Friday, December 5, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Assignment #3
Daly City borders the City/County of San Francisco. Its closeness would imply a strong relationship to San Francisco, so I sought to delve into what sort of relationship this could be. The city was named after John Daly, who began to work on a farm at around age 13 in what would become San Mateo County. He was able to become a successful business man and purchased a large amount of land on the “top-of-the-hill.” In the 1890s, the streetcars from San Francisco began to come to Daly City, over “Daly’s Hill,” and Daly moved to San Francisco in order to procure better education for his children. He still kept his business, however. Daly donated a lot to the Daly City community, helping to establish a bank and donated funds for the first library. In the 1906 earthquake, many San Francisco residents rushed to Daly City for help, and John Daly even allowed his farmlands to be used by the refugees, supplying the San Franciscans with food. As the community began to grow, there was an increasing amount of support to become a city. The community decided to name it Daly City, and was incorporated in 1911. “Prior to the earthquake, dog racing was a big attraction, with trains and streetcars bringing thousands to the sparsely-populated hills of the area across the county line. Boxing matches were held in quickly-built arenas near the edge of San Francisco, where gambling was less restricted than in the City” (dalycityhistory.org).
After World War II, Henry Doelger, a developer from San Francisco, bought “600 acres of sand dunes and cabbage patches that occupied much of the land between the original Daly City’s westerly edge to the ocean. He built a community called Westlake, which was annexed to Daly City in 1948” (dalycityhistory.org). Doelger continued to develop Daly City, and the city only began to grow larger. It has “emerged as a shopping mecca for San Francisco residents. The combination of plentiful free parking space (compared to the constrained and expensive parking options in San Francisco) and San Mateo County's historically slightly lower state sales tax rate (http://www.boe.ca.gov/cgi-bin/rates.cgi?LETTER=S&LIST=COUNTY) have contributed to this trend. Many big box retailers that are unable to operate in San Francisco due to real estate prices, space restrictions, or political / community opposition have opened stores in the Serramonte and Westlake neighborhoods.”
According to dalycity.org, approximately “51% of Daly City’s employed labor force works in San Francisco, about 17% work in either Daly City or South San Francisco and the remainder work in other Bay Area communities.” This is an example of San Francisco’s importation of labor from other areas. San Francisco comes up repeatedly in Daly City’s history, in which San Francisco residents often come to Daly City to exploit what is unavailable in their own city: either earlier on, when gambling was popular in Daly City, or currently, where they go to shop. It was used as a place of refuge during the earthquake, and San Francisco still grasps the city in its (sort of symbiotic) parasitic embrace.
http://www.dalycity.org/
Pretty much anything you could ever want to know about Daly City, you can find here. I looked chiefly at the “Overview” (http://www.dalycityhistory.org/overview.htm) and “City Profile” sections (http://www.dalycity.org/about/city_profile.htm). There is an amazing amount of information.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/08/BU76188.DTL
An article about Daly City’s Serramonte Center being sold for $119 million. Says that Serramonte is a “solid performing property” with “$400 of sales per square foot per year, above the $300 industry average.”
After World War II, Henry Doelger, a developer from San Francisco, bought “600 acres of sand dunes and cabbage patches that occupied much of the land between the original Daly City’s westerly edge to the ocean. He built a community called Westlake, which was annexed to Daly City in 1948” (dalycityhistory.org). Doelger continued to develop Daly City, and the city only began to grow larger. It has “emerged as a shopping mecca for San Francisco residents. The combination of plentiful free parking space (compared to the constrained and expensive parking options in San Francisco) and San Mateo County's historically slightly lower state sales tax rate (http://www.boe.ca.gov/cgi-bin/rates.cgi?LETTER=S&LIST=COUNTY) have contributed to this trend. Many big box retailers that are unable to operate in San Francisco due to real estate prices, space restrictions, or political / community opposition have opened stores in the Serramonte and Westlake neighborhoods.”
