Love Happens: Carnaval in San Francisco.

LOVE HAPPENS: 

CARNAVAL IN SAN FRANCISCO

The neighborhood awakens to the loud drumming coming from the street. Infectious, happy sounds, inviting everyone to come and join! 

I live in the Mission district of San Francisco, traditionally the most important Latino neighborhood in The City ... although gentrification, or- as my daughter calls it- "hipsterfication," has dramatically altered the neighborhood in the past 10 years.

Nevertheless, its Latino essence remains in events like Carnaval and perhaps the multiculturalism observed in this celebration is something that will strengthen that Latino essence instead of diminishing it. Hope springs eternal! 

My place is located on the corner of Bryant and 26th Street, right on the spot where part of the participants and their floats gather. At 8:30 am, looking out of the window, there are many people already there, For a Sunday, it is a very early awakening. 

I peek from behind the curtains and the first thing I see gives a nice jolt to my half-asleep demeanor: a shapely female walks by wearing a big smile, some feathers and very little clothing, while clompity clompity goes the sound of  her high heels on the pavement!

That vision makes me jump out of my pajamas and after a fast shower, all decked in white, I am opening the door to the excitement of the day.

There is a multiplicity of colors in the costumes and in the faces of those who prepare to dance and rejoice in the traditional Carnaval Parade, which helps to counter the grey color of this rather cold and windy spring day.

Maybe the drumming will bring the sun back?  The costumed couple who talk next to my door seem certain of it, as one of them says:“Every year when is cloudy the same thing happens: by noon, the sun is out and then it gets really warm!”

I am not sure about today. This cold cloud seems to be the lingering kind, forcing many people to wear some coat or windbreaker over the colorful costumes, as they prepare for the 10 am time of departure.

I open my house, so conveniently located, to a regular and steady stream of cold revelers of various ages, who come in to use the bathroom. They go in rapidly, very much in need and they come out with relieved and smiling faces. “¡Muchas gracias señor!

Women in g-strings and feathers, children from close-by elementary schools wearing their brilliant new costumes perhaps for the one and only time, the way it is with most Carnaval costumes the world over. All of them going up and down the stairs, leaving a trail of laughter, sequins and perfume.

“That woman is a saint!”  tells me Eli, who teaches at Leonard Flynn, a nearby elementary school, pointing to someone who is walking out of the house,  “She sewed ALL the costumes for our school contingent! Imagine that!...Too bad that she is leaving us, going back to El Salvador!”  

It is a special day indeed, when real children and those who are children at heart bask

in the communal light of Carnaval euphoria. Of course, participatory euphoria is the best form, because if you only watch, your ass will freeze!

At least for one day, some inhibitions are left hanging in the closets of our self-consciousness and the flesh, “la carne del Carnaval!,”  takes center stage…and left and right as well.

The parade still does not begin, but I am already sweating. In one hour, I have walked almost more than what I usually walk all week! The crowd that will watch from the sidelines begins to gather as well, warmly-dressed, mostly in grey colors. The grey from the crow versus the multihued colors of the participants is one of the many paradoxes of this San Francisco event, which here becomes more of a voyeuristic experience than in most other places on earth. 

The weather has something to do with this, but I am certain that there are more reasons to be considered, if I was to analyze this even further…which I am not going to do at this time. Just a mental note suffices.

I am proud to see quite a few of my students and former students, not only in the crowd, but working as leaders, volunteering and coordinating, as well as dancing or playing music in some of the floats, all colorfully dressed. Some of them have become teachers. Others are community organizers.

I feel happy and proud. They are the new links to the future, the new generations of community leaders and artists.

There are also quite a few “only in San Francisco” visions, people who help make this city the very special place that it can be…if we only accepted and celebrated our diversity on a regular basis and not just in special occasions, as we do in Carnaval.

 I think of this when this skinny white dude flashes by, wearing a pink leotard which covers him from head to toe and riding a unicycle, his arms pressed against his bodywhile his hands flutter, well…like a big butterfly. His all smiles and his also fluttering eyelids are engaging, as his whole demeanor invites us to smile or laugh with his daring silliness.

We make eye contact and he comes close to me and declares, while balancing on his unicycle: “I am the pink guy, baby!...but I’m working right now!,”  and then winks an eye, spins adroitly around and takes off, to keep on charming the amused crowd, as he is showered by the happy sound of squealing kids. “Pink guy! Pink guy! Come here!”

Above the crowd, two giraffes pass gracefully by. Actually, they are two Black beauties, decked in mostly-yellow colors, walking on stills, clearly larger than our regular lives.

A buffed and almost nude skater drags behind him a long feathered boa, eliciting smiles from a couple of police men and women who a are guarding the parade. One of the cops takes a camera and snaps pictures of the skater and of some of the scantily-clad Brazilians who form part of the Aquarela contingent.

Since I have a Press badge, I can walk in the middle of the streets and I can engage the participants, the spectators, or the police in conversation. When I tell the policeman photographer “Tough assignment! Right?,”  he smiles and says: “I’d rather be under dressed than under covered!” A witty, smiling cop! An oxymoron? Well, not today. Not in this San Francisco Carnaval.

After all, the theme of this year is “Love Happens,”  as the main man, Roberto Hernández, “organizador número uno,” tells us, while wearing a huge red heart shape

on his chest and a silly little hat on his head. As he introduces The Lonely Boys, a trio of  Texan brothers, who brought their loud bilingual rocking and loving ballads to the Carnaval, Hernández also tells us that “the Carnaval is about love,  love happens”…and that “we are against the war, people!”.

I like that a lot: let us celebrate occasions like this wonderful Carnaval, but also let us not forget that we cannot cover the sun with one finger.

Let us not go blindly into the acceptance of that overwhelming reality: there is still an invented and unpopular war going on, there still is an overwhelming anti-immigrant movement on this country, even among those who were immigrants themselves, not so long ago, even among those who happen to have a Latino surname and who  have moved away from themselves in a vain effort to dream the impossible dream of assimilation and acculturation. Moved away “from the sacred phrase ¿Qué pasa?!,” as the late Pedro Pietri wrote in his Puerto Rican Obituary.

 

CONCLUSION

 

So, what do we get from this cloudy-day Carnaval in San Francisco, circa 2007?

What do all those spectacularly undressed men and women, all those feathers, all those palm branches, all those shaking glistening bottoms and smiles tell us? What can we get from this happy exception to the rule of our daily relative solitude, a day when ages and colors mix, where we celebrate our past and present cultural heroes, like the memory of dancer/choreographers Carlos Aceituno and Malonga Casquelourd, who left this earth entirely too soon, but who left a happy trail of drums and dancing on their paths?

After the parade passes by and all is left is the wind and the cold of the day, the drum beats that linger in our ears and the images that we keep behind our eyelids, what was that vision that snaked by our lives today? A mirage? Something that can only happen -even in San Francisco- once a year?

I propose that we could see another truth, evidenced at this Carnaval: that cultures do not melt into a happy melting pot in the United States: people want to keep their languages, their customs, their music, their traditions…and they want to share them,

Even though they live here in North America, all these dancers, musicians, of all ages,  from all corners of the world, are very much in touch with those places where their ancestors come from. Thus, there is a better goal: to keep our cultures, to learn and practice new ones, to share them and then, to create new cultures, cultures than will respect each other, that will laugh and dance with each other daily, not just in Carnaval.

Let Love Happen daily!

Carlos Barón

May 30, 2007

San Francisco, California

 

Photos by Carlos Texca

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlostexca/collections/72157600275154002/