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We were lovers in the beginning, but it never took. Wayne wanted The Great Dark Man, and I, typically, wasnt up to it. We lived together for a while in a flat below Coit Tower in its pubic hair, as Wayne put it and even after the sex had died we indulged in sentimental gestures. I would wake late, long after Wayne had left for one of his clerical jobs downtown, to find an index card propped on the kitchen table bearing some fragment of a thirties song and a line of Xs and Os. It was Waynes way of honoring the big romantic love that neither of us had ever achieved. And it was I who ended this gentle charade, suggesting cautiously one night that we might both find what we wanted if Wayne took a recently vacated studio across the Filbert Steps.

- Armistead Maupin, The Night Listener



I wonder if it is possible to achieve love with another person but not want or imagine spending the rest of your life with that person. Not being prepared to accept the inevitable changes, both to person and relationship; not looking to the future with the we as opposed to the I. And by the same token I wonder if you can love a place and not wish for it to remain important in your life, whether or not time changes its faade? I love what The City did for me growing up. Every kiss, every mugging, every bus, every hill.

A lot has changed, obviously. But the quality that keeps people like me from never venturing too far for too long, or draws people in droves every year in order to pay way too much rent for far too little space, is unchanged. People find sparks like that in each other. Its what we fall in love with. What will not abide a gentle charade or frivolous sentimentality.

People move here for various reasons, but I think the ones that stay, regardless of their situation, know how lucky they are. Nobody says, shit, I am stuck in this town. I need out. Not like growing up in Yuba City or whining about the Sacramento Sprawl. People may complain that its expensive, or dirty, or too crowded but not for long. Those are the excuses that lay the groundwork for a prompt departure.



Every city and town in Italy, regardless of the size, has a church. And at least one of those churches has a bell tower, a campanile. Typically at the center of any given town, and always the tallest structure as far as the eye can see, the bell tower symbolizes a kind of civic pride and town unity that we just dont see outside of Europe. Its the reason people are referred to not just by name, but place of origin. The reason you root for the local serie-C soccer team even though they havent won a game against Altopascio in fourteen years. This campanilismo is evident to everyone, not just those who live there. Its the undefinable air of calm and comfort that tourists yearn for but cant ever quite recall.

I credit Shad for stirring up my own sanfranciscismo earlier this week. It saddens me that my inspiration to revisit the bus shelters I huddled under, the theaters I made out in, the parks I misplayed fly balls in comes at the expense of his very different sentiment for his hometown. Coit Tower may be the closest thing we have to a campanile. It works.

This country just needs more bell towers, I guess.