Prologue

You can walk to get from point A to point B. You can walk to get away from something or from someone. You can walk for exercise or to clear your mind or to think. But there’s a different kind of walking. You can walk to linger. You can walk to listen. 

What are the birds telling you? What’s the street saying today? What do you say back?

When you walk like this, in a soulful way, you walk not “to do” anything, but simply “to be.” You’re walking, yes, but what you're really doing is sinking in to what’s around you. What you’re really doing is becoming aware of what you miss in all your busy living.   

But is this kind of walking even possible today? None of us can just walk the earth unhurried, right? Just smelling the roses? There’s no time for it. We’ve got jobs, schools, families. We’ve got things to figure out. It’s not possible is it? To walk soulfully right now through the middle of your messy life?  Well, it is. But don’t take my word for it. 

Ask Kirk. Kirk Davis, he’s a San Francisco native and resident of the city’s Bayview neighborhood. He’s a community leader there and a real busy guy. I’ve known him for a couple of years now and when he told me about these walks he would take, three-hour walks, through the city, from just about its most southern point all the way up to the most northern point, right near the Golden Gate bridge, I had to learn more. Why would someone who’s lived his whole life in the city, who already knows about its history and the lay of the land, take three hours every Saturday to walk through it? 

[Kirk] It felt like I was driving by people, driving by issues, just driving through. I hadn't walked in a while, and walking gave me a different vantage point than driving through. That I'm here, that I'm present, that I smell, that I see, that I touch. And I think the seeing piece is the most part. Because you realize you're not seeing, you're moving through.

So what did he see on these long tours of the city he already knew? And what kept him going back week after week? Join me as I walk with him to find out what it was.

I’m Seth Dickson and this is Soul Search. 

Act 1 - Bayview Forever

I met up with Kirk one sunny afternoon at his home in Bayview. He had told me that the walk was quite a distance, all told, almost nine miles. At an unhurried pace, it would take at least three hours. 

You go up Third Street, which runs from Bayview in the south end of the city, up north through neighborhoods like Dogpatch and Mission Bay. You keep walking up Third, through South of Market and the Financial District where it eventually turns into Kearny Street. You take Kearny past Chinatown, until you hit Columbus Avenue and walk a couple of blocks until you run into Broadway. Make a left there and walk through North Beach until you get to Ghirardelli Square and Fisherman’s Wharf. And you’re finally at the north end of the city. I’m tired just talking about it. Then you go left and walk along the bay past the windswept grass of Fort Mason and the Marina. You keep going until you walk into the Presidio, finally ending near Fort Point where the Golden Gate bridge is standing proudly right next to you. 

From there you can turn around and take in a postcard view of the city’s skyline–a historic and diverse city you just spent hours getting intimate with. You may not know anything about these neighborhoods I just mentioned, but as I found out each one is like a world in its own right. All connected by these couple of streets you were just on. All of them changing, some much faster than others. And perhaps, none changing faster than Bayview, where the walk starts right outside Kirk’s house.

Bayview is a predominantly Black neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, made up, historically, of working class folks employed in the area’s shipyards, warehouses and canneries. Once the economy shifted and those industries closed, unemployment rose, along with crime and disease. As we walk down Third Street, the main artery running through Bayview up into the heart of the city, Kirk points out the cell phones shops, the check cashing stores, the “normal kind of craziness” as he puts it, you come to expect in an under-resourced community.  

[Kirk] Walking to me, allows you as you, as you can clearly see. It allows you to see people, smell people, a little different. What's up, baby!?!

One thing that’s clear right off the bat is that Kirk sees people and people see him. Bayview, this is his community. 

[Seth] Good to meet you sir. Seth.

[Manuel] Manuel. That’s Kirk.

Connection and intimacy is his language. It’s how he relates to the world around him. So for Kirk, these walks are a way to be present to the world. Present to relationships. It’s not walking by. It’s being mindful of what’s already there. And allowing what’s already there to speak to you.  

[Seth] Walking?

[Kirk] Uh walking allows you … Hold on. Hold on.

[Seth] Yeah.

[Kirk] Hi y'all doin’? I just wanted to say hey! I’m gonna get out of your way … Uh, it allows you to meet people and kinda see them as people. And connect them to the place. It makes for a relationship to be healthy. Otherwise you're just walking by people. 

