Aïda of Richmond
She didn't say there was an umlaut above the i in Aïda... it's just the way she pronounced her name, A-ee-da, accented on the first syllable, and so that's how I'm writing it here now.
I'd gone to the California DMV on Baker Street between Fell and Oak, right at the eastern (starting) end of the Panhandle, to apply for a state ID. And it turns out I was still in the system, as Aïda found me there, some 28 years younger, with identification card last renewed in 1998, when I was still living in Berkeley. The address? 3639 Tolman Hall. ::chuckle::
I asked her: do you know that Tolman Hall is no longer there? She didn't know that, and I mentioned that the building had been among the least earthquake-safe on campus, finally razed to the ground in 2019. I said that I missed the old Brutalist structure, and Aïda said she missed Berkeley too. When they were kids growing up in Richmond in the 1980s, she and her cousins would hop on BART and go to Berkeley to watch movies.
All those indie theaters there? The U.C. Theatre, Berkeley Cinema, Rialto, Fine Arts Cinema, Northside, Telegraph Rep... all gone. Really? she said, admitting to not having been back to Berkeley in decades, having lived here on the other side of the bay for a long time now. I saw something poignant flash on the face of this lovely African-American woman well into her middle age years, and then a sad, wry smile.
As she did her work quickly and efficiently, looking through my documents and entering data into her computer, Aïda and I chatted companionably, as if we'd known each other for years; among other things bemoaning the fact that the art of smalltalk between strangers has seemingly vanished, in this era of everyone constantly looking down into their phones, instead of at people's eyes and faces.
I silently marveled at the casual amiability and patience of this woman, who daily performs the largely thankless job of a DMV clerk, interfacing with members of the public who for the most part would rather be elsewhere.
On the way back home, I stopped by the mural on the wall at the CCSF John Adam's campus on Masonic and Hayes, to pay my respects to an old comrade who has been memorialized on part of the mural.
Leandro "Lean" Alejandro was a student leader and activist in the Martial Law years in the Philippines, whose courage and brilliant organizing got him assassinated in 1987 by elements of a right-wing death squad that had outlived the Marcos dictatorship. He lives on in memory here in San Francisco in this mural depicting history, education and the struggles of marginalized peoples worldwide.
