Walked roughly southwest this morning, down Market Street from the bay in the crowded well-appointed business district of San Francisco. Lovely weather; wishing it were London. Not sure why. Pubs? Always good. But this earthquake-beauty city has long been a joy. First flew here in early ’82 with a now-famous southwestern US/UNLV professor, Doc G (as I call him).
Glad to be on SF streets.
So I’m walking near the Powell Street crossover, analysing cascades of seasonal radiation bouncing between layers of music, food, fountains … when this sparkly thing sort of appears in the sky, definitely in the stratosphere and far away. Looks like a crazy ball of metallic sunlight moving slowly through the heavens, on its own. No smoke, no sound, just a brilliant chrome-type sizzling sphere the size of a curbside convenience or coffee store that continues basically east to west, occasionally pausing and sort of bobbing about before it moves on.
I, of course, expect I’ll suddenly get surrounded by bipedal people all stopped in place, staring at this far-out thing that’s likely descending from the Kármán line of earth’s oxygen, all the way to the ground. But no. People are moving along in San Fran style, acting entirely normal. Like, not a damned thing was happening from space this morning.
Yes, I’m the only one catching the mini-star. For some reason. Hm. But how could that be? Maybe a brain issue. Not like I never had one before. Anyway, the sun-looking silvery object now quickly descends to my starboard, in the middle of the city and possibly close to Transamerica.
Hold on; you gotta be kidding me …
With no notice, the entire day transitions to night. Fastest sunset, ever. Somewhere north-northwest, the star-ball thing glows behind big fields of mighty skyscrapers. With stellar beams. That all make shadows from the streets and cars.
Except that no cars are moving. No cars around at all, apart from previously parked rides. And people not walking, either! In fact, no Homo sapiens, period. Kinda like San Fran was suddenly 100% abandoned by two-leggers, after the possibly fake instant darkness thing.
All except for me. And now it’s deep nighttime. Dark as hell, but a few city lights active like sprinkles. The contrast of a light-unpolluted night sky with the sorta video game ambience ritual was cool. Kinda dreamy.
I decide to investigate. Of course! And if you ask me, that was the ball’s intent: to lure my shoes and pants. And shirt.
Must have been a good little landing spot it found. We shall see.
The light coming from the ball’s touchdown is quite intense from here. Sort of a burning kind of flame deal, but the radiance was composed of sharp, scintillating beams, mostly blue-white and moving like tiny but highly coherent spotlights, all over the damned place.
I was reminded that the singer-songwriter from The Go-Go’s was around here once. Wasn’t her name Jane Wiedlin? Sold her San Fran place in 2017, I reckon. Oh, that was Corona Heights, not even close to this street. My bad. All this stuff just kinda reminded me of a solo song she did, or maybe the time she showed up on the Star Trek movie, the one about the whales.
DING DING DING! Hey, a trolley somewhere! Well, now.
As I said, I was right there at Market & Powell … with the trolley terminus circle just to the right. So I ran over and there it was: a trolley, waiting. The hell?! Not a soul around. Or even a mouse. So, I jumped on the trolley and the damned thing took outta there like a rocket. DING DING DING!
Up the track it went, moving north. I had to really hold on. Never seen a trolley bolt like this. Is it even possible…?
The shadows around everything now were lovely and techno, sort of disco, sort of clothesline. But onward I went, not knowing what I’d see. With the San Fran population seeming gone, the feeling just now was a right 420 dream. Or maybe just a regular lucid thing, waiting for a rollover in bed to hammer a notepad with a few hieroglyphs.
Closer I got, or closer the trolley got, moving across streets zany, unhindered. Still no people around, anywhere. And the Milky Way stars look so nice overhead.
DING DING DING! The damned trolley squeaked to an almost immediate halt, and I flew to the floor. Bang! Where the hell am I, anyway? So I get out of the trolley and meanly look back at it, with a frown. Thanks for the stop! DING DING DING! It zooms away like a roller coaster. Didn’t know such a big ol’ piece of metal could do that. Far out.
The throbbing fantastical light from the silvery ball was now due east. Hey, I know my compass. I’m right at the Powell & Jackson intersection, at the border of magnificent Chinatown. And way, way, way down the street is the icon Transamerica—the compressed pyramid-type building everyone has seen a bunch of times in Dirty Harry movies and whatnot.
Seems that’s where the ball landed. I can literally observe the top of it, shooting its blue-white light like a signal. So here I go.
Away I walk through the shining night toward the Transamerica skyscraper. If you’ve never been to San Fran’s Chinatown, you gotta go. Everything is … wow. So visually cool, especially in the enhanced version of night right now. Thought I’d mention I just caught my reflection in a well-stocked store window. Hm. I really need some new shoes. Prada or Vans this time, I swear.
And whoomp, my walk comes to near climax…and there’s the sphere, landed directly in front of the Transamerica pyramid, perfectly centred in the Washington, Columbus, Montgomery trinary intersection. Like a Jim Cameron pic.
And let’s call the thing Falling Star of San Francisco: a perfectly round, brilliantly snowy-toned ball with a luminous edge of kooky physics. Zero sound, too. Something about it was…surreal. Outré. And what the H?! I hear music!
I knew it! That’s “Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please!” by the Kent blokes band Splodgenessabounds. Recorded in 1980, even. Why’s it playing here?! And Holy Klaatu, Batman! There’s some guy standing right in front of the star-ball, shafts of white blazing around him. I can’t really see how he’s dressed, what he’s carrying, nothing. And he’s kind of waving at me. The hell? I approach, because why not? I’m here, right?
