Meeting of the Minds

Of all the places to hold the coveted title of ‘best third places,’ San Francisco has to be at the top of the heap. While London has its pubs, Paris, its sidewalk cafes, and Beijing, its teahouses, I haven’t found a spot that carries such a coveted history.

Down through the decades, the ‘old lady by the bay’ has attracted a wide swarth of the talented, troubled, possessed, dispossessed, and marginally-coherent individuals who gave the city its unique brand of literacy.

The Montgomery block, when constructed in 1852 on the bay shore survived earthquake and fire long enough to become San Francisco’s most illustrious literary landmark. More than two thousand creatives are reputed to have lived in the building over the years. Among the writers, Stoddard and Joaquin Miller had rooms and affairs there. Ambrose Bierce wrote his blistering ‘Prattler’ newspaper column there. Jack London stayed there near his friend George Sterling who had a room for his many secret amours.

Long before North Beach and the infamous Barbary Coast brought San Francisco to America’s attention, the disenfranchised creatives were gathered on the Montgomery block. South of the city, Monterey Bay, also became a literary hot spot.

Much like Carmel before it, the area attracted a wide swath of brilliant, troubled, talented, drugged out writers, artists, actors, anarchists, alchemists, and socialists.

Many years later, my mother lived and worked as a maid in the same fog-draped, wind-swept enclave known as 17-mile drive after the bohemians moved back to San Francisco. The Black Cat Café, located next to the Montgomery Block, was the most famous of bohemian hangouts during the 1930s right up until the Berkeley Renaissance of the late 1940s.

My brief exposure to the sights and sounds and aroma of post-beatnik, pre-hippie culture came from several jaunts to an old working-class neighborhood not far from the base. Haight Ashbury was just beginning to attract a younger crowd of Berkeley intellectuals, folkie drop outs, drug dealers and young people looking for the next big thing. I was just a lonely GI accompanying a seasoned veteran looking for weed and hippie chicks.

As a young enlisted man, the closest I got to those mid-Sixties social and cultural changes was working at the Larkin Theater in the Art District and watching a ton of foreign films. Barracks life exposed me, for the first time, to a wide swath of other life styles captured as we all were by two or more years in Uncle Sam’s Army.

Life in the barracks was but a brief moment in time when we were all young and stupid and far from home. Asinine antics, weed-smoking on the window sills and stupid horsing around were daily occurrences. It was a non-stop party we all knew would end all too soon.

As a motley collection of draftees, we all knew there were eventual transfers for all of us to other army bases far less permissive than the Presidio. So, while we were there, the collective mantra seemed to be ‘let’s be stupid now for who knows what our future holds?’

After the service, it was the Triangle Bar on the West Bank that gave me the same comfortable ambiance to continue my search for direction and a glimpse into my future. It wasn’t the Chelsea Hotel in the Village where my folk idols gathered but it was better than nothing.

Third places take many shapes and forms but all serve as a collective gathering spot for like-minded souls. Mine have come and gone, based on current writing projects, Sharon’s art classes and lucky accidental meetings.

The one coveted ‘third place’ I’ve only visited once was the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. It played prominently in my last novel ‘Playground for the Devil.’ The kids and I stopped there on our tour of the West Coast a couple of years ago.

The place reeks of moldy paperbacks, old rag sheets, new literature, cook-out and sing-alongs on the back porch and a gathering spot for the eccentrics of the area.

Unfortunately, there are no third places in Palm Springs, at least not for me. A patio chair and coffee will have to suffice. Minnesota does better with my mulch garden hideaway, my ‘Coffee and Chat’ sessions and one coffeeshop in Norde East.

It’s not the same as other third places but it still provides an out-of-the-way place to collect my thoughts, jot down writing ideas and spend the quiet with other like-minded souls.