Author: Mark Alexander

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You Can Never Go Home

It was rather slow at work yesterday, so after reimaging a PC that had come back in, when it was finished I fired up Windows maps. I never realized that the app had a street view like Google, so for kicks I flew over San Francisco and dropped in on my one-time home.

I’d visited downtown several times via Google (getting totally lost and not recognizing a thing any more), but for some reason I’d never ventured into my old hoods. It was near lunchtime and I was hungry, so I decided to take a peek at some of my old haunts.

I got sad very quickly.

You know you’re old when you can’t find any of the places you used to visit on a regular basis because they’ve been sold, repurposed, or completely torn down to make room for yet more overpriced condos.

Sparky’s on Church Street is one example that lept out at me. Microsoft’s street view was from 2014 and the place seemed to still be in business, although the vegetarian place just up the street seemed to have changed hands. Knowing Google’s views were more recent I switched over and to my disappointment saw that Sparky’s was now closed and the space was marked “for lease.”

This of course led me on a web search to learn it’s fate, and I discovered it’s been closed nearly four years, most recently shut down by the Health Department for various violations. (TBH, not surprising.)

So then I “wandered” up Market Street. Sweet Inspiration was also gone. When I lived in the City, that was the preferred spot to meet up with someone you just met from AOL or one of the many gay BBS boards before actually getting down to business. (Yes, Virginia, I’m that old.)

Streetlight Records, while still appearing on the 2014 street view image on Google, is gone.

Just like downtown, Upper Market was basically unrecognizable to me. The spot formerly occupied by Tower Records (which was obviously in distress when I left the City in 2002) is now a CVS Pharmacy. The hole in the ground at the corner of Market and Noe was now (finally!) filled in with new housing. My favorite Chinese place in the Castro, House of Chen—which I’d gone to almost as many times as Rosie’s Cantina*—was on street view, but a further search revealed that it too, had been shuttered.

Don’t even get me started on Castro Street itself.

Let’s just say that by the time I tore myself away from this virtual visit, I was heartbroken to see what had happened to my city and the neighborhoods I had called home. A lot of unresolved emotions were triggered, and I was forced to admit that the sixteen years I lived there were not really as happy and carefree as I’d like to remember; there was a profound loneliness underlying my time in The City (explaining some of the questionable choices I’d made and equally questionable things I’d done while there) and I really have no desire to ever go back.

I used to say that there are two San Franciscos that live in my consciousness: the one that lives in my memories and the one that lives in my dreams (aspects of that place are always off the rails). But I fear I must add a third; the City I no longer recognize.

I discussed this with Ben last night, and he pointed out that the changes that have happened in Phoenix since our return from Denver are just as jarring when you step outside the insulation of daily life living here. No doubt we would both be shocked if we’d returned now, not having lived through the ongoing changes of the last five years, and I’m sure that if I’d somehow remained in SF, the changes I see there now would also seem just as natural.

 

*I thought I’d posted about Rosie’s some time ago, but apparently that was in the blog that I’d deleted before we moved to Denver. I’ll have to post it again…

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Be Careful What You Ask For

A random thought…

TBH, there are times I miss being viewed as a sexual outlaw by society. Now that teh ghey has gone mainstream, and LGB—if not quite T yet—folks and our relationships are accepted in at least the blue and purple areas of the country and almost every television show has gay characters these days (even if it’s obvious pandering), the thrill of being different in the sea of the commonplace is gone.

I know it’s a generational thing, and I accept that.

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Immensely Satisfying

I just finished binging the first season of Tell Me a Story on CBS All Access, and I have to say, it was one of the most satisfying bits of storytelling I’ve seen in quite some time.

When I initially read the premise of the show I didn’t see how any of it would work, but somehow the writers pulled it off.

Highly recommended if you have CBS All Access.

Going to give it a short break and then jump into Season Two.

But next up, Star Trek: Discovery.

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Finally!

It took longer than expected, but I’ve managed to acquire another piece of Holy Grail vinyl I saw online a couple years ago. After seeing a photo of the red vinyl version of Kraftwerk’s The Man Machine on Tumblr or some such, I subsequently tracked it down on Discogs late in 2018, but never thought I could justify buying a copy. (It typically sold for over $100 USD). I have a pristine copy on black vinyl that is one of the few records to survive from my original collection, bought new in 1978, but when I saw this I had to have it—sooner or later. I guess the analog gods were smiling upon me a month ago, becuase a copy came up for sale at a third of the typical asking price and I jumped on it. It seemed to take forever to get here from Germany, but it finally arrived yesterday and believe me, it was worth the wait.

The seller graded it very conservatively, assigning a VG (very good) rating to the sleeve and VG+ (very good plus) to the vinyl itself. After receiving it, however, I have to say the sleeve is mint, and the vinyl itself it NM (near mint).

The Man Machine is probably my favorite of all the recordings in Kraftwerk’s extensive catalog.

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Men Will Be Men







You always hated it when your wife insisted on bringing you to a couples date so she could be with one of her girlfriends. Ugh, the guys were usually such losers. What did that say about her choice in friends?  10 minutes after being seated, while the girls were busy sipping wine and chatting non stop, you felt something brush your leg. At first you thought it was your wife but that angle was wrong. Then you looked across that table at Jim and his smirk said it all. While you tried to keep calm, his foot moved higher and higher up your leg. You struggled as it actually felt nice. You know you should stop him. Encouraged by your eye contact and not stopping him, his foot presses against your cock and he raises his eyebrow when he finds the solid lump. You reach under and grip his foot, taking his shoe off and then pressing his naked foot against your bulge. He begins to massage it with his foot and you are trying to keep cool while this is happening. Then holding his foot, you take your hand and unzip your pants pulling out your erection and then he realizes his foot is rubbing your exposed cock.  You let him do this for several minutes until you look at the wives who are unaware of everything.  You rub his foot and then say to your wife “Babe, gotta go hit the head.” She rolls her eyes and as you put Jim’s shoe back on his foot he says “Maybe I’ll go too”. The look you exchange says that in 5 minutes you’re gonna have him in the stall bent over with your cock buried so far in him that he’ll be feeling it next week.