The wind gets a little strong here, so I’ll tell you what he says, because he makes an interesting connection. In the gold rush days of San Francisco, people would scoop up dirt and put it in a pan with some water and swirl it around, sifting for the small nuggets of gold. It took time and patience and commitment to really find the treasure they were looking for. He says it’s the same way with these walks. 

[Kirk] Sometimes you've got to sift through the mud. You got to sift through dirt. You got to sift through things that are pretty, but it's there. And it's always been there. And matter of fact, some of the dirt, possibly created this beauty, you know?

A couple of blocks down we stopped on a corner and looked up at this beautiful mural.

[Kirk] That’s that sign that I was … 

[Seth] Oh yeah, yeah. It’s the Black Panther?

[Kirk] Yeah. Bayview forever.

A little further down Third, Kirk points out that there is no major grocery store in Bayview. No supermarket chain with affordable, nutritious food. It’s what’s called a food desert, which you often see in low income communities.

 [Kirk] The only grocery store here is what they call SuperSave. They got everything, but they also price gouging you. Cause they know they’re the only one here … How you doing? [dog barks] … See even that’s different … 

We walked past a woman who appeared to be white. She was sitting on the sidewalk by herself, back against a building, petting her dog. She looked up and smiled at us with her bright white teeth. A sign, for Kirk, that the neighborhood was indeed changing.

[Kirk] I knew when Palm trees came that are $10,000 a piece that the neighborhood was going to change. I know once we saw joggers and dog walkers, knew that was going to change. I knew when we started having, basically a bike lane, that the neighborhood was going to change. So what do we do about that? How do we not be angry, but how do we fight for what has been?

This is what stuck out to me, walking with Kirk through his community – a sense of loss that he’s wrestling with. The $10,000 palm trees the city planted up and down Third Street mean something more to him than just an attempt at beautification. 

[Kirk] I believe that folks, um, don't need to get kicked out of their community, uh, uh, for it to change. Now, is there bad stuff that happens in this neighborhood? Hell yeah. But do you kick somebody or you do you deal with somebody who deals with 1% of a population that might be doing something bad and begin to take out 60% of that population? No, you don't … You … We’re gonna go this way … We, uh … I feel I need to challenge you. Like, “No, there’s good people that is getting displaced.”

Further down Third Street, we come to a neighborhood called Dogpatch, where the gentrification is in full swing. We pass by breweries and bagel spots and wall climbing gyms, where canneries used to be. Old abandoned warehouses are being transformed into upscale apartments that no one in Bayview could dream of affording. And in the next neighborhood, just a few blocks down, was the jewel of it all – the billion dollar Chase Center, which opened in 2019, where the NBA’s Golden State Warriors now play. “The whole area is becoming a city unto itself,” Kirk said.  We jumped into my car to get a closer at it all, because there was plenty happening off of Third Street, including a brand new power plant being built. 

[Seth] How does it make you feel to see all this? 

[Kirk] Um, both, uh, I think, yeah, uh both sad and glad at the same time. I'm glad to see, you know, beautiful things happen. I guess I'm into watching the renovation of the space … I'm gonna have you go all the way up that way, cause I'm gonna show you where I grew up at… um but know that it has displaced people and it will continue because if it's coming this way, cause I see it as a wave. It's going to go…straight. 

[Seth] It’s coming down Third Street.

[Kirk] It’s coming down Third Street.

[Seth] Straight towards you. 

[Kirk] It's coming down Third Street ... How do we combat it? How do we embrace it? Cause there's parts of it. You go, you know, people talk about gentrification. I'll be like, dude. You're right. But less murder feels good too, though.

[Seth] That's just the truth. 

[Kirk] Less murder feels good. Cause I remember when there was bodies laying outside. 

[Seth] Wow. 

[Kirk] That there was a SWAT team in my backyard, my backyard where you were just at, there was a SWAT team in that backyard. And I had to open up the downstairs to let them out. Cause they, they didn't want to … You know, once you, uh, handcuff a dude, you can't make him climb the fence again.

[Seth] Right. So they went through your house?

[Kirk] Went through my garage, bro.

