03.07.12 - Musical on Geary Street

I wrote my Hotel Frank story today and showed it to Jonah but he feels like there isn’t enough of a story because union pickets are two-a-dime in SF. I sent it to Jacob who is this week’s editor for a second opinion and ideas on whether I could take it in a different direction. It’s really difficult thinking up stories that I can write about as an expert in nothing. It means that you’re writing a story about something you don’t know about and just skimming facts and quotes from things to try to create an article. Ugh! Also, one of the things that was annoying me about being a freelancer was having to always come up with your own ideas, I was really looking forward to being told what to do. Well, that doesn't seem likely. Why can’t I just be given an assignment? That would make my day.

After work I went to catch today's Unite Here union march up Geary street protesting about

several hotels including HF. There were about 200 people, all hotel workers and union officials, with placards making a hell of a riot. I would not have wanted to be in the hotel foyer with the baying crowd outside and no means of escape. You would have had 200 people shouting personally at you if you had walked out of the hotel door at the wrong time.

I didn’t really feel like going back to the cave so I bought a ticket for ‘The Scottsboro Boys’ which is a musical playing at the American Conservatory Theater. It’s written by the same people as Cabaret and Chicago. It was no Cabaret but it was good, and a very interesting, true story. To cut a two hour show down to two lines it’s about nine black guys who were accused of raping two white girls in 1930s Alabama. They didn’t do it but spent years being trialed and retrialed even when one of the girls said that she had lied about the whole thing. The four youngest were eventually released, three who agreed to plead guilty were paroled and one who refused to do so died in jail. They turned the whole idea of a minstrel show on its head and had black actors playing the minstrels. There was one white guy who played a Master of Ceremonies character.

Afterwards there was a discussion with the actors. One white woman told the whole audience that in the 1970s she had gone to New Orleans and been sexually abused by a black man but she hadn’t done anything about it because at the time the punishment would have been the death penalty and she didn’t want that on her conscience. No one knew what to do, there was a stunned silence until someone started a round of applause. I couldn’t decided whether it was a very weird thing to say to an auditorium of strangers or an amazing story. The show certainly made a big impact on the audience. I read a few of the reviews from when it was on it New York and one described it as “a nightly act of self-congratulation in which the right-thinking members of the audience preen themselves complacently at the thought of their own enlightenment.” Which probably sums it up but it was a good piece of American history for me, or a bad piece rather!