January 21, 2008

Touch the Magic: Chicago

Me with G-Unit and P-Diddy at the Violet Hour.
January 2008
Chicago, IL

As readers who have (for reasons unknown) been with me since (at least) last summer know, my decision to leave the Bay after six years of, among other things, getting hyphy and ghost ridin' the whip, was by no means easy, due not in the least to the many close friends and natural comfort zone I would be leaving behind. This weekend's much hyped tour, aptly entitled Touch the Magic: Chicago, which reunited the maladjusted boys of 1524 SF for the first time since we bid our tearful goodbyes to The I.S. (i.e., Inner Sunset),¹ was a poignant reminder that though distance may separate us from our good friends, it need not obviate those friendships entirely.

Over the years, the Realm has often featured tales involving my former roommates, G-Unit and P-Diddy, from our heroic efforts to bring American values to the Godless lib'ruls of San Francisco, to our uncompromising commitment to (among other things) take back the 'loin, to fighting the good fight against evildoers near and far. As such, the expectations were high for our reunion tour here in Chicago. In preliminary preparation, G-Unit and I discussed entitling the event Take Back the Streets: Chicago, but this idea was quickly discarded. First, the streets of Chicago are terrorized not by transients and cracked-out bums as in San Francisco, who can be netted and exiled to Alcatraz, but by genuine criminals and vagabonds that would require nunchucks (à la Johnny Drama) at the very least to defeat. Second, I had not had the opportunity to establish a network of committed vigilantes to assist us in our efforts.

Instead, we came upon another title, one which both captured the essence of the tour (recapture the magic) and the general sleaze for which we were well-known while noble denizens of 1524. (Touch the magic is a reference to a certain theater on 6th and Market that G-Unit was reputed to frequent—daily. I can neither confirm nor deny these allegations.) And while I am very sorry to report that no business cards with our trademark phrase (Anything You Want, with the anything underlined twice) were offered to any unsuspecting (and likely unattainable) women nor any magic touched (at any undergraduate establishment), the tour was nonetheless a success.

The aspect that surprised me the most was the ease with which we fell back into our usual routine; the rapport built through years of torturing applicants to Cal's Alumni Scholarship (G-Unit and I used to conduct interviews regularly) and recounting (embarrassing, salacious, embellished) stories about one another to people we did not know well was virtually unaltered, despite rare contact in the time since we went our separate ways. Having moved around frequently as a child, I know from first-hand experience that reunions with close friends from past lives do not always go down this way: people change, circumstances meander, and past connections give way to present indifference—and awkwardness. Indeed, in my experience, the closest relationships are often most susceptible to this sort of drift.

So much more, then, is the reason to appreciate that the maladjusted boys of 1524, though perhaps unable to touch the magic, have not yet lost it entirely. In a life (and world) that is increasingly focused on networking rather than friendship, quantity rather than quality (as Jon aptly noted earlier), it is nice to know that I still have friends who can drop in for a weekend and thoroughly sully my (already faltering) reputation amongst my new colleagues more than I could ever do alone; if that ain't true friendship, I do not know what is.

(Oh, and by the way, though this article may be sentimental—for me, anyway—it should not be read to suggest that I am in any way repudiating my much-touted economic analysis of interpersonal relations. Though both G-Unit and P-Diddy may qualify as value-added friends, they are by no means irreplaceable. Everything—and everyone—has a price; they simply garner a higher valuation vis-à-vis utility than do most holdings in my relationship portfolio. Sorry guys: c'est la vie.)

^ ¹ By tearful, what I really mean is a series of manly grunts: Oh yeah? Yeah.