San Francisco 2002

There's something more in the city tonight
Then the Transfer, one sleazy pink neon line running straight through its name
Market Street San Francisco, the fags and the homeless screaming in front of the Safeway and the Starbucks Coffee
More, more, more than a website to be built in the morning
It's Friday night
More than the Grand Cherokee parked in front of Mecca
And all of Haight Street
All of the two a.m. bars
The new junkies that migrated here on the faith of an old rumor
Or the dirty words scrawled by Kerouac on some small town library shelf
Looking for Vesuvio!
City Lights!
Hunter Thompson plowing his motorbike over the hills of Divisadero
The Summer of Love
Where are you San Francisco

There's something more in the city tonight
Even Berkeley is quiet by witching hour
Awaiting the big game against Stanford
The election is in four days
They're expecting the lowest turnout ever
And on Market Street to the Castro the pickup joints are almost full with chunky college kids fresh from the closets
And marketing interns ready for their first lesbian experience
And racks and racks full of the black leather jackets, black pants, black wool, black mid-range cars parked near Fourteenth Street
And haircuts short and tight to the sides to deemphasize that receding hairline

Here is your revolution, a handful of twenty somethings dancing to disco at the Top everybody strung out on exactly the same pill
Here is your revolution
A fire at the hotel on Sixteenth and Van Ness across from the all night gas station and the hooker with see-through heels and ten dollar habits
Rising rents
Parking permits
Your revolution is at the polls
The empty voting booths
Harry Britt, John Burton, left over politicians from campus riots, another time, you too will be globalized

There's something more in the city tonight
There must be
The boom is dead
And the left over wealth from the internet startups, the cashed in stocks, the ones that almost made it but still can't let go even after the crash, twenty-five cent markers pressed up against their fingers
And Stanford's not taking anymore MBAs this year
And Berkeley will not be awarding any law degrees
The city empties
The gold diggers try to navigate the highways home
The Castro tries to dance it off
Somebody put a condom on the party
And the artists were gentrified first to Oakland but Jerry Brown didn't want them and then they gave up
And North Beach has trashed its literary legacy for tourism, strip clubs, and bad Italian food
All that's left is Diamond Dave Whitaker shaking his hands out, the first man ever to smoke pot with Bob Dylan
Oh Yeah, he says at the Morning Due Coffeeshop
It's going to be a beautiful day