Life in the Big City

Driving home with my kids this evening, as we reached this neighborhood, we entered a war zone. The first indication something was seriously wrong came when I noticed that traffic was blocked up on Bryant Street, heading north, for as far as I could see back at 22nd Street.

So, I turned right and discovered that I could not even reach my street (which was two streets eastward) because a contingent of police cars had it sealed off. After sitting in a jam for a few minutes, I realized we were blocked from proceeding in that direction, so I hung a u-y (is that how the Aussies spell it?) and joined a throng trying to snake northward along York Street.

It is frightening and exciting to be trying to go home and encounter this kind of chaos.

First of all, what the hell was happening?

My mind was suspecting a gang shootout, partly because of a recent piece in the San Francisco Chronicle profiling the two main Latino gangs warring in this neighborhood. (More on that in another post.)

The reason it was frightening was that I had my three young children in my car, and if they were going to be exposed to danger, I wanted no part of whatever was going on.

The reason it was exciting is that I am a reporter, rarely active in that role any longer, but on-scene journalism is something you never completely eliminate from your bloodstream once it's in there.

The York Street to 20th Street conversion was scary when someone started screaming loudly, but that just turned out to be a young woman with a loud voice, two friends in her car, acting obnoxiously because she (like the rest of us) couldn't go where she wanted to go as fast as she wanted to.

Further from my house than I would usually park, I pulled over, grateful that there was any space at all to dump my vehicle. As we got out into the open air, we became aware of the many helicopters hovering overhead -- an ear-splitting cacophony all the more irritating to human ears because it is an uneven sound, a slashing, chopping of the air that sends bifurcated sound waves angling uneasily toward the earth, where they bounce back up, messing with our inbuilt ability to locate where those sounds are coming from.

Helicopters are one reason many civilians and soldiers alike suffer PTSS, I'm quite sure.

Just to make things complicated, as we started walking toward our street, where a phalanx of cops were directing drivers hither and yon, my 12-year-old, ever the vigilant oldest child, put his arms out and tried to turn us around.

"Dad, a crazy person."

Sure enough, a street person, as we so euphemistically like to say here in the States, was perched outside the corner store. He was scary-looking (to a kid) but clearly not much of a threat, as he was squatting on lifeless limbs, and clinging to a walker, which was clearly his only way of getting around.

Still, he exuded an evil spirit as he begged: "Please, pretty please," to the kids (they told me this detail later). I, meanwhile, was looking east, trying to determine whether it was safe to take the kids around the corner and home.

We got to the corner and I instructed them to stand in a group there and wait for me. I walked out into the intersection to interview one of the police officers occupying the intersection.

"It's a bomb threat at a building near General Hospital."

(That's a couple blocks from my house.)

"You're outside the danger area, at least as far as we've been told," he told me, indicating a yellow hazard tape barrier one-half block away.

Although that was not entirely comforting information, I decided we would all be better inside than outside, so I hustled the kids into my house, locked the doors, and turned on the radio.

At this point, I transitioned from my natural role (reporter) into a consumer of the news. Eventually, the story was nailed down. Channel 5 Report .

By then, we were deep into our Wednesday night ritual here, which is spaghetti and meatballs night. Since my 11-year-old refuses to eat any birds, a pork-beef mixture familiar to those who make meatloaf has replaced ground turkey meat.

My eight-year-old loves to cook this with me, so she has been taking over more and more of the tasks: breaking up the pasta, stirring it; forming the meatballs, spicing them with various herbs and seasonings, adding in the tomato-based sauce, and then turning and blending it all into the eventual final result: "Dad's and Julia's Special Spaghetti."

***

She, my youngest child, recently discovered a guacamole she considered delicious. Here is the list of ingredients she instructed me to obtain in order to replicate this traditional Mexican dish for her:



Am I right to be a tad bit skeptical?

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