We drove over to his parent’s house on Potrero Hill, a neighborhood next to Dogpatch. It’s a brick home they bought for fifty-, sixty-thousand dollars, now worth well over a million. His dad drove a taxi for a while among other jobs he had. “What didn’t he do?” Kirk said about him. His mother was a nurse. This was a working class neighborhood. They’re retired now but still live there. The house sits right on the corner with a postcard view of downtown San Francisco. And on a clear day like we had, you could see across the bay to Oakland–it’s glass buildings downtown shining in the sun. We stop and take in the sights for a moment, then he points out a building across the street.

[Kirk] They just turned that nursing home into apartments … It was crazy to me. Man, what’s helping out people … Now they say, we can actually make more money if we do this … Because we already know land is prime. I'm not, I'm not, I hope, I hope what you hear is not, I'm not necessarily against capitalism in that sense … I just think there's a, there might be a different way of looking at it than the way we've been doing it. I’m not opposed to people making money, but it just seems to hurt … Yeah, stay in this lane … It seems to hurt people, uh, greed, you know. 

Back at his home later that day, I wanted to know more about what Kirk wrestles with as he walks through all these changes. Because as he said, “less murder feels good.” Some of the change is good, but there’s a cost to it. A cost he can’t overlook:

[Kirk]  It's hard to love the city. I think we think it needs to love us back. And we can't expect a system that is broken. That is, uh, full of racism. That's full of, of greed. It can't love you. I think what's happened in the last few years is that there's been a lot of brokenness. There's been a lot of hurt. 

San Francisco has been greedy and they've taken a lot, uh, particularly redevelopment when it came through, the Fillmore took over, I think it's over two or three hundred Victorian homes that were owned by African-Americans. And so if you took those Victorian homes and did that, those same Victorian homes were at this point million dollar, $2 million, $3 million homes.

So you messed up African-Americans generational wealth that they could have passed on to their children and their children's children. And so there's a, there's a void of Black middle class. There is a non-existent Black middle class. You're either low income or no income.

It changes the soul of the city. There are Black churches right now that are empty in Bayview Hunters Point. There's over 80 churches. Just in Bayview. 80. Some of them have no more than 10, 20, or none at their services right now.

I could feel the pain in his voice as he sat there explaining to me this loss that surrounds him every day. What really struck me was that there was always a sense of hope for him swirling around in that grief. It wasn't naive optimism, though. Like, “Oh, it’s okay that all this is happening because everything will be alright.” It was more like an openness to something new, expecting something good can come of it, while still wanting to hold onto what's always been good. 

[Kirk] I still love the city. I still love what it has stood for and knowing that it's going through the change, if you will. It's maturing and changing into other things, but, um, to not just hate what it's changing into, but also to look at it, to fall back in love with it as well. To constantly say, now, this is still what I love about the city. I took you to a place a little earlier where it's me looking back into the city saying, “Yeah, but I still love you. And I choose to fight for you.” I choose to, uh, wrestle with the changes because I'm in relationship with the city. I'm looking to forgive and to be forgiven. There's a part in the movie, Last Black Man in San Francisco. At the end of the movie, these two girls are talking on the Muni bus and they're talking about all the stuff that they hate about the city… 

[Woman 1 in clip] The city’s dead…

[Kirk] And the guy basically goes, “Hey, hey, hey.”

[Man in clip] Excuse me…

[Kirk] And he stops them from talking.

[Man in clip] … You don’t get to hate San Francisco.

[Kirk] And he says, “You can’t hate what you never loved.”

[Woman 2 in clip] I’m sorry what?

[Woman 1 in clip] Yeah, dude. I mean, sorry but I’ll hate what I want.

[Man in clip]  Do you love it?

[Woman 1 in clip] It’s, I mean, yeah, I’m here. But do I have to love it?

[Man in clip] You don’t get to hate it unless you love it.

[Kirk] That was dope. When I first heard it, I was like, wow, that's what I feel.

The movie Kirk was talking about, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, is based on the real life story of Jimmy Fails, a young Black man and San Francisco native, living in Bayview - Hunters’ Point. With the help of his friend, he tries to reclaim his grandfather’s house in the Fillmore. In the beginning of the movie, the house is occupied by an older white couple who doesn’t take care of it, and they try to take it back. It’s a story about wanting to hold onto your home, to your heart really, when you’re losing the world around you.

There’s so much to the plot of the movie which parallels Kirk’s journey. For him the loss really comes down to people not loving people. 

