Standing On The Corner, Suitcase In My Hand

"You ever hear of a band called Decay?" Smokey asks me. Standing on the corner next to Jerry's Pizza, he loosely grips the handle of a rolling suitcase.

"No, I haven't."

"They just pick a bright, talented kid and bring him down. The lead singer and guitarist was this shrimp of a kid. Dark hair and eyes, skinny. Boy, could he scream," he chuckles softly. "Anyways, I don't know what happened, but he goes to his mother's house one day and..." Smokey makes a gun with his fingers and presses them against his chest.


"Smokey" poses at Wall St. Alley

"That's J--. We were childhood friends. Our grandparents were neighbors, but I hadn't seen him since middle school. His grandmother called me a couple of weeks after I moved back to Bakersfield to tell me about the funeral."

"Oh, Sissy. I'm sorry. This town just swallows people up. I feel like I'm always the next one on the list. Talk about running!" Somehow I found it incredibly comforting--this strange old man calling me "sissy" with the ease of a grandfather. I couldn't believe that he knew J--, or maybe just that he'd brought J-- up and I'd known who he was talking about.

"How did you know J--? Through the band?"

"Yeah. You know I play around, write some songs here and there, get to know the musicians. Did you know that I wrote the Alice in Chains song 'Man In the Box'?"



I ask Smokey if he could tell me what he remembered about J--. I'd never known him as a teenager or adult. In my mind he's still a lanky boy who liked to shoot rattlesnakes and save stray dogs. Smokey tells me the basics (most of which I alread knew): J had a wife and a baby and a job (and a truck that Smokey adds to the list as if it's something that's supposed to be real important).

As we talk, at least five people stop to greet him. He mentions how people generally treat him well (except for the other homeless), but that once a group of men showed up at a loading dock he was sleeping on and poured liquid latex all over him.



"What's it like living downtown?"



"You ever hear that song 'Living in L.A.'? It's a lot like that. Hold on. Let me go look for my beer." Smokey hobbles around for awhile, peeking into the large planters between the Wall St. Alley bars, but he doesn't manage to find his tallboy.

When he returns, I ask him where he grew up.

"Delano. I came to Bakersfield when I was thirty five, been here twenty years now."

"What was it like growing up where you lived? What did you like to do?"

"Well, Sissy, I always liked wandering around. When I was a kid, I used to go down to the Salvation Army for books. I'd read anything I could get my hands on, but I liked the ones about the occult and physics best." He launches into a monologue about how people are sharing thoughts through electrical transference and how he doesn't like it one bit.

Smokey raises his palms, puts them behind his head, and spreads his fingers.

"I call it 'Moosehead'." 

Without skipping a beat, he returns to the conversation about his childhood.

"Boy, I miss my mother. Her name was Dorothy," he trails. I wonder when the last time he talked about his mother was. Does he even know anyone that remembers his mother?

"I'd sure like to talk to you in the morning sometime--when I'm sober."



If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a man use that line...



We exchange goodbyes and Smokey graciously lets me take his picture.  As he leaves, Smokey hollers, "I hope to see you around sometime!" He walks down the street and out of sight, the wheels of his suitcase grinding against the alley's coarse cement.

On my way home, I turn a corner and see a man holding out a beat-up guitar in front of Downtown Deli & Market. He's yelling, "Busking for beer! Support the arts!"

"What would you do if I bought you a beer?" I ask him.

"You'd be my muse. I'd write you sonnets."

"Deal. What kind of beer do you want?" He looks suprised that I've given him a choice, perhaps that I've offered him a beer at all, and he hesitates at the question.

"I don't know. Whatever. Suprise me."

"I like my beer dark--like brunettes," he adds and runs a hand through his curly hair.

I buy him a porter and he pops the cap with the bottome of a lighter. He rolls a cigarette and we bullshit for a while about fucking up. After he's done with the cigarette, he wipes his hands on the side of his dirty cargo pants.

"Sorry. I have terrible manners. What's your name?" He holds out his hand.

"Jane."

"No shit. You know how many songs there are with your name in it? Hey--you ever hear of Lou Reed?"

(Full disclosure: I love Lou Reed so much that I did a presentation about The Velvet Underground for a college course. Maybe I don't hang out with the right crowd, but most people I know haven't even heard of The Velvet Underground let alone like the band's music. On High Fidelity, The Velvet Underground is #4 on John Cusack's character's list of Top 5 Side Ones, Track Ones... Anyway--let's just say I was excited.)



Bakersfield's "Lou Reed"



The busker picks up his guitar, walks out to the corner across from the Padre Hotel, and begins to play the intro to "Sweet Jane" by The Velvet Underground.

(You can hear the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkumhBVPGdg).

"Standin' on the corner, suitcase in my hand..." he sings breathily.

I recalled the suitcase Smokey had been carrying with him when we talked earlier in the afternoon and wondered about the power of coincidence in our lives.

I've been working on a short memoir about J--'s suicide and the coincidences that have occured since his death. It's difficult to pin down that feeling of an "accidental plan"--which seems to me to be a somewhat accurate description of the writing process. Sometimes I wonder if coincidence isn't really coincidence at all--if it's somehow God's way of staying anonymous or just an odd little cosmic joke.

The Exhibitionists

I like to write in public. Call me an exhibitionist. It's one of the few physical aspects of writing that makes me feel like a writer. Even if you're overwhelmed by rejections stuffed into the mailbox, you can simply write where there are others.

You are writing. Someone sees you. You are a writer. Voila!


