On a Mission

It’s Friday night and everyone’s talking Spanish and you’re feelin the dance comin on and you’re in your groove and you’re owning the street and Tommy yells and flips the bird at a delivery truck and the black guy fryin up ribs in the trunk of his car laughs and you tell him you’ll catch him later and you pass the Indian place and Pancho’s Best of the Bay Burritos and you can hear the women inside chopping steak and chicken and the small Chinese woman herding a couple kids tells em to get out of your way and Brian says in his best-ever Elvis voice, “It’s alright momma, anyway you do.” He tips his hat and it’s an iconic jazzman’s hat and it’s alright. This is the last gasp of SF’s Mission District and the families and the cops and the hipsters and the drugged and the down and the gangsters and the artists and musicians and film-makers and poets and the gonna-be-poets and the long-term mental rental tenants wonder, “WTF?”