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C
H R I S T O P H E R J.
M A R T I N
Shake
Up
In an attempt to throw some variety into my routine of IT
project management and weekend sailing, I recently threw my
educational resume at the San Francisco City College's fall
2002 semester. I was unceremoniously accepted but,
nonetheless, immediately launched a three-day party with close
friends and strangers to celebrate the occasion.
The
subsequent online registration process gave me weeks of
pleasure...at work. I imagined myself in an Acting class, an
Intro to Aircraft Maintenance, Zoology (harder to spell than I
thought), Gay Lesbian and Bisexual studies...in short, all the
fringe classes I had hoped to attend but didn’t in my first
go round with a voluntary, formal, education process.
Forced
to meet a deadline, I settled on "Conceptual
Physics" (too wonderful a title to reasonably pass up)
and "Fencing 101" (You never know when you'll need
to brandish a weapon...if only figuratively and if only
against imaginary demons).
Both classes began this week and even though I feel
I've always been very easily entertained, I am excited to say
that I think I made some awesome choices...as far as fringe
classes go.
Physics
- Mission Style
I left work early to drive to the City College campus in
the Mission District. Parking being a premium practically
everywhere in San Francisco, I gave myself a little extra
time. Of course, since I left early, I found a spot on my
first pass. I parked on Mission Street in front of a boarded
up theatre plastered with music adverts and random paint. I
threw a quick glance at the decaying 3-story marquee and,
while finding a pad and pen lost under my truck’s
passenger-side seat, thought how that marquee must have looked
20 or 30 years ago. On the street directly opposite was
another, equally aging, yet slightly smaller rival theater
that was suffering from the same abundance of neglect.
After securing parking, I wound my way through the closing markets and opening cocktail bars and moneylenders. The gray, nondescript building I was looking for sat almost invisibly between Mission and Valencia streets...I had walked or stumbled past this spot dozens of times going from one bar to another having never realized it was a school. Now, as I worked my way past throngs of ESL students, the broken Spanish chatter of a hundred motivated immigrants announced my arrival to uncertainty.
I
found my room just to the left of the second floor landing. At
11$ per credit hour, I wasn't expecting padded leather chairs,
pipe smoking professors, or manic school mascots. I was happy
to find none of these present.
In fact, as I squeezed past a middle-aged woman and a
young kid to an available hard plastic chair, I almost smiled
as I saw that our "room" was actually and old broom
closet that the 25 of us were shoehorned into…probably due
to general overcrowding and/or an inherent lack of funding.
The reality of low-cost, urban public education smacked
hard against my middle-class senses and I liked it.
On
The Fence
Physics went off without a hitch. Unless, of course you
call the fact that I accused my professor of extortion when I
found a picture of him in the text I just paid 100$ for, a
"hitch." I think he understood I was joking. With
that first class successfully behind me, and my mind no worse
for wear (we leapt into mechanics with romantic abandon), I
turned full attention to my impending introduction to fencing.
For
those of you unfamiliar with the San Francisco City College
system, do not go without first consulting a map.
There are no less than 11 separate campuses spread
randomly throughout San Francisco proper.
It took me a few hours on the SFCC website and half a
dozen phone calls to determine that my Tuesday night fencing
class was being held at the most intimidating campus of
all...Ocean Avenue. The Ocean Avenue campus does deserve the
name campus, but perhaps “compound” or “territory”
would better serve to describe the expansive universe that
makes up the main school’s acreage. I’m convinced that it
has it’s own zip code and with the marked increase in the
usage of cell phones, having it’s own area code would not
come as a surprise. The streets that make up the campus are an
impossible mix of one-way and dead-end circuitry yet the
design, as seen from above, conveys a perfect, mirror-like
symmetry. The idea, I imagine, is that if you somehow manage
to learn the insane twists and turns on one half of the
campus, you’ll undoubtedly master the other.
