a film for harvey

we went to the castro theater yesterday to see "milk".  i've been excited for it to come out since they started filming. i lived at 650 castro street when i first moved to san francisco, just up the block from harvey milk's camera store.  i walked by it everyday for years. when i was 18, my friend debbie and i left hightstown on the greyhound bus with 150 dollars and no plan other than "california". our mutual friend moved to san francisco, and she lived with a couple also from hightstown and a student from los angeles. the day we arrived, the college boy asked us if we wanted to try lsd...i hadn't before, but figured it was like smoking pot, which i was a big fan of...wrong...within an hour or so, things got very weird. i remember wondering if my family would ever recognize me again...it was a long night with a lot of questions, especially about god and the meaning of life...i didn't even know what debbie's trip was like until the next day...mine ended the morning after, with a walk up and down castro street alongside the new jersey couple, who became my friends during those hours. they seemed very wise to me, and castro street looked so beautiful in the wee hours of the morning. there was something about the neighborhood that felt authentic and safe, and i had no idea yet that it was the gay center of the world. debbie had a bad lsd experience and she left san francisco that day, on another greyhound bus, back to new jersey...and i became the fifth roomate at 650 castro.  i lived in that incredible victorian house for 2 years, and paid 86 dollars a month for rent.  you'd hardly have to work to make rent, and our days and nights were filled with fun and freedom.  i remember being amazed that 5 people could live together without fighting...nothing like living with family. it was a great new world for me. i thrived. lsd was not my cup of tea tho', and i had no interest in giving up control again...but it did it did serve a purpose in my life, like a wake up medicine. 

i'll fast forward to a few years later (lots of stuff in between that i hope to write about someday)... i was a cashier at the new york city deli, a restaurant in the castro. harvey milk came in for a bagel every morning before getting on the bus to go to work at city hall.  he looked and sounded so familiar to me...that new york jewish familiarity... and we had a nice little rapport.  he was the only person i ever knew who was killed...and like everyone else in the castro, in san francisco, i was reeling from the news...seeing sean penn play harvey 30 years later, and remembering the castro in all its glory, was really exciting....and thrilling to see him portrayed by hollywood.  but for me, the movie was good, not great. perhaps my expectations were too high...maybe a little more sylvester music would've expressed the joy of those days...the beauty that emerged because people were free to be themselves...it was an amazing time, before the devastation of aids, before we all had to be grownups and take care of each other...i don't know how it will play across the country, but i was hoping it would be a big plus for civil rights, and an eye opener for the prop 8 peeps...on the upside, it was wonderful to see the movie at the castro theater, where it all happened, with the people who lived it...the sense of community was strong and profound...there was no place i would've rather seen "milk", and no where but san francisco i would've rather become a grown up.    

Comments

[Pat]

I watched MILK in Buffalo. The film follows closed the documentary (Life and Times of Harvey Milk) almost frame-by-frame. How nostalgic to see a chapter of counter-culture life that so many of us shared on the big screen. I lived over just a few blocks at 17th and Delores, 17th and Valencia and the infamous Linda Street...feel fortunate to have found my way to SF during the 70s. There were so many human rights efforts going on back then. Yet, despite the dismal economy, life there felt safe and hopeful...not the struggle of today's world.