In San Francisco town that I don't know yet -- I walk in a traveler's trance with the airplane engines that brought me here still ringing and roaring in my ears and the traffic roars;  California roars;  all around me is the placid confusion that is San Francisco;  I don't know it yet but I mean to. After all cities are only cities but this one; the streets are canyons from where you only see a crack of the sky; neon flashing -- the trolleys trundle by --  night to day is my small prairie city to this place.  I thought they must all be alcoholics here, everywhere liquor stores, everywhere tiny cocktail lounges -- a small old bar on Grant Avenue with bat-wing Wyatt Earp doors and delicious draft beer, nude girls on the walls and crazy people who know everyone but I didn't now anybody, just stared around me with a child's disneyland eyes quaffing beer and atmosphere; kept my mouth shut.  Watched a guy -- fifty-two years old he said -- bumming when he could and telling his story like a religious chant --  broken down he was but he had something to say and I listened.  Said he had eight wives and twenty-nine children, said he could pick up one of his daughters, ball her and never even know her. This city is so fucking anonymous he said, wished me luck as I walked back through western doors; I thanked him and turned my face to the people on the street.  They walked past, drove by, hobbled along, danced around -- every imaginable shape, colour, size and sexual affiliation; I could only blink and stare.

 

       Stared at the awning that hangs over the street in front of City Lights Bookstore, I could see it from up the hill on Broadway, could almost see Kerouac in front, drunk and laughing with his arm thrown around Neal's shoulders, could almost see them but not quite 'cause they're both  gone now but the stores' not and I went in.    Clomped down the stairs staring around me like I should have had a camera around my neck and a hawaiian print shirt and bermuda shorts on  -- Jeez lookit all the books I said to myself -- ran straight to Ginsberg's shelf who I love,  bought what I can't get in Canada because even though  those boys were making history twenty or thirty years ago no one knows  what history is  in Canada so I came  to San Francisco like on a pilgrimage almost and got what I could.

 

        Now I sit at my fine little desk in the Maryland Hotel with the window wide open in front of me and the last rays of sunlight streaming in -- the screaming street is like a huge beckoning finger to me and I wonder about this place where I am  and  I'm drinking little cans of Coors beer hoping that I remember exactly what this moment was like thirty or forty years from now and  its  history and  I want to tell  my kids about it.

 

         Though how can I tell little Canadian kids about palm trees in January and summer blue skies and soft gentle breezes or this mad city.  They won't understand  or won't believe me,  thinking I just made it up to amuse them but it's right out my window, right here!