Reveling & Reconciling
I'm standing in a store at 17th & Valencia in the late afternoon on Saturday in the Mission. Earlier that afternoon, I had a lovely mellow brunch with fightingwords and I decided to linger. I was raised in a culturally mishmashed household that erred mostly to the 'white' side of the spectrum but don't let us completely fool you- we're Latino in our own way. There's a different cadence to a Latin neighborhood and sometimes I find that I miss that comfortable rhythm so I stuck around...
So but just then I was standing in that store and mucking around with pre-packaged little plastic bits when
this cacophony of car horns drew everyone out of the shop. It wasn't a traffic accident. Instead, it was a funeral procession.A long line of escorted cars were lined up to turn left onto 17th with every driver bearing down on his or her carhorn and from the windows of these cars at least one person holding up a white funeral card. There was something very celebratory about the way everyone is honking their horns and occassionally yelling from their windows. As we all file back into the store some comment aloud about how important the dead person must have been to warrant such a ruckus.
When I finally leave the store and walk up to the corner, I notice the funeral procession is stopped just half a block down 17th. There are people in the street. I can vaguely hear music. And so, I head down 17th hoping to check out what's going on but trying to figure out how to well, gawk respectfully and to avoid being caught interloping. As it would happen, there are two teenage girls walking ahead of me who are in no way interested in crossing the street to avoid the spectacle- they're walking through and I decide to just tack on to their wake and move through as quickly as possibly.
A few cars plus a white limo are stopped outside a funeral home. There is a sizeable crowd on the sidewalk in addition to the people in the street and most are African American. They are mostly wearing crisp, pure white and even the limo parked in front of the funeral home is white. The limo has a banner fixed to its side. His nickname was 'Tay Tay'. He was born in 1977. He was my age when he died. But this is not the interesting part...
It's the crowd in the street. They're still shouting. They're clapping their hands. They're stomping their feet and waving their hands in the air. They're holding those funeral cards up to the sky. They're dancing along to the music blaring out of the cars parked in the middle of the street in front of the funeral home. A crowd of people dressed in crisp white clothing dancing in the middle of the street in celebration of a life. Most funerals are black attired, somber affairs where everyone gingerly holds their funeral card and tries to slog through the service with all the reverence one can muster. This funeral, however, instead was intent on asking the question: 'If we can't dance in the street for a life, then what can we dance in the street for?"
As quickly as I came upon the procession, I left and turned up the next block to head to 16th and the Bart station a short distance away. Whoever 'Tay Tay' was in life- to at least these people- he was important enough to dance in the steet for...
So but just then I was standing in that store and mucking around with pre-packaged little plastic bits when
this cacophony of car horns drew everyone out of the shop. It wasn't a traffic accident. Instead, it was a funeral procession.A long line of escorted cars were lined up to turn left onto 17th with every driver bearing down on his or her carhorn and from the windows of these cars at least one person holding up a white funeral card. There was something very celebratory about the way everyone is honking their horns and occassionally yelling from their windows. As we all file back into the store some comment aloud about how important the dead person must have been to warrant such a ruckus.
When I finally leave the store and walk up to the corner, I notice the funeral procession is stopped just half a block down 17th. There are people in the street. I can vaguely hear music. And so, I head down 17th hoping to check out what's going on but trying to figure out how to well, gawk respectfully and to avoid being caught interloping. As it would happen, there are two teenage girls walking ahead of me who are in no way interested in crossing the street to avoid the spectacle- they're walking through and I decide to just tack on to their wake and move through as quickly as possibly.
A few cars plus a white limo are stopped outside a funeral home. There is a sizeable crowd on the sidewalk in addition to the people in the street and most are African American. They are mostly wearing crisp, pure white and even the limo parked in front of the funeral home is white. The limo has a banner fixed to its side. His nickname was 'Tay Tay'. He was born in 1977. He was my age when he died. But this is not the interesting part...
It's the crowd in the street. They're still shouting. They're clapping their hands. They're stomping their feet and waving their hands in the air. They're holding those funeral cards up to the sky. They're dancing along to the music blaring out of the cars parked in the middle of the street in front of the funeral home. A crowd of people dressed in crisp white clothing dancing in the middle of the street in celebration of a life. Most funerals are black attired, somber affairs where everyone gingerly holds their funeral card and tries to slog through the service with all the reverence one can muster. This funeral, however, instead was intent on asking the question: 'If we can't dance in the street for a life, then what can we dance in the street for?"
As quickly as I came upon the procession, I left and turned up the next block to head to 16th and the Bart station a short distance away. Whoever 'Tay Tay' was in life- to at least these people- he was important enough to dance in the steet for...