[Kirk] I think people have only come to mine the city. To rob it of his resources. Some churches might view it as souls. But they never loved the people. So how can you really love their soul? 

This is Soul Search.

Act 2 - Walls without Walls

Back on the street, we’ve passed through Dogpatch and are now in Mission Bay and South of Market. We’re still in my car, though. I think Kirk was worried about my feet or something. I’m not really conditioned for this kind of thing, apparently. We get out a bit later. Promise. 

Here, the landscape’s changed. It’s no longer check cashing spots and abandoned warehouses converted into gyms and bagel spots. Instead, it’s what people might call “developed.” There’s Oracle Park where the San Francisco Giants play, and a little further ahead it’s the Moscone Center, the city’s massive convention and exhibit complex. There’s hotels and restaurants and museums. It’s all fueled by a different kind of economy than Bayview, that’s for sure. But, if you have the eyes to see it, brokenness and pain is here too.

[Kirk] But also in the middle of this, there’s a lot of homelessness around here. Up underneath this bridge, uh not bridge, but this freeway. You know, a lot of times there’s tents. All kinds of other things. Folks who are living on the street. So you get to see that, there’s a couple of shelters down this way.

There’s also some churches which have popped up here over the past few years, he says. And lots of fancy apartments.

[Kirk] But you can also see during the COVID stuff, you also saw so many closed businesses, which is also a sad thing too. So you get to kind of notice that too. You get to decide not to just walk by the pain of that.

We continue up Third, through South of Market and head into the financial district, where the sun’s now cut off by towering buildings made of glass and concrete. The whole energy of the place here is different than just a mile or so back. “Lots of movement,” to use Kirk’s phrase: people, cars, buses. Lots of noise too. I figured if we were walking instead of driving. I’d be looking to head back by now.

[Seth] This is a long walk already. 

[Kirk] Yeah. We're not even close. 

[Seth] Was there a particular place along this whole route that was important to you? One that you realized something? 

[Kirk] Um, I'll say there's two places that…

He talked about these two parks he would stop at, one up ahead in Chinatown called Portsmouth Square, and the other, Washington Square in North Beach: 

[Seth] What about the parks that was so interesting to you?

[Kirk] Those two parks are gathering spaces. They're not just a park for a kid to come play at or something. It's where adults and children. And it was like cultural spaces. Like the parks in my neighborhood aren’t that. But this is where people actually came to congregate. 

[Seth] What would you do at the park? 

[Kirk] Just sit. Watch people's movements. Half the time, I wouldn't, particularly around the space down here, uh, I would have to just watch people. Cause I didn't, you know, I didn't know the language. So just watching.

For Kirk, “just watching” is not a passive activity, like you watch a screen. It’s not entertainment as we think about it. It’s being soulfully present to what’s going on around him. To take it slow and be intentional about noticing what's below the surface and let what’s below the surface speak to you. It’s about being present to the truth that we’re all connected and in our connection we can see God. 

[Kirk] If you choose to take the city as a body, you have to decide you want to see it. It's almost like you're trying to have a relationship. You don't want to try to rush to a marriage. You want to court it. You want to get to know it. Where you’re looking at architecture. You're looking at people, you're looking at what people wear or not wearing or what they're able to do. Are they unhoused or are they housed, or you get to the Marina, how nice the house is? You know, so you get to really have an intimate look at the city because I still believe God to be the God of the city.

And so I know for some people, particularly with some of my Caucasian friends, they have always talked about the beauty of  the Redwood forest in all the, you know, go to nature and see God. And .. I've always in my spirit kind of said, but I see God in the city.  I see Him in the unhoused. I see Him in my gay and lesbian brothers. I see Him in all these different spaces. But if we choose not to see, we can't get to know, in a sense, God.

He made everything beautiful, according to Genesis. And then in the end He said, “It is good.” I think we often look at the city and can tell you what's not good. But until you decide to be intimate with it, you can't see the beauty and the good in it. Not just the brokenness, cause I think it's important to see it all. But there's this thing where people stop seeing all of the city and just see only the pain and the hurt and not the beauty.

What he told me later was that the beauty present in the pain and the hurt was more than just the pleasing aesthetics of the city. It’s a beautiful city to be sure. That’s easy to see. But for Kirk, the beauty of the city was about the people. And what he saw in people as he walked the same route week after week was the imago dei – a Latin phrase meaning the “image of God.” God of the city doesn’t mean God conquering the city, like a warrior. Instead it means a divine and holy presence mysteriously stirring in all of its people.

