One morning in November of 1983, I drove my Chevy Nova from my $150 room in a decrepit old house just off from the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, into the North Beach district on the north end of the San Francisco peninsula. As usual, the smell of fine coffee permeated the air. A welcomed contrast having traveled past where Chinatown intersects with Columbus. Back then, the freeway deposited you onto Broadway St. so as to take a right turn onto Columbus Ave. That is, if you worked at a music store on said avenue, as I did back then.
Back then, people didn’t go to SF in search of normalcy nor convention. San Francisco was inherently anomalous and that’s what made it fun, if not sometimes a little cold and lonely. The ‘Minnesota nice’ I left behind had its own challenges, but as many have done, a foray into ‘San Francisco weird’ was how my version of the search that is being nineteen presented itself.
Historically, Broadway Street has been the city’s red-light district, replete with the displays and sketchiness that such a street exudes. To me as a musician, Broadway was somewhat mythic as a place where, it was told, Wes Montgomery, Lenny Bruce, Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis — would all be playing gigs on any given night. This was back in the sixties. Now, it was the decidedly different eighties. A club called The Stone was now the preeminent place to see diverse acts, or the great guitarist Allan Holdsworth who was forging fresh new paths in what Wes would not have imagined as ways to play jazz guitar.
In any case, working in a music shop situated between The Stone and Bill Graham’s club, Wolfgang’s, meant meeting many of the musicians and tour managers who had gigs at these two clubs with their attendant last-minute equipment needs. Saturdays were always full of extra zing down in North Beach. On one of these Saturdays, the store owner, the rather flamboyant Don Wehr, introduced me to the concert promoter Bill Graham. How to put it? You know how some things are holographic, in the sense that you just see a fragment of something … and that fragment somehow conveys a myriad of a larger picture? To me, as a somewhat star-struck kid steeped in the Minnesota nice, Graham provided a glimpse into what sort of force of nature would actually propel rock and roll. Another story. But impressive. Don Wehr was like that too. Beyond sharing birthdays, albeit twenty years apart — it was obvious upon first meeting, that essentially, we came from two different planets. (Funny to be writing this from the hustle-challenged locale of the upper Puna district on Hawaii Island. Apparently, Don hailed from these islands. Yet, knowing a little of Don’s … drive, one doesn’t quite imagine him content to placidly arrange his beach towel in the sun.)
Having turned off Broadway — proceeding to work — the display of famed stripper Carol Doda’s flashing nipples upon a sign outside The Condor was enhanced with the added display of police cars and other emergency vehicles. Ah well, flashing nipples as promotional lure is bound to end in trouble, right?
Arriving to work on this morning, whereupon we began another day, anticipating what sales openings, and more importantly, closings, would light up our own metaphoric nipples — word had begun to emerge from down Columbus at the Condor Club.
It should be said here, that I had sales ‘closing’ skills far inferior to my folksy Nordic ‘opening’ skills. Perhaps fittingly, I became a teacher/homesteader who enjoys writing in the forest. To wit: another young man (who, were I a profitable salesman, would have been identified primarily as customer) was enthusiastically enjoying his bass playing upon a nice Fender bass which I had earlier strung up with the Rotosound brand strings now being slapped funky.
“Wow man. What strings are on this? It sounds great!”
To which I answered, “They’re Rotosounds”. Alas, I could just feel the disappointment of Jerry the manager, upon my reply to the musician, whom I’d incorrectly identified primarily as fellow-string-zealot and no more.
After the funky lad left the store, it was time for the briefest of sales lessons. Obviously a lesson long known by all my co-workers.
“Ahem, so Darren. The thing is, when the customer inquires of the brand of bass strings that he is enjoying … you’re definitely going to want to tell him that they are THE BRAND THAT WE HAVE IN STOCK, and not the Rotosounds that we don’t! See how that works?”
I imagine that this lesson, in various forms, gets taught at institutions beyond music stores.
At this point, the good reader may ask,
“How do flashing nipples work into this?” … as if nipples need any excuses …
Well … Carol Doda is reckoned to be the first woman to ‘publicly’ dance topless. Bob, the dude, just doesn’t make history with his nipples, public or otherwise. Something for another post perhaps. She also had, what even to Minnesotans, would be called “an impressive rack”. Not only that, but Carol — who brought such promotion as only publicly nekkid ta-tas in 1964 will do — had some other cool props. One was an elevator piano. The descending piano was but one of the signatures of her burlesque act. So naturally, to descend upon a 15-foot high piano would only heighten the … well, I’m not sure what. Where I come from 44-inch boobs are simply enough titillation. Wait a minute! Two times 44 is 88 … and … let’s continue.
Well, apparently, sometime in the early morning, the assistant manager of The Condor night club: James (Jimmy the Beard) Ferrozzo, climbed atop his ‘girlfriend’ upon the piano. Of the erections that may, or may not, have occurred that night, most significantly, the elevator piano accidentally rose to the ceiling — whereupon, in flagrante delicto, Jimmy got crushed to death. Equally unfortunate (well, unequal in the death part), the young lady “entangled” as the Chronicle put it, was on the hysterical side upon being extricated in the morning. (“Angel Vicente, the club’s janitor, found the couple pinned between the piano and the ceiling 15 feet off the ground at 7:30 a.m., police said.”)
Of the more legit reasons for a woman’s hysteria, this probably qualifies. And not to project here, but as “entangled” isn’t exactly a sexual position we’d denote in the gymnastics that can be love-making worthy of the make-y part, I’m pretty sure I’d prefer being crushed by an elevator piano whilst on the bottom (of the woman, not the piano) if I had to choose. I’d also like her to be sort of svelte … maybe a stiff drink within reach. A digression.
But there you have it.
And to think that in 2020, as I watch virtual nerd conferences about javascript; it’s apparently seen as rapscallion to wear a funny hat and leave it at that.
Wacky coder? um, you sort of lost me there …
Flashing nipples?
You’re at the wrong convention … in a different San Francisco.
Island Notes 