Oh, The Irony!—A Short Essay On San Francisco
Oh, The Irony!—A Short Essay On San Francisco
Irony, loosely defined, is “a statement or event that is deliberately contrary to what one would expect” and is not strictly a bad thing. It is a literary device, a literary theme, and a wonderful element when used properly. It happens in life whether we look for it or not. The problem comes for those who use it as their only device — a lifestyle even, and depend on it for their every move. For this, it may require an additional definition, an amendment, one could say. If I were to offer a maxim for its manifestation lately, the phrase “it is so bad, it’s good” will certainly do.
I remember being in San Francisco many years ago sitting in one bar, some decrepit place. Dingey, musky joint. I look around myself. Well, the ceiling may be a little caving in and the carpet a little ran through and damp and the glasses a little greasy and the air a little stale, and the people a little grim — but I didn’t mind it. Every morning the bar is peppered with dour, smoked-out faces. I suppose everyone likes a shit-hole to some degree, myself included.
But in San Francisco, that’s just the tip of the delusion that many of its bohemians are desperately clinging to.
Asking myself what is a very natural question, I think — especially after having a few drinks — where am I? And better yet, how did I get here? As the day grows on, the bar fills with a much younger crowd. After all, it takes decades of drinking to muster shots of whiskey in the morning like the old-time-yellow-mustache barflies. So, as the graphic designers, the advertisers, and the last gasp of post-tech creators in the bay saddle up to the bar, they do so in the same way their older drunk wise men do — in a huff. Finally off from a long day of work and in need of a drink — never mind the air-conditioned office with a breakfast buffet and fridge full of cool, artesian water. Salary and wages be damned! They yearn to be commoners — “If you’re a nobody, I’m a nobody, too”, they say.
Many of these young artists seem to have the rouse down pat. They saunter into the bar exhausted from a hard day at the laptop. They sit their smartphone and their cigarettes begrudgingly on the bar. They too are supremely invested in the game on the television screen. Doesn’t matter the teams playing — sports are sports. After all, who likes sports more than the working class?
The young men, too, wear faded denim blue jean jackets, which, just like the decrepit barstools they sit atop, may have rips and tears in them, and just like those barstools, they won’t be patched or repaired anytime soon — the jackets work, don’t they? They too have an affection for all things “shitty” and a particular disdain for anything whiffing of pretension. They too are particularly fond of ordering the same “shot and beer” combos that have become a staple of dive bar-dom. The shot will be cheap whiskey — the beer, also cheap. But of course, that is what they order. In fact, it’s the only thing they can order, lest they destroy all the labor they put into their working-class aura by ordering a martini. Might as well wear cufflinks, monocle, and a top hat if you’re gonna drink that way.
Many decades ago, San Francisco was a working-class city. It was affordable, practical, beautiful, and the weather, as always, was fantastic. In 1967, the beginning of the hippie movement had started, declaring the Haight-Ashbury District as Mecca. As the kids bussed in from all over the country, the working class were not exactly welcoming of the ruckus their new long-haired, stinky, pot-smoking neighbors had brought with them.
After all, the hippies were born in the suburbs, they had opportunities, they were well-raised, but alas, they were bohemian and homeless, albeit strictly by choice. They weren’t authentically begrudged, they were ironically frustrated. They could afford a good education, a good life, a good home. If they wanted to shave and bathe they could have done that, too. Enter into the working-class soul of San Francisco a new ideal, a new scene, a new character; the artist, the hippie, the poet, the beatnik.
After the explosion of counter-culture movements in the Bay Area, throngs of America’s youth have since made their way to California in search of that purity, that innocence (or loss of it) to expand their minds, their thinking, and their art. I would know, after all, I too was enticed by the bohemian dream that San Francisco offered, and I too fell into substance abuse, endless creative inspiration, and financial malaise. For the most part, earning money just didn’t appeal to me very much. But the promise of the steep golden hills certainly did.
The mentioned “it’s so bad, it’s good” routine can be served up in many ways, especially in the City by the Bay. For painters and visual artists, it was perhaps outlined to perfection by Jean-Michel Basquait, whose work is by no means bad, but approached that ironic childish quality (long before it was strictly hip) with a prolific, shot-out-of-a-canon execution. But even Basquait, the “true voice of the gutter”, came from a good family and his dad was a doctor. And there is nothing wrong with good families, or doctors. In fact, I come from a good family and my dad was a doctor, too. While Basquiat was not from the gutter, he certainly lived in some. And in this way, he represents the path toward enlightenment for many and has long been since considered an art-school hero.
The new artist, found everywhere, not just in San Francisco, is quick to indulge in the temptation of hastily produced naive art. An overwhelming amount of which is filled with shoddy portraiture, cruddy line-making, abhorrently vapid content, and displays lots of un-intentional disregard and misuse of materials. Anything that reeks of the ironic, the street, the cruddy is gallery-worthy but anything befitting a museum is strictly shunned.
But who needs to try? After all, we are the newest generation. We like our art raw, crusty, and weird. But above all, we even like it bad. What good has “the good” in art, done for us? We don’t need no education. We don’t need talent. We don’t need work ethic. What we need is art — and with the modern-day promise of instant fame and fortune at the speed of a camera shutter or Instagram post, who wants to wait for fame and fortune? Oil paint takes forever to master and forever to dry. Cruddy crayons a la’ Basquiat are all the rage. And we need our art to match the spirit of the shitty dive bars we congregate in, too. Where do you think you are, Jack?
The artist and the working class do have many things in common; they are both, for the most part, laborers of love and survivors of circumstance. They make things with their hands. They work hard. They both struggle. Irony and self-deprecation is a shield, an iron guard, a way to make sure you don’t ever have to face any harsh words that you may find troublesome to the fantasy life you’ve convinced yourself is the truth. Hard work is for artists, craftsmen, the working class, and the tech-savvy businessmen. Hard work is something you all can share. The “ironic” is strictly for the clowns. While irony may make you immune to critique, you become seriously vulnerable to delusion.
And that, my friends, to most of the artists who are still searching for that Golden Gateway to liberation, is San Francisco in a handbasket. Yes, delusion. It’s a way to become a protector of the culture you emulate, not a perfector of the craft you hold dear.
If Bukowski’s gravestone should be appropriately etched with the words “Don’t Try”, then the new artist’s gravestone ought to read “It’s so bad it’s good”.
There are plenty of things, in my mind, the 21st-century artist should give up — Instagram, the romantic appeal of booze, templated social activism, but most of all, irony. It’s not cute anymore. And it is not so bad it’s good—it’s just plain bad.
Judson Stacy Vereen is the author of American Pleasure, 62 Poems from Judson Vereen, and Like A Bird Knows To Sing. He is also a staff contributor to Wrong Speak, where he publishes a bi-monthly opinion column. His substack page Dispatches from Bohemian Splendor.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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