Are you down with the T to the L Tenderloin - how to move with drunk homeless guys all up in your grill.
My brother in law is a great person. Very smart and original, his art is amazing. I like it a lot and its linked to my blog! Partly because he is such a great artist - he's in art school (graduate) at the Academy of Art. The Academy of Art is in a great city - San Francisco Downtown. Thats great - except for the fact that rent is ridiculous there. So what does a poor graduate student do to get a place? He has one of two choices:
1) Rent a place that is so small that you don't ever see or touch the floor. Need to eat - hop over to the chair. Need to sleep - hop to the bed. You never touch the ground. I thought someone was kidding when they told me they live in a closet in SF. Now I know they weren't.
2) Rent a place in a shady area. You want a real non-homogenized city experience? Live where the pimps, hustlers, crackheads, homeless, and hoes do. If you survive, its a mark of strength. If you somehow manage being mugged only once, you're a fucking superhero.
My bro-in-law (henceforth referred to as BIL) was forced with this decision too. I felt bad for him. BIL had really no choice - renting in SF sucks hardcore like Kobe Tai (an example of how a porn star can go from decent looking to used faster than Cuba Gooding movies go straight to video). He was forced to take what he could.
Initially, we all thought it was in Lower Nob Hill. Nob Hill being a neighborhood that is Hollywood friendly - you see it all the time in film and TV. The rich white folk don't like looking up - its too tiring for them I guess. Lower Nob Hill is sorta an in between. Where more middling restaurants and shops proliferate - but still tourist friendly enough to keep the riffraff from gaining hold. Although at night, Lower nob hill gets a little testy.
Well, my BIL ended up not in Lower Nob HIll as the ad advertised - lo and behold he ended up in the Tenderloin. Say it out loud once - TENDERLOIN. Does it sound like a good neighborhood to you? It sounds like a meat market. Which, well, it basically is. The Tenderloin was named as such because cops got paid much more to work in that district - and they could thus afford choice cuts of beef - aka Tenderloin. I guess Filet Mignon wouldn't do to describe a district full of pimps, crackheads, and drunk homeless guys that smell like 2 day old concentrated urine.
Well, anyways, I had a premonition once I found out where his joint was that things would go badly on the move. It almost did. After parking the moving van hella illegally (like the cops cared), we opened the door and immediately was greeted by some drunk homeless dude tryiing hard to lobby his services. I didn't mind, until he was basically 1 inch from my face and not taking no for an answer. Then came his friends.
It got so bad, we had to go take a break inside the building until we could get more of BIL and my friend Terry to help out and provide a uniting force in numbers. Not that we were an intimidating looking bunch (art students aren't particularly strapping) but hey - we looked like we could run fast and calculate better than anyone there! Pitiful.
Anyways, we finally moved in with the increased numbers without incident and realized again how nice BIL's place is. However, based on the daylight conditions, I could tell that once the sun went down there - nobody wants to walk around alone in the Filet Mignon, er, Tenderloin.
1) Rent a place that is so small that you don't ever see or touch the floor. Need to eat - hop over to the chair. Need to sleep - hop to the bed. You never touch the ground. I thought someone was kidding when they told me they live in a closet in SF. Now I know they weren't.
2) Rent a place in a shady area. You want a real non-homogenized city experience? Live where the pimps, hustlers, crackheads, homeless, and hoes do. If you survive, its a mark of strength. If you somehow manage being mugged only once, you're a fucking superhero.
My bro-in-law (henceforth referred to as BIL) was forced with this decision too. I felt bad for him. BIL had really no choice - renting in SF sucks hardcore like Kobe Tai (an example of how a porn star can go from decent looking to used faster than Cuba Gooding movies go straight to video). He was forced to take what he could.
Initially, we all thought it was in Lower Nob Hill. Nob Hill being a neighborhood that is Hollywood friendly - you see it all the time in film and TV. The rich white folk don't like looking up - its too tiring for them I guess. Lower Nob Hill is sorta an in between. Where more middling restaurants and shops proliferate - but still tourist friendly enough to keep the riffraff from gaining hold. Although at night, Lower nob hill gets a little testy.
Well, my BIL ended up not in Lower Nob HIll as the ad advertised - lo and behold he ended up in the Tenderloin. Say it out loud once - TENDERLOIN. Does it sound like a good neighborhood to you? It sounds like a meat market. Which, well, it basically is. The Tenderloin was named as such because cops got paid much more to work in that district - and they could thus afford choice cuts of beef - aka Tenderloin. I guess Filet Mignon wouldn't do to describe a district full of pimps, crackheads, and drunk homeless guys that smell like 2 day old concentrated urine.
Well, anyways, I had a premonition once I found out where his joint was that things would go badly on the move. It almost did. After parking the moving van hella illegally (like the cops cared), we opened the door and immediately was greeted by some drunk homeless dude tryiing hard to lobby his services. I didn't mind, until he was basically 1 inch from my face and not taking no for an answer. Then came his friends.
It got so bad, we had to go take a break inside the building until we could get more of BIL and my friend Terry to help out and provide a uniting force in numbers. Not that we were an intimidating looking bunch (art students aren't particularly strapping) but hey - we looked like we could run fast and calculate better than anyone there! Pitiful.
Anyways, we finally moved in with the increased numbers without incident and realized again how nice BIL's place is. However, based on the daylight conditions, I could tell that once the sun went down there - nobody wants to walk around alone in the Filet Mignon, er, Tenderloin.
posted by Richard at 7:33 PM
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