I lived in SanFran or thereabouts for a quick year or so as a minority-stricken elementary school youth. Many of my memories have faded but I recall the outer-suburb of Concord as warm (warmer than downtown SanFran somehow, we would note the difference in temperature by our trips to the Crookedest street and other city landmarks and the required additional light jackets), plum-tree full and quiet. So seemingly quiet and empty and (relatively) foreign that getting lost in your own neighborhood during a learning-to-drive period and pre-cellphone era could bring your young mom to tears. Still, from Queens, I would reminisce on the single-floor buildings that comprised my school campus and the consequent in-and-out experience of daily instruction. What a contrast with five or six stories, and excersing in between class with textbook weights just to get to and from or treating the half hour “recess” as a momentary reminder of what it means to live in a world with authentic sunlight. And almost dreamlike is my memory of watching, with excitement and relief because of the break from that early form of “work”, the live presentation of the Space Shuttle Challenger taking off into the imaginary darkness of space via the bright safety of the sky, only to learn in a confused and retrospective manner that the brightness of the sky, the beauty of clean blue, the warmth of the sun and the pride of a teacher, an elder, who so enthusiastically wanted to share in the achievement of her peer, is not enough to prevent disaster. In those days disaster was sometimes a far off explosion that took time to understand or sometimes a slightly bigger-than-you, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy with a Karate sweep that was difficult to defend. Off and on I used to miss Concord, the weekends in SanFran and visits to my friend’s trailer park, with the communal pool built up in the center of the parked mobile homes. I would like to go visit again one day.



San Francisco, CA. is taken from BOAC’s Project Roach, available this January 24th on Machete Vox Records.