I have been contemplating my existence in great detail for some time now and was wondering about my transition from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane. Realizing of course, that I tend to be a bit dramatic about things (hey, preacher, artist, activist..what would you expect?) I stopped to take a realistic gander at my life as it stands now.
As some of you may know, we are being booted out of our studio home of twenty+ years to be replaced by a condo development for the well to do. Since where I am now is considered to be quite chi-chi and up-and coming, it took a while to emotionally understand it.
Mostly because I have never in all my lifetimes been Chi-Chi, so I have never walked with that crowd and well up and coming is a very specific viewpoint. It was a hard time understanding how the simple act of money could change the character of a neighborhood let alone a city in such a short amount of time.
Have I mentioned that I can also be really naive at times?
As with any separation of beings or places-that were once as one-it’s a heartbreaking affair. There are no winners, just losers and nothing is left but blood on the floor, no matter how amicable the separation. So I grieved.
But the grieving needed to end.
I have been lucky enough to have witnessed some amazing things pass through these doors. The birth and death of bands, people falling in love and starting families, people falling in hate and beginning life long feuds, god touching the deserving as well as the undeserving.
A parade of life has come through my door and I am humbly grateful to have been here for it. It was small studio, but it had a big heart.
And then there is the Ghost.
I wonder if she will follow me to the next place or haunt the high-end condo complex that will replace this venerable institution. I hope I made it clear to her, that she was most welcome to come. But when you gotta haunt, you gotta haunt.
So we left the city and began our search in the desert called the peninsula. It was filled with fast food restaurants, tract housing and odd 1960’s warehouse construction called tilt ups. I guess because you just tilt up the walls and boom! You have a structure. (Can’t wait for the quake!!)
But in this desert we have found a facility in a land called South San Francisco that fits our needs. South San Francisco…It’s almost San Francisco but with less fat. So I guess that now makes us Ex-patriots of San Francisco, my adopted home. The city where my heart lives, no longer welcomes us. No longer welcomes small business. No longer welcomes the disenfranchised or the middle class. Despite their protestations, it gives not a shit. It’s a very tragic thing.
The City that I have loved and called home has changed its name to: Googlandia, Twitterville, the City of Zynga (or is that Farmville?)
Home to the young and upwardly mobile, the chic and trendsetters. The social media-talk no action club-that will gladly post about the wrongs of this city, but will not lift a finger to do something about it.
The privileged in the Golden Ghettos, that lives alongside the Golden Gate.
Am I bitter? As I read this back to myself it would seem so, but I’m not. All things change, always. It is the only constant in the universe and I accept this, utterly and completely.
I have wandered this blessed earth for thousands of years now and I have seen places come and go. This is just no longer my time here and I am ready to begin again.
South San Francisco open your biotech gates!
Selah
The rev
The Reverend LordRifa 