He would talk to the merchants on Columbus in North Beach, stop in their stores, buy their food. He was present to the life of the place. And he said that, for the most part, people were kinder than he expected. People were open to conversations, but he was still very aware that he is a Black man walking the streets of the city and that it has implications for him. 

[Kirk] I can't take off my Blackness. Right? I can't take this off. So for me it’s to not use that as a lens to look through. But it was to try and take off the filters that I have, realizing if anything that I have them. And that there are biases in me. So if I have biases, other people do too. But what does that mean? How does that keep me from? How does that help me grow closer to?

I think place, actually, continues to define people. If we're not careful, if we're never out of those spaces or those places, that's the only definition we know, that's the only thing we know. And getting out of that helps me to see others, so I don't pigeonhole myself into only one thing. 

But yet I understand that I am a Black man in this neighborhood and not only in this neighborhood, but even in the next neighborhoods. That I'm aware of who I am in those spaces. I'm tall. I'm about six, three, almost six, four. Got long locks. They have a vantage point of me that I don't have, and it might come with biases. It might come with all that stuff. So I need to engage it in a different way or in the best way I know how. And some stuff I can't change how another person sees it. It's not up to me to try to necessarily change every space, but be my best self in that space. 

Time has transformed spaces in the city, and Kirk’s seen a lot of it. As we pass through the financial district’s canyons, he points up at some of the buildings towering overhead. “Lots of conversations about money taking place in there,'' he says. Those kinds of conversations may not have changed over time but other parts of downtown life have.

[Kirk] As a kid, we used to come to get dressed up to go downtown. 

[Seth] Oh, where would you go? 

[Kirk] Uh, to the stores. Uh, it was, it was going downtown. It was something special when I was a kid. Uh, uh, of course I took pictures at the Emporium downtown. Uh, there used to be, uh, uh, rides on top of Emporium. It was, it was, uh, it was a thing..

[Seth] It was a thing to do.

[Kirk] It was a thing to do. I'm one of those kids that you saw in plaid and tie or whatever. 

[Seth] It was the seventies.

 The Emporium department store is long gone, transformed over time into a nine-story mall. And no more rooftop train rides for kids during Christmas. But Kirk’s not necessarily “starry-eyed” about the past, as he told me later. This walk isn’t about blindly holding onto the past. It’s about being aware of how the past and the present are converging. Or maybe it’s better to say how the past can still say something to us about the present. You just have to listen.  

[Kirk] Really, my brother? Really? Calzone’s. That’s one of my spots right there. Hey but right on this street … 

Third Street has now turned into Kearny Street. We pass by Chinatown on our left. He tells me about a Chinese housing project  he used to work at. The space here still feels a bit dense and crowded like the financial district, but without the tall buildings. Lots of cars and foot traffic on the sidewalk. People hanging outside the famous House of Nanking waiting for a bite to eat. 

As we turn onto Columbus Avenue, and head into North Beach, he talks about how fascinated he is with the cultural mix present here. On one side of Columbus Avenue, they speak Mandarin and Cantonese. On the other side, it was Italian, historically. He comments on the architecture, the food, the movement of the people in and out of small shops and grocery stores. You can feel his spirit rise as he talks about it.

We pass by one of the parks he was talking about earlier – Washington Square. Kids are playing around on the grass, people are sitting on park benches. Across the street from the park is Saints Peter and Paul cathedral, with its golden crosses pointed up to the sky, still and shining in the bright sun. It’s almost mystical.

Kirk, and often with his wife accompanying him, would start the walk in Bayview at 7:30, 8:00 in the morning on a Saturday, get here around lunch and hang out for a while.

[Kirk]  It’s just something about watching people, you know? 

Further down Columbus is Ghiradelli Square and Fisherman’s Wharf. Tourist spots, mainly. But if you get there early enough on the weekends, it’s empty and you can watch people swimming in the Aquatic Park that connects to the bay. Frigged temperatures. “You can be sure there’s no tourists in that water,” he says.

