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Since this is the Christmas and New Year’s eve time of celebration, after the slam on Nancy taking the fall, here is a look back to lively San Francisco in the 1980s (when she was appointed to a political role by the Jewish feminist cabal of Mayor Dianne Feinstein and Senator Barbara Boxer) during the boom of New Wave music and pogo dancing - and stripper clubs - on the weekend just prior to Christmas mass.
After arriving to the Bay Area due to my health issues in grim smoggy New York City in its default nadir, I relocated to San Francisco - basically to stay alive – where the first available job was at a warehouse in South San Francisco. (Further along, I got involved with video documentary productions and then at a print news service, then enrolled the UC Berkeley journalism school, graduating just in time to cover the Loma Prieta Quake.) In SSF, the only work-break was at the local cowboy bar - a hangout of race car drivers. I soon got tired of lukewarm beer and the song of the year “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places”. So I started searching for other jobs closer to city center.
My own golden memory from that warehouse was lunch hour while listening to tape recordings of opera in the car of a co-worker from Calabria, the Greek-origin region on the boot tip of Italy. His aunt in the old country was an opera singer. His collection of tapes from the Scala theater in Milan introduced me to that music universe - which later enabled me to serve as an opera critic in Tokyo. Also from that astute Calabrian, I first learned about the trade and commerce-based avarice of the Ligurians (or Genoa) and also of their Italo-Jewish bloodlines, such as Christopher Columbus and many of the 'Italo-Mexicans' along the U.S. border – it’s the restless sailor in them that pushed their lust for wealth.
Those lessons from the Old World enhanced my understanding of the secretive Italianos, which led to my recognition of the Unholy Triangle of politicians-gangsters-financiers that is the bane of what the SF Chronicle columnist Herb Cain called 'Baghdad by the Bay' – a secretive hellhole of greed and intrigue. My previous contact with Italians were Sicilian restaurant workers in New York’s Little Italy - a cheerful bunch with none of the uptight reserve of reticent San Franciscans.
Since those good fellas from Sicily in NYC could not pronounce my Japanese name, they adapted to the closest Italian equivalent - Luigi - like Super Mario’s brother. Hey, Luigi, how’ya doin’ today? That helped me feel great in the Lower Manhattan smog, like an insider or at least a walk-on loser with a fedora and tommy gun in Coppola’s ‘Godfather’ movies. I later in life discovered the island of Sicily to be one of my favorite off-work destinations during my journalistic reporting in Europe and North Africa. The local mafioso in the hill country were truly good guys, patriots and protectors of their rural communities. Yet I never filed a single article on Sicily because I narrowly missed the mafia bombings in Palermo by just a couple of weeks - and otherwise had too much fun as a dumb tourist.
A Christmas Carol
Soon after landing a job at an arts supply store near the Latino district, a pert young clerk named Carol Detwiler asked me for a favor. Short and cute, her pastime was as a performer in a loin cloth with her buxom figure covered with white talc powder. Her weird performances were based on a bizarre school of Japanese avant-guard dance - centered on writhing in contorted psychic pain of nuclear bomb victims - as pioneered by the ultra-weird San Kai Juku (mountain sea troupe) based in
In a bit of a tizz on the last Friday of the year, she asked me if I could help set up a New Wave fashion show put on by local art students right after work. “Whatever you ask, sweetheart” - what else could I say? I always tried to look no lower than her pert chin in my pretense of being a gentleman. So I rode a bus to the venue - the Tivoli Cafe in North Beach - and start pushing around tables to clear a fashion runway while one of my co-workers at the store, Leon, mopped the floor. Spotless. Done with fanatic energy. With another 90 minutes to go, I asked him: “Is there anywhere to get a beer or a glass of vino around here?” The problem was that there were dozens of great drinking establishments from high society to down in the dumps. “What kind of question is that?” he smirked.
