Janis Joplin and San Francisco

This was one of those I’m-not-sure-what-I’m-doing-today sort of mornings, since I totally ditched my itinerary. I had originally planned the San Francisco Shambhala Center in the morning and an African-American history museum in the afternoon. However, I didn’t feel like having any more bus experiences this weekend. I prefer walking. And considering how much trouble I had getting to the Zen Center on time, there’s no way I’d be way out at the Shambhala Center by 9 am—it’s at least as far from downtown as San Francisco State University. Also, I wanted to get to Chinatown one last time and get 1) more mooncakes and 2) another Japanese doll. I also thought I might finally get to the Chinese Cultural Museum while I was there.

I first went to Union Square to check it out. I’ve been walking past it every day and only get glimpses of the center. It turned out to be less than interesting—I think there ware sometimes art shows there, and that would have been cool, but it wasn’t yet 10 am on a Sunday morning when I got there. I saw a couple of little shops, including a café in front of which people sat (presumably for a late breakfast or just coffee). The column in the center, it turned out, commemorates the barbaric and oppressive behavior of some military type named Dewey, during the Spanish-American War. John Dewey, as in the Dewey decimal system, was a pacifist. There were beautiful plants—particularly big purple flowers—around the edges, but I wanted most of the concrete to be jack hammered and replaced with more plant life. So I walked through Union Square and up to Chinatown.

In Chinatown, I didn’t stop in stores as much, since of course I’d already been there and knew that a lot of it gets repetitive. I did, however, get not only the Japanese doll I was seriously thinking of getting (an old grey-haired man in pale silk, and he looked quite old), but also a small and whimsical girl doll. A major theme on this shopping spree was cats, cats, cats! I picked up lots of cats, but not any that need to be fed.

At one place, there was a cage crowded with about a half dozen beautiful pure white doves—the cage was up on top of something else, in front of the store. I stood and looked at the birds, and they looked back at me as if to say, “Let us out!” The other things this store sold were dead, skinned birds. Um, it’s time to change the subject.

The AIDS walk was going on, so there was a lot of honking, shouting, and singing off and on throughout the day.

I didn’t find the museum, but the travel books that I checked out from the library date to before 2000, so it could have moved. Or I could have, who knows, walked right past it. That’s when I decided to go have lunch—after I walked up Broadway and didn’t see the museum.

I have undergone the dim sum experience. I much prefer stir fry and spring rolls, but I kind of thought I had to try it while in San Francisco. It was a bad sign when I got up the stairs (it was above a store) and the place was noisy and crowded. They set up a small table so it only had one chair, and as I sat down, I saw a roach or beetle scurry up the wall, and it wasn’t Ringo or George. I expected the dumplings to be firm—something like bean buns—but they have an outer wrap that is like transparent rice noodles, and when you try to pick a dumpling up with chopsticks, they squeeze the dumpling and it even pops open, oozing out onions, garlic, and mushroom. So I picked up the bamboo container, even though it was hot, and dumped the dumplings onto my plate. Maybe that’s why they’re called dumplings. The tea was OK, and I drank a whole pot myself.

I got back to the hotel really early this time—3 pm. That’s after I found the Marines Memorial Theater and bought a ticket for the musical Love, Janis. At the hotel, I took a bath and a nap before going to the theater.

The play was marvelous! One actress playing Janis spoke the letters and the interviews, and the other sang songs in between—and she was quite a Janis Joplin impersonator. The band was on the stage all the time, upstage. I’m thinking I’ve got some groovy ideas for clothing and jewelry.

Janis Joplin died about a month after I was born. According to Tibetan Buddhism...and Doctor Who... two incarnations of the same person can have overlapping lives. A bit off the topic—I think just about everyone else in the audience was old enough to remember Janis Joplin. I was definitely the youngest person in the audience.