Salt Flats from E. Roehl. on Vimeo

restaurants, a maritime goods store, The Fisherman’s and Seamen’s  Memorial Chapel, boat tours, bike rentals, themed restaurants galore and lots and lots of people. Riding my bike into this theme-park end of town I felt as though I had entered a city completely foreign to me. Small stands with items for sale hanging like stalactites from the roof - beach balls, Bandanas with “I heart SF” written on

them, coffee mugs and postcards and cotton candy, reminded me of many many other cities I had been to. Fisherman’s Wharf, I realized, was the best representation of Americana I could have asked for.

Amid the din of homogeny is a local treasure located at Pier 45: le Musée Mécanique  (the mechanical museum). And it’s exactly that - a museum,

or shrine, to the mechanical arcade machines that once drew small hands and big eyes to theme parks. Le Musée Mécanique is, as the

San Franciscans however may be completely unaware that they are seafaring folk. Seafaring folk eat fish, lots of cheap fish.

So what happened to San Francisco? Well overfishing, wealth and imports I guess, but somewhere along the line, West coasters forgot that they ever liked the stuff. Fish is treated like a delicacy in this city. After a lovely trip to Maine last summer I became painfully aware of that fact. If, like me, every once in a while you get the urge to have a handful of battered and fried fish for a dose of Americana, there is a place I can point you. 

IN THE NEXT ISSUE

Something to look forward to from the Purple & Gray.

1. ★ Issue #4 will be dedicated to the sacred practice of correspondence: letters, emails, love notes, eviction notices and more.
   

2. ★ Issue #4 will mark the bi-monthly status of the Purple & Gray...hurray!

Photo by E.Roehl 2010

Photo by E.Roehl 2010

Photo by G. Walker 2010

A great East coast style fish eatery in the city is the Woodhouse Fish Co. Owner Dylan Macniven, seems to be cut out for the restaurant life. Other than an intensity about the eyes, he comes off as a college type and a man that enjoys life. In fact, Googling Dylan will lead you to a smorgasbord of bizarre activities and familial connections. For example, you might run across pictures of his younger brother Tyler who won the Amazing Race a few years ago and now is making documentaries.  Or you could happen upon a link to Dylan’s father’s restaurant - Buck’s, a California legend and glut of Americana. Or you might just come across the puzzling photos of Dylan bating a humpback whale with a buoy made of Cordarounds and balloons. These Macniven e-sightings paint an intriguing portrait of Dylan and his business model. He’s not interested in press or advertising, he doesn’t do the trendy white fish in Awapuhi oil on top of mâche, goji berries and bacon.

White fish for fish and chips. Cole slaw the way you’d find it at a picnic but not drowned in mayo - you can taste the cabbage. The fries are crispy and well fried but not dripping with grease and they are definitely not home-fries. MacNiven found an esthetic that he liked and a hole in the market: cheap*, tasty, East Coast style seafood. MacNiven’s food is simple, American fare. Americana - or what might be more aptly called sentimentality-for-anything-we-grew-up-with, if done right is generally a winning venture.

An exploration of Bay Area Americana took me to the inevitable

source of America - from Levi Strauss of Bavaria, to Le Musée Mécanique whose toys hail from England and

Germany, to the Woodhouse Fish Co. where they serve the British favorite, fish and chips - our objects of nostalgia are really a confused but brilliant amalgamate of a yearning for the Old

Country. God Save the Queen and God Bless America.

C placed a single letter in the center of the star, the letter E, for Empire. Our mock-ument to American expansion was a star of empire embedded in a rocky landscape constructed from the grey rocks at the rim of a dead lake. Our cactus flag barely stood upright in the hard salt and we fussed over it endlessly, begging the breeze to blow just-so. The breeze cooperated. We captured a short video clip of the little

Cowboy culture dominates; there is a metal bed frame that invokes a “home on the range”   tucked under a staircase and a red white and blue serape adds a touch of New Mexico charm. To those who see, the question of “who is American?” seems to pepper the quaint, contrived American frontier display.

The Bay Area, California, like my younger self, likes to deny its Americanness - probably because no one can decided who here is American or, if we’re all American, what does that mean about the rest of the country and a national identity? On my search for Americana in the Bay Area, I took a dangerous voyage into the lost and forgotten (to all but the tourists) region of San Francisco: Fisherman’s wharf (home to the infamous Pier 39), which I had a hunch, might reveal the Americanness of San Francisco.

Let me begin by saying that I never, ever, go to Fisherman’s Wharf. In fact the last time I spent any time there was when I was seventeen and didn’t know any better. Fisherman’s Wharf is about as un-San Franciscan as possible. Every destination city has an area like it where citizens earn a living off the tourists they despise; and, generally these parts of town are (ironically) the reason the city became a destination to begin with.

San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf is one of the only districts in the city that still milks its own maritime history. There are crab shacks and seafood

There is a placard describing the “New American’s Project” which reads, “This July 4th Levi’s tapped into the Pioneering Spirit of our nation and asked for words and pictures; thoughts feelings and laughter that embrace Today’s America.” American flags paper the walls and are dotted with flag artifacts  - quilts and books, boxing gloves, a motorcycle helmet - all sporting the stars and stripes.