Source.

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Fascinating

I am not now, nor have I ever really considered myself a “gamer” or “gaymer,” if you insist. But for several months at the start of 1994, I was obsessed with a new game called Myst. Too many very late nights were spent attempting to solve those puzzles. I’d get drawn in, look up and realize it was 3 am. On a work night.

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Prime Time (Part Two)

While the drama had been brewing with Emmett, I’d been in touch with a my longtime friend Michael in San Francisco. He and I had met on an inbound MUNI train years earlier, and after a couple romps in the hay we both came to the realization that we both carried too much baggage that didn’t match and we’d probably be better off as friends than lovers. When I’d made the decision it was time to return to Bagdad By The Bay, he suggested I move in with him until I found a place of my own. “I have big house all to myself. You’d have your own room downstairs and I’d be glad to have the company.”

Your host and Mary, my ex’s mom, who really didn’t want me to leave Tucson.

Michael lived out in the Avenues. Not my first choice of where in the city I’d ever want to live, but his offer to crash there until I found work and got a place of my own was too good to pass up. So, the first weekend in December, Michael flew down (to drive my car while I drove the rental truck) to Tucson and helped me pack up, load the truck and get out of town.

As I recall, a job arrived pretty quickly, even though I wasn’t able to return to the firm I’d worked for the previous eight years. I still wasn’t able to transition into PC support, but a job’s a job and since I had the architectural and AutoCAD skillz, any port in a storm, y’know?

Unfortunately, instead of staying put at that prestigious national firm, when the opportunity arose for me to go elsewhere  and actually get my foot in the door doing computer support work, I jumped on it.

While I prided myself on my PC knowledge, I soon found out I was in over my head. I knew the ins-and-outs of Microsoft Word, but not to the degree required by a Law Firm. Additionally it was a whole new world for me to be dealing with end users, many of whom were difficult at best and—being a Law Firm—hellspawn at worst. I got minimal support from the two other people on the Help Desk and next to none from my supervisor. I was miserable.

In one of those odd twists of fate, however, one day while returning from lunch, I ran into a guy I’d worked with in Phoenix twelve years earlier. I knew Fred had relocated to San Francisco, but lost touch with him shortly after he left the firm where we both worked.

Fred now had his own business. We chatted briefly and I told him of my employment woes. “I’m looking for people,” he said. “Here’s my card. Come by next week and we’ll see if we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement.”

And thus began two years of employment hell that was to send me back to Arizona again.

(To be continued…)

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Invoking the Prop Master

Ben had training on Saturday.

Early that afternoon I got a text from him telling me he’d lost the brand new Pro AirPods that I’d got him for our non-denominational winter holiday.

My heart sank. Probably as much as his. As you know, these things are not inexpensive, and even with a piecemeal AppleCare replacement, they’d cost more to replace than the original purchase. I was not happy.

He tore his bag apart. He cleaned out his car. I tore the sofa apart and looked underneath both it and the coffee table. I went through the laundry I’d just finished up. They were nowhere to be found.

As he was about to leave training, he asked if I wanted to run out to his school to look in his office and grab dinner on the way back. I said I did, although to be honest I wasn’t at all hungry at that point.

They weren’t at his office. Further, we temporarily locked ourselves into the parking lot at the school because the normal exit gate wasn’t remotely triggered to open; it was locked with padlocks. I waited in the car while Ben let himself out the pedestrian gate and went back into the school to try and find the key. The keys he found didn’t work. Thankfully there was another teacher on campus, and she was able to trigger the entrance gate allowing us to get out of the labyrinth.

We drove past the lunch spot where the Pods last appeared on Ben’s “Find My” app. Nothing.

Hey Apple, what good is the Find My app when attempting to locate lost AirPods if it will only locate their last known location unless they’re actually paired to something and broadcasting?

There were a couple other places he thought they might be: two classrooms where he’d been coaching teachers Friday afternoon. He didn’t have access at those particular schools, and didn’t have the teachers’ phone numbers, so he resolved to email them when we got back home.

We didn’t stop for dinner. Neither one of us was in the mood at that point.

More rifling through the sofa cushions. More going through pants and jacket pockets.

I was in the laundry room when I heard “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” from the dining room.

I walked in and found Ben with the Pods in his hand.

“I SWEAR I went though every damned pocket in my backpack and it was totally empty!”

I started giggling. Then laughing.

“It works every time,” I said. “Every damn time.”

While I’d been sitting in the school parking lot waiting for Ben to get the keys I remembered something from many years ago: when something is lost, you need to chew out the Prop Master for fucking up.

“Prop Master, you’ve fucked up! We need this prop for this scene in Ben’s life!”

This never fails. Never. I don’t know how or why it works, but I guarantee that the object in question will magically appear within hours—if not minutes after you do this. Is it magic? Does it confirm the existence of an intelligence beyond the physical? Does it point out another hole in the fabric of what we call reality?

I honestly don’t know. All I know is that it works.

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If I Had the Down Payment Handy…

…I’d be all over this. It’s exactly what I want. I’d even be willing to pay the $100 to have Carmax ship it from Henderson down to Phoenix.








2016, low mileage (should easily get another ten years out of it without the major problems starting), and very reasonable payments on a 5-year loan.

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