Introduction to “The Alice Project”

This excerpt is taken from a project (Dolores Park: A Memoir of the 1990s Bay Area Art Scene) that tries to capture a time and place at once vividly close and impossibly distant. It was San Francisco during the 1990s. At that time, along with many other young people, I strove to find my place in an arts community that had recently been gutted by the AIDS crisis, and which now grappled with the widespread gentrification wrought by the dot-com bubble. I fell in with a varied group of dancers, musicians, poets, and artists of all kinds, each working in their own way to survive and succeed. Everywhere I went — riding buses and trains, walking endlessly up and down the city’s hills — I carried a notebook. I wrote:

A man crossing the street at Market and Larkin was nearly hit by a car, which slammed on the brakes and beeped at him; instead of jumping out of the way, he crouched defiantly in front of it, beating the hood with both fists. The driver leered at him, revving the engine; at last, the man moved to the side, spitting on the windshield as the car screeched away.

There were three young girls talking and goofing in the back of the bus. “Oh, he’s so funny,” one said, “not as funny as yesterday,” another replied, laughing, oblivious to everyone else, their hands light, making gestures with manic fluttering movements. Then two of them stood up to leave. The third girl shared one final laugh with them as they swung down through the rear door, having trouble pushing the handle to open it. As she turned around to take her seat again, she at last became aware of the other passengers, like an actor when the lights come on, her smile fading instantly. Yet she looked around bravely, keeping up a façade, the first thought of the evening rising with the blood faintly making her cheeks flush.

In a children’s soccer game, the ball shot up from a scrum beside the improvised goal and smacked one of the kids in the face; it deflected off him and into the goal. The children were momentarily stunned, but then the team that had scored began raising their arms, laughing and screaming in celebration.

On 16th and Mission, an old woman wearing a shawl stopped walking and gasped upwards, stiffening her back and tossing back her head, staring straight up at the sky. In doing so, she seemed to be completing a motion begun by a frail Chinese woman who’d been shuffling on Broadway in Oakland earlier that same day, completely stooped over, her shoulders hanging below her hips, hands clasped behind her back as she waddled along.

Such were the brief “sketches” of people and things I trained myself to scribble down as I wandered around. But I also worked at turning this lens on myself, in longer entries that encompassed relationships I pursued, creative projects I contributed to, and the endless doubts and insecurities that haunted me every step of the way. “The Alice Project” was one such artistic venture, undertaken with a group of avant-garde dancers, musicians, and theater types. Like the city, it became a world unto itself, with moments of the sublime and absurd, triumph and failure, love and loss. I hope readers find something herein that resonates with them.

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