The Secret Storm

7/14/2015

The Secret Storm

A secret storm rages off shore in the Pacific. Meanwhile in the naked inner city, a sweltering heat in mid day brings every smell to light in the Loin. In the streets there are more half-naked bodies than one cares to confront with most of us wishing in back of our minds it was Thursday when the Lava bus rolls into the hood and showers for every body in desperate need of washing is readily available.

More or less I was an introvert through out the day with many interesting things twirling in my head. As for staying connected, I did so online, chatting with my closest Facebook contacts from distant countries I have come to appreciate and love. Happy Ramadan to all of them.

It was a good day to write. To create as I await other priorities that are still ripening. A walk through the hood is always an interesting delight. The final stages of work are moving swiftly on Randy Shaw's Tenderloin Museum at the corner of Eddy and Leavenworth in the Cadillac Hotel, a dream museum Shaw envisioned some eight years ago is close to opening its doors for natives and a new tourist destination.

Constrution work at the site of TENDERLOIN MUSEUM, Eddy at Leavenworth Street, San Francisco

Exhibition centerpieces at the museum will include recordings of music performed at the Tenderloin's infamous Blackhawk Jazz Club where Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Dave Brudeck, Thelonious Monk and others played 14 years--1949 to 1963. The club gave musical giants endless creative opportunities and hugely affected the global perception of jazz. As a nice fit with the Tenderloin's great past, the museum will be both a daytime gallery and a destination for evening events.

TENDERLOIN MUSEUM will occupy a corner of the Cadillac Hotel, Eddy Street at Taylor

The first, a 7 p.m. opening day, celebrates the legacy of transgender activism in the Loin with video clips and sound from "Screaming Queens," the 2005 documentary about transgender women and drag queens who fought police harassment at Compton's Cafeteria at Turk and Taylor Street in 1966. This area today is minus the cafeteria but is called "ground zero for drugs and violence" by the Tenderlion Police.

On a hot sweltering day, people in the Tenderloin remind me of the South, especially the way they sit around, kind of slow and sluggish, while the rest of the world changes and moves forward.

TENDERLOIN
in PHOTOS

14.JULY.15