & White
Ball of 1991, held concurrently in several different City buildings including
the Opera House .
That’s
Bill & I and my daughter Patricia who is now retiring from being a
professor at Notre Dame University in Belmont,
and a flight instructor at Palo Alto.
She
has bought 200+ acres in Modoc County, where she is attempting to settle. Bill made millions in computers and real
estate and is now a Republican recluse.
I care for my cat and a few finches.