At this point, we’ve made it to the north end of the city. And we head toward the Golden Gate Bridge, which comes into view as we pass by the Marina Green, a large field of grass that runs along the bay. There’s lots of joggers, people walking dogs, and multiple bike lanes – as Kirk points out. Not just a single path for bikes, but several lanes running adjacent to each other like a freeway. The other side of the street is lined with the biggest houses we’ve seen so far. 

[Kirk] Dang there’s some money in these neighborhoods right here! 

It’s a neighborhood of old mansions with large bay windows to take in the view of the bridge and Angel Island and Alcatraz and people flying kites on Marina Green. Kirk names off the celebrities and other famous people he knows who’ve lived in there. 

[Kirk] It just makes me think of just, you know, there's some people who are doing well and it's okay that people are doing well. It's not, you know, I'm not opposed to that kind of financial kind of deal. I'm not even calling it financial security because you don’t know their life. They might be struggling to keep this thing going. You know, I heard somebody one time, I was driving Uber and this guy said, “Man, I can't make it in this city, man.” I mean, and he was talking about, he makes 200,000. 

[Seth] The driver for Uber?!? 

[Kirk] No, I was driving. 

[Seth] Oh …

[Kirk] I was driving Uber and, uh, I was like, wow, he made 200,000 and it's still not enough. What do you think I'm doing? You know, if it's not enough for you, you know it ain’t enough for me.

At this point, we’ve passed through nine neighborhoods in a little over six miles. And as Kirk says: You’re hours in, you’re tired, you’re hungry, but the bridge is close, standing there proudly against the pale blue sky, just waiting for you to say hello. 

It’s right around here, just past the Marina Green, with the Presidio up ahead, that Kirk usually starts to contemplate that he’s just about walked from the city’s most southern point all the way to its most northern point. And he’s taken almost a straight line through the city to do it. 

It’s brought him through poorer neighborhoods, through rich ones, through ones that are more still and serene, through others brimming with noise and people shuffling about. He’s listened to people speaking different languages, people expressing anger and hopelessness, others, joy. He’s walked like Jesus walked, one foot in front of the other, in the midst of human life with all its beauty and all its pain. Avoiding none of it. So what really did he see?   

[Kirk] There is definitely a cultural mix, but interesting enough, there's a cultural mix without mixing. Bayview is Bayview. Dogpatch is Dogpatch. South of Market is South of Market. Chinatown is Chinatown. North Beach is North Beach. Marina is Marina. And it, and it's a decision to be that. It's almost, walls without walls. Yeah and it’s just definitely noticeable. It's noticeable amongst those who are unhoused, homeless. Those who are addicts. They're definitely walls. And those folks know where, where the walls are as well. They know where they're wanted. They know where they are not wanted. And so definitely, there's definitely that.

 [Seth] Was there anything that surprised you? Anything you learned that was kinda, “Huh, I never saw it that way. I never thought of it that way before?”

[Kirk] Well, I think I had a picture of this a little bit, but we all do live on the same street. Literally: Third Street. Kearney. Columbus. It's actually one street. But I don't think we see it. I think we, we, we feel disjointed and disconnected. Not realizing literally you're my neighbor. Yes, it is blocks away, you know, but literally we, we’re on the same. I can say that about the Chase Center. I'm on the same street as the Chase Center. We literally are on the same street. I'm on the same street as Moscone Center. And I think knowing that also actually gives me more empathy towards others because maybe the same issues I've been experiencing, the same fears, the same angst, maybe that's what's happening here. But we don't communicate. I just think it's important that we realize that we're just blocks away.

You’re listening to Soul Search.

 Act 3 - New Wineskins

We’re standing next to some rocks that line a path which takes you another quarter mile up to Fort Point, a historic landmark which sits right next to the Golden Gate bridge. It’s the end of the walk. We’ve gone as far north as you can go. From here, you could touch the bay if you wanted to. An easy climb over the rocks and you could put your hands or feet right in. 

From my vantage point, Kirk’s 6’ 4” frame fits neatly between the bridge’s two towers. He’s facing the city’s skyline, contemplating something. There’s gusts of wind blowing through the bay's entrance, coming from behind his back and heading straight to where he’s looking.

