San Francisco 2-25-8

I've been here in San Francisco for about five weeks now and it certainly has proven to be an interesting, eventful and learning experience. For starters, I'm traveling with a lot more luggage than I normally do which makes moving a bit stressful. I'm bringing many more of my things back to Berlin so I have a large green trunk and two other big bags. I'm sure you can imagine what a nightmare that was having to lug everything up the hill to my hostel from the BART station!

One of the lessons that I learned on this trip is to avoid hostels, especially in the states and never stay at the cheapest place in town as they tend to draw the cities shadiest of people. I stayed at the globe trotters hostel in the tenderloin for my first week and at twenty bucks a night it was the type of place where people were actually living there long term, so there wasn't really much of a backpackers vibe. Actually to be frank, it was mad sketchy. One of my roommates kept trying to sell me clothes that he had obviously just shoplifted. Then the girl roommate would stay up all night all cracked out. I finally decided to leave after I discovered that my ATM card was missing yet again. I hate banks. They can be such a nightmare to deal with.

I moved up the hill to another hostel that was a bit more expensive but the atmosphere was much more pleasant. On my second day there, I was sitting on the bed with my laptop downloading music when a new roommate arrived. He was an older fellow from Hawaii by the name of George. He was wearing some crazy hat made of maple leaves and was carrying about seven canvas bags with anti-bush slogans written all over them in magic marker.

I thought to myself, why is this old man staying at a youth hostel? I then asked the same question of myself. At first we were getting along great. We talked at length about politics and our mutual disdain for the Bush administration and he advised me on some good classical music to download. Then he pulled out a six pack of beer. An hour later he was pretty buzzed and was starting to get kinda loud and rowdy. He offered me a beer and I started drinking with him. After a while we were both quite drunk.

He gave me some money and asked me to go down to the store and buy some more beer. So I did and when I came back without a receipt he came completely unglued literally screaming at me and made me go back down to get one. Then when i got one he was pissed off again saying I had paid too much for the beer and got ripped off. By this time I was thoroughly annoyed. I told him that its roughly the same price at all the stores and reminded him that not only are we living in the twenty first century but that the US dollar has gone down in value significantly in the past few years.

We began to argue and at one point I made a comment about one of the anti-bush slogans he had graffitied on his bag. it read " George W. Bush sucks big dick". I made clear to him that I am no fan of Bush but that I really don't see how sucking dick is an insult. I told him I thought that it was very homophobic. He then went on a drunken tirade calling me a faggot and making threats against me. Then out of nowhere he blindsided me hitting me twice in the jaw and knocking my laptop to the floor. I was livid.

At that point I made a big mistake. I just completely lost it. I attacked him punching him twice in the nose, leaving him bleeding on the bed. Seeing him laying there bleeding, I felt horrible, even though I was only defending myself. I wished that when he had hit me I had just run away from him down to reception to report it and ask for a room change. But at the same time when someone is attacking me, I don't care if they are seventy five or fifteen, I have to defend myself. It just sucks because I ended up spending a few days in jail because of something that he did.

He was bleeding quite a bit so I went and got some tissue and then brought him downstairs to get help. Just then the police arrived and I walked outside to explain to them what had happened. They took one look at me and one look at him and threw me in handcuffs without even asking my side of the story. I HATE cops. Some of them can be cool but ninety nine percent of the time they are arrogant assholes lured into that line of work in order to satisfy some pathetic power trip. It's poor mans politics, plain and simple. Although its probably not such a good idea to let them know this, as I did.

Angry and frustrated by the situation I was facing, I was well lets just say less than respectful to the arresting officers. Another lesson learned, It's never a good idea to mouth off to the police.(a lesson i should have learned last summer) Because they can throw whatever bullshit charges they want at you just to fuck with you, as I found out later. I was in jail for almost three days. They informed me I was facing four felony charges and my bail was set at two hundred thousand dollars. I almost passed out. I can't even remember what they all were, I was just so shocked. I could not believe that that kind of corruption still exists in this country. I do know one of the charges was for elderly abuse because the guy ended up being in his late sixties. I felt so horrible but mostly i felt really helpless being locked up in there not knowing when I would be released.

Jail was an eye opening experience. I was housed with guys that had been there for months so I was pretty worried at first that I would share the same fate. Although my mind was somewhat at ease knowing they could never prosecute me on the false charges due to the fact that there couldn't possibly be any evidence or witnesses, I was however still worried about the abuse charge because I was'nt sure if they would believe me. I shared a cell with four other guys none of whose real names i remember because they all went by the nicknames, dorothy, blanche, rose, & sophia each having assumed the identity of one of the Golden Girls. We of course watched the Golden Girls every night after dinner hahaha. Only in San Francisco could the experience of incarceration be so goddamn gay!

