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.

California, Here I Come

I have a long and fractured romance with California. Its part delusional, part opportunistic and part magical. It’s like Leonard Cohen’s Hydra calling me back once again. But mostly it’s a comfortable relationship that seems to bring out the flip side of me that a lot of folks never see. It is at once my friend, adviser, irritator, and councilor. It forces me outside of my Midwestern comfort zone.

Marlene and I on the beach - 1946

The first time I stepped foot in California, it was off a Great Northern Railroad passenger car from Minnesota. The year was 1946.  I was three and my sister two. Along with my mother we had ended up in Carmel, from the Twin Cities. My Mother, by then separated from my father, had been encouraged to come out west to become a housekeeper for a past client out of St Paul’s Summit Avenue.

When we finally arrived on the coast, broke and hungry, my mother was informed by the old woman’s son that she had gone senile and would no longer have use of my mother’s services. My mother was literally stuck on the beach with no place to go and two kids in tow. She got the next train back to Minnesota. So much for California dreaming.

My second time in the Golden State was in 1964. Fresh out of basic training, I was on my way to my first assignment at the Presidio of San Francisco. Along with three other trainees, we were crossing the country in a 1960 Buick that could go 120 on the open road. When the front end of the car started to drift off the road at 120 mph, I slowed it down to 99 and crawled the rest of the way through Nevada.

Life at the Presidio was a Camelot-like existence that ended all too soon eight months later. Nevertheless, it gave me wonderful material for three future novels to be written.

The third time to bask in that warm California sun came back in 2000. Our family was staying at a friend’s condo in Palm Springs. It was our first introduction to desert living. The dye was cast and we were hooked.

Thus began a twenty year intermittent love affair with that diverse community and all of its surrounding amenities. As much as the state changes and evolves, and stumbles and leaps ahead of others, it remains a pathfinder in so many areas.

Vintage California hints of a glorious past and an ever-evolving future. The Coachella Valley is no exception. Alongside its staid traditional communities down Valley, Hollywood East still provokes memories of a rich and tawdry past; full of tinsel, illusions and entertainment. It’s a diverse, irreverent, creative, and wonderful playground for mind expansion.

That inland ocean, the Salton Sea and its surrounding oddities like Salvation Mountain, Slab City and Bombay Beach provide a post-apocalyptic landscape to inspire the imagination. The mountains, canyons, and desert expanse paint a background tapestry of wonderment.

It’s become home in more ways than one. It’s a cradle upon which the imagination gives birth to creative, frivolous, silly and enlightened ideas, concepts and story-lines. It inspires me and mocks me at the same time. It’s the flip side of that routine called lifestyle. If ever there were a balance in my life, it would be called the Minnesota-California connection.

What can I say... it works for me.