Wednesday, January 2, 2008

NFSL - Canvas Catch

(Actually posted January 3rd from a draft...you live, you learn, you won't be trying that shortcut again...)

When I first moved to the City in July of 2006, I often traveled down the hill on 9th Avenue to the sprawling cafe on the corner of 9th and Lincoln. I found it in my book of San Francisco cafes, and the place was called Canvas. The ceilings were high there, and strange, squirting art was splashed on the walls like bugs on a windshield. When you first walked in and turned to the right to place your order at the register you smelled something that came very close to BO, but wasn't--the lacquer that they used on some hand-painted stools smelled up that corner. My favorite place to sit in one of the little rooms of the cafe side was a plush, grape-colored loveseat. I would curl up there and enjoy a pot of mint melange or egyptian red tea. A whole pot to myself!



If I didn't want to write on my lap I went to the rough hewn windowseat and pulled a table up to it in the main room up front. The walls were windows there and I could watch the people waiting for the bus or walking the edge of the Park. Some artist had painstakingly created a sculpture from the ceiling--a flock of two-inch crepe-paper "birds" in all heights and depths. The color-choice was orange and it was a glorious statement in a beige fort.



Last year they closed the Canvas (rent issues), and just a few short weeks ago a restaurant called Pacific Catch filled the space and (at last) opened its doors. The main theme is of course seafood, but many menus exist within the main one--Japanese and Mexican bookends of cuisine. I shit you not. The ceilings are high still, but the walls are bold colors with bold, square canvasses of fish screwed in. The front room is now a bar. The other rooms are broken down and a vast maze of tables and booths instead. Blue wine bottles hang from the ceiling in wire suspension of the same lengths, measured.



I adore both places. Canvas was Bohemian. Catch is exquisite without pretention. Canvas had crappy food and music--Catch is un-linger-able. I can't write in there now. I couldn't eat in there before.



Yesterday morning in the Chronicle there was an article on the "boutiquing" of San Francisco, a claim that the City was only for the extremely rich. One Rincon Center, condos, latte shops, and former slums becoming trendy (yep, they are working on finishing school for Hunter's Point) are all indicators, they say, of the City becoming more than substance.



Um.



?????



I do find pockets of substance here. Philz won't serve you a fucking latte. And they opened two new locations this year. I can wander into Golden Gate Park and never see a Dulce and Gabanna bag for the length of the entire blocks. I can climb Home and watch the fireworks.



I do love the cafe culture here. But I'm not that much on appearances. So I hunt for substance. I can make it appear, just with the muscle of my imagination, like a sand castle.



Having to hunt and shape the substance myself brings me back to who I am rather than what I look like, after all.



Covered in substance.



Substance and culture in my shoes.

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