Scenes from a city in waiting

I approached a homeless man who held a sign that read, “Anything Helps. Only Time Will Tell.” I asked him what he meant by it, and he explained that we can’t tell what tomorrow will bring. I knew the feeling. I gave him a dollar and headed toward the Ferry Building, stopping to meet James Russell Austin (or J.R.), a florist and co-owner of nigella botanical boutique. On this particular day he was preparing bouquets for a private dining event at a nearby restaurant.

Nigella sells 25,000 to 45,000 flowers, or “stems,” as Austin refers to them, each week. He buys them from the San Francisco Flower Market on 16th and Mississippi St., but they’re grown in various parts of California including Half Moon Bay, as well as in Florida, Singapore, Kenya, Holland, Columbia, and Ecuador.

Outside, a man carrying a briefcase headed for the stairs to the Embarcadero BART station, and then changed his mind, opting instead for the escalator. Another man dressed in a fitted blue suit and perfectly polished dress shoes told his female companion, a colleague I surmised, about a book he was reading, titled 1929.

Across from the Ferry Building, I passed vendors selling jewelry, leather goods and T-shirts for five and ten dollars each in the shadow of the big statue of the naked woman. I came upon a shirtless man with a gold necklace on a BMX bike, wearing a black ski cap, loose-fitting black pants and white high tops. An older woman pushing a man in a wheelchair stopped to watch the cyclist as he performed some tricks. In one, he rotated the bike in the air on its rear wheel, as he spun the handlebars around, looking like a figure skater in a suspended Axel jump.

His name is Pete Brandt, and the move, he told me, is called the blender. The woman pushing the man in the wheelchair came over to tell Brandt she admired his work, giving him what looked to be a twenty dollar bill. “I really appreciate the love, even more than the money,” Brandt told her. “Really, it means a lot to me.”

Brandt told me how he drew inspiration from a paralyzed man who came to watch him every day, and told him that his dedication to his performance motivated the man to build the strength and push himself to climb the stairs to a statue in the plaza.

“Sure enough, after about six months, he actually made it up there and walked back down,” Pete said. “I’ve had a lot of difficulties, but that’s a whole different level. It’s interesting, he kind of paid that motivation back to me. To this day, I’m just like, ‘You can do anything as long as your mind says you can do it.’”

I walked through the Ferry Building, its expensive shops bustling with tourists and office workers grabbing food, and out to the Bay where families and friends laughed as they ate at Hog Island Oyster Co. and Señor Sisig. The water was calm as a giant blue container ship crossed in front of Treasure Island. A ferry boat headed toward Vallejo.

A little later, on my way to North Beach on Sansome St., I spotted a security officer who likely worked at the immigration court catching a smoke and looking at his phone. Even late in the day it was so warm that I took my sweatshirt off, noting how unusual it was to walk so comfortably at that hour in San Francisco in a T-shirt. Skirting the eastern side of Telegraph Hill, I caught sight of and listened to its parrots, and noticed bougainvillea still in bloom.

San Francisco has been in the news a lot lately with the president saying he’d like to send in the National Guard to “straighten” us out and Elon Musk saying that’s the “only solution.” But walking around, I didn’t see much in need of straightening. Heck, the Wall Street Journal just said some nice things about us, too. San Francisco really might be back.

Eventually, I sat down at Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store Cafe on Columbus Ave. A couple sat across from me, their baby on the mother’s lap stared at me with big round eyes taking in the world around him. His mom lifted him, turned him around so he was facing her. As she spoke to him, kissed his head and cheek, the baby looked at his father. With his bare foot in one hand, the baby grabbed for his mother’s hair, the plastic bag on the table, and his parents’ Moretti beer bottles. 

My server, Anthony Muñoz, thanked me for my patience as he set a cappuccino down at my table. Muñoz works at Liguria bakery in the morning, delivering bread around the city, and does the late shift at Mario’s. At this point in the year, he said, the restaurant gets its share of French, Italian, and Spanish tourists. Monday nights attract the industry folks, meaning cooks, bartenders and servers who work the rest of the week, and some regulars.

Anthony and I spoke at Mario’s outdoor seats, overlooking Washington Square Park which was clean, green, and crowded. He had woken up hungover but pronounced the setting gorgeous. “Once I came out here, I felt the sun and said ‘I can definitely do it.’”

As I sipped my coffee, I watched an old man with a long grey beard, wearing a cap with two or three long feathers tucked into it. A real San Francisco character, the kind you don’t see as often as you used to but you’re always happy to spot. The song “Hang on Little Tomato” was playing on the stereo at Mario’s. The man, wrapped in an American flag, seemed to be dancing to the music.

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