Excerpt: Resident Aliens

Brass in Pocket
I got to be a regular and know the other regulars on the Plaza over the next couple of years. There were the bead-stringers, not considered Real Craftspeople at all, as most of them were rumored to outsource their work, or even to import ready-made necklaces and earrings for sale. Certainly, all their work looked alike. Hishi beads, liquid silver, and mother of pearl fetish beads... boring. But they made money from the public, who didn't know any better. A major step up on the artistic scale were the jewelers who made their bracelets, rings, and necklaces themselves, usually of silver set with semiprecious stones. You could tell that their work was their own, or at least done by family. Entire families would sit at their tables or jewelry cases on the plazas, with the little kids standing in for their parents when it was necessary to dash into the Hyatt Regency to use the bathroom. And then there were other Real Crafts: stained glass, wood carvings, leather, one Italian woman who crocheted hats and whose cry was "No paper! No paper!" (I think she meant that her hats were made of wool only, but never figured it out.) And there was Dolores, who was a bead-seller, but whose beads were large and ethnic, and who sat stringing necklaces for all to see, necklaces which were major wall art, much too big and heavy for the average person to wear. Dolores was one of the old guard who had sold crafts on the streets since the Sixties. These people were forever telling everyone that the quality of crafts had gone down from the old days, always ending with "you should have been here then!" and a regretful headshake. (I have no doubt that someone was already saying this after the second week anyone ever sold things on the street, back in ancient Babylon.)

Among the leather crafters there were several bikers, leather being the preferred artistic medium for anyone with any pretentions to biker chic. Helen was actually married (common-law) to one of the local Hells Angels; Spider and Kathy had come up from Texas on his bike and now lived in a battered trailer which they parked wherever they could on the city streets at night, taking showers at the nearby YMCA and keeping most of their stock of belts, buckles, leather purses, chaps, and so on in a $5-a-week room at the Audiffred Hotel at the foot of Mission Street, in the dirt and shadows of the Embarcadero Freeway. The hotel was a last-gasp resting place for winos and the aged poor, incongruously set in the then-faded Victorian splendors of the Audiffred Building, built in 1889 and one of the few downtown structures to survive the 1906 earthquake. (This building would be gentrified in 1983 and is now the site of Boulevard, a high-end restaurant catering to the well-to-do. The Embarcadero Freeway is long gone, and nobody misses it. The winos and aged poor are making do under other freeways.)

Sundays were the biggest moneymaking day on the Plaza. In order to prevent sellers from camping out all night and reserving the choicest spots, the regular Plaza sellers got together and instituted the Sunday Morning Table Races. The contestants for the best spots would line up at the Market Street end of the plaza, folding tables in hand. As the Ferry Building clock struck six am, they would dash for the spaces facing the Hyatt Regency, at times skimming their metal tables ahead of them along the sidewalk to secure the desired spot, while everyone else cheered and clapped. The rest of the street artists made do with the rest of the Plaza. After everyone's table was placed to the general satisfaction, we would all pile into various cars and go to Sears Restaurant on Powell Street to breakfast on their famous Swedish pancakes. By seven am everyone would be setting up. On weekends we locals would be joined by crafters from further afield, and the selection of wares would widen. There were batik artists, doll and puppet makers, booths with beautiful hand-dyed clothing, and many more; the Plaza on Sunday was the place to be.

The weather. Ah, the weather. Mark Twain famously described the chill of a San Francisco summer, but what he didn't mention is that it might alternate with hot spells. Going out to sell on the street meant taking a lot of extra clothes to put on and take off as the temperature fluctuated. It would be cold and foggy in the mornings, and the street artists, ever hopeful, would say, "It'll burn off by noon." Noon, if predictions were correct, would be hot; then at three, the afternoon fog would start coming in, at first in wisps, then in chilly clouds. You could look up Market Street and see it spilling over the rampart of Twin Peaks, and know that pretty soon it would be time to pack up and go home.