This I Dedicate to Shnickie
Nearly every summer since our core group's diaspora, I've made a trip to the Bay for a sort of mini-reunion. It is odd to see it change, not only in the people who move through and come back but also how I've come to view San Francisco, from a place of excited vacationeering to the siren of my heart's unrequited secret home. This particular trip was spurred by Shnickie's rally behind her declared intention, in the admirable way she always does, to get armed with education on this co-housing business. And it makes me indescribably excited to think of how it may be with Idit's return next summer.
I revived my early Craigslist ridesharing habit and found my travel safety in the throes of an Indian man who made this commute every weekend to speed back to his family, possessed in a maniacal rampage at the unexpected traffic gargantuum when the mountains of Santa Clarita had caught on fire. The hills did not blaze nor flicker but became engulfed in the steaming ethereal breath of whitest smoke. It beamed, emitted a powdered haze, dematerializing, revealed nature in all its awesome beauty as a few small helicopters who dared penetrate her robes hovered gliding gently into the distance. Even before we could see the cause of the jam, my driver had reversed between some ten fully-loaded shipping trucks at attention docked bumper to bumper up the only stretch of pavement that allowed the rotation of a wheel. We were riding backwards up the on-ramp. The middle aged man must have sensed the petrification of his three young adult passengers and stalled for a moment at a bank before the road would turn and meet up with the tangent of the exit lane before it. He then flipped the car, nose facing the on-ramp, and sped straight past the road cutting through the dried grass of SoCal chapparal, swinging onto the exit loop behind to once again join the traffic of the streets. Winding through old canyon road was tranquil thereafter. We made it to Fremont well into nightfall.
I circumambulated the deserted plaza at the end of the Bart, ignoring other night wanderers mumbling at no one singly, until Lyric, Adam, and Shnickie pulled up to escort me in their trusty steed. I always feel a bit detached in the space of readjustment on these trips and nearly forgot how much of my hair had been lopped off, how comfortable it felt at this summer's length, a shortness I hadn't entertained since being in Hong Kong lifetimes ago.
Off we went to the Meat Locker. It was a. party. The meaning of underground never really grabbed hold of me before now. Even in L.A. the "underground" parties feigned an appearance, but there we were in a barely recognizable meat locker turned do-it-however event space. The door guard "stamped" each of our hands with a green sharpie sguiggle. Filing down a narrow corridor and stepping over stale chips strewn across what served as a daytime commissary, we turned toward the lights and the music. It was a room with walls. and red light. And is that a disco ball? A foldup table set up in the back for concoctions as the residents could muster, a patron with an oversized eggie/eyeball head covering and some kids giving their friends a ride in a shopping cart spinning themselves in dizzying circles. The technology/decor was perfunctory, available. The denizens of Meat Locker assembled a charming display with an old school classroom transparency projector, creating a light show by shuffling scraps of colored cellophane over the light box whose reflection was thrown across the floor over the entranced herd. They were transposed, moving without word or glance. I suddenly realized I was surrounded by people who had come here not for the gazing or to be gazed but to dance. The numbing thump of industrial beat meets dreadlocked bellydancer serpentine. Cigarettes, whatever else could be huffed breaks, "Who goes to a party for 5 dollars anymore!" tittering later and we had our fill of this.
The next morning I was rejuvenated to be back in the Oakland sun. I made an early start to stride alongside the lake before meeting up with Adam and Shnickie at Shandong restaurant. It gave me immense pleasure to explore a little enclave in a satellite city off the main metropolis of SF, contemplating the parallels to LA's own Chinatown spawned Monterey Park. Even after the first meal of the day, I still had a portion of hand cut noodles in soup bowled the size of my head. Nary a few blocks away, sated and with wine in hand, we hobbled forth to rapping on the keypad of the Swan's Market gate for an appointed tour.
Our guide Neil loves spreading the gospel of cohousing. This genial, silver-haired and slightly portly man lives in an upper floor two-story unit with his cat, who by now was so used to strangers coming in and out that it shifted nonchalantly under the slow roaming fingers of the oblong sun. I couldn't know how many times he had walked curious visitors through his home and those of his adored neighbors. He had been to the conventions, moderated the forums, collected all the books, and now led us through a personalized tour of his abode with a freewheeling stride and unbridled enthusiasm as if he were savoring the first parsed unveiling of the best kept local secret or, simultaneously, revisiting the greatest joy of his days.
