End of a (Long) Era

On Friday the Thirteenth, I was stopped at a red light on my bicycle on Market St. when another cyclist pulled up next to me—just a tad too close—and asked if I get flak from motorists for taking the lane. I told him I hardly ever do. He said he gets a lot, but he always does it anyway.

Then he zipped off to position himself in front of all the motorists waiting at the light, which might partly explain some of the flak he gets.

Later that day, I was in Rainbow selecting produce when a woman I’d never seen before told me she often sees me on my bike on Market St. when she is in her car. She noted with approval that I don’t dart in and out of traffic, and otherwise complimented my safe cycling! That absolutely made my day, and it was surely perfect timing: the exact opposite of flak on the very day the subject had arisen.

Last weekend Tom and I went to Sacramento for a birthday dinner for Chris, which was nice, though Eva was ill and unable to come downstairs, which left Sarah, I believe, largely in charge of all the tasks a beautiful sit-down dinner for ten or so involves. However, Sarah herself was having a dreadful bout of food poisoning, yet everything seemed just as always, which is to say it was perfect and gorgeous and delicious, so tremendous appreciation to Sarah for working so hard for us, and the other helpful behind-the-scenes cooking elves.

Among other things, Sarah made a salad dressing that was extra scrumptious: canola oil, a bit of water, white balsamic vinegar (she gets this at Trader Joe’s) and tons of pressed garlic.

Lately I’ve been making a tasty dressing out of red wine vinegar and Stonehouse’s garlic-infused olive oil, which is fantastic stuff and which Tom’s mother, Ann, introduced me to. There is a Stonehouse location at the Ferry Building (and one in the mall where Bloomingdale’s is), and if you bring a bottle back, they will refill it for $3 off. Before they do that, they sniff the bottle, which completely turns my stomach.

I’ve been having a certain amount of nausea off and on, and all kinds of things get to me that never used to, so I sent Stonehouse an email to see if this is something they absolutely have to do. I didn’t say, “I don’t want your employees’ boogers and/or nose hairs in my oil,” but I did liken it to having a stranger come up in a restaurant and put her or his nose one inch from something one was planning to eat: blech.

When I arrived at Stonehouse that day with my bottle and asked if we could skip the sniff test, the sole woman there asked, “Oh, did you just send us an email?” I said I had, and she said she had just answered it.

During our short interaction, she all but rolled her eyes and generally was barely civil, no more. When I left, she wished me a good day in a tone that clearly expressed that she hoped I would die of an aneurysm before I got back to work.

Well, I understand that. I understand that, these days, the customer is always wrong and that we have no role other than to produce a method of payment. We are not to ask questions, or want something to be different, or have opinions.

But I had to interrupt my brooding about that to take up a period of brooding about something even more serious: the closure of Stacey’s Bookstore. If you go to their website now, all you see is this:

Stacey’s
San Francisco
Stacey's Bookstore
1923-2009

Is there a sadder sight than that of one’s favorite bookstore with nothing in it but bare shelves? There is not. I didn't go there after I knew it was going to close because I thought I’d prefer to remember it as it was than to see it during liquidation, but when I approached it that day, I decided to go in, after all, and it was a sorrowful sight indeed. I cried.

I guess they’re going to keep the doors open until every last fixture in the place is sold, but all the books and most of the employees are gone. I didn’t recognize the person at the cash register. He might have been a Stacey’s employee, but he also might have been from the liquidation company.

After I left, I “needed a moment,” as they say. Fortunately, See’s Candy is right across the street, a good place for a moment.

By the time I’d gotten back to work, I’d decided not to send an email lecturing Stonehouse for having a mean employee, and also not to say I wasn’t going to buy their oil anymore—I might not buy it at the Ferry Building, but there’s always the mall at Bloomingdale’s, so any mention of a boycott would have been a fib.

The email waiting in my inbox from Stonehouse was from “Patrick” and was perfectly friendly. It said they sniff the bottles to check for rancidity, but maybe, per my email, they should rethink that policy. In the meantime, I should just make sure the bottles I bring for refilling are clean and dry, and let the salesperson know that.

This was slightly confusing, since the mean woman at the Ferry Building had said she had answered my email: Is her name Patrick and she’s rude and condescending in person but utterly gracious via email, to the point of saying they might change their policy? I wrote back and thanked her/him politely and said I would make sure my bottles were clean and dry and that I hoped my requests to skip the sniff test would receive friendly responses, and left it at that.

The morning after Chris’s birthday dinner, Steve and Julie and Tom and I had brunch at Ann and Mac’s, also just as nice as ever (especially considering we had basically invited ourselves over).

Due to work on the train tracks, we had to take a bus from the train station in Sacramento to Suisun, and were seated right in front of a woman who yelled into her cell phone at top volume for half an hour straight. (I note that most people who do that kind of thing seem to do ALL the talking; it’s more delivering a monologue than conversing, as such.)

Then we got on the train, and then on another bus, in Emeryville. As we sat down on that bus, Tom said, “Here comes the cell phone woman,” a measure of the trauma he had suffered—he had had to just give up on reading and shut his magazine while the woman talked—because he usually refrains from remarks that are even that mildly pejorative, and even when the person is out of earshot, as this person was.

Whereas during the offending event I went ahead and put both fingers in my ears in full view of the woman, because I’m very childish: If she can force me to listen to a description of everyone who was at the event she just attended and in what ways, to her eye, they looked different from in the past, I can signal that I’m not enjoying it.

I consider this to be a step in the right direction from turning around and glaring at her, or asking her to lower her volume. But maybe someday I’ll be all grown up and sit there patiently and maturely, like Tom. Maybe someday I'll think, "Not for a million dollars would I risk hurting the feelings of this stranger, no matter how inconsiderate she may happen to be."

By the way, one time I was a bus with Tom, whose voice happens to be on the loud end of the spectrum, and someone turned around and told him to shut up, even though no cell phone was involved. Like, they just plain told him to stop talking.