Angels of the Tendernob

I used to live in the area of San Francisco right between Nob Hill (very shee-shee) and the Tenderloin (crack infested ghetto that most resembles Alphabet City before Guiliani fucked it up). It was affectionately refered to as the "Tender Nob". the area was a very cool, very exciting place to live. In the daytime it was a collection of hip boutique stores, cafes, bars, lounges, and clubs. there were pockets of ethnic zones, like vietnamese areas, thai, russian, and turkish all mixed together. incredible restaurants and art galleries. it looked a lot like NYC because it was near union square and the center of town so you could step out of your building and hail a cab instantly.



at night, however, the freaks came out. it was like tides. literally since Nob Hill was uphill from the 'Loin. in the daytime the ghetto receded back a bit, by about 3 blocks. but at night, the tide came in and the ghetto splashed uphill into my zone. the later it got, the freakier the freaks were. tranny hookers took over the corners, homeless crazies and drug addicts wandered the streets, screaming bloody murder at the air in front of them. it was the kind of place that i know will probably gentrify in the next 5 years, but right now, its still very "iffy".
thats me on halloween. i was a pro tennis player (i am wearing a jacket though)

here's a review of the hood posted by an old friend of mine.

Dear TenderNob,
Given the recent gentrification of rough and tumble areas such as Western Addition (now NOPA) and SOMA (6th Street Gentrification project), I can only fear and suspect that you will be next. There was a time in the recent past when my humble abode at Sutter and Jones would have been considered part of the Tenderloin proper so even this handle of "TenderNob" is a result of encroaching Marinafication. Please, I beg of you, resist! Send out your fiercest roaches, rats, crackheads, prostitutes and crazies to do battle with the white-bread zombies best suited to Marina living. I don't want to sacrifice my pee-scented, garbage strewn 'hood for a hipster populated, yuppie visited, SUV parking garage. Where will I be forced to live if you forsake me? Dogpatch? Bitch, please.

Yours in times of crack and blowjobs,

Jill S.

i LOVED that about it. living their took me back to growing up in NYC in the 80's. needing to step over people lying in gutters, a police force with bigger fish to fry, yuppies choosing to live elsewhere but visiting the nightlife with fear in their eyes. I never felt in any danger because i tend to look very confident and i have a shaved head so people generally don't target me. the ones that did, usually couldn't even focus enough to perceive my physical advantage over them. one time i just walked around a drug addict who was holding a stick and asked me for my money. it took him a second to realize that i had simply side stepped around him and kept on walking.

one part of it that was a bit annoying though, was that i usually had to accompany my ex's or any female friend who wanted to come or go late night. because they were almost certain to get hassled. like 80% chance of drug addict, 20% chance raving psychopath. this resulted in a few exciting episodes, but one story that i love telling was about a girl in an angel costume. a girl in a white flowing dress and white wings had to fight off 4 freaks at 4 a.m., right out in front of my building.

it happened one night in the winter of 2005 i think. I was recently single and had become friendly with a bartender woman who worked at a place right near my house. she was a very tough girl, kind of scary actually. she was petite, and very girly looking, but i found out quickly that she came out of a tough childhood and could handle herself very well. she also had a tendency to serve herself behind the bar a bit too much. one night, after being very liberal with her personal pours, she ended up telling me a story about when she was a teenager that raised the hair on the back of my neck. it was a story that she really shouldn't ever repeat again as she was involved in something REALLY BAD. so i knew that she was nobody to trifle with, but could tell that people probably didn't figure that out about her until it was too late. seeing as how she looked like a sweet innocent type.

so this one night, i stopped by her place to say hi, i was going out to a friend's party in the mission so i was just stopping in for a drink. there was a theme party going on in the place and she was wearing a full on angel costume. kind of fairy-like, with sparkles and flowing white gown fabric, plus two large cumbersome wings which were obviously impeding her ability to tend the bar. it was actually very comic, she had even put too much mascara on so it looked like she was a washed out fallen angel. perfect for that area at night.

anyways, i don't remember telling her to call me or stop by after closing out the bar, but she must have gotten drunk and thought i did, or maybe she just got plain drunk. i went to the mission, rocked out, came home at about 3.a.m. and promptly passed out. passed out unconscious and nobody was going to be able to wake me up unless Mao, my super awesome deceased cat jumped on my face with his claws out, which he never did.

so most of this event happened with me out cold. i didn't hear about it until i heard from her, and my neighbor who witnessed it. my friend walked to my building in her angel outfit and started ringing my doorbell. despite my bell being a very loud ringing phone, i didn't so much as stir. she called my cellphone like 20 times. no answer. so she must have been standing in my building foyer for a while trying to roust me.

apparently she was there long enough to capture the attention of 4 sketchy guys who quickly targeted her. she suddenly found herself getting grabbed by strange dirty men. they must have figured she was as innocent as her angelic appearance. i am sure they didn't expect her to have any fight in her (i believe she had some kind of training from what my neighbor describes happening next). she started to scream at them in the doorway which awoke my neighbor who lived near the front of the building. he ran to his window and said he thought he was dreaming. it looked like Tinkerbell had turned vigilante like charles bronson. she started kicking and punching at them like a spider monkey. he said he thought in his half sleep that her wings were actually flapping but in retrospect it was probably because she was dancing around so fast. he counted that there were four of them and they had her cornered in our entrance. one of them grabbed her wing and she kneed him in the groin and/or stomach. he said she had them defending themselves rather then the other way around. as he woke up and the reality of the situation sank in, he quickly called 911 and then yelled out the window at the men. they tried a little bit longer to grab at her, i am still not sure if they were trying to rob her, or worse. but my neighbor said they all looked pretty roughed up by her and he saw her kick one in the face and pull his hair so he fell and then she kicked him on the ground. the other three picked their friend up and ran downhill, back to their Tenderloin lair.

meanwhile, 5 stories up and one window to the left, i was snoring away and snuggling with my cat, blissfully unaware of the biblical struggle happening down on earth.

the police screeched up to the scene a few seconds later and surrounded her. they probably even had their sirens on, and i still didn't wake up because my window was facing the street and by then i could have slept while an f-18 landed in my living room. my neighbor, who luckily was not as skilled in sleeping through noise as i was (of course, whether it was luck for my friend or luck four the four attackers we will never know...although it sounded like she was winning) when he went outside to help, apparently she wanted nothing to do with him or the cops. She wouldn't tell them who her friend was in the building, in some sort of instinctual distrust for the police no doubt, i guess i am kind of the same way.

instead she managed to pull herself together, fix her wings, wipe some dirt off her face and walk away like nothing had happened. my neighbor said the cops seemed pretty baffled by her blase' attitude considering the tale that my neighbor told them afterwards. one of them had made a crack about how even the angels of the Tendernob are dangerous. i have a lot of respect for that girl, i was actually kind of scared of her after that and subsequently kept my distance. but the image of that angel in a pitched battle on Sutter and Jones street at 4 a.m. is exactly what made that neighborhood so super turbo awesome cakes.