Stories
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In the beginning the first few years, it was a mix of men and women, but later our table became known as the boy's club, although certainly women were always welcome. Erica who worked behind the counter was a member, and the gay woman my mentor, spoken of earlier also for a time. She would tell stories about female lovers she had had. Over the years, there was great number of people who came for awhile and then disappeared, at least three dozen.
Someone usually brought a newspaper or two, almost always the SF Chronicle the morning paper, and we would read and talk of the papers contents. It wasn't North Beach and few famous people crossed the door's thresh-hold. There was a famous photographer who came in a few times, but he was more famous for who he had associated with than who he was.
Mostly it was lower middle class working people. However there was Joe the bus driver. He talked a mile a minute and would not shut up. He had gone to grade-school with Castro of the Fidel type in Cuba his father working down there. Said there was no clue as to what he would become. Joe was medium tall not heavy, glasses, who had a photographic memory. I liked him because he was like a walking encyclopaedia.
Joe was what Google is today. He also knew his movies and the descriptive punchline which summed the film up. He turned me on to "Body Heat", Kathleen Turner, which gives us a time frame here, 1981. Some people got mad at me because I invited Joe to our table and he was a verbal maniac. They didn't know how to say - Joe shut up ! And he did get better by use of that technique. I saw him as a valuable asset information wise, like people consult their phones today.
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