Can you guess which window?



OK, maybe it's not that easy, but there's something about being surrounded by the people and places you're writing about--the movement, the interactions. There are a few coffee shops downtown that are great for writing, though I often prefer fast food restaurant lobbies or parks because of the overexposure at coffee shops. I may like to write in public, but I also like to get work done, which feels somewhat impossible at hipster hotspots. (Don't get me wrong: I love gathering places for artists, musicians, conversationalists, friends, but when we're together, we like to talk about our projects way too much.)

Sometimes you'll find me writing at the wicker tables in front of The Padre's Farmacy, enjoying the afternoon sunshine. The patio faces the somewhat dingy, weekly rate Porterfield Hotel, which happens to have one of the more interesting porches to people watch. If you ever need someone to smoke a cigarette with, you'll find a friend or two who'll share some stories with you on the stoop.



Every time I write outside The Padre, there's a naked man who stands in front of an upper window at the Porterfield. He's become my good luck charm, a part of my writing routine. I'm not sure if he's watching me, but the man is staring out the window at something. 

The first time I saw him, I was with a writer friend who has a great imagination and sense of humor. I (stupidly) asked him what he thought the naked man was doing.

He arched an eyebrow and smiled.

"No..."

"I think I see an arm moving," he said.



"No way. OK. Maybe, but it's so obvious! He's right up against the window and everyone can see him."

"If there were kids around, I'd definitely call the cops."



My friend went back to his work, but I couldn't stop staring at the window. The man would leave for a few minutes at a time, then return. The room was too dark to tell if there was anything obscene going on, but he had piqued my curiosity.

"Creeper. You're obssessed with him. You like it," my friend accused me.

Maybe I do. As a writer, I'm both an exhibitionist and an observer. I can't help but see. That's what a writer's supposed to do--watch things, record them, find something new and interesting about the commonplace lives we live. Writing requires staring. Lots of it. So I happen to stare at an old naked man...

Thank God the bottom of the window hits mid-waist.

The Death Couch

In the 1970s, my grandparents bought a 1905 mansion that originally belonged to the family that owned the Payne Mortuary. Now the Ira L. Stoker law office, the mortuary sits on the southeast corner of the intersection of 20th and B St.

When the mortuary went out of business, my grandmother asked if she could buy some of the unwanted furniture. She brought home a pea-green velvet couch circa 1930s that's now located in the house's entryway. It used to be the receiving couch for the mortuary and when I use it, I imagine the grief-stricken people who had just lost a relative huddled together speaking in low voices or maybe not saying anything at all.



"The Death Couch"



I wonder what happened on that couch. Who sat there? What was said? What memories were made? Who was being remembered?

In college my friends and I used to play a game where we'd try to see how far back we could trace the furniture we had inherited. (Great party game, right?) My ex-boyfriend had a dirty navy blue couch covered in a terrible green, yellow, and red plaid pattern that had been donated to him by a Communist who said he had gotten it from someone who had gone to jail whose mother had given it to him when she wanted to update the furniture (or something like that). We drank beer and played this game until I'm sure that we started making up stories about the origins of our furniture. (Believe me--you'd be this bored during a Wyoming winter too).

My family, especially my grandparents who were both history students, has given me a deep sense of the individual's connection to places and people long gone. My grandmother always said that our families' stories were our stories. That it was our duty to carry their memories with us. Those memories leak into my perception of life as I experience it. The same ex-boyfriend I mentioned earlier in the post used to talk about "the democracy of the dead," referring to valuing the experiences of the dead in addition to the living.

That's something I adore about Hispanic culture: respect for and remembrance of passed relatives. Every year I make altars for my mother and grandmother to celebrate The Day of the Dead and I often find peace in the ritual (though my family still thinks it's a little bit strange...). Do you have any special traditions regarding the deaceased?

That connection to the dead, to imagining what their lives were like, inspires me to write: to remember and re-imagine. To sit on a couch and guess at who'd sat in that spot last, how we might have understood each other had we met, what we would have talked about. If I can't get my answers from history, at least I can make it up.

The Downtown Beat

Alley between Front Porch and The Padre

We make history as we live it.

Downtown Beat aims to record a living micro-history of Bakersfield's historic Downtown District as it is experienced its residents: a portrait of a neighborhood. I hope to spotlight the people, places, and events that make up the diverse, fascinating, and sometimes downright strange place that's at the cultural center of the Southern San Joaquin Valley.

It's been said by many who live here and who have left Bakersfield that there's a serious lack of culture and a disparate, unconnected community. I agree that perhaps the cultural scene hasn't developed like our counterparts' and that there's more work to do. However, I wholeheartedly disagree that Bakersfield's a "cultureless city" and that's what I hope Downtown Beat will help demonstrate.

It's a matter of recognition. You'll find culture all around you--in the architecture of houses and apartment complexes, alleyway graffitti and art galleries, churches and bars, and in the songs of buskers and conversations at the GET bus hub. I didn't understand the richness of Bakersfield until I left, until I became a transplant somewhere else, a foreigner. That said, these are the stories of one woman, an individual, and I speak only for myself and my experiences. But I begin this blog with the desire that I create a conversation between community members about what's important to you and what you want your Bakersfield experience to be.

My hope is that this blog will become a place to organize, to connect individuals within our community, and to share stories. If anything interests you on a personal level or you'd like to share something, please comment on the site. Please feel free to send me suggestions about what you'd like me to cover at janefriday@hotmail.com with the subject line "Downtown Beat."

Jane