A  green and white motif, white clapboard and fishing paraphernalia dapple the walls of Woodhouse. Fish and chips, mussels, crab cakes, lobster rolls, stuffed artichokes, black and white movies or footage of the bay and a sense of good ol’ days by the sea is the formula.  The fry batter is light and flaky, the fish is fresh and tasty though low key.

website states,  “one of the world’s largest privately owned collections of mechanically operated musical instruments and antique arcade machines”. It houses scary  fortune telling dolls, Laffing Sal, frightening carousel music, dusty carpets, amber lights illuminating tarnished handles, a Wurlitzer and one of the last surviving photo booths in the city. Originally housed in the Cliff House of San Francisco, the Musée is relatively new at the Pier and is a private collection of oddments.

After making it out of the clogged arteries of the Wharf I got to thinking about the fried fish stands strategically placed on each corner. Those little huts lorded over by their mascot  - a hoary bearded fisherman with a yellow slicker and pipe, made me notice their absence in the rest of the city and I thought that San Francisco (proper) must be one of the only coastal towns that pretends it has nothing to do with the ocean at all.

San Francisco is a peninsula. Which, by definition, means that there is water, and by water I mean ocean, on almost all sides of the city. In any other place this would mean that its inhabitants would make their living by means of the resources biting at their heals and seeping into their garments. Or at least you could tell that at some point that’s how the city made its way.

Laffing Sal

*A first glance at the Woodhouse menu might lead you to say, “actually that food isn’t so cheap,” but here’s the deal, it is. For example, have you tried to find a lobster roll in San Francisco or outlying cities? If you have been to the northern, East Coast states, ie Maine, and you’re privy to the buttery hotdog bun loaded with lobster in mayo, you will know that lobster rolls are worth tracking down and that no, you can’t easily find them out here. If and when you do, be prepared to drop a month’s lunch money on one. Then check out the rolls at Woodhouse and you’ll notice that they are roughly half the cost. “It’s about the price of a burrito” MacNiven told me one afternoon when I visited his Church and Market location, and it’s a true.

we had gathered and constructed our memorial, a five-pointed star that rose from a horizon-line formed to resemble the one that beckoned across the white plain. M and I gathered rocks while he worked; we took pictures, shielded our eyes, and tried to make out the shapes of hills across the expanse of salt. C worked slowly; we recorded his progress. The three of us had prepared all summer for this project, reading books on the history of westward expansion, hoping to write our own with the curiosities we collected through the lenses of our cameras and our rudely documented self-conscious performance as tourists.

of pinstripes; it was pieced together from scraps. Our flag was a curious thing - it had already made its artistic debut in an exhibition of C’s work the previous spring. The flag was an experiment, as was the trip.

We watched the traffic go by on Interstate-80 and gathered rocks. My home was in my car; theirs carried the tents and supplies, including extra flags. We planted these flags at each of our stopping points, in a pasture near Osceola, in a motel room in Sydney, at a roadside pull-off in eastern Wyoming, and in the salt at Bonneville. We would plant three more before reaching our destination at the edge of the San Francisco Bay. The flags didn’t stay long in one place - we’d photograph them or try to position them so that the wind would catch the thin fabric and we could capture the action with our point-and-shoot cameras. We were claiming space that wasn’t ours to claim. That was the point.  

The salty plain was dotted with memorials to former visitors, their initials meticulously spelled out in shards of grey stone. C took the stones

WHERE DO TEENAGERS COME FROM?

By Patrick Kiley - Purple & Gray

02.15.2010

A reckless teenager, seeking solitude yet craving connection

in a futuristic world where vampires rule.

Cue adolescent dramatics, double-entendres and triple-time raunch:

Gun and explosive violence, death and despair.

Nature red in tooth and claw.

The usual dystopian violence (mayhem and menace, but just for laughs).

Exploding heads

suppurating pores

and plundered veins!

Watch out for that disembodied head, girls.

(Girls are particularly cautioned.)

*All phrases, including the title, taken from titles and cautionary notes in New York Times movie reviews.

Photo by G. Walker 2010

THE WORLD IS POOR: AN ODE TO THOMAS FRIEDMAN

Hampi, India

by Jacob Matilsky - Purple & Gray

02.27.2010

Surrounded by bright red boulder fields, and built throughout the remains of Vijayanagara (City of Victory), Hampi attracts droves of tourists—Indian, foreign alike. During the high season, between October and March, the street pulses with throngs of temple viewers, rock climbers, and spaced-out dreadlock-sporting party-goers. The main city lies on the southern bank of the Tungabhadra River, and many dwellings are built into the old ruins that stretch, literally, for miles in all directions. Some of the ruins have been gated off and cost 5 dollars to enter, but with a bicycle or by hiking around, one can explore the remnants of this ancient city on rock outcroppings or surrounded by banana groves.  While the south side of the river caters to Indian and foreign tourists, cross the river and Hampi takes on a different life. Here, all the shops are either guesthouses, restaurants, or internet cafes, with the occasional stand selling water, cigarettes, and Herbal Essence shampoo. The clientele appears to be 95+ percent foreign, and the menus offer a standard array of "Chinese, Mexican, Continental, Indian, Israeli, Italian food" and encourage tourists to "come in and feel at home in Hampi”

  Cont., Essays

Photo by J. Matilsky 2010