The Port of An Francisco

The monolithic buildings of Market Street seem desolate in the early dark, despite the bustle. Bongo drums echo off hard walls and vast stretches of concrete. A single customer sits in a chain-store café so dimly lit it looks closed. Pedestrians are quick, solitary, hurrying to cross streets, to cover ground, dodging street vendors and homeless people pushing carts, sitting on cardboard, hawking newspapers.

One newspaper seller takes advantage of the cluster of pedestrians at a red light to talk to them, as informally as if they were walking together, sharing philosophy, discussing the hardships of life. His tone leaps abruptly when one young man buys a paper: You are going to heaven, sir! You are going to heaven!

A block east, people pour from the dark street into the fluorescent white maw of the BART tunnel, an endless stream of silhouettes filing into a grim subterranean version of the newspaperman’s hereafter. Shadowpuppet cutouts against the stairs: suits and briefcases, jackets and heels.

By a railing, on the north side of the street, a man dressed in white is playing a tenor saxophone. His body bends with the simple lonely song, five notes over and over, echoing up into the cold air.

At the ferry plaza, a craft fair is folding up its tents; a few necklace chains still hang glinting in front of a bare light. Someone has scarves folded on a sheet on the ground. A gray trolley honks as it goes around the corner, a weak and antique-sounding wheeze.

Later, on board the boat, the buildings of downtown are lovely, each angle traced in white Christmas lights. As we begin to pull from the pier the space between them shifts unexpectedly, as if they are moving on their own, as if they are dancing. In front of them is the ferry building, with massive red neon lights spelling out a thwarted farewell from the Port of An Francisco.