[Seth] When do you see the city, do you feel hope? Or despair? Cause you're looking at it and looking at the skyline … 

[Kirk]  I'm looking at it with both. I'm trying to have, I'm not trying to have, I feel like I have both despair and sadness, but at the same time I have great hope. I have, like, I know what the city was, but let's, at the same time. I don't want to, I think, cause I think sometimes I have starry eyes about what was. Like some people have starry eyes about what the church was, I have to decide that's not what it is anymore. Even if it was that. What did we do now? One of, um, I think it's, uh, Martin Luther King, um, in his book, Where Do We Go From Here? And that's kind of where I’m … We're here. What do we, what do we do now? We must do something now. What is the answer now? Not, not, not, not to wax too nostalgic about what was. Cause you could do that all day, um. And there's beauty in that, but I don't want to miss the beauty of what is right now.

“You can lament the death of a thing,” he says, “and at the same time embrace the new thing that’s being birthed.” I was curious to know if that was true for him too. If he was feeling something die in him and something new emerging.

[Kirk] Yeah. Yeah, there has to be that. It's not just the city because there has to be something that happens in me as well. Uh, there has to be a decision to both mourn, uh, what's happening in me, because of my connection with it. But also go, “Okay. What is the, what is the new birth? What is the, what is the old wineskins that I'm going to have to decide to get rid of?”

In a parable Jesus told, he said, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins, because the old wineskins will burst.” He was drawing a simple analogy, using an example from every day, first century Palestintian life, that everyone listening to him would understand. In that time, animal skin would be sewn together into containers for wine. But as the skins aged, they’d get tough and wouldn’t be pliable anymore. New wine expands as it ages, so old wineskins can’t stretch enough to hold it. You’ve got to use new wineskins to hold new wine. In other words, you have to change to fit the new thing that’s coming.

But how do you change and still hold on to your home? How do you stay open to what’s new and keep your sense of belonging? Of place? Of identity?

In the Hebrew Bible there is the story of Nehimiah. He was a Jewish leader who helped to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem when his people returned from exile in Babylon. The city had been utterly devastated and the Jews had been devastated too. They lost their land, their temple. They lost their identity. Who they were as a people was rooted in where they were. 

When they returned to their home, they had to rebuild their life, starting with the walls that had been destroyed. It took more than a physical renewal though. It took a spiritual renewal too. Part of that was to lament what the city had been, what was good and beautiful and pure about it, and to return their hearts back to that. They prayed. They fasted. They read their sacred Scriptures. It was for realignment. And they did it, not in order to live in the past, but to bring the past forward into the present. 

San Francisco is named after Saint Francis of Assisi, a 12th century Italian born into wealth. Upon his conversion to the faith, Francis gave all his possessions to the poor and walked among them and served them. He wore brown robes, which was a sign of poverty. He died naked. His whole life was a testament to calling attention to everything that divides us as human beings, particularly the material things, in order to rebuild a life which reflects our basic connection to each other and to the earth. This is the city’s patron saint. The city may never have embodied the spirit of Saint Francis in quite this way, but it seems like a dream worth living for. 

In part of the recent development in San Francisco, the Millenial Tower was built South of Market. It is a 58-story luxury condominium building that cost $600 million to build. And it’s sinking. In a little over a decade, it’s sunk almost two feet into the ground. It’s also tilting to one side at the rate of about three inches a year. It’s San Francisco’s own Tower of Pisa and if it’s not corrected in the next few years, the added tilt will make the elevators stop working. The plumbing too. And then it will become an uninhabitable empty shell. Plans are underway to stabilize it. As I was talking with Kirk back at his home later that day, he saw it as an apt metaphor for what rebuilding the city might look like.

[Kirk] When things are leaning, that they’re going in another direction, what they often do,  engineers have often done, was come alongside and bring poles to go deeper into the soil, to hopefully stabilize that soil and then get deep enough to where they could actually find a way to prop it up, to balance it, so it doesn't lean any further. 

That’s kinda what I'm thinking about. Can we put some poles, some iron deeper into the soil, that’s gone deeper than the building itself, so we can help balance it, to solidify it, so it won't lean any further, because if it leans any further, it's falling, right? If there's hopelessness in this space, there's a lot of ugly things that come out of hopelessness. More than just leaving. You wonder why people are breaking into jewelry stores, why there are carjackings, why people are stealing cameras and stealing dogs.

There is a hopelessness out here. And let me be honest. It can get worse. I'm not trying to say hopeless people are justified. I'm not trying to say there's justification for the crime and the hurt and the pain that is being caused, but that hopelessness breeds other things. And some people might not even know why they do what they do. It becomes a mental illness after a while. Because you can't see light, even when light is out.

