“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” e.e. cummings

There was something so compelling about this giant flag slowly undulating on the perennial breeze that is San Francisco. I grumbled to myself every time I passed by it though because, from my photographer’s eye, there was never a clear shot of the flag, alone, without the detritus of the urban landscape it exists within. I fired off a few images out of simple documentary habit and, into the morass of saved photos they lay.

Scrolling through shots looking for…something?…..not sure what, the pull of this image grabbed me once again.  I thought “How could I manipulate this picture into more than it is. Pump up the color? Mute the wires? Tighten the focus?”. They all felt fake.  They would be no more than “artistic” faux photos that failed to convey what I now saw, with delighted quickness and solidity, was the metaphor that lay within.

As I enlarged the image and looked for ideas to improve it, remake it, rewrite its story, I slowly began to get pings and pokes in my brain about just what the elements individually imparted to the whole.  One by one, once I had opened my brain to look at the same object in an entirely new way, subtleties of meaning began to creep out.

Lower Right: The Castro Street sign was inadvertently truncated with the last letter missing. A metaphor in my mind for all that is missing today from the Castro I knew fifty years ago; the funky shops, Double Rainbow Buttered Almond Ice Cream, Harvey Milk’s camera store, Star Pharmacy, Elephant Walk, on and on the recitation goes.  Most of all, the thousands of young men who, seemingly overnight, were just erased, leaving only panels on the giant AIDS Quilt, if they even had friends left to actually sew them one.

Lower Left: The Pride flag, again cut off from its full flavor of colors. A faulty photographers eye? Or maybe on another level, again, acknowledging the somber mien that pervades  gay culture overall as we navigate our lives and our thoughts through this tremulous new age we must now endure.  Emotions are surface deep again and we must continually remind ourselves of our own humanity and our distinct right to express it.

Lower Left inner a bit:  You’ll have to enlarge and look closely but again, truncated, partial stories inadvertently clipped by me, the photographer, and now critiqued by me, the artist.  The stark, shiny new, human Metro cage, only a partial on Cat….again, the historic tri-globed antique streetlights, partially obscured by cables and progress and somehow cheated of their grand design heritage and yet still mirrored in a way by the arching chrome new streetlight on the left.  The palm tree somehow anchors this mini tableau through the eras that the light has stood sentry, waiting for the new technology to catch up with its stoic reverie and illuminate a new, brighter night.

Bottom third field:  The Fog.  As always, the one great leveler of all great San Francisco phenomenon.  Obscuring some of the seedy, lending even that a soft-lit, sensuous, delicacy that bespeaks the harsh reality of the chill and frigidity that it imparts into the core of The City and its residents at once.

And the Grid: the final overlay of both the long gone and the very current (pun intended) that hums San Francisco into life all its days and nights. It is the ultimate metaphor.  We can only see the The City through the lens/grid of the past; our personal past (mine of half a century) and the city, and each of the neighborhoods contained within, through the hardscrabble struggle that epitomized every settler, conquistador, urban pioneer, and hippie whoever called this creational promontory home.

Today, this Sunday November 8, 2026, Palm Springs rolls out the red carpet for the largest Pride Parade on the West Coast. Fitting in its frivolity, serious in its imparting of hard truths.  We are here, We are Queer, Get Used to Us. This was the chanted aphorism of decades past.  It still holds kernels of that very important truth today.  Those kernels will be for the next generations to pop into full color as their lives unfold. My work is done here.  I have lived as out and loud as I possibly could for over sixty years.  I have not always been the best representative of my tribe, none of us is, but I have contributed as much as I could and as I can. The torch is passing, quickly now, as it must.

I am home in my sunny place of peace, three cats circling me, waiting for a lap.  Now, I can watch the parade on TV as it happens.  I can no longer tolerate the crowds, the intensity, or the energy.  Contentment to me now means a job well done, a life lived fully, and a home that safely houses all the memories that I have accrued.

Mission Accomplished