Noe Ryhmes with Chloe
"That's stupid!" she said. "You're going to take them to Noe Valley first? They've never been to San Francisco, and you're going to start in the middle of 'Little Switzerland'? What do you plan to do there? Go up to Twin Peaks and yodel?"
"Nope, too foggy up there this time of year." (According to my notes, this conversation took place in April, 2002. April weather is alternately foggy and fair around San Francisco.)
"But you would go up there and yodel if you could, wouldn't you?" The conversation was beginning to flag. It was past midnight at her end.
"I think we'll check out the local Starbucks and look at the brightly colored houses."
"The 'brighty colored houses?!' Those are owned by gays, silly. Little late in life for you to switch now, isn't it?"
"Some of them probably are, but in the main, it's a working man's neighborhood, luv. The rainbow flags fly on the other side of the hill."
The other side of the hill north of 21st Street is Eureka Valley, now more often called the Castro for its principal north-south thoroughfare, Castro Street. North-south streets in this part of town have steep hills, although even steeper slopes occur on the an east-west line a little to the west of here on the side of the Twin Peaks, a 900-foot high hill with two protuberances almost in the exact middle of this city with a sea level perimeter. The Castro is decidedly full of gay working men who from appearances put considerable effort into property upkeep. The straights of Noe Valley are no slouches either.
"Workming man's neighborhood?! Do I hear man's neighborhood? Oink, oink. There could be working women there, too, Mr. Twin Peaks Yodeler."
"Policemen, programmers, tarot card readers, physicists, insurance estimators, psychiatrists. Just your usual San Francisco types with families or living-togethers, or families where ma or pa has a secret lover."
"Ma and Pa Kettle of Noe Valley. I love it!"
"Hmm, it does fit. Wasn't Percy Kilbride from San Francisco?"
"No, you mean Gracie Allen. I have to run, but the next time we talk, I want to see if you can still recite all the streets from Montgomery to Divisadero."
"Montgomery, Kearny, Grant, Stockton, Powell..."
"I said: next time. Every time you do this, it takes you an hour."
"That's how long it takes to walk it. I need the street signs to prompt me. Listen, in the meantime, you could come out here and see them for yourself, and then we could wind up at that place on Union Street." That place on Union Street is a nondescript coffee bar, very typical of down-at-the-corner coffee houses across San Francisco, a city with its share of dreary doughnut shops too. We will not dwell here on the difference between Donut Star and the coffee house.
"No, we can't be on Union Street, you and I, unless my husband is with us. Good night, James."
It's not a good sign when she calls me by my formal name, which I only use on copyrights, or to sign agreements to appear in traffic court. But I've become used to her husband.
She and I did spend a little time on Union Street in the 20th century. Union Street is in Cow Hollow to the north, several neighborhoods removed from Noe Valley. And Percy Kilbride was too from San Francisco.
Percy Kilbride Gracie
Allen
Native San Franciscans
