SF Pride Week (Take 3 - Casual Castro Walk)

The temperature reached about 90 degrees yesterday in San Francisco. Scorching. Cool breeze that picked up in the afternoon made the heat less unbearable. I was grateful for the sunshine and warm weather. I was sitting in the shade outside Cafe Flore after work, sipping a lemonade Jessie (it's Jessie and Dirk today, Bee must be off showing her mother, who is visiting from Thailand, around the city) poured me, and scribbling some thoughts in my Moleskine notebook on The Pillars on Earth, a story of a devout monk who was driven with formidable determination to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known in the 12th century.

Fellow blogger cipriano has pointed this 973-page historical novel to my direction and it has proven to be a spellbinding and gripping read: an epic tale of ambition, action, revenge, suspense, tension, greed, violence, dedication, passion, devotion, bravery. I got lost in my thought of the riveting story and memorable characterization when my friend Brent called from Sit and Spin (laundry-cafe on 18th St near Moby Dick). He is staying in SF for the pride week en route to Portland and Seattle, then Oklahoma, Arkansas and fly over the pond to Amsterdam and London. What a lifestyle! I met him at Cafe Flore (where else right? hehe...) one morning over coffee when he timidly broke the ice with a casual comment on the piece of classical music being too dark and spooky! Then I went on babbling about reading and writing along to Telemann's flute and oboe concertos. Ha!

Brent and I have been cruising around the city in a Bay-Area-Backroad style and shot some of the most spontaneous pictures. He spotted this phone pole on the sidewalk outside Twin Peaks Bar. The pole is infested with staples with which past flyers had attached. He was fascinated by the chronological distances and histories of events that the lonely pole has born and witnessed over the year in the Castro. Countless flyers for rallies, bar happy hours, bath houses, epidemic news, support groups, movie festivals, street fairs must have left their mark at one point or another on this pole. So we tried to find an angle to take a picture that best accentuates the old, rusty staples galore on the weathered pole. Stepping across the street to the MUNI underground entrance, Brent contrived to replicate a picture of the rainbow flag against the blue sky. He also captured the quiet vista and Guy's flower stand on Noe Street west of Market toward Duboce Park.

So on the way to meet Brent, who was doing laundry at Sit and Spin, which on the store front is a cafe with free wi-fi, I had to negotiate through a crowd of viewers waiting to be admitted into the Castro Theater. I stopped by the hardware store down the street and looked for a lei that is made of glossy colored beads for the weekend--to my surprise, two days before the pride celebration; the leis are yet in stock! I have to go back and check with them maybe tomorrow or the latest Saturday morning. Two doors down at A Different Light Bookstore the frontal display of a copy of Aiden Shaw's biography has driven a drooling threesome who riveted at his bare chest.

The short stroll down Castro lifted my spirit, probably owing also to the Pride Weekend that is right around the corner. Brent made a comment about how all the men I see on the strip of Castro, whether they are jock, muscle cowboy, drag queen, the guy next door, or the gruffy leather dude, form a brotherhood to which I belong. As we celebrate another gay pride, we have to remind ourselves that we are not fighting among ourselves but a society that offers the ticket to equality on the stake of conformity.