While strolling down the bumper-to-bumper boulevard, Leon informed me: “Some of those girls are hot to trot, dude.” My cruel reply was: “In that case, I’ll place a bet on them at the race hound track.” He responds: “You are one cold hearted bastard, eh?” Rejoinder: “I’m just picky not by choice because you see there are thousands of lonely females in this gay city who’d do anything for an orgasm. But I’ve got to be selective." “Why?” he asked. “Because you see what the store owner pays us? How many times can I take a date to that piano bar on Nob Hill or to the Top of Mark before she realizes that I earn way less than a garbage-man?” That’s the sky-high lounge of the Mark Hopkins hotel. Never forget to leave a tip.
Being back in poverty should have been disappointing, because I had been offered 1 million dollars – half in cash and the rest in stock shares – if I took over management of an artists’ and art conservator’s supply warehouse in Manhattan. My qualification was being the only person with university schooling in chemistry and the arts. Then one afternoon while strolling past a glass-wrapped café, I saw black fumes pouring out of the exhaust pipes a line of Mercedes limos funneling straight into that high-end eatery where no diners seemed to notice. If I stay it means death within a decade, I realized. Is a million bucks worth losing your health and then your life? So I got an air ticket to California – broke once again...but breathing without pain.
Leon's impertinent reply was, “So that’s why you hang out with scroungy dogs instead of executive secretaries?”
“Hey, my chow-chow Mitzi is groomed by a top dog-show stylist, and the women adore her - mostly ladies over 70.”
He cracked up, knowing I wasn’t BS-ing him. “What about you know who?”
“Am I that obvious? She’s into the Japanese esthetic scene but not interested in a crappy dancer like me. Otherwise, I don’t know why the cold shoulder. Maybe because I can speak English? I'm just not exotic enough - more of a thug, I guess.”
Leon figured: “Or maybe because you’re employed at the arts store, lowest pay in the retail business.”
“What’s money have to do with love or loveless sex for that matter? I get your point - Everything!”
We laughed at the bachelor’s predicament while pushing through the crowd. As an urbane habitue of local Italian descent, he said: “Hey, ever see Carol Doda?” My reply: “Only her nude figure on a neon sign.” So, we strolled down the street and slipped through the curtain - only to hear a bouncer report, “Miss Doda came down with a cold so the show’s off tonight.” OK, with that Christmas let-down, I asked, “What’s the difference between the two Carols?” "Huh?" “Leon, you are slow: Detwiler’s are real. Va-va-boom! Where next, bro?”
I followed huffing behind Leon who was trotting ahead. “This is it,” he said while nodding to the doorman that I wasn’t a nerd tourist from Tokyo. We sat down at a tiny table in the back, while a band was playing an atrocious parody of Italian folk ballads and the waiter slammed glasses of stale vino on our table. “Say, Leon, if my suspicion is correct, could this be the Finocchio's transvestite club?” He answered: “You ready to leave already? This is the cultural heart of Li’l Italy.”
Repartee “Oh, I get it now - a local treasure like Tony Bennett’s ‘I left my arse in San Francisco.’ So, every last one of you Dagos are queer? What have you Eye-ties got against the real deal? Wait! I know it’s the Mama Mia complex. Grown-up girls make you feel like little boys.”
Leon choked with laughter. “Hey, that’s rude of you, bro’. And never say “tranny” around here. Didn’t anyone tell you that the Italian slang for a queer is ‘Nancy’? I got a girlfriend but her name is Sally - no macho man dates a Nancy.” I jumped to the occasion: “Oh, I get it - fancy Nancy prancy faggots.” Putting an index finger to his lips: “Not so loud, man, some of these fags are boxers and hit-men.” “Say, could that Italiano number on the board of city supervisors be a Pinochio in drag?” “Yeah, it’s weird, she’s from a rich family whose background nobody in the Italian circles ever mentions.” “So, just another feminist crook.”
