I Walk the Waterfront

Mondays are bad anywhere.  What to do on the last day before returning to the factory?  At a loss, I decided to walk along the waterfront in Berkeley close to the gentrified 4th St. and environs.  It is a crazy changing over from warehouses and factories to shops, cafes, artist's lofts, and condominiums.

And so I took my Nikon D700 and a 50mm f. 1.2 lens and began to walk.

At first, I saw what I expected to see only because I'd been there before.  But it was what I liked to do.  I need a mission, a project, a direction.

I passed unsuspected places.  4th St. chi-chiness was really spreading.  And all along, in between the yoga studios and groovy cafes, there were real working industries with bullnecked men in knee boots and hard hats and overalls.  I passed printing companies and open garage doors leading on to hundreds of huge rolls of printing papers.  Next would be the office of an attorney.  There were plenty of places for rent, big glassed wall shops on top floors that would make dreamy photo studios.  I wanted my new Frankencamera, the Graflex with the Aero-Ektar to shoot portraits of the people I came across.  

I walked to the waterfront, an estuary of the bay where the railroad once ran.  At the end of the road was a dilapidated shack, and between it and the water lay a woman's dress and brazier.  Nobody was around.  The dress was laid out flat with the bra sitting atop it as if someone had decided to skinny dip in the fetid water.  But no one was around.  

An empty bottle of wine had been placed in a hollow of the shack beside the place steps would have once been.  A mystery, I thought, that I'm not solving.  After a few photos, I was on my way. 

A bit after noon, I decided to eat in one of the small cafes that dotted the streets.  How to choose?  There was no informed way, so I simply picked one with a strange name--Tomate Cafe.  I sat outside in the almost warming sunlight and had a tri-tip beef sandwich with horseradish sauce and a Coca Cola from Mexico where they still use the original formula and cane sugar rather than the corn syrup they now use in the U.S.A.  So the sign said.  It came in the original old bottle and had an import sticker on it, so it tasted much different.  In truth, though. . . it did.  

After lunch, I got into the car and drove toward Oakland.  There things were not as gentrified, though in truth, it won't be long.  Signs were already showing.  I parked the car and walked a bit not feeling nearly as safe and comfortable but not feeling threatened, either.  Then I saw a boy with a skateboard disappear off the road.  I decided to go discover.  

But that will have to wait.  I'll be home tomorrow.