After spending two days in jail I was finally able to meet with the investigator. I sat down and as articulately as possible, I explained to her exactly what had happened. I asked her about the other false charges against me and she wrote them off saying that they must have been typos. Ha, yeah right! I found out from the other inmates that this type of thing happens all the time especially if you mouth off to the cops but usually its the black guys that see the worst injustices. Cops on a power trip. Such shade. Thankfully within about five hours of speaking to the investigator all charges were dropped against me and I was released. It turns out George is no stranger to the law and has quite a lengthy rap sheet. Words cannot express how relieved I was to be out of there. I walked all the way across town back to my hostel but they said at reception that I had to move because of their no fighting policy, even though it was self-defence.

So I schlepped all of my luggage up the street to the Adelaide Hostel. When I was checking in she asked why I was moving from the other place. I just told her the truth about what happened and she asked me if the guy who I fought was named George. When I said yes she started to laugh a little and said that they had just kicked him out of The Adelaide a few days ago for drunken behavior and making homophobic remarks. Hmmm sound familiar? So he ended up my roommate right after being kicked out from the Adelaide.

The Adelaide Hostel had a much better vibe. It was mostly young backpackers from abroad. Its a bit more expensive for a bed but the atmosphere improvement was well worth it. I got along great with my roommates there but after a couple weeks I grew weary of other people snoring or coming home loud and wasted at five in the morning. I swear somebody needs to teach these children some basic hostel etiquette. But what really put me off hostels was that I caught a nasty case of the flu from one of my roommates, that I'm just now finally starting to get over. So much for that flu shot I had. Eventually I discovered a little hindu run inn on nob hill renting rooms for 200 bucks a week and I moved in there for the rest of my time in San Francisco. I was glad to have my own room again.

After I got out of jail, I emailed Gus about the film but never heard back from him. Realizing he must be very busy with the filming, I decided to just show up on set in the Castro. I saw Gus and went over to say hi. After reprimanding him for not returning my email I asked him if he still had a part in mind for me. He said that he wished I had shown up for the auditions in November, but that all the big speaking parts had been cast. Suddenly I regretted temping those few months in SLC instead of coming directly here. But then he said I should be in the protest scene they were filming that night. So I got to be one of the crazy angry queer rioters.

It was so much fun and I got to meet so many amazing people. I met lots of legendary SF queens. The Radical Faeries were out in full force. I also met Lance Black, the writer of the incredible script for the film (which Gus gave me to read during our flight to Istanbul last year) and of course the amazing Sean Penn, so that was pretty rad. About a week later I brought one of my hostel roommates along with me to the set to meet Gus and be a part of a much more somber scene in the film. The candlelight vigil scene was filmed down on Market Street. I introduced my roommate to Gus and we chatted for a bit. That's when Gus told us that my other friend Paige (the woman who introduced Gus and I) was in town but unfortunately by the time I got in touch with her she had already gone back to Portland. Too bad too because its been like a year since I've seen her.

That was also the night where I realized that aside from the main actors, the casting for a production of that size is really out of Gus' hands. He has so many people working for him that oversee all of those things. Admittedly I was very naive to think that I could just show up on the set of a major hollywood production and expect to get a part without auditioning, even though the director is a friend of mine. I guess I just assumed that if the director emails me asking me to try out for his film he must have a role in mind for me. I'm not even an actor anyway but I just thought that it would be cool to act in this film because its such an important queer film. Regardless It was just interesting to hang out on set and really get a chance to see how a film is made and how much work and manpower it takes. Even though I didn't get as big a part as I had hoped, it was still just an honor to be apart of everything.

After filming one night I went out to a party just off Polk Street called Rod. I ended up getting completely wasted and after a while I was smoking a joint with some kid outside the bar. Suddenly someone grabbed me from behind. I turned around to see my old friend Noah X standing there. I was friends with Noah when I lived here back in 2004. We used to go to concerts and hang out together quite a bit. We went to see Blonde Redhead together my first time and once he took me to a crazy performance in the basement of a gay strip bar by a really cool local band called Soft Pink Truth. Every time I'm in SF it seems like I run into Noah. The last time I was here in November of 2006 I ran into Noah at The Knife concert at Mezzanine. I swear this kid is everywhere! We had a lot of fun catching up that night & watching old episodes of strangers with candy.

I love those kind of strange serendipitous moments in life. Its almost as if some force is pulling you together. Back when I lived in New York, I used to run into the same guy everywhere. At the bar, the bookstore, the train, the deli, you name it. It was as if he was stalking me. We even hung out once after the bar one night and he was a nice guy but there didn't seem to be any immediate interest there. Why then was I seeing this person all over New York? It wasn't until I took a trip to London and then ran into this same person again in the most random out of the way side street that I began to wonder, what are the odds? Who knows what draws certain people together? I do have to say though It was really great to see my friends Noah and Gus again and everyone else too. Although i definitely saw my share of ups and downs on this trip Im still so glad that I came. I really love San Francisco and I'm actually considering splitting my time between here and Berlin, maybe summers there and winters here. We'll see what happens. Although I'm dreading the cold weather in Europe, it will be cool to finally get back to Berlin tomorrow, I just hope spring comes early this year!