Red Fog, White Fog, Blue Fog
San Francisco has remained mercifully cool these last couple of weeks as the rest of North America baked under a thermal dome of intense record heat and summer storms. Western Canada came within a whisker of 50 degrees celsius. Canada. Here it’s tolerably warm in the afternoon, but ladies wrap themselves against the chill as the sun begins to fade. This is how it is on nearly every Fourth of July for us. The city sends a barge out into the bay and launches fireworks to celebrate Independence Day. That’s right King George, I’m talking to you. Lie back and think of England. But the pyrotechnics can’t be seen directly. The pea soup fog just changes colors. Red fog, white fog, blue fog.
The tarpaper roof above the detached garage next door has been dubbed the Covid Lounge and continues to serve as a neighborhood gathering place post lockdown - a gift from an unpleasant year. I do the material procurement, gardening, set up, and cleaning. That’s my payment in kind for illegally squatting on property that isn’t mine. It gives me something productive to do in my spare time and I enjoy it. The legitimate residents of the building make use of my handiwork to everyone’s delight.
There’s a meme out there on the interwebs that says cities are dead. It’s promulgated by people who never liked urban living in the first place and who choose not to live in cities for aesthetic and cultural reasons. They shun the wrong element. Too poor. The 1% elite. Too rich. That’s fine with me. America is a profoundly suburban nation and actual urbanity is rare and suspect. The future of the continent and the society will not be decided one way or another by what happens downtown. There isn’t enough “city” to matter. It’s the suburbs that will right themselves and succeed or bleed out and fail on their own terms. That’s a conversation people in the cul-de-sacs and age restricted gated communities tend not to have. Meanwhile, I like where I am. Happy fourth.
