Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Good things about Main Street and Central Street in San Francisco is that they aren't.

Main is off Market Street running in one direction, south, on one side of the Federal Reserve building as Market Street gets close to the Ferry Building and the Bay.

Crossing Haight Street, Central is one street in the downhill direction from Masonic. It's where the Haight-Ashbury shopping district ends really, though it kind of feels like it ends back at Masonic.

In addition to being not main or central, Main and Central Streets have in common a grey wall and money motif.

Main goes by the side of the Federal Reserve of San Francisco building which there manifests as a big grey wall. It ends in a fenced parking lot where armored money trucks come in and then go out the other side of the parking lot on Spear Street. People in the building behind the wall think about money in big abstract ways and also one dollar bills and their friends come and go.

Central and Haight has the Haight Central Market which has starting at the corner of Central and going along Haight Street a mural once a grey paint base. There's a little bit of wall and mural right at Central, then the door to the store, the a much longer bit of mural along Haight Street.

The mural is black and white and orange paint on grey. There are great big skillfully done drops of water in black and grey. There are jagged lines, graffiti art feeling, in black and grey. The large and numerous utility meters on the wall are painted orange which gives them a just-in-from outer space feeling that makes them more interesting than the average meter and are a reminder that meters are both common and odd.

That's all on the long part of the mural. On the short part right next to Central on the other side of the door, there's a big drawing of a rasta kind of guy who looks like he just moved his head and his dreads are still swinging. He looks like he's basically happy, not in a perky way but because he's found for himself a good way to live and work against what's wrong.

"Don't gain world and lose your soul. Wisdom is better than silver and gold," are the orange words next to him. He is like an excellent charcoal sketch, blacks and greys. His head is outlined, his hair is outlined in a thing band of orange, like his life intention gleaming.

The drivers of the armored trucks that go in and out of the local Fed can't go just go down some street cause it looks interesting. It is straight from one money place to another for them. It is lucky to have a life where you can make an unimportant byway central to you because it feels good.

The building of the Federal Reserve in San Francisco is secretly and openly not grey. It looks grey from across the street. It implies grey if you rush by its shiny sky reflections. If you look straight at it close up and can avoid reflections, the stone that it is faced with at sidewalk level is made of bits of black and white and what's that third color? The third color might be brown, might be pink, might be a bit like the pink of pink quartz that if you carry it in your pocket, it's supposed to help your heart.