Musée Mécanique and the Haight

Last night I went to Musée Mécanique, the coolest place I have been in San Francisco so far. It's an old arcade hall filled with arcade games from the Victorian era (1837-1901), although I think some of the games were from a little later in the early 1900s. Most of the games were only a quarter! They had a couple strength testing ones, a bunch of musical ones with the perforated paper rolls, some flipbook style "videos," and the old gypsy fortune tellers, among other things. I couldn't believe all these old arcade games were still usable.



Here is me in front of one of the creepier looking ones. There is a caption underneath the big laughing girl which says, "Laugh with Sally." It totally gave me the creeps, the old-fashioned creeps. When I first entered, a man dressed flawlessly as Charlie Chaplain greeted me by bobbing his bowler hat twice at me and raising his eyebrows in unison. He didn't seem to be employed by the Musée though, so I guess he must come there just for shits and giggles. He definitely fits in with the furniture though. I later saw him do the exact same greeting to other visitors coming in. Hahaha. I guess it doesn't get old for him.

A lot of the games say, "See the mystery!" or "What a woman does in her dressing room!" or "Unique study of a woman!" and then there is a place for you to look into. I was dying to know what was in this one, so I took a peak.



It was a lot of pictures of topless women sitting pretty. It was ANTIQUE PORN! This highly amuses me. Porn has transcended time. It also transcends space through the internet in a way. Wow, the powers of porn. I took a picture through the eyepiece, just so I could share the excitement.



A couple came in and played with a lot of the musical ones. Every time I heard music going off, I was drawn to the sound, and I'd walk towards the music and see the couple. This happened three times, enough for them to get thoroughly creeped out. Especially the girl, because I kept popping up behind her. I decided to document my creepiness by taking a picture of the couple with an "autopiano" they played. The girl kept backing up to try not to be in the picture because she assumed I would want a picture of the piano alone, and then I kept trying to covertly back up too. Haha. To make matters worse, when they left, I happened to be following them. The girl kept looking behind her. Her face told me she was trying to cover up an alarmed expression.



Earlier in the week on Sunday (same day as crazy drama with police) I went to an area called the Haight (pronounced like "hate"). It also has a similarly quirky-hippie feel to it like the Mission, but the Haight seems less grungy and is in a nicer neighborhood. The famous music store Amoeba is there, and so is the famous 4:20 clock (which is permanently stuck at, you guessed it, 4:20!). It amuses me that the city of San Francisco is just cool with all this outright pot-world. Some of my roommates have this card that allows them to be prescribed marijuana too. I always thought you had to be dying of cancer to be prescribed pot! Anyway, here is me in front of the clock.



Just before I left the neighborhood, I saw a guy sitting on a streetcorner with a typewriter. His sign reads, "Pick a Subject & Price and Get a Poem." So I gave him $5 for a poem about finding yourself in San Francisco. I told him I was from Chicago, too. I was pissed he wrote this poem about being lonely in a new city! WTF! I thought the prompt would be whimsical, my thought process being that poets are whimsical. Haha. Maybe I should change that to poets are self-pitying starving artists. Although this guy was super friendly and sociable. Anyway, here is the poem in full.

The map turned around in my head today as I sat on a Muni that I knew where it was going as I talked to the person next to me they knew that I was new but they told me they were too as now they have been here for years and they couldn't see themselves leaving as now I got off at the stop I still didn't know anyone in the city as I sat at a bar and watched the game and in between quarters I called my father to tell him how I was doing
The truth is I didn't know but I said I was alright anyway if you were getting used to the city you too would have done the same



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Fyi, while I wrote this post there was a crazy man talking outside my window who sounds like he's trilling his tongue and talking in a Scottish accent at the same time. He is also alternately beating on something in rhythm, like a drum.
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