11:00 am on a Saturday morning, the sun smudges through my white linen curtains. The soft sound of cars passing by on Fell Street, just off the highway on Octavia, has become white noise at this point. I enjoy it in a way, living in what you might call the city’s running engine, rusty and well-worn. I have the pulse of the city. I hear the songs people bump from their car’s speakers. I’m at the river’s mouth where tour buses and semis and commuters funnel in for the day. Car exhaust lives on my windowsills.
I step outside my apartment, hungover, sunglasses ushering me into the light, sweatpants and birkenstock clogs dragging at my heels, into the line of people that perpetually surrounds the boba shop next door. Canopied by buildings on either side, rattled by the bellows of car horns and angry drivers, the urban mystic that made me fall in love with this apartment still washes over me. I’m in dire need of a coffee.
I walk towards Patricia’s Green, a small urban green space that marks the center of Hayes Valley. A few benches around its perimeter and patches of grass at its center, the park is typically filled with San Francisco consumers spending their tech-earned money at the Lisa Says Gah! flagship store or the ever-rotating fine homegoods, trending women’s boutiques, high-end luggage or e-bike stores that can never pay the abysmally high rent. Hayes Valley visitors walk a little slower, always slightly overdressed. It's more of a shopping district than a neighborhood, second to Union Street. Patricia’s Green visitors are just passing through.
Typically on these Saturday mid-mornings, I grab an iced coffee and people watch on an open bench in the sun, rolling my sweat shorts up to just below my pubic bone. There are only a handful of locals who I recognize by face, none by name. They’re taking conference calls, stopping by for a lunch break or quick shits for dogs. Old men, smoking cigarettes and wearing fedoras, gather at a set of tables. I’m curious where they live, in the neighborhood, for how long. I close my eyes after my first sip of coffee.
Chi chi chi chi
I open my eyes upon hearing the familiar sound. Five unleashed chihuahuas in sweaters trot down the sidewalk, heading to the grass with their elderly owner in cargo shorts trailing behind. I smile as he passes me, and he smiles back.
Not only are these chihuahuas at Patricia’s Green on Saturday mornings, but I imagine most days given the frequency of their sighting, each time adorned in a different sweater as they scamper through the parklet on their own. Their owner pays no attention, joining the men in fedoras, trusting in their etiquette and respect for Patricia's boundaries. The chihuahuas rarely approach onlookers, they’re just checking on things, matters of importance. The leaves and the rocks and the bushes and gravel. We are all in their territory, and rightfully so. They were here long before I moved to the neighborhood.
But this particular Saturday morning, as I approach the parklet, the sound of a crowd grows. And then dogs barking.
A banner hangs above the walkway to Patricia’s: Halloween Dog Parade. The park and surrounding block is packed with people and their dogs, adorned in tutus and glitter and streamers and suits and lights.
Fuck me.
My least favorite thing in the world is a dog parade. It’s kitschy, not even charmingly ironic, taken way too seriously for something that seems to be for the benefit of the owner at the dog’s expense. If it were a parade for human babies, you could at least say it’s for their social or developmental enrichment. Instead, dog parades exist to gather pompous dog owners to overfetishize their pet. Strapped it into, what I’m assuming, is an uncomfortable costume, I’m sure the dog would much rather just be at the park. They’re roped into these cringy displays of dog ownership all for the sake of, I don’t know, community?
But could you even call this community? As I navigate the crowd, I overhear boastful, anthropomorphic comments by owners. Their dogs dozing on their sides or panting in the heat.
“Babe, where are you?” A woman presses her phone to her ear. “We need to get Zippy to the start of the parade asap.”
“Oh, Poppy just loves wearing her tutu.”
These types of events – costume parades, vendor markets, movie screenings, and so on – pass through Patricia from time to time, like traveling shows from the turn of the century. Sometimes they return the next year, and sometimes they don’t. They spring up without warning, a new banner above the walkway. How do people even find out about these things? Whispers must run through certain circles, promises of wholesome gatherings and good-for-the-economy and up-and-coming-neighborhoods and restaurants you were influenced by god-knows-who to try.
But does community exist when the ones who were there first are nowhere to be found? My sweatered friends or the men in fedoras are not in their usual spots. Their matters of importance would be indistinguishable from the smells and sounds of the parade. Discarded kettle corn rests atop blades of grass, only for a dachshund in a hotdog costume to eat it. Cheap thrills never seem to hit the same, though.
The coffee shop serves as a short respite, but with no benches available to sit on, I slowly make my way back to my apartment. My head is still pounding and I need to nurse my hangover without the sound of “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz in the background.
I’ll likely come back the following Saturday, and I’m sure a sweatered chihuahua will pass me on the sidewalk. Making his rounds, checking to see everything is in its place, right as he left it.
