Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
A Proper Freedom
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
I’m not sure what I am going to do. This morning I woke up in San Francisco with a leaky brain. In the middle of a sleepless night, a power drill bored holes into my skull. My gut is dry heaving.
In a crazy, optimistic act of civic daring, my very chic, hip, stylish hotel inhabits an earthquake zone of human misery. On the hotel’s doorstep, up close, too close, is today’s urban America: the homeless, the mentally ill, the poverty-trapped.
At the triangled corner of Market and McAlister streets, the Proper Hotel decor is curated, cocooned self-indulgence. When I checked in, the front desk gifted me a bag of crunchy, house-branded granola. Vintage San Francisco meets avant-garde San Francisco.
The eight-story hotel exterior is covered head-to-toe with a brightly colored ‘weave mural’ by Alicia McCarthy. You can’t miss it. A well-turned-out city showing off with public art and public murals quickens my heart rate which is why I am vacationing here in the first place.
Nearby is the Asian Art Museum, SF Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, the Museum of the African Diaspora. City Hall and the Opera House are built in the Beaux-Arts Revival style—culturally appropriated from Paris.
In a civilized act of grace, the city bans private auto traffic on Market Street, San Francisco’s Champs-Elysées. Historic streetcars clattering by, smile at me. Up and down the boulevard, turn-of-the-century lamp posts and leafy plane trees are evenly spaced.
Also littering the streetscape, like so much abandoned salvage, are broken lives. Men, mostly men, sleep in doorways. Urine, vomit and shit offend my nostrils. Young black boys with sagging pants boom out rap music. Tent encampments block my way. Crazed men and women, drugged up and disconnected from reality, wander aimlessly.
The public display of poverty and pain is offensive. There’s no crime called homelessness, so there’s no one to call. I walk faster because I am frightened and helpless to help.
The paralysis of local officials to provide the Proper Hotel with a proper neighborhood is gross and improper. The dirty, the down-and-out, the displaced—all under siege from economic inequality—deserve better. So do I.
I’m in San Francisco to be entertained. To unshackle from the causes, contracts, commitments, that define my life. To enjoy the City’s beauty, not be confronted with its disfiguring injustices.
Refusing to let reality ruin a perfectly good vacation, I put into practice a privilege that many in the living city do not have. Workers subsisting on subpar wages do not have the freedom to quit their jobs. People of color do not have the freedom to change their skin color. Ex-cons don’t have the freedom to shed a stigmatizing resume. The homeless don’t have the freedom to move into decent housing.
As a tourist, I have the privilege to walk away, to be somewhere else. The liberty to leave.
I cross the Golden Gate Bridge, putting San Francisco in my rearview mirror. From the Marin headlands, only three miles by car, the city sparkles. No worries or warts. Pristine. Immaculate.