Closer I get, and louder gets Splodgenessabounds. But not too loud.
My God, the person standing and waving wears a Bergdorf Goodman tartan/cashmere plaid sport shirt in the lapis pattern (saw it on a commercial once). And white canvas shorts! And…well, I never seen those shoes before. Look pretty nice in a kinda classy Harrison Ford way.
In the spectacular formalist composition of the Transamerica next to his ball, the guy keeps waving my way … and various photons now show his face. Cool guy, from the look. Great hair. Has a short beard, kinda like an Alaska crab dude meets Keanu Reeves.
Wait a second … that’s Charlie Fish from the Fiction On the Web UK place! Wow, I remember seeing him on Graham Norton, sitting with Dame Judi and talking about this pelvic tilt thing. Did wonders for his back.
So why is Charlie Fish here, in San Francisco, in a flaming star-ball thing, with every other creature gone? Except for me?
“Hello!” he says, of course, with a bit of an Estuary meets Brighton. Hm.
Think I probably mentioned all these lights were kinda disco at first. Not so much here, but I still felt very keen on busting a Spandau Ballet. Why, I don’t know. Possibly thanks to Fish’s wonderful blue/orange/red/yellow wool tartan, exquisitely tailored and sleeves rolled.
“Hello!” he says again. So I walk up closer. “Charlie Fish!” I say.
He smiles warm. “Yes, and I’m in a bit of a pickle right now,” he says. “Fancy I could borrow a lump of coal and a really thin pizza?” I was amazed, because I was just now thinking of both coal and thin pizza, more of the Margherita style. Still, it seemed an odd thing for him to ask.
“What’s this about?” I say. Charlie frowned a little. “My engines need a bit of synchronised graphene quantum dots, I’m afraid. Damned thing.” I understood that part. But, “What about the pizza?” Charlie smiled wide. “Because I was hungry.”
Wait a second! That was Steven Spielberg’s line, when he opened his sub sandwich restaurant chain “Dive!”— and we all know what happened to that one. Too bad, though. Great food and superb submarine museum stuff…til the Nemo Nautilus flew off a corroded rail and crashed on my head one night.
“Charlie … the Dive! The place closed decades ago. Yellow sub no longer sails, man.” Charlie winced a bit. “Still hungry, proud to tell you. Okay, I know! Find those graphene quantum dots, and I’ll take us both back to Dive! What was it, 1994?”
I was confused. Charlie is quite a slick Dr. Who-type cat, and I say, “So you can travel through time and clouds with the ball?” Charlie nodded. “Indeed, all we need is some coal. Get it, and we’ll be eating Spielberg sandwiches, post haste!”
Hell yes! But I didn’t remind Charlie that Jeffrey Katzenberg and the Steve Wynn casino dude also had yummy financials for Dive! in 1994.
But Wynn was part of the Vegas lot, so we should head out to the 90s years of Century City, Los Angeles, instead … if I manage to find some more of Charlie’s “radiant cashmere cocoa” or whatever it was he was talking about. Oh, right. Quantum dot coal!
I turned around and tried to figure out how close we were to North Beach. Not far, obviously. That one Tony’s pizza slice joint was there, famous for coal ovens, and for sure it would be easy to slip over and grab some rocks.
Nobody was around anyway.
But I started to get a little “fishy” about the time differential. No pun intended. Not much of one, anyway. How was time going to work? Maybe we should stay where we were, on the calendar? Who the hell needs time travel for a sandwich?
“Charlie, are you familiar with Super Chef Eric Ripert?” Charlie rubbed his beard a bit, then said, “No, I don’t think so.”
I nodded. “He runs the number one restaurant in New York City, and if you make sure the time stays about where it is, we can make it to his Le Bernardin place on 51st and 7th and have the best fish, ever. No pun. Really.”
Charlie seemed to agree. “Sounds great, and I do know the restaurant…or I’ve heard of it at least. But, this is all your move, your choice. Either is lovely.”
Well, then: NYC it is.
I looked around a bit, then stole a self-driving taxi to North Beach for Tony’s Slice House. It was easy because, no people wandering about at all.
So it finally occurred to me: if the venerable Charlie Fish from Fiction On the Web travelled across the Atlantic from his South London HQ why the hell did the time change so radically and everyone alive just disappeared?
Uh oh. Something is not right here.
Anyway, I told the taxi “Stay!” and went inside Tony’s to grab coal from a still-burning oven. Ouch! Then I shot the taxi back to Transamerica in a jiff.
Charlie Fish examined the coal and was very happy to get it, indeed.
I cleared my throat and said, “But wait, Charlie. What’s going on here? Why the time change? Sunset? Nighttime? All that? And where’d everyone go?”
Charlie did a kind of creaky grin. His cinnamon beard looked extra shiny. Luxuriant, even.
“Well…right now we’re caught in a separate dimension. You and I. Too complicated to explain, but it looks nice, doesn’t it? I’ve always favoured the contrast of stars and skyscrapers, you know. Like Van Gogh mixed with Frank Lloyd Wright and a slight dash of I.M. Pei.”
Hey, can’t argue with I.M. Pei.
In no time, Charlie had his engines repaired, and off we went to Ripert’s Le Bernardin. As we flew away from San Francisco at maybe 10K miles per hour (4470.4km), I noticed we were passing the chateau of Professor Hicks and his husband, clearly having flames in their fireplace, which had somehow burned all night.
Oh, well. They’ll be back in action soon as Charlie corrects these transdimensional waves and dots and whatnot.
And then it finally occurred to me I left my own damned oven on, this morning.
With créme brûlée in a slow cook mode.
Oh, dear.
