42 Belvedere, San Francisco, CA 94117

Prologue
It was 20 years ago this month that I met a young man named Moody. I had no idea that he would figure so prominently in my world from there on out. No idea that he would provide for me wonderful friends – an entire crew of subversive types engaged in every kind of career. They were lawyers and pharmacists and cab drivers, teachers and actors and programmers. I certainly had no idea that he would introduce to me the girl who would become my life-long best friend and partner in crime.

42 Belvedere
I found the ad in a big blue binder at Roommate Referral, a service bureau with a small office located on Carl at Haight. The year was 1992, five years before the Internet and Craigslist (first called List Foundation). Roommate Referral gave people looking for roommates a questionnaire to fill out. The questions were like, Smoking or non? Male, female, either? 20s, 30s, 40s? I was most interested in a home in the Haight that allowed smoking, and that's about it.

The ad read Michelle – 27, Tony – 28 and Peter – 32, Upper Haight, looking for a roommate interested in film, art, music and hairball living. 4 bedrooms, one split bath. Smoking.

I called.

When I went to interview I took my friend, Jenny. We rang the bell. The iron chime was misshapen from years of city wear. A curly-haired boy answered the door. He was jovial, friendly and excitable. He took us up an impossibly tall staircase leading to the third floor flat. 42 Belvedere is in a classic Victorian building. The staircase had elaborate wainscoting and postcards decorating every inch of wall, each neatly attached with tape, and numbering in the hundreds. They came from all over the world, with images and artwork reflecting the graphics of the time, each one sent to Peter – 32. These stairs only curved once, and at that landing stood a partially dressed female mannequin with blue hair, t-strap sandals and sunglasses from the Glitter Rock era. The stairs continued just a bit from there, depositing you at the intersection of Bedroom One and the fainting room. Tony – 28 slept there. Michelle – 27 slept in Bedroom One, a real beauty with deep crown molding and a fireplace. The next room would be mine, a regular-sized space with two big windows and ornate molding. A small closet faced the door from across the room. The walls were painted peach. 

Pushing further down the still-postcard-covered 12' walls, we came to a split bathroom; shower room first, with sink, then toilet room. Also classic Vic. At the end of the hallway there was a Y. To the left was the kitchen. I thought the postcards and the mannequin were impressive, but it turned out they were just a sampler plate of what was coming. 

The kitchen was painted stark white and was covered – 270 degrees of wall and ceiling space – with large patches of long-pile black fun fur. The design gave new meaning to "cow kitchen" and how to effectively decorate with black and white. Off a small window at the back a suction-cupped barbie bust jutted out at a 90 degree angle, like someone stuck her there during a party and no one took her down. 42 Belvedere was absurd and I loved it. A small table and chairs were provided along with a pantry, fridge, stove, sink and back door at the opposite end. A house phone hung on the wall: 864-8374. On the answering machine, Peter could be heard leaving his pager number in case of emergencies.

The living room, off to the right, had the coolest miss-matched furniture. It can be expected that there will be miss-matched furniture in a roommate house, bits and pieces left behind over the years. But this shit had style and innovation. A curving '50s sofa in purple Jacquard. A large drum used as a side table next to a red leather recliner.  A kidney bean-shaped coffee table, a relic from the '60s. Built-in bookshelves with leaded glass doors that held a record player and a large assortment of 12-inch vinyl in alphabetical order. A large bay window. A box beam ceiling. A fireplace out of commission…with a mantel that could only be described as a visual gift. Atop it stood a dried blowfish that had been repurposed as an ambient lamp, a red lava lamp and an accordion frame containing two photos. On the right was Maureen McCormick, aka Marcia from the Brady Bunch. It was signed to Peter – 32. On the left was Maxwell Smart, from Get Smart! signed to his grandson, Tony – 28. A bar stood in the corner. It was made of painted particle board built around a large fish tank. Nothing-special-fish darted here and there inside. A light illuminated the scene. Above the bar was a Moroccan lamp made of punched metal and on the walls were various odd paintings. Behind the bar was a small trampoline, used to shake martinis. The wainscoting circling the room up high was deep enough to act as a ledge. On top of it, all evenly spaced, were a dozen gleaming silver shower heads.

At the far end of the living room was Peter – 32's room. He was the house boss, having lived there for a decade already. This made our individual rents super cheap. The room I was interviewing for cost $300 a month. 

The back door in the kitchen led to a rickety staircase with a hundred layers of paint showing through its cracks. Tony – 28 was speaking of a Russian doghouse and a putt-putt golf course. When we reached the top, nothing else could describe what I was seeing. There before us was a papier mache and chicken wire-constructed doghouse with spires and onion domes, standing about three feet high. Astro turf covered the surface of the roof; planters and pots devoid of their foliage dotted the space around the epic scene. Tony – 28 explained the method behind this mad creativity. In 1967 Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fontaine, the famous Russian ballet dancers were caught in a police raid of a house party here. Pot smoke was rampant and the cops started arresting. They ran to the roof to hide but were found. The next day the SF Chronicle ran a headline, "The Great Ballet Bust." 

"This is an homage to Rudolf and Margot," Tony – 28 waited for my reaction, laughing nervously. There was only one word: WOW.

Peter – 32 wasn't home for the interview. Tony – 28 apologized for him as he sat us down on the purple sofa. Michelle – 27 joined us. We chatted about me. Tony – 28 was really excited when I told him I worked at the Psychedelic Shop, a famous head shop downtown. "Free whippets!" he declared. We smoked pot out of a brass pipe decorated with fimo, and hung out for two hours. As the conversation wound down, Tony – 28 asked me to come back the next day to interview with Peter – 32, "He needs to meet you."

When we went back to my friend's house afterward, I asked her if she thought they would choose me. She told me sitting around chatting for two hours is not common, so yeah.

When I returned to meet with Peter – 32 the next day, we spent the interview talking about the Coppola family. He had worked for Francis as a PA. He was trying to get a location scout career going. I went to school with Sofia and knew something about film. We laughed and talked with forced speech, the way you do when nerves mix with abundant energy.

Then he mentioned how cool it is that I work at the Psychedelic Shop, "Free whippets!"

I was in.