N is for North Beach

Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store Cafe

I walked through North Beach this morning and it’s been a while. Predictably, as it happens, things have changed.  I moved to San Francisco’s North Beach in 1991. My first child was born a year later, and we spent the first year and a half of his life walking and strolling around our neighborhood before we moved to the burbs and his brother was born.

First off, Tower Records is now Walgreen’s.  This is partly just the way it goes, record stores are not profitable enough to occupy two corners of prime real estate in San Francisco.  But Walgreen’s? Bleh. Strike one for charm.

pagoda theater Go Giants!

What’s still thriving? The Chinese laundry and alterations shops, tourist bike rentals and Coit Liquor. The Pagoda Theater is gutted. Once an actual theater, then a blue movie house,  when we lived nearby it was a movie theater specializing in Kung Fu flicks. It's Deco façade is now stripped of neon and the front is boarded up and nicely graffitied. (Go Giants!) The theater was supposed to be renovated, then a parking garage was to be dug out of the basement and the building converted into condos.  Now the plan seems to be about the impending subway and the theater being an entry point. Strike two.

A few doors up Powell is an empty restaurant called Bottle Cap which used to be Ed Moose’s historic WASHBAG.  Erased with periwinkle blue paint. Same with Moose’s across the park. Just another restaurant. Out front Prius cabs and helmeted tourists in three wheeler go-carts, slow as neon slugs, manuver around as if in a San Francisco’s North Beach theme park.

Mario's on Columbus & Union

What’s still around, thank god, are Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store and Saints Peter & Paul church. On the east side of Columbus and the north side of Union Street, it is sunny and warm spring weather. On the opposite shady sides, it is down jacket weather with icy gusts of wind.  Inside Mario’s my ambitiously mustachioed barista whips up a double cappuccino and a roasted red pepper and eggplant panini. Unchanged since the first time I order it in high school. The bells of the church chime noon as kids screech and yell in Washington Square Park. This remains the same.

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cold steel

We were driving through June fog to fulfill my firstborn’s destiny. He had waited until he was in high school before we’d let him get his ear pierced, which we felt was reasonable and it bought us some time.  Just a quick call to Dad to officially sign off and he was golden.  My husband was on a conference call and not in the mindset to deal with this life altering teen moment. 

Forget it.  You will regret it for the rest of your life.

We were nearing the last Marin exit before the bridge. I pulled off to mediate and call for backup: my younger sister and my husband’s younger stepbrother. Both weighed in heavily on my son’s side.  This being that not only was ear piercing OK, but also that getting both ears pierced was the norm. I got back on 101 and headed for the city in the hopes that my husband would see that this was going to happen eventually anyway, even if it wasn’t today.  I scored a George Costanza parking spot off Haight and my husband called back. 

Okay, one, but make sure he gets the right one, or the correct one, you know? 

Gender identity issues weren’t the problem; now my son was insisting that a single earring was for dorks and that we were dorks. 

Alright, get back in the car. Let’s go back home.

Fine!  

As I turned onto Masonic the phone rang again.

I took a poll in the office and the younger people say that getting just one ear done is a little dorky.  So, I guess two is fine.

Now I had to find another parking spot. 

At Anubis Warpus their piercer didn’t come in until 2. They recommended Mom’s down the street.  At Mom’s the Amazonian pink haired Betty Page wouldn’t do it because my 14 year old didn’t have a picture ID.  Soul Patch doesn’t pierce minors, period.  Who thought a suburban housewife would be the most permissive person on Haight Street?

Since I was with him and it was only lobes, the two men at Cold Steel were lenient. Both were ambitiously modified, each embellished with ink, facial piercings, and earplugs. Our piercer could have been plucked right off the Black Pearl, complete with limp. He was only lacking a monkey. Maybe this was for my benefit, but the pirate made a big point of how he always checks with his mom before he gets anything new done. Except the time he forgot when he got his tribal chin tattoo.

After ribbing my boy about becoming a man today – the other guy insisted ‘that costs extra’- the pirate was all business. Noting that his left lobe was thicker and slightly higher, he dotted his lobes with ink to check placement. The aesthetics were key.  All the while, the pirate was quick to dispense worldly sage advice: Girls have cooties.

Then it was done. With his red curls pulled back in a low ponytail, showcasing the new steel hoops of (young) manhood, my boy needed ‘za.  We celebrated with two slices.  Then he called his Dad.

2007

Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

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