Frankie's bohemian

When I first came to San Francisco, I was tired and hungry and stopped in at Frankie's Boheminan on Divisadero & Pine out of the blue.

The 49er's were playing on tv, so it must have been a Sunday. Mike Singeltary was the coach and he was still held in high regard, so it was at least 3 years ago.

I'd been out walking neighborhoods, looking for a place to live. It's hard work looking for a place to live, especially doing it the way I do it, by instinct and an over-riding ethos that there is exactly the right place for me and that it's my job to find it. I sat down at Frankie's and ordered the borscht and a Czech beer.

There was a place up on Larkin that was kind of interesting. It had a view of the bridge, but the guy hadn't even changed the cupboard paper or cleaned the carpets and still wanted $4k a month. A 2-bedroom on California between Steiner & Pierce seemed ok, though it needed paint and the traffic from the street below made a sound like a big fast moving river. Two days of looking and these were the only two prospects that turned up.

I sat in Frankie's for a long time, eating borscht and drinking my beer, with Lea Ann. The borscht was good, almost as good as Lea Ann's borscht, and the beer hit the spot. Almost everyone in Frankie's that afternoon was younger than me, but then almost everyone every afternoon is younger than me, especially in certain parts of San Francisco and especially in a place like Frankie's. Everyone was friendly but non-invasive and I felt as if I could sit there for a long time without having to order another beer.

Maybe San Francisco isn't the place for me, I mused that Sunday afternoon in October while sitting at Frankie's.  Maybe the failure to find a place that's just right is a sign of incompatability between person (me) and place (San Francisco). Maybe craigslist, the Chronicle, and the several references from friends who lived in San Francisco and that had only turned up duds or led down blind alleys, weren't the right venues...

I ate the last of the borscht, drained the beer, and paid up. Lea Ann and I walked up Divis, made a right on Washington and wandered into Alta Plaza Park. We sat in the sun on a park bench there, looking out at the city toward Twin Peaks, seeing what John McLaren must have seen when he designed the park. It looked like a city you could eat.

Tired, a little discouraged but buoyed by the view, we walked out of the park, down the long wide steps to Steiner, continuing on Washington toward Fillmore. A woman was sitting on the sidewalk on Washington, planting herbs in a treewell. Lea Ann asked her if she knew anyplace in the neighborhood for rent. She did. We moved in to her little house on Washington about a week later.

Yesterday, I stopped in at Frankie's for lunch. I needed quarters for a parking space. The bartender gave me eight quarters and said I could pay him back later, after I'd eaten. "You trust me?" I said. "Of course," he said. I parked the car, came back in and ordered the spanish sausage and a pint Guinness.

The place hadn't much changed at all. Friday afternoon in June. The tv was on to soccer. Two tables were filled and a guy was eating lunch at the bar. The bathroom's been painted recently and someone's put a hand-made sticker on the paper towel dispenser that reads, "I'm trying to be a nicer person."