Swan's Market cohousing came about through a series of conversations between a group of passionate citizens, a developer who recognized the exceptional opportunity of this historic site, and the City of Oakland's craving for more mixed-use projects of community. Over the course of three years, the down-and-out department store and grocery dating from 1917, and disinvested by isolating freeways, was transformed by the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation into a teaming retail block, children's art museum, and shared community living complex. The urban village was a charming hideaway. In fact we had spotted a courtyard on the southfacing plaza onto 9th St before entering from the narrower side of Clay, to later realize that these inset structures forming an L around the standalone art center were all part of one site. The differing aesthetics of the adapted stick construction housing set back from the commercial storefronts of terra cotta and white glazed brick did not make obvious of being developed at the same time.
Over the next hour-and-a-half of leisured walking, explication and questioning, the different styles of our three visitors soon became apparent. Since Nickie had arranged the tour, it was no surprise how she and Neil shared an immediate bond for the cause. Journalist Mann wore his by now second nature approachable/inquisitive interviewer's hat, while I doled out my relentless pop quizzing after architectural technique and legality that I was sure was taking the wonder out of it all. I was already sold on the lifestyle from my stint in the birthplace of cohousing design and wanted the how-to already!
The former market's large hall was divided down the middle into facing rows of living units on the upper floor, the newer addition exhibiting a sawtoothed clerestory profile. A corridor between them and a skylit dining hall retained their exposed gabled roof trusses, hinting at its old grandeur as a previous industrial space where it was now filled in with generic but pleasantly light diffusing stucco pastels. The walkway was painted to mark provisional boundaries for those who wished to customize a small lot in front of their unit without spilling into their neighbors (resolving, oh, the potential conflict!). Most of the common areas, live/work, shop, garage, were on the retrofitted lower floors that at the entrance opened upon a small garden bed just within the courtyard gate. Aside from communal meals and rotating house duty, perhaps the most heartwarming story of ownership was to hear how the cohousing tenants sometimes ran into their (predominantly Hispanic) low-income housing neighbors just across the plaza to a slight language barrier, but their children didn't let it stop them and would scour the yard with their bicycles in uncontainable play.
We gave a warm thank you to our generous host. With a brand-spanking new cohousing primer and a headful of knowledge, we boarded the BART for SFMOMA.
I had less than 36 hours in the Bay and dragged my cohorts to a Buckminster Fuller show, and when they had tired from staying up the night before, I headed out to Fort Point solo. I watched the sunset over the glorious Bay Bridge and the receding light setting the airfield and wetlands aglow until fading in a wash of lavendar to night. One day I hope it will be more than a summer romance.
I revived my early Craigslist ridesharing habit and found my travel safety in the throes of an Indian man who made this commute every weekend to speed back to his family, possessed in a maniacal rampage at the unexpected traffic gargantuum when the mountains of Santa Clarita had caught on fire. The hills did not blaze nor flicker but became engulfed in the steaming ethereal breath of whitest smoke. It beamed, emitted a powdered haze, dematerializing, revealed nature in all its awesome beauty as a few small helicopters who dared penetrate her robes hovered gliding gently into the distance. Even before we could see the cause of the jam, my driver had reversed between some ten fully-loaded shipping trucks at attention docked bumper to bumper up the only stretch of pavement that allowed the rotation of a wheel. We were riding backwards up the on-ramp. The middle aged man must have sensed the petrification of his three young adult passengers and stalled for a moment at a bank before the road would turn and meet up with the tangent of the exit lane before it. He then flipped the car, nose facing the on-ramp, and sped straight past the road cutting through the dried grass of SoCal chapparal, swinging onto the exit loop behind to once again join the traffic of the streets. Winding through old canyon road was tranquil thereafter. We made it to Fremont well into nightfall.
I circumambulated the deserted plaza at the end of the Bart, ignoring other night wanderers mumbling at no one singly, until Lyric, Adam, and Shnickie pulled up to escort me in their trusty steed. I always feel a bit detached in the space of readjustment on these trips and nearly forgot how much of my hair had been lopped off, how comfortable it felt at this summer's length, a shortness I hadn't entertained since being in Hong Kong lifetimes ago.
