San Francisco YMCA

By Larrywomack.com

The desk clerk had a braided bracelet tattooed on her wrist.  She was gracious, yet quiet.  My reservation was lost.  There was no record either in my name or the person who had made the reservation for me.  The clerk left to find the manager.  The San Francisco YMCA Hotel.  Another first for me.

I was in San Francisco to help a friend develop a plan to raise money for his business.  My friend was on hard times.  The “Y” was the best he could do.  I didn’t mind.  This friend is also eccentric.  Had times been better, he’d probably booked us here anyway, just to get my reaction.  We were in town for the 1992 MACWORLD Exhibition to look for ideas and products for his medical practice management company.

The “Y” was convenient, only a few blocks from the better hotels where we had business meetings scheduled.

I really didn’t mind.

I’d stayed at similar places around New York, back when I was a struggling jazz musician in the early ’60s.  But this was more like a new experience than reliving a memory.  Those jazz days had faded from my mind long ago.

The building was no doubt beautiful in its heyday–grand columns and elegant porticoes.  The floors were marbled and well polished.  The place was very clean.

The clerk returned.  For the first time, I noticed her experienced-worn eyes.  Deep and shifting.  Afraid if I looked directly into her eyes I’d discover a secret not to be shared with a stranger.

They found the reservation!  Being the first to arrive, I was told I’d have to pay for one of the three days we were to be there.  David had been a friend for a long time.  I knew that even in the best of times, he had a quirky way with money, so I refused to pay.  She didn’t press, so I retired to my room without obligation.

I was a bit tired because of the long walk up Market Street to the “Y”.  Some 15 blocks.  I had reluctantly and softly told the airport limo driver that I was staying at the YMCA.  He said it was not a regular stop, but that it was at the Wharf near the Hyatt.  He was mistaken.  The “Y” at the Wharf is the Health Club, not the Hotel.  According to the directions given me at the Health Club, the Hotel was “just up the street.”  It was.  About 15 block, and long San Francisco blocks at that.

It had been a couple of years since I had visited the city.  Under normal circumstances, I would have enjoyed the long walk.  This time, however, I was carrying two large suitcases, a briefcase, and wearing new shoes for the first time.  The walk was a killer.

The room was more or less as I had expected.  Like the lobby, it was clean yet shabby.  There was a single bed with a thin mattress and springs, a desk, a chair, and a lavatory with a yellowed mirror.

Looking out from the single window, there was a picture postcard view of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Looking straight down, I saw the most abject poverty I’d ever seen.  A street strewn with trash and garbage.  Security gates ripped away from the windows they were designed to protect.  Ragged, filthy humanity wandering aimlessly, druggedly back and forth across the street.  Panhandling one another.  A police car raced by, almost striking one of the derelicts.  The cop and the bum, numbed by the misery of the area, oblivious to one another.  Invisible.  I had the feeling that I mine was the only heart that raced at the near-accident.

It was around three in the afternoon.  David wasn’t to arrive from Los Angeles until later in the evening.  So, after a few minutes rest and changing into my cross-trainers, I headed out to experience San Francisco once again.  Basically tracing my footsteps, but one block over, I returned to the Wharf.  After a brief stroll around the pier, I sampled the calamari and fresh crabmeat, Quaffed a beer, and headed back.  The whole adventure took about two hours.

When I approached the neighborhood of my hotel, it was dusk.  The closer I got to the “Y”, the more decadent the area became.  First it was pharmacies and small ethnic eating establishments transitioning to fast food restaurants and discount electronic stores.  Farther down I came to the liquor stores and the porno paraphernalia shops.  The entourage of shoppers and stragglers was mixed.  Heavy towards stragglers.

As I turned and headed up the hill (it’s always up hill in San Francisco), I realized I was entering a danger zone.  The stench was bad.  The characters ominous and the streets dark with despair.

Now, this I minded.

It seemed wiser to walk in the middle of the street, instead of on the sidewalks.  I passed a men’s shelter.  Out of the shadows, I could hear coughing and wheezing, along with grunted indistinguishable sentences.  Just up the street, on the east side, was a women’s shelter.  The late sun provided me a silhouette of poorly clad women standing quietly in line for their evening supper.  They were probably there for the opportunity to bed down for the night, as well, with the hope they’d arise in the morning, no worse for wear.

“Better than the street, ” I heard one say.

“Know what you mean,” was the reply.  Then, silence again.

I did not feel threatened in this setting, but I quickened my step to get away from the misery.  At the entrance to the “Y,” an affable panhandler met me.

He smiled and offered me his hand.  “Hey, buddy, you look like a fellow who’d help a friend that’s down and out.  How ’bout a couple of bucks for some drugs?”

Though moved by his honesty, I just ducked through the hotel door without making eye contact.

Inside I learned why he was outside the door.  An aerobics class of young men and women was letting out, and my “friend” was at his regular post to hit them up as usual.  A young girl took a dollar out of her billfold before going out the door.  I was right.  This was obviously a regular event.

There was a message for me at the desk.  David had been delayed and would not arrive until the next morning.  Great!  Stuck in San Francisco in the YMCA Hotel with no food, no TV, and no phone in my room–only a window on a world that I did not particularly care to see.

The night clerk, a young, thin Oriental man, suggested I try the carryout from the Chinese restaurant around the corner.  He said it was in the opposite direction from the “war zone” and that I would, most likely, be safe.

I found a wine shop next door to the restaurant and returned to my room with a bottle of Gallo Chablis, a carton of broccoli chicken, fried rice, and two fortune cookies.  The clerk was right.  The food was delicious.  AS I ate at the small desk, I could see the fading shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge–the only reminder that I was in San Francisco.

I placed the empty cartoons in the small wastebasket under the lavatory and caught a glimpse of me in the faded mirror.

My first memory of me was an image in a mirror.  The image of a little boy sitting on a day bed with my maternal grandfather.  He was playing the harmonica.  He handed it to me.  As I started to huff and puff, I turned to see me, in the mirror, playing my grandfathers harmonica.  My grandfather was smiling.  I saw a small, wide-eyed boy with a smile broad enough to be visible from behind the harmonica.  Not a care in the world could be seen on either face.

That is my only memory of my grandfather.  He died a few weeks later of a heart attack in the yard just outside the window where we were playing.  Years later I was told he actually died of a “bourbon attack.”

The next mirror image I remembered was my mother naked.  I was eight years old.  Mother had just stepped from her bath and entered her bedroom drying her hair with the towel.  I was making faces in the dresser mirror when I saw her behind me.  She had exceptionally large breast, a full but shapely figure, and a tuft of dark curly hair between her legs.  The little patch of fur puzzled me.  She calmly asked me to leave her bedroom.  Later, while sitting on my bed, I wondered what I had seen.  I could think of no one to ask about it.

There was a half bottle of wine and the two fortune cookies left.  Should I ration them or consume them now?  I realized I was tired at 8:30 pm because it was 10:30 pm back home in Nashville.  Still, I decided to ration my provisions and assess the goings on beneath my window.

Though I’d been given complete instructions on using the community facilities down the hall, I was unsure of my surroundings.  I chose, instead, to relieve myself in the sink in my room.  I turned on the hot water, wondering about all the others who’d stood right here looking in the mirror, while relieving themselves in the lavatory of Room 527 in the San Francisco YMCA.  This mirror had seen a lot.  If there were some way to tap its memory, there would be many tales for it to tell.

Drinking from the wine bottle, I looked down at the street.  It was quiet.  Too early for the madness.  I went back to the mirror to see what it might hold in the way of entertainment.