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Stop the presses: Same-old, same-old on Broadway
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I was alarmed, briefly, when I spied the six-column, all-caps headline plastered across Page One of Monday's street edition of the Chronicle: "Horrors on the Streets of North Beach," or words to that effect.
Something really awful must have happened, thinks I, like a Starbuck's finally opening in the neighborhood. Now that would be a truly revoltin' development. Remember, it's important to protect the charm of our neighb... er, our experience sector.
But, no, it was just another story about Broadway, that urinal-turned-testosterone jousting field where the twentysomething louts and goons come to rut, fight, and occasionally die. Two years after Gavin Newsom made a lot of noise about cracking down on the nightclub violence along our Great White Way, nothing meaningful has been done. Oh, and by the way, Francisco Franco's still dead, too.
Pardon me for not getting the vapors over the fact that Broadway remains a hell hole. But what, really, do you expect?
In a perfect world, today's young partiers would hang out in jazz cellars, appreciate fine food, and be able to handle a couple of cocktails without stabbing somebody. The cats would wear sports jackets and skinny ties, play the bongo drums and maybe smoke a little reefer now and then. The kittens would wear black tights, pencil skirts and berets ... and only let you get as far as second base until at least the third or fourth date, unless you were a sax player or a down-at-the-heels poet. But it's a different world we've made for ourselves, and Broadway is a reflection of that reality. Did somebody say crass and vulgar?
The city could shut down the dance clubs -- that's where the real trouble comes from, with all those drunk, horny boys who aren't gonna get laid so they get aggressive and stupid instead -- in fact, the city probably should shut them down. Most of these joints are run by creeps, anyway, and they're not even local creeps. They make serious coin off the booze and Broadway can draw big crowds, making it a money magnet. And we know how the Chamber of Commerce feels about money magnets.
So everybody says they want to clean up Broadway, but nobody ever quite gets around to doing it. There's this cash flow thing, you know. The local merchants on the street -- the ones running the legitimate businesses being drowned out by all that neon -- would sure like to see things improve. Those of us who live in the local experience sector would, too. I never walk down Broadway after dark unless I'm flanked by a couple of menacing lesbians. And protection like that doesn't come cheap, lemme tell ya.
But as we push to clean up Broadway, let's be careful what we're pushing for.
Broadway is a dump now. On that we can all agree. There's a criminal element that hangs out there with impunity pretty much every weekend and it would be great to deep-six those guys. But we don't want to steam-clean this entertainment corridor into a bland, fake-bohemian version of Disneyland's Main Street, either. Pottery Barn, Broadway? Heaven forfend.
Broadway's always had a little bit of the Barbary Coast in its soul (even if the real Barbary Coast was a block south along Pacific). Let's bring back the fun parts and get rid of the rest.