According to dalycity.org, approximately “51% of Daly City’s employed labor force works in San Francisco, about 17% work in either Daly City or South San Francisco and the remainder work in other Bay Area communities.” This is an example of San Francisco’s importation of labor from other areas. San Francisco comes up repeatedly in Daly City’s history, in which San Francisco residents often come to Daly City to exploit what is unavailable in their own city: either earlier on, when gambling was popular in Daly City, or currently, where they go to shop. It was used as a place of refuge during the earthquake, and San Francisco still grasps the city in its (sort of symbiotic) parasitic embrace.
http://www.dalycity.org/
Pretty much anything you could ever want to know about Daly City, you can find here. I looked chiefly at the “Overview” (http://www.dalycityhistory.org/overview.htm) and “City Profile” sections (http://www.dalycity.org/about/city_profile.htm). There is an amazing amount of information.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/08/BU76188.DTL
An article about Daly City’s Serramonte Center being sold for $119 million. Says that Serramonte is a “solid performing property” with “$400 of sales per square foot per year, above the $300 industry average.”
Monday, October 20, 2008
Trout Fishing in America
In Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, there are recurring ideas of things that are lost, ignored, or destroyed.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty is a good example of this, as shown when the narrator says, “I remember Trout Fishing in America Shorty passed out in Washington Square, right in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue. He had fallen face first out of his wheel chair and just lay there without moving. Snoring loudly,” (46). No one apparently cares that this paraplegic man is passed out on the lawn, fallen from his wheelchair. The narrator mentions this with such an offhand tone, as if it is completely normal that this sort of thing would happen. The narrator even remarks later on that, while his daughter is at first fascinated with this man, “The sandbox suddenly looked better to her than Trout Fishing in America Shorty. She didn’t care about his sausages anymore either. She decided to take advantage of the green light, and she crossed over to the sandbox. Trout Fishing in America Shorty stared after her as if the space between them were a river growing larger and larger” (97). I feel that this sentence also represents the gap between the old and young: that the younger generations are losing touch and interest in those things that came before them, while the older generations can only watch as they plow forward at the first sight of "a green light."
The narrator's child again comes up along the lines of this topic when, while at a lake, she “caught one of the fish with her hand and looked at it for a while. . . . Then she grew tired of this. She tipped the pan over and a dozen fish flopped out onto the shore” (65). The fish eventually get put back into the pan so they don't die, but, as a mere baby, the fact that this could end their lives didn't enter her mind. Even the narrator doesn't seem to mind too much about these fish, as he and "the woman" simply "watched the baby to make sure she was just leaning on them a little. We didn't want her to kill any of them because she was too young" (65). They don't care if the fish do die-- after all, the narrator is an avid trout fisher--but only want the baby to not kill them because of her youth and "innocence." Interesting that this innocence is also what would cause her to almost "innocently" kill those same fish.
The narrator, too, gets ignored, when trying to hitchhike along the road: “It was all very simple. No one would stop and pick me up even though I was carrying fishing tackle. People usually stop and pick up a fisherman. I had to wait three hours for a ride” (6). Nowadays, people are more likely to be surprised by someone picking up a hitchhiker than by one not getting picked up, which is, I think, hinted at in these few sentences. How many people see a hitchhiker along the highway, look at him (or her), and then keep driving, utterly ignoring him/her? (I mean, I do it all the time... hitchhikers are "scary" by public opinion, now). There was a time when it wasn't considered a threat to your life to pick up a stranger in your car, but in this novel, no one would even pick up the little boy with fishing tackle.
