North Beach Is Gone

I stopped at a liquor store like I always did on the way to North Beach. The best liquor store was conveniently across the street from Washington Square which was a good entrance to Grant Avenue and the bars and my youth times with its memories of an old North Beach.

My favourite bar in the before times was the Anxious Asp. A cigar smoking lesbian midget ran the place. I first entered when I was sixteen looking like I was twenty-five. The Asp is gone now. A blood I had met in Mexico had bought it and moved it to the Haight during those latter stages of the hippy landings but it had failed. I did not like that guy anyway.

Mike’s Pool Hall was gone also. It went slowly as topless came in bringing with it the tourist. Mike’s was wonderful and introduced me to the hierarchy of San Francisco’s underworld. Genovese to Sicilian to Bloods and Chinese. The heroin, pot and coke were routed through the toilet at Mike’s and deals were made at the pool tables for sometimes more than samples. Mike’s smelled like a German Beer Hall and had crushed peanut shells soaking up anything on the table level of its one step up two floors.

Then there was the old reliable Specks in his own tiny alley. Across from Vesuvio’s and City Lights Bookstore. The bouquet was memory. At Specks I would pour some of my rum into the last contents of my beer mug and would eat a slice out of the cheese wheel with its big cleaver slicer on the bar. The bartender always saw me pour the rum but knew me doing since I was a kid. I was at home at Specks.

I was a City boy. I was born in the Dogpatch ghetto with my primary formative years spent in another ghetto, called the ‘Mo. Then we moved to the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood smack in the centre of San Francisco. The world of the City boy changed from sizing up everybody for weaknesses to laughing and climbing trees in the Golden Gate Park.

My high school days were decorated with female conquests, fencing in the ROTC and a complete fascination with gangs. I adored fighting and my nose showed my reluctance to stand down or run away. At sixteen I started looking for other expressions of my youthful surging passions. I found the Beatniks and poetry through the aforementioned female conquests. I don’t remember the particular girl who introduced me to the particular woman but I never really went back to girls again and I never went back to a world without jazz or poetry.

I never really liked the Beats, they were not San Franciscan, but I did like the free sexual realities and the whole basis they promoted of a search for personal freedom with emphasis upon holding onto one’s character and just using the personality.

My introduction to Mike’s Pool Hall, The Tropicoro Nightclub and the Anxious Asp was my introduction to the combination of jazz, poetry and the underworld. It actually came about because of a childhood friend who was into latin jazz. We used to play congas in his music room that was built away from his home. One night we went down to North Beach where Jacob said the Beatniks were doing a beat, which was what they called a poetry reading. I went along because Jacob had some pot and I had never had any before.

The Beat was no big deal, but the pot was. We smoked it in a short alleyway just up from a small bar named, tah dah, the Anxious Asp. We pushed our ways into the Asp. It was crowded and dark with a surprising mixture of clientele. I was stoned and started talking to a woman, who was smoking a cigar at the end of the bar. I did not know until she got up that she was a midget and I started laughing at her. She started laughing too and we became friends. Nobody ever laughed at Blue because she was a bad dyke, and owned the Anxious Asp. If you ever wanted to come back in you paid respect to her. I was an exception and I think she always knew I was a kid but just liked me.

Janis Joplin got eighty-sixed from the Asp while I worked as a relief doorman, checking identifications to ensure no kids would come in (I was sixteen or seventeen and the legal entry-drinking age was twenty-one). I used to bring her drinks out to some stairs next to the Asp and we would talk about somethings or nothings. This was before she started singing.

The Mayor of San Francisco used to come by the Asp during that time and get high. Some of the big names in the Italian mafia of San Francisco used to rub shoulders with rough and tumble longshoremen. The hum of conversation was music blending with the latest jazz pieces on an old colourful jukebox in the back of the place or some musicians doing an impromptu session. The pool table barely fit and the pool cues were a challenge but that was not the reason for being there. This was heaven for me from sixteen to twenty-three when the place was sold.

Mike’s Pool Hall was a whole other thing, but not really. The two pool tables were always occupied and money was always being laid on the players. The pool tables were at the back of the place on a small risen platform. The restrooms were the real reason for Mike’s popularity back in the day with a steady stream of urinators running in and out holding little packets or pocketing wallets. Cocaine was just starting to become popular, but heroin was greatly in demand. I could get some pot but I am sure I was just a waste of time with my ten and fifteen dollar buys but people knew me and usually just gave me something to get high that night.

I really appreciated the Genovese though. They were immaculate in dressing and downplayed their evident class in subtle colours and textures of clothing. The hair was their pride though, and never seemed to have a strand out of place, even when a curl would fall over an eye as they made a bank shot. The Sicilians were a bit garish, down to earth and loud in their dress and manners. I always thought of the Sicilians as happy fishermen and the Genovese as commodity brokers.