No
sooner had I pulled off Phelan Avenue in front of the
Planetarium (that’s right, a community college with broom
closet rooms…and a Planetarium) when a random blue
uniform appeared in front of me, gesticulating wildly in what
I supposed was an attempt to keep a long line of slow moving
traffic from actually stopping.
I hadn’t brought the campus map and I needed to ask
for directions but everywhere I looked I saw very young Asian
students going nowhere in particular and carrying books.
All at once I became OLD and WHITE.
I could just as soon approach any of them for
assistance as I could change the age and color of my own skin.
I thought if only I could find someone in their mid-thirties
(or at least from Northern Europe) then maybe I would've been
brave enough to approach someone and thereby puzzle out where
the hell I was supposed to be...and there I sat, laughing at
my own bigotry, and at my duel with the mad gesticulator.
Eventually,
I found a parking space next to the North Gymnasium, slipped a
dollar into an automated parking-pass dispenser as prescribed
in the articles of parking (I've since learned that NO ONE
does this but me.) and found my way to the gym by now in a
sincere state of anticipation for my first fencing class. I
was 5 minutes late.
Fait
Accompli
"North Gymnasium." From the registration slip in
my hand, this was the only description of the place I was
supposed to be. Unfortunately, I could see neither obvious nor
subtle signs that a fencing class was in the vicinity so I
would have to find my ultimate destination by trial and error.
As I stepped into the building, I was hoping beyond hope to
see someone simply appear holding a sword or yelling
"touché!" or some other...overtness to
direct me to the class. I made a quick survey through the
institutionally brown hallways, and found myself twice
(without regret) birthed into rooms filled with incredibly
young and surprisingly flexible female dancers in some and
various states of stretch. I let play for only a moment the
idea of shoving off fencing in lieu of "Modern
Interpretive Dance."
I
wound out and up the last set of stairs I could find. The
wide, worn landing conveyed an ability to impart the passage
of a hundred maddened dancers. The solid gray steps gave
nothing back underfoot as I took two at a time in my haste. A
short hallway passed through and I found myself in The
Gymnasium. The Gymnasium, approximately 200 feet long by 50
feet wide was newly whitewashed and ornamented with a 50-foot
high, wooden-framed, glass ceiling and a beautiful, but
neglected, yellow-gold parquet floor. The room itself smelled
of extreme age, as it should. I could easily imagine the
Indiana Hoosiers playing here in 1959.
There
were 30-40 people standing in a line against the western wall
and one, lone man standing in the exact middle of the floor.
Being highly regarded for my ability to quickly size up a
situation, I joined those standing in the line against the
wall.
The
Instructor (I've been to four classes as of this writing and
have yet to hear him mention or anyone call him by, anything
resembling a name. I will not ask.) stood addressing the
class. He was neither tall nor short and he wore simple white
shorts with a red, hoodless sweatshirt. His hyper-developed
legs and large shoulders attested to his athleticism but the
sharp knife in the dark alley of his physical traits was his
complete lack of hair. I have no idea what this offers towards
his character or his ability as a swordsman, but the man
possessed a shocking lack of hair. No hair on his legs, his
arms or head or face. The fact was that even his eyebrows and
eyelashes were missing. I launched into the possibilities...a
fetish? A trait? A side affect of some treatment? All
possibilities leant themselves to the mystery of this nameless
and monkish figure who, for the next three hours, physically
tortured the 30 or 40 students of Fencing 101.
Coffee
Cup Reflections
After 10 weeks of Fencing, I inadvertently discovered the
instructor’s name, I own a very cool sword and have learned
just enough French exclamations to get myself into a duel in
Paris. After 10 weeks of Conceptual Physics I’ve unearthed a
few secret parking spaces in the Mission and maybe less
importantly, now know why I can’t hit the switch on the wall
in my room and get back under the covers before the light goes
off. As I sit,
downing another cup of coffee and pouring through the City
College catalog hoping to find more gems of fringe-class urban
education, I realize that these added arrows to my
intellectual quiver alone were worth the $66 I paid to be so
enlightened.
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