The “Worsewick Hot Springs” that the narrator and “the woman” go to, too, seems to be one of these ignored, destroyed places. There “was a green slime growing around the edges of the tub and there were dozens of dead fish floating in our bath.” (43) Talk about creepy. This "green slime" and the "dead fish" signify a lack of maintenance at these "hot springs," yet the narrator and the woman don't seem to mind (they also have quite an uncanny knack for finding these forgotten, ignored places), even going as far to have sex in the disgusting, murky "spring" while dead fish float all around them. They don't mind the hoards of fish, somehow, even though I think most people would vomit just at the thought of such a sight. They are able to find some weird sort of beauty in this space, even though it probably hasn't been touched in yeards.
One last thought on things being ignored: the narrator writes that “old Italians gather in front of the newspaper in the afternoon and just stand there, leaning up against the building, talking and dying in the sun” (45). Most of the things I've mentioned being ignored are older things, things that are obsolete, or just not "progressive." The sorts of things that get in the way of "going through the green light" in order to get along with one's life, or things like how slowing down to pick up a hitchhiker would take too much time from your schedule (or might get you killed, whatever). I think that one thread in Brautigan's extremely layered and intensely thematically deep novel is this notion of ignored spaces, ideas, or things, especially those that are older, in a time where "modern-ness" is considered to be of the utmost importance.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty is a good example of this, as shown when the narrator says, “I remember Trout Fishing in America Shorty passed out in Washington Square, right in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue. He had fallen face first out of his wheel chair and just lay there without moving. Snoring loudly,” (46). No one apparently cares that this paraplegic man is passed out on the lawn, fallen from his wheelchair. The narrator mentions this with such an offhand tone, as if it is completely normal that this sort of thing would happen. The narrator even remarks later on that, while his daughter is at first fascinated with this man, “The sandbox suddenly looked better to her than Trout Fishing in America Shorty. She didn’t care about his sausages anymore either. She decided to take advantage of the green light, and she crossed over to the sandbox. Trout Fishing in America Shorty stared after her as if the space between them were a river growing larger and larger” (97). I feel that this sentence also represents the gap between the old and young: that the younger generations are losing touch and interest in those things that came before them, while the older generations can only watch as they plow forward at the first sight of "a green light."
The narrator's child again comes up along the lines of this topic when, while at a lake, she “caught one of the fish with her hand and looked at it for a while. . . . Then she grew tired of this. She tipped the pan over and a dozen fish flopped out onto the shore” (65). The fish eventually get put back into the pan so they don't die, but, as a mere baby, the fact that this could end their lives didn't enter her mind. Even the narrator doesn't seem to mind too much about these fish, as he and "the woman" simply "watched the baby to make sure she was just leaning on them a little. We didn't want her to kill any of them because she was too young" (65). They don't care if the fish do die-- after all, the narrator is an avid trout fisher--but only want the baby to not kill them because of her youth and "innocence." Interesting that this innocence is also what would cause her to almost "innocently" kill those same fish.
The narrator, too, gets ignored, when trying to hitchhike along the road: “It was all very simple. No one would stop and pick me up even though I was carrying fishing tackle. People usually stop and pick up a fisherman. I had to wait three hours for a ride” (6). Nowadays, people are more likely to be surprised by someone picking up a hitchhiker than by one not getting picked up, which is, I think, hinted at in these few sentences. How many people see a hitchhiker along the highway, look at him (or her), and then keep driving, utterly ignoring him/her? (I mean, I do it all the time... hitchhikers are "scary" by public opinion, now). There was a time when it wasn't considered a threat to your life to pick up a stranger in your car, but in this novel, no one would even pick up the little boy with fishing tackle.
The “Worsewick Hot Springs” that the narrator and “the woman” go to, too, seems to be one of these ignored, destroyed places. There “was a green slime growing around the edges of the tub and there were dozens of dead fish floating in our bath.” (43) Talk about creepy. This "green slime" and the "dead fish" signify a lack of maintenance at these "hot springs," yet the narrator and the woman don't seem to mind (they also have quite an uncanny knack for finding these forgotten, ignored places), even going as far to have sex in the disgusting, murky "spring" while dead fish float all around them. They don't mind the hoards of fish, somehow, even though I think most people would vomit just at the thought of such a sight. They are able to find some weird sort of beauty in this space, even though it probably hasn't been touched in yeards.