I would love to bring people back to the city. And I know that's a hard conversation. I believe in this thing called “re-entrification.” That means bringing back those who were once here, who got pushed out, and helping those folks qualify for new as well as existing spaces to live.  I'm pushing for that as a part of bringing balance back to the city.

And part of that rebalancing is reconnecting with the city’s soul.

[Kirk] You know what I said about the black churches? Black churches and gospel music is a part of our legacy and I sense that legacy dying here in the city. Come on, man. Gospel? Gospel music? So one of the things I'm hoping to do here in Bayview is, before the end of the year, we're going to have a community choir. A community choir. Not just one church. And guess what? It won't be just for African Americans, because I believe we need to be introducing this to other cultures. That the culture of gospel music needs to be sung by all cultures, but it has to come out of a Black experience. 

In the opening scene of The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jimmie and his best friend, Mont, are waiting for the bus near their home in Bayview-Hunters Point. Across the street from them, a preacher is standing on a milk crate, voice raised like a prophet of old telling anyone who has ears to “pay attention!” Because behind him, people in hazardous waste suits are cleaning up trash on a pier. 

[Man in clip] They have plans for us, man. Looking like George Jetson rejects...

“They’re here to clean the water,” he’s yelling, “water that’s been dirtier than the devil’s mouth for 50 years.” The water had been poisoned during World War II when atomic bombs were brought into the shipyards for final preparations before being deployed. They’re only bothering to clean it now because redevelopment is happening. “They’ve got plans,” he’s yelling, “but not for you and me.” Things are changing. But no one seems to be listening. Jimmie and Mont are watching the preacher’s performance with a sort of detached amazement.   

[Man in clip] We’ve been yelling about this water since before they were born. Before they were born!”

Jimmie looks down the street and shakes his head wondering where the bus is. 

[Jimmie in clip] We’re not gonna make it.

[Man in clip] And you all leave us the hell alone. Unless y’all really here to help us…”

Mont looks over at him and says calmly, “We’ll get there.” But Jimmie shakes his head like he already knows and says, “We’re not gonna make it bro.”

[Man in clip] “So I urge you. FIght for your land. Fight for your home. Fight for your …”

[Jimmie in clip] “Escape.” 

And Jimmie does in the end. 

In the movie’s final scene, Jimmie leaves the city, his home, the place he was born and raised in. Seems he’d had enough with all the changes and won’t stick around to see any more of it, because it can’t be good. “We’re not gonna make it.” So on an early foggy morning, he rides away in a row boat. He goes out on his own along that rough bay water under the bridge, with the city skyline behind him. Destination unknown.

For Kirk, though, there’s no escaping. He’s walking to reclaim the soul of the city. It’s a walk into the real. A walk to fight for what’s always been good and a walk to really see what good can come. “We’ll get there.”

[Kirk] To see the man rowing away, or whatever way he was trying to go away, I get it. Because the wave of this is so strong. You almost feel like what's the use of fighting for it. But I don't think I'm just fighting for the city. I'm feel like I'm fighting for people, to put on their full self, to put on a new identity, to pull them “out the matrix,” to have them really see for the first time that this stuff is crazy, but there's real life out there. There's real love out there. There's real depth out there. There's real joy out there. There's real kindness out there. But it's hard to find through the darkness that sometimes, it feels like it can overtake you. And that's why I lean into my spirituality. Is that God, I feel, shows up and He is light in darkness. He is joy in sorrow. He's the beauty for the ashes.

I still believe love wins. Still believe that. And I refuse to believe that it doesn't. I refuse to believe that it doesn’t. Hate can't win. Hate breeds hopelessness, brokenness, and more of the same. And that's not the life that I think I was born for. I was born because of joy, because of love and, um, wow, it's for me to give it out as well.

 Credits

This episode of the Soul Search podcast was written and produced by me, Seth Dickson. Sponsored in part by Mike and Sandy Dickson. Music is by the Blue Dot Sessions. And thanks to Kirk taking me around the city and for showing me what it takes to love it. You can find out more about his work in Bayview with the links provided in the show notes. And visit our website, thesoulsearch.org/podcast for a spiritual exercise and guided meditation you can use to take what you’ve heard deeper into your soul.