... the first five at a very cool little cafe/bar about fifteen blocks away from us. In truth, there have been a few shootings this week - unrelated to this one today as far as I know - including one in which a stray bullet killed a father of two who was running errands prior to a family vacation. My sense is that people are upset and worried about this increasing level of Seattle violence, and they should be. But it also occurred to me that I wasn't, and that the reactions here in Seattle struck me as somewhat different than San Francisco responses to similar events (though this is hardly a scientific study, by any means). So I had to sit back a moment and puzzle that out, at least for myself.
When I lived in San Francisco, our place was just outside the Tenderloin, which is notorious for drugs, squalor, a fair amount of violence and, in truth, some truly stunning food, be it Burmese, Indian, Thai, Chinese or what have you. One night I was in Frank's 21 Club at the Ground Zero intersection of Turk and Taylor with Geoffrey Bankowski having a few drinks. We departed 11ish, and by maybe three a.m. a gentleman wearing body armor was shot in the head outside the front door.
Danielle and I routinely walked our dogs (during the day, only) at Jefferson Playground, which is right on the edge of the Western Addition and across from the Eddy Rock Projects. During the time we lived there at least three or four people were shot to death in that park, though in general after dark when we were long gone (there was one mid-morning exception which I did not witness but came upon after the fact, when the scene was under police control).
My absolutely favorite neighborhood in San Francisco is the Mission District, and it is a battleground for the Norteno and Sureno gangs (and if I knew how to add a tilde on each of those "n"s I surely would have). There are shootings in the Mission that occur on a pretty frustratingly regular basis, including one a few years back that happened outside the fine Taqueria Cancun at 19th and Mission.
Shit, just a couple of months before we left San Francisco a man was shot in the back room of the coffee shop one block from our house, a coffee shop where Danielle and I have enjoyed mochas and crepes and the Saturday morning paper more than once.
My point being this - the violence or threat of violence didn't keep me out of the park, or out of the Mission, or away from the 21 Club, or out of the Tenderloin (my walk to and from work, five days a week, was directly down O'Farrell in the TL), and that's not because I'm a tough guy or I'm a brave guy - it has nothing to do with that. Instead, it had everything to do with the fact that they were simply places that we went. It was our city, and these places made us happy, we enjoyed the people we would see there; they were part of the fabric of our neighborhood, part of what it meant for the two of us to call San Francisco home. And because of all that, because we weren't going to radically alter our routines to accommodate this very small chance of danger, I think in some way we incorporated that threat of danger/violence into what San Francisco meant to us, the way we defined the City, all its good, all its flaws. Which is another way of saying we got used to it. Gun violence was something that happened - awful every time, no doubt - but it did happen and, likely, sooner or later, it was going to happen again, possibly on a street corner with which we were intimately familiar.
So, in fact I do think it's good people are upset and worried by this kind of thing in Seattle. Going forward, I intend to try and take these incidents a little more seriously myself, not take them for granted, or as inevitable. But I will also be returning to the Cafe Racer, fifteen blocks away. The bartender was very welcoming the time I stopped in, and I walk past it whenever I'm doing my volunteer work at the University Food Bank, or shopping at the Trader Joe's further down Roosevelt. I've always meant to return - it's a cool, funky spot with art on the walls and jazz on Sunday nights, board games, a tasty-looking menu and a full bar.
And I will go back, no doubt. Why wouldn't I? It's my neighborhood. It's my city.
IBL:mm
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It's so great you two are urban dwellers without living in excessive fear. I accuse the media of fear mongering and try to have a realistic view of the dangers but undoubtedly I'm more fearful than you when contemplating the broad range of urban scenes. Two things:
ReplyDelete1) When I was a motorcyclist, there were times I'd be driving a car and get passed by a MC and think, "Man that was dangerous." But on my bike I could have done a similar pass and not thought anything of it. It's because the here and now immediacy when riding skillfully and the responsiveness of a powerful bike renders time and space completely different to daydreaming in a car.
2) Prudence vs. The Life You Want to be Living.
Here in absurdly low crime Fruita, we still lock our doors because it's prudent. But if we forget, we're not too hard on ourselves. We'd see ourselves in a community where you don't HAVE to lock your doors. Likewise, leaving our house empty while we spent 5 months in Denver. Sure I set up a couple internet accessible cameras. Mostly just for the reassurance of checking on things. Not like we'd actually catch someone in the act of robbery. No alarm.
When we ride our bicycles, we don't lock them up if we go in somewhere. There is actually some small chance they could be stolen. But in this case, we feel obliged to demonstrate our confidence in our community. Prudence vs. The Life you Want to be Living.
