One of my favorite bookmarks is Found Magazine link . In the collegial spirit of the Internet, I am starting to post similar items, but only those that somehow land right in front of my house in the Mission District of San Francisco.
You see, my side of the street -- the west side -- is the recipient of many lost items, courtesy of a wind tunnel that swirls through here much as those that used to cause those pop-ups of legend back at old Candlestick Park. This one I am posting tonight came drifting into my front "yard" the other day.
The note, which has two sides, reads:
Michelle & Justin:
I am trying to sell my car. I need bus money only to get hom(sic) to Detroit. Michelle this is your moms(sic) car. Do you want it? My food stamps didn't come. I don't want to cause anyone any trouble. I just want to get home!! I'll see you later.
The author shares my original hometown -- Detroit -- which makes his story only the more poignant to me. San Francisco is not for everyone, so I hope he gets enough bus money to make it back home.
Somehow, this is starting to sound like a blues song, Midnight Train to Georgia, etc.
***
Most of us who live here, in this city perched unsteadily above the San Andreas Fault on the tip of a peninsula that measures almost precisely 7 by 7 miles square, have spent many years hearing references to a certain number -- "49." How many of us realize how mathematically perfect this number is for our town? We all know, of course about the Gold Rush that built San Francisco back in 1849, and therefore we probably can guess the origin of the moniker "49ers" that in the present day refers to a football team down on its luck.
Within recent memory, however, is a spectacular string of Super Bowl victories by an earlier iteration of these modern-day gold-diggers that led to dancing in these same streets.
Boom and Bust. That's our cycle here, and we all know it goes with the territory, all 49 square miles of it...
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