Off we went to the Meat Locker. It was a. party. The meaning of underground never really grabbed hold of me before now. Even in L.A. the "underground" parties feigned an appearance, but there we were in a barely recognizable meat locker turned do-it-however event space. The door guard "stamped" each of our hands with a green sharpie sguiggle. Filing down a narrow corridor and stepping over stale chips strewn across what served as a daytime commissary, we turned toward the lights and the music. It was a room with walls. and red light. And is that a disco ball? A foldup table set up in the back for concoctions as the residents could muster, a patron with an oversized eggie/eyeball head covering and some kids giving their friends a ride in a shopping cart spinning themselves in dizzying circles. The technology/decor was perfunctory, available. The denizens of Meat Locker assembled a charming display with an old school classroom transparency projector, creating a light show by shuffling scraps of colored cellophane over the light box whose reflection was thrown across the floor over the entranced herd. They were transposed, moving without word or glance. I suddenly realized I was surrounded by people who had come here not for the gazing or to be gazed but to dance. The numbing thump of industrial beat meets dreadlocked bellydancer serpentine. Cigarettes, whatever else could be huffed breaks, "Who goes to a party for 5 dollars anymore!" tittering later and we had our fill of this.
The next morning I was rejuvenated to be back in the Oakland sun. I made an early start to stride alongside the lake before meeting up with Adam and Shnickie at Shandong restaurant. It gave me immense pleasure to explore a little enclave in a satellite city off the main metropolis of SF, contemplating the parallels to LA's own Chinatown spawned Monterey Park. Even after the first meal of the day, I still had a portion of hand cut noodles in soup bowled the size of my head. Nary a few blocks away, sated and with wine in hand, we hobbled forth to rapping on the keypad of the Swan's Market gate for an appointed tour.
Our guide Neil loves spreading the gospel of cohousing. This genial, silver-haired and slightly portly man lives in an upper floor two-story unit with his cat, who by now was so used to strangers coming in and out that it shifted nonchalantly under the slow roaming fingers of the oblong sun. I couldn't know how many times he had walked curious visitors through his home and those of his adored neighbors. He had been to the conventions, moderated the forums, collected all the books, and now led us through a personalized tour of his abode with a freewheeling stride and unbridled enthusiasm as if he were savoring the first parsed unveiling of the best kept local secret or, simultaneously, revisiting the greatest joy of his days.
Swan's Market cohousing came about through a series of conversations between a group of passionate citizens, a developer who recognized the exceptional opportunity of this historic site, and the City of Oakland's craving for more mixed-use projects of community. Over the course of three years, the down-and-out department store and grocery dating from 1917, and disinvested by isolating freeways, was transformed by the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation into a teaming retail block, children's art museum, and shared community living complex. The urban village was a charming hideaway. In fact we had spotted a courtyard on the southfacing plaza onto 9th St before entering from the narrower side of Clay, to later realize that these inset structures forming an L around the standalone art center were all part of one site. The differing aesthetics of the adapted stick construction housing set back from the commercial storefronts of terra cotta and white glazed brick did not make obvious of being developed at the same time.
Over the next hour-and-a-half of leisured walking, explication and questioning, the different styles of our three visitors soon became apparent. Since Nickie had arranged the tour, it was no surprise how she and Neil shared an immediate bond for the cause. Journalist Mann wore his by now second nature approachable/inquisitive interviewer's hat, while I doled out my relentless pop quizzing after architectural technique and legality that I was sure was taking the wonder out of it all. I was already sold on the lifestyle from my stint in the birthplace of cohousing design and wanted the how-to already!
The former market's large hall was divided down the middle into facing rows of living units on the upper floor, the newer addition exhibiting a sawtoothed clerestory profile. A corridor between them and a skylit dining hall retained their exposed gabled roof trusses, hinting at its old grandeur as a previous industrial space where it was now filled in with generic but pleasantly light diffusing stucco pastels. The walkway was painted to mark provisional boundaries for those who wished to customize a small lot in front of their unit without spilling into their neighbors (resolving, oh, the potential conflict!). Most of the common areas, live/work, shop, garage, were on the retrofitted lower floors that at the entrance opened upon a small garden bed just within the courtyard gate. Aside from communal meals and rotating house duty, perhaps the most heartwarming story of ownership was to hear how the cohousing tenants sometimes ran into their (predominantly Hispanic) low-income housing neighbors just across the plaza to a slight language barrier, but their children didn't let it stop them and would scour the yard with their bicycles in uncontainable play.
We gave a warm thank you to our generous host. With a brand-spanking new cohousing primer and a headful of knowledge, we boarded the BART for SFMOMA.
I had less than 36 hours in the Bay and dragged my cohorts to a Buckminster Fuller show, and when they had tired from staying up the night before, I headed out to Fort Point solo. I watched the sunset over the glorious Bay Bridge and the receding light setting the airfield and wetlands aglow until fading in a wash of lavendar to night. One day I hope it will be more than a summer romance.