Halloween and All Hallows

Oct. 31-Nov. 1

Monday we decided to go back to the Asian Art Museum, to see some of the galleries we didn’t have time to visit before. This time we walked to Market Street to skip the Tenderloin.

But there was still plenty of street theater. One old guy in an electric wheelchair, for instance, was serenading the world at large with salsa recordings cranked up into distortion.

He was riding the sidewalk and shaking his shoulders in time to the music. He looked smug as hell, like the life of the party instead of a minor public nuisance.

We approached the museum this time by a different route that took us past the Settlers Monument. My favorite part is the section labeled “Early Days,” which at a distance looks like a Spanish grandee and a padre trampling a local Indian. 

A closer look tells you that the first impression is pretty close. The grandee is looking far into the distance, maybe sizing up the property he is about to seize. The priest is leaning over the Indian, who is lying on the ground, and preaching at him.  

Next to that is a small park with equipment that has fun with sound. 

One is a frame in which you get long boards rocking. They make a clicking noise and when you get them rocking out of sync, you can walk between them and hear how they resemble the footsteps of a crowd. 

The other is even more fun, long tubes that return an echo. They also let you carry on a conversation in your normal voice when Joanna is a hundred feet away.

The strangest thing, though, came as a surprise. When you clap your hands, you don’t just hear the slap of your palms returning. The echo also a sharp ping, much like a movie sound effect for a bullet ricochet.

We came to the steps of the museum and something wasn’t quite right. We looked at the door and discovered that the place is closed on Monday.

The Asian Art Museum is on McAllister, which is also where the No. 5 bus goes on the way to Golden Gate Park. We would go there, maybe to the California Academy of Sciences.

A lady on the bus heard us talking about it and checked on her cellphone. The de Young was closed, but the Academy was open.

So far, so good.

The bus driver set us down at Eighth Avenue and told us to take the No. 44 bus to the Academy. We did that.

Monday was Halloween. We saw people everywhere in costumes. A lady working for the Segway tours concession in the park was wearing red pajamas and a silver fright wig. People working in stores often wore cat’s ears. We later saw a little girl done up as a bumble bee.

We found that the Academy of Sciences wants $30 a head for a ticket. We were going to be in the museum for a couple of hours. For that kind of money, I want something with live music and alcohol.

We walked the park, looking at the sculpture, which in this area was mostly devoted to music and literature—statues of Goethe, Schiller, Cervantes, and Beethoven, for instance. 

There was a major monument to Francis Scott Key and the “Star-Spangled Banner,” which was still called “the national song.” It didn’t become the national anthem until 1931. The monument was unveiled in 1888.

The park map had something nearby called the Shakespeare Garden. It is a small fenced area with various trees and plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.

The trees have what appears to be Spanish moss on them. It’s the only place I’ve seen it out here. I don’t remember reading anything about Spanish moss in Shakespeare.

[Editor’s note: Harry later learned that there are other forms of mossy growth that form on trees. One, usnea, is also known as old man’s beard.]

A structure in the back of the garden has bronze plaques with hundreds of quotes from Shakespeare referring to trees, flowers, and herbs.

We walked around Stow Lake to the boathouse for a bite to eat and then decided that we’d had enough walking for a while, so we headed toward the bus stop.

We got on the wrong bus, of course. Right number but wrong direction. All we had to do was cross the street to fix it. After that getting back was easy.

We went downstairs to Foley’s for dinner. The place was packed for Halloween. A waitress snapped a photo for a couple at the next table who wore matching skeleton pajamas. 

There was a table in a separate room where everyone was impressed when a lady showed up as a lion.

I finished the night by closing Bartlett Hall at midnight. 

Tuesday the art museum was open, so we walked down Market Street again.

We passed groups of idle men. Street aromas mixed the fragrance of cannabis with human piss. 

I saw something that I had never seen before. 

A woman crouched on the sidewalk and started looking intensely up and down the street. She was shielding a man who leaned against the wall of the Federal Office Building and worked a syringe in his arm.

We made it to the museum without injury, and this time we started on the second floor in the Chinese galleries. 

We saw ancient porcelains, several of which are more than 1,000 years old; ivory carvings of legendary historical figures and of the Eight Taoist Immortals; paintings old and new of landscapes, plum blossoms, and the fungus of immortality.

Lots of bats, too, because the word for bat, fu, is a pun on “happiness.”

Much of this stuff was fascinating, like an intricately carved drinking cup made from a rhinoceros horn or a lotus root carved into a procession following a trail up a forested mountain.

But the most fascinating for us is called “Collected Letters.” It was commissioned by the museum for a corner of a gallery. It combines Roman alphabet letters with Chinese radicals. 

The characters are white porcelain and hang from the ceiling at various levels. There are more than 1,500 pieces in all.

The artist said he chose letters as the motif because, before it was a museum, the building was a public library.

It is a fascinating thing to watch. It is unexpected, in a corner next to a pillar, and unlike anything else in the place. The breeze raised when someone walks by causes the letters to sway slightly.

We also had time to see the Southeast Asia rooms on the third floor. Thai and Cambodian Buddhas, a video of Angkor Wat. It was like old home week. 

Being primed by Asia, we headed to Chinatown for dinner. We met a trio of musicians playing stringed instruments on the street.

They gave us a card and recommended a restaurant nearby on Washington Street. So we went there.

The cod with black bean sauce was tasty enough. The claypot of mixed vegetables and vermicelli was OK, but a little on the bland side for me. Joanna, who really enjoys vegetable dishes, was satisfied with it.

I think all this museum walking has gotten to me. I didn’t even want a beer tonight. 

That’s all right, though. I probably had enough yesterday to last at least a couple of days.

I’m packing it in soon.

Good night to all.

Harry