. . . . AN ANTI-VIETNAM RALLY; UGLY SCENE IN LOBBY; RED-LINING; CAREER ADVICE.
April 1967 anti-Vietnam march on McAllister Street to the Polo Grounds in Golden Gate Park, City Hall is in the background.
As I locked up my bike across the street from the office, late, as usual, I saw Tom, my boss, waiting for me; he was sitting on the rim of the "dish." I crossed the street and sat next to him. (The “dish” was lost when the building’s façade was remodeled.)
“You’re such a good employee,” he said, “Don’t jeopardize your job. I can’t give you a raise this time because of your tardiness.”
“What about all the people who come in on time but don’t do anything all day? I’ve actually seen them literally sleeping at their desks, like Henry, with his head thrown back, practically snoring! ” (Henry, a soft-spoken, affable man, was near retirement age; wore thick glasses pushed up on his forehead.)
“That’s not the point. Rules are rules. They want to see a body behind that desk at 8:30, period. Asleep or not.” I looked at him. He smiled. We laughed and went inside.
Employees meeting people for lunch or after work always said, “I’ll meet you at the dish.” Gene, a senior property underwriter from the seventh floor, and I passed the dish one Monday after a weekend of unusually warm, late summer weather; he started laughing, pointing at some really tall plants in the center. “Oh, man,” he said, “those are pot plants! That’s wild!” They were gone the next day. An investigation went nowhere; it could’ve been a passerby.
A warning against going to an anti-Vietnam war demonstration. A creepy lobby attendant gets physical.
Old Stock Exchange Building (now a sports club) at 301 Pine Street.
One day, November 15, 1969, anti-war mobilizers in San Francisco joined Washington D. C., New York, and other major cities and staged a protest of the Vietnam War on the steps of the old Stock Exchange building a block or so away from Continental. Gene and I decided to go. About 11:45 the PA crackled and the Branch Manager's voice came on:
“We strongly forbid any of our personnel from attending the noon demonstration at the Stock Exchange.”
The PA buzzed and went silent. Nothing was said about what consequences we’d face by going. A couple of minutes before noon, I met Gene in the lobby. Continental’s former uniformed elevator operator- now relegated to lobby attendant- still wore a black leather glove on the hand that used to work the extinct door lever. He was a strange little man who looked like the noir actor Peter Lorre. Now that elevators were computerized, his job was to screen people coming in and going out of the building, announce when an elevator was available, and herd people into them. I guess this made him feel important. We walked past him along with others on their way to lunch. He put out his arm, barring our way.
“You are not to go to the rally!” he barked.
“We’re on our own time. We can do whatever we want.” Gene moved the attendant's arm aside and we pushed through the doors to the street.
“How does he know where we’re going?” I said.
“I don’t know; the guy gives me the creeps. He’s always watching me.”
After the excitement of the rally, we walked into the building jabbering away with the crush of people returning from lunch (we saw no one else from the company at the demonstration). Gene stepped into a waiting elevator. The attendant followed him, grabbed Gene's sleeve, and tried to pull him out, then threw a punch. Gene struck back, but missed; the elevator doors closed on a shocked crowd and a stunned Gene. Dazed, I went to my desk. I estimated the time it took him to get to his and called him. He told me he was so upset he was going home. He didn’t show up the next day, so I phoned him. He told me that personnel had called that morning and fired him for being physically violent on the job.
“It was self-defense! What about that jerk of a lobby attendant? He hit you!"
“It doesn’t matter. I’m out of there.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked him. The whole incident baffled me.
“I’m going to try the Post Office.” Within a few days he was hired and stayed with the PO until he was laid off for disability.*
The Chronicle Building on the corner of 5th and Mission.
Gene lived with his partner, Frankie, in a ground floor apartment on Minna Street, an alley behind the Chronicle Building on Mission at 5th Street, a “red-lined” area, meaning property owners and renters either couldn’t get insurance or if they did, paid twice as much premium. He once told me that he’d been lectured by his boss, the manager of the Property Department, for living in an “undesirable” neighborhood. He warned Gene that if he didn’t move to a better area, his career would be jeopardized. (In the past few years, red-lining has become illegal. And today, condos on Minna Street are selling in the hundreds of thousands.) His boss went on to say that, furthermore, Gene was single, so he’d better find a girl and get married if he wanted to get somewhere in the business. They had no idea he was gay
Next up: Chapter 8, Part Four: A chance to go to Alaska on company business. The Branch Manager opens a telegram addressed to me from Time Magazine. Head honchos arrive from New York. Everything changes. I’m on my way out again.
* Gene had inherited a rare form of arthritis from his father who had died from the disease a few months after I had met him. He and I remained close for decades. The last few times I saw him, he appeared to be calcifying right before my eyes. Then he stopped answering his phone. I went to the last place he lived on Bernal Heights and found it vacant. I neither heard from nor saw him again.
