From the deck of my new apartment

Wow, my neighborhood is beautiful. I don't think I can overstate it, nor do it justice. I've pretty much decided that it's the most beautiful, magical neighborhood in the city. I'm not talking about the Castro, mind you, but instead the neighborhood up the hill, between the Castro and Twin Peaks. I'm not sure it has a name of its own. It's entirely hilly, with streets and houses running up and down several hills - Tank Hill (I think it's called), Corona Heights, Buena Vista, and the flanks of Twin Peaks. Unlike the hills further downtown, the peaks here haven't been conquered yet by real-estate, so you can clamber up them for citywide views. And in between the hills are the beautiful, winding streets, hidden stairways with evocative names like Vulcan Steps, and my favorite set of street names, named after the planets - Mars, Venus. Saturn, and not forgetting Uranus.

For a guy like me who's gotten used to going jogging right out of the door of my apartment, you can imagine that my new neighborhood, with its hills, poses a challenge. I think that either I'll become superfit, or die of an early heart attack. I've tried three different routes so far. The first was a disappointment. Friends had told me that slanting up Twin Peaks wasn't so steep. The only road I could find that slants like that turned out to be a grey wind-tunnel of featureless apartment buildings shielding the road from any view of the city below.

But my weekend runs, yesterday and this morning more than made up for the first one. This morning, I darted through Ord Street, then up the Vulcan Steps and along Levant Street, past the ruins of a former apartment in the "Swish Alps". Well, it wasn't really in ruins, but it made for a romantic sounding sentence. Then round the corner of Roosevelt into the park underneath Corona Heights. Corona Heights is a distinctive rock that, from the Castro, looks almost as if it's crowned with real ruins. Or at least so thought a friend visiting from Holland a couple of months ago: he took the spikey, tawny rocks on the summit as a ruined church. I told him we don't really have old ruins here, unlike in Europe.

Anyway, up Corona Heights I panted. At the top, I paused to survey the view, before running down the other side and then back up Roosevelt, across 17th and down Uranus, which proved to be a dead-end until I cut back up to busy Market Street for a block. I tumbled down steep Short Street to finally encounter the rocky Tank Hill. On my way down the other side of the hill, I discovered the remains of somebody's midnight tryst: an abandoned bra, a short section of chainlink and a porno mag. We are, after all, close to the Castro. Finally, down 19th Street for a short stretch before cutting through the Seward Steps for home.

I've been fighting off my old melancholia all weekend, though, despite the joy of my new neighborhood. It was partly triggered by conflict over the cast for my upcoming movie. I've finally had to make the decision to find a new cast, which will be difficult given that I'm shooting in two weeks and need people who can both waltz and act. But it wasn't so much the loss of the cast; it was more the conflict that first made me feel down. It's really the first time I've felt so melancholic in weeks. I guess it's no surprise that it's also the first time in weeks where I've had any real leisure time.