In retrospect, it was probably poor judgement to allow a classful of high school sophomores unchaperoned access to the streets of San Francisco. We bussed up to see Les Miserables performed at the Curran Theatre. 1990 or 1991. Got there early, an hour or so to kill before the doors opened, so we were set loose to do as we pleased with our time. My AP English class.
The “Theatre District” in San Francisco isn’t really called that except with irony. The truth is that it’s nestled uncomfortably between the posh Union Square and the seedy Tenderloin. Outside the theater, tickets in hand, you could walk down Geary street in either direction: one leads to galleries and light and retail, the other to what most guidebooks call the worst neighborhood in San Francisco.
Guess which direction I went?
It was me and Robert Krufal. We found a record store and I bought a copy of Faith No More’s The Real Thing on cassette tape. Dressed in theater finery, at least what passed for theater finery. Black slacks, Docker-type. Button-up shirt. Not t-shirt, not jeans. Must have taken a wrong turn on the way out, because it was quickly clear that we weren’t going where everyone else was heading.
It wasn’t dark yet, but getting there. Got hassled walking past a local kid, asked us for change or money. Ignored him, kept going, but decided we’d be better off going in the other direction. Had to walk by again, and again he asked, commented on our clothes. Ignored him again, walked by. Kid started following us, a friend of his, maybe an older brother, comes out of nowhere to join him. Taunts. “Why can’t you give me no money? Dressed like that, got no money? Bullshit.”
The Tenderloin is where noir goes when it wants to get good and scared after dark. Nah, that’s probably overstating it a little bit. But it is a working-class neighborhood dropped in the middle of San Francisco, between the stately civic center and the inspiring financial district, between the bustling Market street and the eccentric Chinatown. It’s just there, and people get mugged there and shot there and people buy sex and drugs there, and nobody wants to be there. Lower Nob Hill is a euphemism for the Tenderloin because otherwise it doesn’t look good in real estate ads. No-one wants to be there, but some people have to.
Robert and I don’t, and we’re doing our best to fix the problem. The kids don’t follow far. But for two kids from shitsplat farming towns in the Salinas Valley, big-city hoodlums are a different beast. Union Square is a bright shining comfortable place, and we laugh it off as though we’ve had an adventure.
That kid, though. He had to go home at some point. And it wasn’t an adventure. I bet it wasn’t at all.