Simon P Crowther

“out three £100 notes, and slid them across the counter”
― E.E. Holmes, Portraits of the Forsaken

“the bushes no more. I stare up at the looming, lit, downtown skyscrapers, the Transamerica Building, Grace Cathedral and Coit Tower spearing black skies beyond crooked hills, the Bay Bridge’s running lights behind me like an airport landing strip, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate, the roaring Pacific leading to the Great Highway’s abandoned beachheads where the Boys of Belvedere and I used to stay up all night building giant driftwood sculptures and setting them on fire at dawn, dancing like Indians, and I know nowhere I go can compare to this place, because nowhere else can offer me what this city has, standing on 22nd and Mission, two o’clock on some random Sunday afternoon, fat, orange sun splashing, the mango, melon, and papaya peddlers on rolling carts camped beneath the giant Woolworth’s sign, the Mexican panadarias baking empanadas, rich, wheat breads, taquerias stewing al pastor and grilling carne asada, onions and avocado and horchata, greasy spoons carved into alley walls and indie beaneries brewing pungent coffees, the bead and trinket stores with their Jesus and Mary candles for 99 cents, the outlandish drag queen fashions in the Foxy Lady display window,”
― Joe Clifford, Junkie Love: A Story of Recovery and Redemption