Soon after the simultaneous opening and closing of “Further Afield” two trips to stores both culminated in unforeseen lengthy waits in lines behind pussy-whipped individuals laboriously purchasing multitudinous tiny cans of food for finicky felines but what could go wrong?

We had, for instance, Sewer Replacement Day wherein all went perfectly save for ATT, the

alleged “communications” company who’d nevertheless failed to communicate to anyone that their cable ran under the alley to at least three businesses on First Street.  They belatedly sent

someone over after the cable was severed who subsequently failed to communicate to whomever was supposed to issue a work order for the repair and then once that was, after some delay, rectified failed to communicate the scope of the work.  Advanced Trenchless

finished and, having completed everything as promised, left the hole open for them.

Years ago when we lived on Guerrero Street there was, squeezed into a tiny storefront between the old Bi-Rite [with its mostly vacant shelves of hotdog buns, Wonder Bread, mustard, Colt 45, Ripple and Thunderbird] and an eclectic secondhand store [run by the aging queen with a penchant for Hawaiian memorabilia who took me up to a garage above Market Street and showed me the moderne couch perched on the roof of his 1959 Chrysler Crown Imperial we have to this day], Canto do Brasil, our neighborhood go-to restaurant when few restaurants

existed to go to in our neighborhood. Though the others kept turning over – we were devastated when the crazy Marseillaises closed the one named after cigarettes [Gauloises] to be supplanted by Bangkok 16, excellent Thai but still two long sketchy blocks further than Canto’s formica tables, TVs blaring either homemade mardi gras videos [Linda remembers lots of sequinned crotches] or Fútbol with fejoada every Thursday, the day we were most likely to show up as it was one of L’s longests at CCAC.  By 1998 the Bi-Rite, taken over by descendants of earlier owners, had begun a miraculous transformation but we left for summer and when we returned our beloved Canto was gone, new construction underway for an unknown…well, restaurant, anyway, and right around the corner [we lived between 18th and 19th from 1987 until moving to Benicia in late 2000].  We came in soon after they opened, loved everything about the ambiance, the friendly young couple trying to make it work, of course the food and, having been pretty much the only people in the place aside from the proprietors and maybe a dishwasher, came back the next night and at least once a week after that in the hopes they’d survive.  After not so many weeks Annie asked our names because, she said, they were about to be reviewed [this was way before internet – reviews in the papers were crucial, the Chronicle above all] which might make it difficult to get a table and she wanted to make sure the people from the neighborhood always could. She was right on both counts…and though we haven’t been back since we left SF both Delfina and that moment remain among the most treasured memories of our thirteen years in the Mission.  At this late date we may be among the few for whom that picture of Canto do Brasil’s yellow awning in the recent SG Gate article about their closing would have much meaning and though I realize it’s just a small part of of a much larger rolling disaster it becomes personal, remembering those days and seeing how all Annie and Craig’s good work dissolved in a minute…as it already has for so many.  Although the Orange Menace is doing everything he can, bloviating daily on TV about promises to bail out the banks [not being Canadians they’ll need help with all those foreclosures on ordinary people who can’t cover their mortgages] and big casinos [as a person who miraculously managed to go bankrupt mismanaging one he can empathize with them if he can empathize with anyone] but the rest of the country, the people and businesses lacking the lobbyists and the Fox News coverage…oh well.

Meanwhile around here Cosmos continues to anonymize his sister and they languish, as do we,

in sunshiny slightly chill [February waited until March to show up, eh?] springtime and while

on my most recent trip to Safeway there were fortunately no pussywhippets in line the guy ahead of me revealed there’d already been a corona case in Benicia…how’d he know?  The guy  infected had driven down from Stockton for a gathering at the Veterans’ Memorial Hall and told him.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, dudes!  So Safeway maybe ain’t so safe no more…

Better shelter at home, or inside…

Days went by and finally, two and a half later, ATT showed up in two large and largely irrelevant boom trucks but were unable to fix their cable…complained the hole wasn’t big enough, didn’t understand the Shovel Concept of Enlargement.  They effected some rudimentary workaround for the restaurant but mostly stood blocking the alley and bullshitting by their two massive trucks to get in two or three hours of Friday night overtime.  L said they were unfriendly and cautioned me against going out there, coming as they did from a company obviously run by MBAs [Massively Belligerent Assholes] and undeniably steeped in that Culture…anyway, I didn’t go out, my truck’s still blocked by their hole but doesn’t need to move until we go to Nevada and at least Elviarita’s can struggle through these troubled times improvising takeout orders now that their phone and internet have been restored…as for the MBAs of ATT?  With the biggest bullshitting MBA in history running the country of course they feel entitled…and if this is some indication of gracelessness under pressure they’re definitely in the running for the award.  Or at the toxic landfill end of the gold standard spectrum, my idea of the gold standard still being the Christmas Eve at Libre our transformer shorted out and San Isabel showed up in a pickup with the new unit, an extension ladder and a block and tackle to replace it. In a blizzard.  One lineman, no two and a half day wait, no massive bucket trucks, no hours of bullshiting*.

The MBAs did say they’d be back…Monday.

Hope I don’t need to go anywhere before then…or whenever they actually do come back…

and, on the way out today under the “you can’t make this shite* up” category;

Free Lunch! [then go die]…

or have lunch at home and go ride around, avoiding the unaccustomed hordes

downtown until it’s time to order out…

But enough of this negatoovity; even in these uncertain times one can still recommend thoughtful compassionate writings and some of the most thoughtful and compassionate I have come across in a long time is my friend Erin Elder’s “Trails Across the Bighorns”, the second installment of her ongoing project “Rites of the Land”…

A worthy project, a worthy diversion. Collect the whole set…

 

*pronounced with the long “i’, as in “shite”.