Mike’s had Jamie and Sully. I went to Mike’s to see those two movie characters and hear and/or see their latest adventure. Sully was always making Jamie do something stupid and Jamie was always complaining about what Sully had made him do. I found out many years later that Jamie’s real name was James and that surprised me to no end… I was forever after telling that to people and nobody ever knew why I brought it up. Jamie was James. Amazing.

The classic tale of those two was the time it was raining heavily outside Mike’s and Jamie came in completely drenched, spotted me and asked for a beer because he was broke. That was strange because I knew he had just come into some monies and financed Sully’s idea to do some gold digging. They bought a used Cadillac and a bunch of camping gear. I helped with organising the camping gear. They left on Friday and when Jamie appeared alone and broke it was Tuesday.

‘That muthafucka done did it to me again’, started the story. It always started the story.

‘What happened, Jamie?’ I asked settling in on the bar stool and glancing at some wonderful looking ladies just running in collapsing umbrellas and giggling at the rainfall outside.

Jamie followed my gaze and started smiling, then frowned gravely and began his little tale. ‘We went up into them hills, up to around 3,000 foot, ya know. Well, when we got to some town I went in and ast’ed the guy behind the counter where we could find some gold in the hills. He said some stupid stuff and we went to a gas station and I ast’ed the guy there, a kid. Well, he said they found gold down in the valley and pointed back where we come from. Then, he said they found silver up about two miles at the head of some trail called, Silver Trail. That was good news.’

He drank his beer like a man who was hungry, so I ordered a Torpedo for him and Jamie looked down, almost tearfully and said thanks. Mike’s was a German beer hall theme and Mike’s Famous Torpedos, like the beer mugs, were big. His plate came quickly, loaded with sauerkraut and a couple of little cups of mustards. I ordered another beer and the bartender came back with one for both of us, on him, and leaned on the bar to hear the story with us.

While they were filling up with gas at the gas station Sully spotted two hitchhiking girls and went over to offer them a ride anywhere. Jamie thought that bad luck when they were supposed to be hunting for gold, now silver, but went along with it thinking he might at least get some muff out of the deal. ‘It were better’n picking up some guys, ya know.’

Instead of driving to San Francisco like Sully had told the girls they drove to an adventure of a lifetime, as Sully phrased it to them and they agreed to go silver mining with these two. We were more trusting in those days. There was a Silver Trail sign that showed the way up a steep road that had pits and groves in it, with the Cadillac not liking it at all. Then, it started to rain and after bumping their way up and into a big rut Sully thought it would be a good place to start their dig… after the rain let up, of course.

They somehow managed to put their very large tent up, mainly through the help of the girls for neither Sully nor Jamie knew anything about camping. Jamie said they started a camp stove fire in the tent to cook hot dogs but found they did not have any mustard, so Sully said he would go and get some and asked the girls if they wanted to come. They wanted to come. Jamie is not the nicest guy to be around for more than a half hour. I was getting tired of him already and was thinking of some way to get out of Mike’s or over to the table with the fine ladies when he told me that Sully never came back and he was worried.

I told him that I had seen Sully the day before at Safeway and the bartender also volunteered that Sully had been in the night before for a few hours. Jamie started frowning and you could see the conclusions in his brain adding up and his eyes shutting them out, then adding them up again and again. The bartender moved away to serve one of the ladies who was ordering for her group and smiling at me.

Memories. I was walking in the early evening air of traffic noises, moving past the crescendo of Miles Davis’ Concierto de Aranjuez as it dramatically fell to simple notes. The sky was a city sky of greys.

Mike’s Pool Hall was gone, as was the Anxious Asp and Tropicoro. Tropicoro was the spot I got into the Latin rhythms with all the feelings of tropical motion and paced action. I learned to really play the conga outside the Tropicoro’s plain looking building hidden just before the tunnel exit from North Beach. Willy Bobo came out to take a break and heard us playing just a little down the street. He came over and took over our drums, making us play right and more together. He did it the next night again, and a third night before going back to New York. But, the Tropicoro has gone and I stopped playing the congas long ago.

I walked over to the liquor store on my way out of those dreams of a past and bought a bottle of Barbancourt-Three Star. I went on across the street to the wet and shiny statue of Benjamin Franklin in Washington Square, unscrewed the bottle top and poured a taste onto the many years of piss at the western side of Franklin’s base, then took a long swig, letting the silky burn of caramel move down my throat. I knew I was now here and then and that was past.

The End.