To change the angle, I inquired: “So where are all the queers in wigs and lipstick?” Leon pointed to a curtain that was being waved by two drag queens. ”Ugly as ugly gets! Franken-swine!” “Damn it,” he muttered, “the waiter just told me the show doesn’t start for another 40 minutes. Before that we got to get back at the Tivoli. So for a bunch of artsy students you’ve got to miss prime time hilarity in North Beach.” “Thank God for artsy students!”
After we polished off the wine, I asked “What’s your fiancee think of us hanging around this queer hell hole?” “She comes here all the time,” he boasted. “What?” I stuttered, “you got some sort of sexual inadequacy?” Laughing, we got out of that lowest level of Dante’s Hell and strolled past gaggles of gawking tourists.
So back to Tivoli headquarters for the goofy surreal fashion show - plates for hats and dresses bouncing up on pogo sticks - plus a passable amateur band’s version of Elvis Costello’s 'You’ve got to be cruel to be kind'. Applause and whistling as the band closed and artsy kids bowed. At a table of girls, Carol waved at me and then got back to her conversation, leaving me wondering whether she was being kind or cruel.
With the amps turned off we could hear the raucous noise from across the boulevard blaring out of the Mabuhay Gardens club for pogo dancing idiots shouting like lunatics and so Leon pushes me out the doorway to get a quiet dinner farther down the street at the Columbus Cafe. Inside an open kitchen with tall flames and food flying in the air. Leon ordered for the both of us...fresh squid fried in olive oil topped by freshly picked basil leaves. After gobbling in starved silence, I announced: “This is better than seafood in Japan and that’s impossible - and its way cheaper.” (The homey cafe is now a biker and boozers’ dive - that’s progress.)
Then we headed to an ancient cafe with waiters in white coats in the heart of Little Italy for espresso. He asks if I want a shot of Amaretto in the coffee. “I guess I look like a goofy tourist from Japan, eh? Not that slimy gunk but what about a double shot of grappa on the side - Montepulciano, no make it from western Sicily. And be sure it’s cheapo.” “Oh, I get it, Old Country rot gut. You are the connoisseur of the good stuff.” “Just like Mad Dog 2020. Makes me feel right at home.” It was a smooth first sip, surprisingly, when I had ordered rotgut. “Leon, after stopping by that gay club, I’m starting to comprehend the children’s story, you know Pinocchio, the puppet boy with an erection for a nose and naughty kids turning into jackasses with emphasis on ass. That probably has been pedophile grist in Italian mill for centuries. What have you guys got against procreative sex with a female who’s got real boobs? Italian dames are gorgeous - or at least some of them, OK, maybe a just a few.”
He chokes on his coffee with a laugh: “You know in a crowded country of large families, there are too many males so we got to ship them off to the priesthood, the army and crews on ships. They say that Mussolini had some gay appeal, you know - the unholy Italian vice - Hell, we were just at Finocchio’s. The problem around here is that most of us in San Francisco are from Liguria - the Genoa region - very urbane, reserved and totally Establishment - everything it takes to be a loyal fascist and closet fag.”
Then one of my college history lessons came back to me: “Faggots? Wasn’t that the Fascist symbol of a bundle of sticks around an axe? I’m starting to get it. Il Duce was the big axe and the rest were his bum boys.” Leon nodded: “Macho men in daylight, little girls at night.”
“You’re onto something there. All the women Mussolini befriended were mother types, older than him. And Jewish. So, can I presume your great dictator was a just little Jewish boy, eh?” “Yoi, you know too much. Be careful, a mob hit man could come after you for that.”
“That’s maybe why my neighbors are so uneasy about any mention of Il Duce and put him on a pedestal like a saint. We got those types in Japan, too - insane war-mongering drunkards saluting the old Empire mainly because they like young guys and meanwhile drinking scotch whiskey imported from England.” We chuckled at the pathos. “Humans are the same sort of social trash no matter where.“
“Better not say such stuff around here, you know a lot of us Italianos are still sensitive about losing the war. The skeptics – you know anarchists and socialist scumbags say Il Duce was queer, a Jew and Freemason, which upsets the oldsters, even our liberal leaders, probably because it’s true, eh?” “No doubt. Guilty as charged on all three counts.”
