A Digression in Contrasts in Everyday Ramblings

“This is one of the oldest structures in the area, built in 1876. It became a boarding house where over time several Hebrew School teachers lived as well as a dance teacher.”

I took this yesterday and I understand the angle is a little odd but it is hard to get a decent shot of this one. Once again the freeways and busy arteries leading South and across the river to the East have been carved around it and it is surrounded on three sides by busy streets now and the front is almost totally obscured by vegetation. A single family with a boy child lives in the upstairs now. There was clearly a barn downstairs on the bottom of the hill.

The story of the dance teacher intrigues me, as does the pugilist that lived in the house in the next block. They both clearly taught at the settlement house.

I get daily emails from Nordstrom’s, which I often just delete but yesterday morning I was struck by the contrast of the two models in the ad. A very very light skinned young female with long almost silver white hair and a very dark skinned young male with sharp angles in his face.

When I was in my early 30’s and living in San Francisco I had a roommate for a time that was so fair skinned as to be almost albino and one of her friends was a charming funny very dark skinned social worker. For some reason that over a period of months became less than accidental I would always answer the phone when he called and he flirted with me mercilessly.

I am not easy to flirt with so I appreciated the effort. :)

In time I started seeing him and we were together as primary boyfriend and girlfriend for 5 years. Mr. Zanzibar. He is 17 years older than me, which was a big shock to both of us. That will make him 78 next January. Eek. We are still good friends and I often miss him. He chooses to not interact on the Internet, which makes contact with him challenging. Mr. Luddite. Affectionate Grrr.

Anyway… as I was wandering around with my camera yesterday I walked by the trashed red cottage that is behind the apartment house that was turned around to face the other way and this large handsome older dark skinned man came out in just some rolled up pants, clearly he was very buff once upon a time, muscle gone to fat and I started talking to him about the place.

At one point he went inside to get his phone to call the owner to ask him some of the questions I was asking and I looked up and standing in the entryway was this very thin very pale woman with gray white hair and sunken cheeks, ravaged by both illness and my guess would be drugs.

The juxtaposition of these clearly down on their luck folks living in a mess of a historic cottage and that Nordstrom’s ad was quite startling and poignant.

There have been sinkholes opening up down in that area a little closer to the river than I am. There was a brick sewer that has been crumbling and significant work has been going on to bolster the supports on the busy Ross Island Bridge. The gentleman told me, and actually showed me that the cottage had sunk about a foot in the last year.

They probably redid the foundation of the apartment building when they turned it around. That turns out to have been a very smart thing to do indeed.

I read an anecdote somewhere earlier in the week that one of the houses in the neighborhood was actually moved down to the river and put on a barge and is now a houseboat.

It is quite interesting living somewhere where the houses, umm, get up and move around.

There is a world of poems here!

Last updated August 02, 2015