Southern Biscuits & Grits in The Haight 7/23/15

Headed out to The Haight for a late breakfast by catching the #7 Muni bus at Market & Battery. I don't recall taking this bus route before especially up the low end of Haight St.. Riding Muni proves to be a remarkable way to get a view of San Francisco, it's people, districts, wonders, warts and all. Doing so is not for the faint of heart. 

Our neighborhoods must be an architect's dream. Run down Victorians dot the landscape and I imagine how fabulous they could be if their owners cleaned them up and maintained them better, rentals or not. As we roll along up the hill, I happily see Buena Vista Park and imagine the haven this must have been during San Francisco's love-in days. The Ashbury Heights neighborhood is lovely and offers spectacular views of the city if one is lucky enough to live there.

I hopped off at Haight and Masonic to try the biscuits and grits at Pork Store Cafe. Apparently, the cafe is a hot brunch spot on weekends. It offers a number of southern style breakfast plates like two country fried pork chops, biscuits and gravy with a choice of sausage gravy or vegan gravy. Honestly, I don't recall pouring gravy over biscuits like this as a main dish when growing up but it is popular throughout the South. We didn't serve a white flour like gravy made from the drippings, Daddy made gravy using darker drippings and sometimes made "red eye" gravy. 

Most of the people at Pork Store Cafe were regulars sitting at the counter. At one point, I watched a young woman come in, slip over to a table in the window that needed cleaning and take a leftover biscuit. She laughed on her way out and I gathered the restaurant folks working behind the counter probably knew her. Once outside, she appeared to be feeding the pigeons or maybe a dog, I couldn't see the sidewalk. It seemed like a good way to share leftover food rather than wasting it. Overall, I was unimpressed with my grits and biscuits/sausage gravy on the side. The price and value seemed about right, I can see why it's a popular spot for regulars.

After breakfast, I walked down Haight toward Stanyan and crossed the infamous intersection of  Haight-Ashbury. The usual tourists captured selfies, numerous tour buses passed. Haight continues its legacy of offering head shops, stores featuring tie dyed clothing, jewelry, vintage clothing,  and my all-time favorite Amoeba Records. 

I remain nostalgic over Stanyan Street, mostly due to Rod McKuen's slim book "Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows" which I bought as a teen. When I first moved to San Francisco in January 1979, I often drove over to Haight-Ashbury and found a place to park off Stanyan near Amoeba Records. My favorite drive was off upper Market through Cole Valley and down Stanyan Street to Haight. At the time, I marveled that I was on Stanyan in Haight-Ashbury, that I lived in San Francisco.

While waiting for the #43 Masonic bus on the corner of Cole and Haight, I watched a group of hippie lifestyle couples laughing gaily as they crossed Cole. Oblivious  to their pretty young dog dragging his leash behind them, the rest of us nearby saw the dog pause and squat in the middle of the crosswalk. A car stopped and it's driver blew the horn---as if---since the dog continued to relieve himself of one of the largest mound of poo droppings I've ever witnessed anywhere. We all watched in amazement, this precious dog finished and trotted to my corner's sidewalk following his owners. The car drove on missing the poo mountain, the dog's owner finally realized what the hoopla was all about and picked up the droppings with a plastic bag.

Throughout my tenure at this bus stop, a woman sat in the middle of her belongings on the sidewalk in the sun next to a bright wall mural painted on the building. She talked to herself and to me. Her conversations were laced with profanities, I could not clearly hear everything she said but at one point she called me a "bitch" for something I was or was not doing. It's not the first time that I've experienced aggressive behavior on the streets or buses of San Francisco.

There are hundreds of men, women, and teens living on the streets. I run across too many on my bus rides and walks. Many appear to have mental illness, induced or made worse by drugs or due to a congenital disorder for which they can't help having and need help to manage it. 

The point is this --- we have a growing serious societal problem with no magical solution in our sights. A young woman hurling profanities talking at no one in particular while sitting in the sun under a brightly painted wall mural in The Haight is one tragic story too many.