Day Off

Standing at the edge of Pier 7, amongst the chain-smoking casual fisherman, we looked onto our city, chatting about the formative impressions these buildings leave on us, the history of its development, and the subtle nuances of what is an ultimately arbitrary set of opinions regarding architecture. I could smell that lightly-slated air, which always reminds me a little of my father. Perhaps an image of my father doesn't appear in my head, but when I think of the memories that return to the house of my brain--fond guests who visit too seldom-- they involve my father. And the sea.
We strolled up Broadway, watching the slight differences that demarcate the change of settings: the lifeless waterfront luxury condominiums transition to strip clubs and dive bars named with unimaginatively obvious abstract nouns. "Atmosphere." "Urban."
Crossfade to ------------> Columbus Avenue.

We walk into a church, St Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic. The cacophonic clutter of honking noises and city chatter was silenced at once by the solemn hollow of the church. I sat in the third-row pew and looked up (something I do quite often). I love the meditative nature of churches. I was raised in a Catholic school, where prayer and worship in God's house was forced upon us twice a week. I am no longer Catholic, but I remember fondly the majestic wonderment of looking up during mass,  admiring the church's vastness, respecting its palpable influence to quiet my mind.

We emerge back onto the street feeling like we've cleansed our brains, only to dirty it again with mediocre hamburgers and ineloquent sexual innuendoes.

We stood before the Sentinel Building, basking, if only briefly, in the rusted copper masonry that clads its beautiful face. But from where we stand, I can only help but notice the emaciated sidewalks it stands upon. All of a sudden, the building looked as though it were suffocating, choked by the sewer of cars that surrounds it, sucking its life and energy out. A world-class restaurant sits at its feet, and yet no street life seems to exist on this historic corner. What was once a proud and respected sentinel for the Paris of the West seems now small and sad, dwarfed by the out-scaled spike of the Transamerica tower.
Poor buildings!  All these poor buildings! I say widen those sidewalks, plant the trees, encourage the lingering and spontaneous interaction that once danced amongst these streets. I say, stop choking these buildings! Let them breathe, for God's sakes! Let these buildings breathe!"

Later, we dodge and swerve amongst the perpetual madness of the shopping district. If that trendy, ridiculous word, "Manhattanized," had any relevance or context, this would be it. Everywhere: Walgreens, Starbucks, Gap, Bank of America, Diesel, Forever Twenty One, Seven Eleven, La Boulange... And where can I sit?
Nowhere to sit, silly! How can you shop while sitting?!

We found our way to an inconveniently hidden public space atop a luxury mall on Sutter, and again, looked up. Here before me were the houses of another god, no gothic spires, but communication antennas atop these so-called churches of capitalism. We had, around us, a cross section of San Francisco's history, displayed by the mixing and squeezing of architectural styles throughout the years. Some towers whisper, while others shout. Some buildings conceal the flow of money and power, while others seem to have no poker face at all. But for all their brashness and pride, for all their tactless machismo, they nevertheless contribute to the splendid variety of this wonderful city.

Her

I'll admit I had a bias walking into the theater. Having only seen one trailer of it, and listened to a few raving reviews, I was surprisingly negatively biased. Knowing the basic premise beforehand, it tapped on a personal opinion that is of hot debate in 2014: this is the debate behind antisocial behavior and its link to modern technology, ranging from social media to video games. 

First, I liked this film: for its aesthetic beauty, for Joaquin Phoenix's adorable character. But I mostly liked it for the imaginative premise that truly questions the paradigms that define modern-day relationships. Joaquin's character struggles with the perceived stigma of maintaining a connection with an operating system. The viewer can see his internal judgement as he sorts through the unspoken voices that might say: "that's not a real relationship, you're insane." 

Today's comparable stigma might be the advent of online dating. Most people who have met someone online, myself included, have felt a little judged for doing so; if not from those around us, at least internally. I suppose my insecurity for online dating surrounds my age and my principles: I'm young, aren't I? I should have no problem meeting new people! or: Modern society is too disconnected! Between the never-ending stream of unread emails being alerted on smart phones, to the antisocial media consumption spread across an ever-growing number of personal devices, can't we just meet each other organically anymore?

I think I've arrived at a middle-grounded opinion on this. I'm continuing to believe that, yes, it is totally acceptable to meet people online, because we are living in a world where we may not always have the time or resources to meet someone in the "organic" fashion, so why not use these lovable/annoying electronic devices to our romantic advantage? On the other hand, I think there is a deeper, more destructive nature to our ongoing secluded usage of online services, video games, and other antisocial behavior.

In this fictitious city of Los Angeles, amongst the millions of people walking amongst each other, everyone's alone, talking to an inhuman device tucked away in an earpiece. This is a somewhat familiar sight to urban dwellers of the new millennium: stand at any busy intersection and count how many individuals are consumed in a text, talking on the phone, multitasking as they walk, busy with something else that's clearly more important than the physical world around them. What's disturbing about this phenomena, especially as it is presented in Her, is that it goes contrary to the fundamental mechanisms of urban society as we know it. The delicate interwoven connections that form the fabric of a community are based on the daily human interaction, even if its nonverbal. Jane Jacob's "eyes on the street" are one example of how a healthy community has the ability to self-enforce street-level crime simply through the ongoing movement and lingering of people on the street, a sort of "ballet of the sidewalk" as she calls it. What is to happen if we have no need to simply walk and look around, focused and undistracted? To ask the larger question (and this might succinctly sum-up my babbling here): What is the point of living in a city, if not for the people in it? If we continue to become atomized individuals, ignoring our physical context in the space around us, what's the need for such space at all?

While this might seem like overcautious speculation, consider this: on a  recent evening on Muni, a man pulled out a handheld gun on a half-full train, and no one else noticed. Police footage revealed that the man in fact whipped out his gun in full sight, holding it for less than a minute, and then concealed it again. Meanwhile, a train full of distracted people, absorbed in texting, reading, and music, sat blissfully unaware of the danger just feet away from them. 

Now that I've successfully gone off on a relevant tangent, I'll bring this home. What I'm getting at is that we must try to understand that good old fashioned human interaction is necessary and required for human beings, and that nothing can replace that. We may satisfy some social needs through semi-intelligent operating software, but what we biologically need is to look into one another's eyes and feel empathy for each other. I walked into Her expecting to see a plead against the organic chemistry of human connection, but what I got was something quite different. 

I still continue to online date, but my ultimate fantasy is meeting someone on a crowded Muni train: we bump into each other, say the obligatory "excuse me," and then embark on some witty conversation about transit service, and the organic chemistry plays on...