Days 4 & 5

Day 4: We do lead charmed lives, don't we? We go out to dinners with friends on Thursday nights, nice French bistro-type places in nice neighborhoods like the Mission, and then we repair to a bar or several for a cocktail or several, all the while walking along essentially temperate, late-December streets. We wear scarves, of course, because we wear scarves every day, without fail, and this time of year our jackets are usually the heavier ones we own...but that's it. No ice crystals forming anywhere, least of all in our facial orifices, no breath pluming in front of our faces. There's no scurrying to get from place to place in San Francisco. Sure, there is not, as well, any late night stoop-sitting, and certainly no late-night stoop-sitting in shirtsleeves and with a beer in hand*...but, well, you can't have everything in life.

Take, for instance, Victim #22, found, according to my meticulous notes, "in the Mission somewhere" on Thursday night. This tree, which once had so much--baubles on its branches, presents beneath its skirt, the warm gazes of Christian babies--now doesn't even have a proper sidewalk on which to be discarded. In fact, its final resting place looks to be some kind of construction site, with a garden hose in the background and feces on the curb. Almost as though the world were taunting him, saying, Here, Victim #22, here is some water and fertilizer to help you grow big and strong...if, that is, you could still grow, which you can't, because you're dead.

But it gets worse. Because take a closer look at that feces.^ See how it's dark, and brown, and thick? That's no dog shit, I can guarantee you of that. That, my loyal readership, is primate feces, almost certainly from the anus of a human vagrant. This in turn means one of two deeply disturbing things: a) some revolting humanoid picked the sacred grave of poor Victim #22 as his place de disgorgement, or b) Victim #22's former owner thought this crass, fecalized corner of the universe would be the appropriate resting place for her/his former Christmas tree, the object, afore-mentioned, of his adorable Christian baby's gazes. Seriously folks, I don't know which is worse. Probably the latter, because, you know, when you gotta go you gotta go. But still.

Victim #23, too, can't have everything in life, though admittedly he has a little more than Victim #22. He is not, for instance, lying near likely human feces. He has also been allowed the meager dignity of standing whilst he awaits his refuse truck fate.He has not, however, been allowed much more dignity than that. See for instance how he is wedged between a lamp post and a trash can, and just in front of a recycling bin. Like he's a side of meat, and the street is a walk-in freezer. "Ah, just store 'em right there for now! He don't need no room, he's just a dead tree!"

Just a dead tree.

Did they think that when they brought him to so much glee and mirth two, three, what was it four weeks ago? When they carefully nestled their presents about his undercarriage, when their children stole longing glances, when their precious little unfunded mandates snuck downstairs in the middle of the night to shake the wrapped boxes, to rattle them just a little--did they treat their trees like dead sides of meat then, salting them maybe, searing their sides?

Heartless goons. 14th Street between Folsom and Van Ness.

At least Victim #24 has his space. Oh--and no feces anywhere in sight, though his is a generally feces-free neighborhood, 22nd Street, between Garcon! and the Lone Palm.

Other than that, there's really not much else to say about this little guy. Standard-issue dead tree, poisoned by Santa not one week ago, lying now face-down on the sidewalk. He didn't deserve this. None of them did.

And that's it for Day 4. Just three entries (plus the feces!) because a) I got so drunk/was so rufied that I fell asleep on the bathroom floor of my apartment when I got home, oh no wait that doesn't actually explain why I didn't take that many pictures, b) I didn't have my camera with me most of the day, and c) Miss Mansel Adams was busy doing something else all day and night, I don't know what. But whatever, because Day 5 more than made up for it, in both quality and quantity. Take for instance Victims #25 and #26, 19th Street and Florida, right by a utility pole, arranged as though they pulled guard duty--one standing at attention while the other sneaks in a nap. And what does that pickup truck have to say to them, what piece of advice is it only too happy to give to these poor, discarded trees? "Trust Your Struggle." That's right, dead Christmas trees, have faith in your incipient struggle with the city trash man, with the incinerator or wood chipper you're about to shoved in because no one loves you anymore, no one has any more use for you. Someone lied to you, whispered sweet tinselly nothings to your branches over the course of a torrid, three-week affair and then kicked you, quite literally, to the curb. But trust it, tree!

Victim #27, however, wasn't proselytized to, just thrown into the path of a crosswalk, an open invitation to any number of daily passersby to kick, spit, nudge or bicycle over.

Finally, Victim #28 was unceremoniously crammed into a red shopping cart, an unfortunately ironic inversion of the actual events. No no one's buying you to take you to a warm home, poor tree, no one is agreeing to take care of you, to dress you and make you look pretty, no, nothing of the sort, you're just being thrown out.

Thanks to Mansel for these three, it needs noting.

It turns out, though, that disrespect for Christmas trees is not limited to residential areas of high Catholic content. In fact, even in godless North Beach there are Christmas trees that people just toss aside like stripper's underwear.  See, eg, Victim #s 29 and 30:

Both these were found on Pacific Street, on the back way to North Beach from the Financial District. Nothing but law firms, strip clubs, Italian restaurants and bars for an entire square mile, and still this business with the dead Christmas trees. Why can't these places get the fake plastic ones? And more importantly, what's Santa doing at a law firm or a strip club?

Finally, the day ended a little closer to home, with Victim #31, another standard issue parked in a tow away zone. 6th and Judah. May he rest in peace.

*Stay positive here, Anonymous author. 

^ I can't tell you how long I've waited to write that sentence.