Remember Clement Street?

It's been ages since I visited Clement Street, the mostly Asian SF zone that time has passed by. Not much has changed there in 50 years, I imagine, other than the infiltration of cell phone service and the sprinkling of little storefronts to provide same (much like in India). It's shabby, dirty, falling apart, the signage is vintage, as are many of the denizens, the food is mostly specific Asian, including fresh and swimming fish, and it's replete with old style veggie markets and Chinese fast food joints with fluorescent lighting. The intellectual light remains the Green Apple bookstore and the wonderful Annex.

There is good and bad in all this. If you drive across one of the bridges from another Bay Area sanctuary, or get there from one of the more upscale neighborhoods, you'll find yourself in a time warp.

Dressed as I was in my corporate pantsuit, patent leather T-strap heels, and jewels for the video audition near Fulton Street, I could feel all this. Adding to the charming decrepitude all around on this sunny late summer day, about 10 blocks of the area had little or no electric power, some of the ATMS weren't working, the stoplights were out, and drivers were on the verge of crashing into each other at dead semaphores. Families scampered across the streets, holding onto one another, reminiscent of that awful San Diego yellow street sign of the shadow image of family members running across the freeway: drivers beware.

This audition was painless. We actors were given brightly highlighted scripts to read for a few moments prior to going before the digital camera set up in a small office. I was asked by the young female director to read the part of the senior VP in charge of marketing. This decision maker would be interviewing a candidate who was bidding on running the public relations campaign for a high-tech start-up. Having played both sides of this game in real life, it felt natural to me.

Let's see if I gave them what they wanted. Don't have a clue about my competition, as the three male actors of three races and two ages there were so different from myself.

The Toy Boat (bakery cafe) and BusVan (furniture, cheap) - two businesses I remember from the early 1990's, when my pal M. lived in the nabe, are still there; well, for BusVan, it may just be the old sign that lingers still.

Is it because all the property is foreign or family owned that no McDonald's, no Starbuck's, no Peet's, no multiplex cinema, no hotel, no elegant clothing boutique, nor any franchise of any sort has moved in? Somebody, somewhere, must be eying this prime real estate's potential for the next Capitalist uptick.