“Gosh, Leon, maybe that’s why every time I mention the war and fascism, the conversation abruptly ends with the neighbors excusing themselves and walking away. I feel like a ignorant naive outsider, I guess.”
“No, you’re just a well-informed insensitive Jap bastard,” and at that we both laughed like madmen. Yeah, the good old ’80s. I wonder what ever happened to him.
The Sicilian Factor
That sort of hyper-sensitivity was never there in New York. Prior to resettling in San Francisco, my Italiano friends were waiters and dishwashers in New York’s Italian quarter - primarily Sicilians, an islander population that have mixed bloodlines from the Greeks, Carthaginians, Arabs, the Normans, Spanish and even American flyers (as in Joseph Heller’s 'Catch 22'). During my travels in Sicily (starting with the worst era of Mafia bombings in Palermo), Sicily’s culturally diverse heritage always held surprises for visitors, including the colorful sea-based menu that different from, say, the high cuisine of Rome or and cream in Florence. As opposed to northern elitism, Sicilian society was based on tiny rural communities with anti-authoritarian attitudes and countrified bravado and expectance of corruption - all with deliberate coarseness, especially in their sun-toasted non-vintage power wines.
For me, Pythagoras - the founder of theorems - was the undisputed icon of Sicily, a firm rock to stand on when lifting the rest of the world with a lever. Why didn’t he just fling it into outer space and we’d be done with it? Perhaps because the view of the Mediterranean from the cliff at Agrigento with its Greek temple at your back is beyond spectacular with the wave-tossed glittering ocean below - a reason to celebrate life in awe of nature. Sure, the local mafia - the good old boys - were everywhere and generally friendly with a laugh about foreign prejudice based on the Godfather movies. Many of them limped along while leaning on a cane, but there is not a hint of resentment or self-pity among them. Hot tempers, quick violence and vengeance, it’s the Saracen - piratical Arabian sailors - heritage in their bloodlines. Their honesty about reality and acceptance of the limitations of life most impressed me. Yes, ambition is for deluded fools. Try to be happy with what you’ve got – mainly life.
As compared with New York and Sicily, San Francisco was a pale runner-up, my reserved soft-spoken neighbors slow to warm up to strangers and so quiet about “business” matters. The majority of early Italian immigrants - especially during and after the California Gold Rush - were from Liguria. Coddled within the seaside curve around Genoa, Ligurians are mercantile, materialist and businesslike individuals. Ethnically, their’s is one of the most Roman of bloodlines without the Etruscan heritage of Tuscany or Greek matriarchal traditions of the Boot Toe of Calabria. There is, however, an ever-so-faint Jewish undertone, even in its most famous son - Christopher Columbus - typically involved in a never satisfied quest for wealth wherever that may be. There are traces of that mercenary Jewish mindset in, for instance, Nancy’s husband Paul who runs the China Fund, a money-laundry for investment in Chinese industrialism aka fentanyl exports to the “gweilo” or white ghosts - all of which smacks of the Opium War era in the Sassoon’s corrupt Shanghai - political manipulation and dirty money aka Mammon.
Born too late to indulge in ancient history, Leon’s uncle who I met a North Beach café once told me about the early days of the immigrants and how Italian ladies used to wash their laundry at fountains and hang them up for the sun to dry. The sheets would flat like the sails on the boats crisscrossing the Bay. There’s no term in Italian for a “money launderer; instead the term is ricicatore – a recycler – how very environmentally correct, perfect way to cover crime in California.
As for Italiano bad guy heroes, we’ve now got Luigi Mangione (surname meaning a food merchant or green grocer like the father of the trumpet player Chuck Mangione). Justice done for all the victims in our coast-to-coast village – truly a Sicilian solution – like that intruder who smacked a crooked Paul Pelosi, money lender to the Chinese fentanyl industry. Bravo!
And Buon Natale! Let the Christmas bells ring!
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