After Dark on the 31 Balboa

Worked a day of temp-proofreading at a design firm in Oakland. Wrapped up at 7:30. back on BART, stopped for a meal as expensive as it was mediocre, took a long MUNI ride through the underside of SF back to my building.

SF has a precious, rent-inflated, chi-chi, candy-coated image, but it's still crunchy in the middle. Large swathes of the city remain untouched by yuppification. The bus stop was a bit dicey -- Market, Jones & McCallister -- but the interesting stuff happened once I got on the bus. Lots to see out the windows, like a Disneyland ride. Passing the corner of Buchanan and McCallister there was a cluster of five police cars, a large man in handcuffs, an officer rummaging through the trunk of a Honda. An ugly crowd was advancing on the policemen, and at least one
person was brandishing a baseball bat. It was a post-apocalyptic film, a world of eternal night where all order has broken down.

"Yo, that's my boy's car!," a passenger said to the bus driver as we pulled away. "Damn! Don't have to be doin' my boy like that!" The passenger then told the driver the story of a recent fight he had been in, one that ended with three policemen bringing him to the ground and hitting him on the head. "Shit...tried to take my dome off...but I popped they domes right back! That's right!" It was already just a pleasant memory...he was relaxed, contented. He might have been telling a fishing story.