Well, let's see. I have done a lot of thinking about this subject over the last 17 years, since I moved from Northern California to Medellin, Colombia, where I currently live. The fact of living in Medellin is that the violence is exponentially higher. Unlike the States, I don't have a single friend or acquaintance that hasn't been close to someone who has died violently. Also, I don't know a single adult, including myself, who has not been robbed at gunpoint. But if you walk through Medellin, it would be hard to imagine that any kind of violence ever takes place here at all. That is, unless you come upon an actual act of violence actually taking place, which statistically you probably will. But the thing is, the city doesn't feel violent. People look happy, relaxed. I now think it would be psychologically impossible to live in Medellin carrying the fear of what might happen. That doesn't mean that somewhere down deep you aren't carrying some sort of anxiety, but you can't have that overt, Oh my God what are we going to do, kind of fear. You just kind of start believing in luck or fate or whatever. Not that your luck is better than anyone else's, but that sometimes things go well and sometimes they go badly and there isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do about it. which does not mean you aren't out there saying hey wouldn't peace just be easier and better for everyone. It's just that the people saying that get killed just like everybody else. It gets complex when you have kids. Here I am someone who, let's say for the sake of argument, could have had my kid somewhere else in the world that would not have been so dangerous to her. She didn't ask to be born in Medellin and I had the choice. But it's like Mike's going back to the bar where those people were shot, the best way to resist violence is to not let it stigmatize people or places, to make it always the exception and not let it colonize our brains. But I would be lying if I said that part of my brain wasn't saying " yeah that's fine for you but not for your kid" as I wrote that last phrase. I'll end with two anecdotes that kind exemplify the two sides of what I've lived with this. I had a Colombian friend who lost it it completely in Vienna Austria because she couldn't identify the violence on the street. She said she knew from experience that there had to be violence, so not being able to identify it was like walking the streets blind. The other thing happened just after I came to Colombia. A bomb placed inside the Botero sculpture of a bird exploded at a crafts fair in San Antonio Park. This happened in the afternoon, and we were just blocks away at the hotel of the international poetry festival. I remember the Australian and Austrian poets being adamant about being taken to view the scene. The organizers refused. Late that night a group snuck out of the hotel to go to the park and see. When they saw how the shrapnel from the bird had dug tiny holes in all the buildings around it, like a huge 360 degree shotgun blast, they asked to be taken back to the hotel. The Austrian poet fell silent and later commented, "We don't know what violence is." The Australian poet locked herself in her hotel room and refused to come out for two days. None of us are untouched. If violence is close to you, it ravages you. If violence is far from you, the thought of violence does the job.
ReplyDeleteI love GA's comment- that's a lot of food for thought.
ReplyDeleteI live in the Tenderloin, and have for awhile. I know the coffee shop Mike's talking about as well as the 21 Club- perhaps the best dive bar in all of SF. I've never gone into that coffee shop, though I pass it all the time. When I do, I always think about the guy who got shot in the backroom and I avoid entering the place because of that- and I wonder how many other people do the same, which makes me epathize for the owners, who had nothing to do with any of it and are just trying to make a living by providing a nice place in the neighborhood. I wonder what that murder has cost them beyond the obvious. Maybe if I had patronized it before the shooting I would feel differently, but having no prior history with it keeps me out instead.
A couple of weeks ago two women were shot at the corner of Leavenworth and Ellis- at a corner I can see from my window. There's a Yucatan restaurant there I occasionally go to, which they were coming out of when they were shot. I'm not sure if I'll go back. But it's not out of fear or precaution, the kind which makes me walk down Geary instead of O'Farrell after 10 PM if I'm dressed a certain way, but driven by a desire to avoid feeling or experiencing the lingering energy and violence, that while I know is irrational and superstitious, runs in through my mind in such places.
Follow up here real quick - the bartender that was so friendly to me at Racer Cafe turns out to the the one person who survived that shooting...
ReplyDeleteJohn, thanks for this...
ReplyDeleteWhat is the name of the Yucatan restaurant? I'm not picturing it...
I went back to the shrine outside the Racer Cafe two weeks ago and basically couldn't leave for 30 minutes. Some of the stuff from one of the victim's wives, an open letter to the victim, pretty much just destroyed me. Though hers was a different kind of energy, of course - desperate, miserable longing and love. Heartbreak. Jesus Christ...
Happily they're re-making the interior over before re-opening. That may speak to your issue of the lingering energy and violence left behind at such places. They pretty much HAVE to go back into that space, and how do you keep it the "same" to honor those who died, but make something else of it at the same time so you don't think you are entering a tomb every time you go back...