One last thought on things being ignored: the narrator writes that “old Italians gather in front of the newspaper in the afternoon and just stand there, leaning up against the building, talking and dying in the sun” (45). Most of the things I've mentioned being ignored are older things, things that are obsolete, or just not "progressive." The sorts of things that get in the way of "going through the green light" in order to get along with one's life, or things like how slowing down to pick up a hitchhiker would take too much time from your schedule (or might get you killed, whatever). I think that one thread in Brautigan's extremely layered and intensely thematically deep novel is this notion of ignored spaces, ideas, or things, especially those that are older, in a time where "modern-ness" is considered to be of the utmost importance.
Friday, October 10, 2008
"Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes"
In Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s San Francisco Poems, the poem “Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes” really stuck out to me. The poem presents two sides of San Francisco: the wealthy, “beautiful” people, and the poorer “scavengers.” For a short moment, they are stuck together at a red light, “holding all four close together/as if anything at all were possible/between them/across that small gulf/in the high seas/of this democracy.” I find the key word in this sentence is “if:” by choosing this word, Ferlinghetti highlights the fact that, of course, “anything” is not possible, and that this scene at a red light is merely a false impression.
The structure of the poem highlights both the “separateness” and “togetherness” of these four people; alternating between having lines in “left” and “right” adjustments and having them more “centered.” Ferlinghetti does have a tendency to do this in his poems, so it’s not particularly unique to this poem, but the connection is nevertheless there. There is also a lot of dissonance between colors in the poem: sometimes things, such as the "bright yellow garbage truck" and "red plastic blazers" are loud and garish, while other things are more muted, such as the man's "three-piece linen suit" or how the older garbage man is described as "some gargoyle Quasimodo."
There are many instances of pitting two things against each other in this poem: the scavengers versus the beautiful people, bright colors versus gray/muted colors, youth versus age, elegance versus "dirtiness," and "hip" versus "un-hip." This is better illuminated by the "small gulf" mentioned at the end of the poem: two shores with one large body of water in between them. The mention of "this democracy" seems a sardonic point in Ferlinghetti's narration of this scene--as this obvious class difference seems to belie any real sense of "democracy." Therefore, it seems as though Ferlinghetti is commenting on the fall of San Francisco: how perhaps, once, it was a great city in which the poor were regarded differently, but now, it's full of "high-class" powerful rich "beautiful" people who never, in the poem, so much looked at the garbage men--though the garbage men looked at them.
The structure of the poem highlights both the “separateness” and “togetherness” of these four people; alternating between having lines in “left” and “right” adjustments and having them more “centered.” Ferlinghetti does have a tendency to do this in his poems, so it’s not particularly unique to this poem, but the connection is nevertheless there. There is also a lot of dissonance between colors in the poem: sometimes things, such as the "bright yellow garbage truck" and "red plastic blazers" are loud and garish, while other things are more muted, such as the man's "three-piece linen suit" or how the older garbage man is described as "some gargoyle Quasimodo."
There are many instances of pitting two things against each other in this poem: the scavengers versus the beautiful people, bright colors versus gray/muted colors, youth versus age, elegance versus "dirtiness," and "hip" versus "un-hip." This is better illuminated by the "small gulf" mentioned at the end of the poem: two shores with one large body of water in between them. The mention of "this democracy" seems a sardonic point in Ferlinghetti's narration of this scene--as this obvious class difference seems to belie any real sense of "democracy." Therefore, it seems as though Ferlinghetti is commenting on the fall of San Francisco: how perhaps, once, it was a great city in which the poor were regarded differently, but now, it's full of "high-class" powerful rich "beautiful" people who never, in the poem, so much looked at the garbage men--though the garbage men looked at them.
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