[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age. If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)

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by Victoria Lucas

Life in the Big City

You'll be glad to know I've evolved a routine (haha). Weekdays: walk to 633 Battery after taking J streetcar to Market and Sansome, bus up Sansome, reading book. (I'm on Moby Dick right now.) Back same but bus goes down Battery Street to Market. Catch streetcar back to the end of Church at 30th where it turns around in front of my apartment.

Saturdays: walk to parks, sometimes all the way to North Beach. If I have any money I might drive to and shop at the Safeway at Market and 7th Street. If it's nearly Friday payday sometimes all I have left is spaghetti and margarine. Saturday nights usually a date (if it's with dinner I don't usually eat during the day). I very occasionally drive somewhere like Berkeley or San Mateo or Santa Cruz if I have money for gas and/or a show or concert. I wonder when I'm going to get a raise to a whole dollar an hour.

Sunday: mornings I pick up the Sunday Chronicle, a heavy load. I read the funnies first, then the pink section. The pink section is the entertainment section, and I eagerly devour it, looking for stuff I want to do–especially free stuff.  This last weekend I found something both wonderful and free and on my usual weekend route, at the Civic Center.

A patron of the Arts

I learned they have these Arts Festivals in Civic Center Plaza in the fall.  In fact, sometimes musicians play their instruments in echoing spaces under the eaves or in the lobbies of some of the Civic Center buildings, so I usually stop here on my weekend itinerary through the City.

Civic Center Plaza, San Francisco

This time the Plaza was my destination, shown here with City Hall, the building with the dome bisecting the Plaza's green areas.  City Hall faces Van Ness Avenue (not visible at the bottom, a major north-south street), and the Plaza takes up two city blocks, just as City Hall does.  I learned that it was the San Francisco Tape Music Center that furnished the Marantz speakers that enlivened the gathering from both ends of the Plaza.  This year the Arts Festival was held on September 25 through 27.  You'll notice on the program below that a misprint had September 26 as Friday, when it should have been September 25.

Friday it began with folk dancing and a "Dancer's Workshop" but at 8 pm The San Francisco Tape Music Center revved up its speakers and regaled us with contemporary music.  Oh, what bliss!  Then from 9-10 were experimental films, starting with Bruce Baillie.  But since I was alone (and the Tenderloin is right there), I couldn't stay, so I walked to Market Street and paid my 15 cents for the J streetcar back to my apartment. As I walked away I heard the first notes of the music accompanying Baillie's "To Parsifal," and knew I wouldn't be sorry I left. I hate Wagner.

Steve Reich, with San Francisco Mime Troupe

Saturday I wasn't really interested in the folk dancing so after a leisurely breakfast and walk I arrived at the Plaza in time for the San Francisco Mime Troupe's production of Moliere's "Tartuffe," directed by R. G. Davis and with music by Steve Reich, who is sometimes featured at the Tape Music Center.  Somebody told me that the Saul Landau listed in the program as responsible for "Lyrics" makes films.  They cranked up those Marantzes again.  Dance and poetry and dance again, and a puppet show by the Lilliputian Theater.

Lilliputian Theater puppet

Finally, at 8 pm more Tape Music Center.  The Marantzes danced.  Again the first film was by Bruce Baillie, and that's great, but once again I had to leave early.  On Sunday more dance, more puppets, El Troupo de Mimo (as the Mime Troupe likes to call itself) performed "Tartuffe" again. I hear they performed one of my favorite plays last year; I wish I could have seen it: Jarry's Ubu Roi.

San Francisco Mime Troupe in Ubu Roi

Come on Down

After more dance the Tape Music Center was back on Sunday at 6 and only till 7, since Monday was a workday. It was still summer here, and the evenings were cool and breezes carried the smell of food cooking and being served from the carts and tents on the Plaza. People were everywhere. It was a delightful night, and I really, really hope they do this again next year–especially the Mime Troupe and the Tape Music Center. However, the Mime Troupe performs in the parks, and I'll be seeing them, and the Tape Music Center is on Divisadero right on a bus route. I'll be hearing them again soon. You should come and see them along with San Francisco's other sights. It's a happening City, and I love it!

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