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Frisco Utopia

Totem City By Hank Hyena Telephone poles are ugly! Want a clear view out your window? Forget it! There's a long, greasy log blocking the scenery, slicing up the landscape like a vertical turd. Insidious telecommunication poles dominate our streets like oily giants--they've surrounded us! Snared us in a web of filthy wires! I want to chop down these 10,000 arrogant towers that blight our metropolitan sky, but ... hey! We need phones. What can we do? How can we live in a visually beautiful, but conveniently chatty, world? Answer: Totem poles! If there has to be wood in our way, we might as well decorate it. Imagine an avenue lined with bright writhing Tlingit posts, grimacing majestically at us as we stroll out for bagels. Eagles, bears, owls, salmon, wolverine, elk--colorful beast-faces transporting our electronic dialogue. Frisco should seek to be the first Totem City! Citizens, let's chisel skinny monuments immediately that exhibit our wit, our desire, our neighborhood pride. Start chopping, utopians! Let's make some sawdust, soon! Below, I've listed some ingenious possible poles: Bush Street: Poles here should honor the famous political shrubs--ex-President George and his child, Texan governor/candidate George W. Visualize replicas of their grinning heads alternately piled up on top of each other, with Barbara and Jeb occasionally interjected between. George W.'s outstretched arms could serve as a crossbeam: one hand clutching whisky, the other--the Bible. Noe Valley: This infant-fetish neighborhood is obsessed with baby-breeding. Totem topics here should commemorate this gurgling affection. I suggest carving massive shit-stained diapers, bisected by enormous heads of hairless puking newborns. Puffy arms grasping rattles can project from the sides. Folsom Street: This stomping ground of the butch 'n' bottom fair should erect either a stiff mounting sequence of spanked cheeks-in-chaps or a 40-foot "woody" phallus, pierced and tattooed. Wires should be handcuffed to the beam and wrapped in rawhide. Crossbeams are "half-mast" and uncut. Cathedral Hill: This church-ridden slope is rabid for Jesus, so let's plant poles here that impersonate the Christian savior himself--tall emaciated figures like El Greco portraits, with their arms outstretched on a cross. Fake blood seeping from nail wounds? Wires bolted to the crown of thorns? Sure .... North Beach: Poet poles to commemorate the beatniks and their bongo drums should be installed here, with buttons you can press to hear tape-loops of their annoying rants. Timber can be made from the pulp of their chapbooks that nobody read. Stacked boob-poles (Carol Doda-sized, to celebrate the strip clubs) are also acceptable. 'Tis the Season: We need holiday poles to prop up during Yuletide: Santa's leering face, Rudolph's red snout, vapid snowmen, candy cane-colored wires--merchants and shoppers will love it. There's also Halloween with a pillar of jack o' lanterns or a slab of smirking skulls. Local Lore: "Vallejo" Street? "Phelan" Avenue? "Geary" Boulevard? "Taylor"? "Sutter"? "Montgomery"? Who are these people? Frisco suffers from civic amnesia, so let's slap up some educational edifices to teach us our history. Civic Center poles could feature all the dead mayors' heads balanced on top of each other, with crossbeams of supervisors and police chiefs. Skeptical? Hesitant? Are you fearing, "Sounds fun, but who's doing the carpentry? I don't have time to gouge, sand and paint a big pole!" Well, stop fretting! I've devised a source of free labor for all of us: beavers. We'll enslave and train the toothy rodents to gnaw what we command. They'll chew out the rough outline, and then--for finer detail--we'll use puppies and teething tots from Noe Valley . Hate my ideas? Send your own Utopian Schemes to Hankhyena@mindspring.com [ San Francisco | MetroActive Central | Archives ]