— The Sidewalks of San Francisco —
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-Pilot Episode-
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“Graffiti: San Francisco Style”
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-Opening Sequence-
(As a part of every episode’s opening sequence, the Owner will conduct three 30-second phone call ‘interviews’ for new tourguide positions, two submitted by viewers and the third this week’s guest star. Then 30 seconds checking in with Cali.)
The pilot episode opens with Owner standing in line at City Hall, readying to disband ‘Hippie Trippin’, his San Francisco hippie bus tour company. In this episode, the three 30-second opening sequence spots will be used to fire the guides who had been working for the company.
(Perhaps with much hype, we can get very prominent celebrities or politicians to open our pilot episode by being fired. This could turn into cameo appearances in future since these fired guides will be hired by a competitor.)
Owner then calls Pops, telling him that he just fired all the guides, is disbanding the company, so he needs to get over to the Garage to get the buses until he can pay the bill. He tells Pops that he has to disband the company because Sky Tours sabotaged the website so there are no bookings.
All this while the phone is buzzing, Cali on the line.
Telling Pops goodbye, trembling finger, he accepts Cali’s call.
“There you are!”
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– cut to break –
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-Scene One-
Each show opens with Cali setting the tone for the episode with her “biology” and asking for guidance from an Owner stuck in line. This episode she is freaking! Facing the back wall at the Wharf pick up spot, she is screaming into the phone, buggy-eyed and frazzled. Behind her a hippie bus sits at the curb, a CGI Alcatraz in the distance.
Tourists are crowding out any view of the bus, preening and taking pictures with the bus, searching for brochures, coming in and waving their cell phones at an at first silent and unlit reservation board, building to a Christmas tree crescendo, all unseen by the still-freaking Cali, yelling at Owner.
Cali blurts out that the bus has been covered in graffiti and Owner is hemming and hawing, trying to find the courage to break it to her that it doesn’t matter any more.
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-Scene Two-
At the Garage on Haight Street, VWJG, SF Cop, Fed Cop, and the Ass Director of the HMHO are standing at the front of the garage looking across the street at a new mural filling an alleyway that appeared overnight on the side of a bodega on the opposite side of the street.
(San Francisco is ‘plagued’ by “mural bandits” who sneak in at night and fill bare walls with world class artwork.)
VWJG says “Wow, that’s a Picassachoo”, one of the best and most loved of the mural bandits.
Fed Cop says it is terrorism and uses some kind of high tech scanning gizmo on it which doesn’t work right.
Ass Director is his yes man, sucking up to the Fed.
SF Cop is munching on something that looks great, agreeing with VWJ that it was indeed a Picassachoo, admiration in his eyes.
VEW Jesus, who is smoking a joint, mistakenly offers it to Fed cop.
Ass Director serves as introduction to the HMHO, talking about interrogating the teens, and gets all lathered up asking Fed Cop, “How far can I go?”
They are joined by an out-of-breath Mandy. She is a homeless teen who lives in the Park with her grandmother, Hellie, and helps out around the HMHO to the point where she darn near runs things. She protects the teens from the pettiness of Ass Director.
(Mandy shares a tent with Hellie, who is a Vietnam War veteran who is so traumatized that she hasn’t left the homeless encampment in years. Or so Mandy thinks…)
Mandy is freaking because after she had been out all night, ‘foraging’, her grandma was gone when she got back. VWJG tells her that Hellie follows her, in camouflage, every night when she goes out. SF Cop nods. Mandy looks very alarmed.
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-Scene Three-
Cali is still freaking into the phone to whoever will listen. She is facing the back wall and close up to the camera. Behind her, the open door, hippie bus still thronged with people, reservation board going wild. Cali still unaware of all that’s going on behind her. Freaking…
A scruffy looking old homeless woman in Vietnam era camouflage approaches from behind. She asks if they are hiring. Cali never turns, and misunderstanding her question, she points toward a jar of twenties on the counter for the homeless, shaking her head ‘yes’.
This is Hellie, Mandy’s grandma. She misunderstands. Heading in the direction pointed to by the distracted Cali, she opens a closet door next to it, puts on a tie dye shirt, some flowers in her hair, and grab bus keys off a hook. She goes to the exploding Reservation Board, then rounds up a skeptical bunch of those waiting, pushes through the crowd, and loads the bus.
Cali is still yelling into the phone and facing the camera.
At the sound of a hippie bus starting up and music blasting, she turns just in time to see it drive off, still blocked from view. This gives us our first briefest glimpse of the painted up bus, going to break as soon as it exits the screen.
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-Scene Four-
Owner is still in line at city hall, one head away from the window. His phone shows a red-faced Cali: “The bus is gone!!! D-D-Drove off!!!”
He’s working up the courage to tell her he’s in line to disband the company and he just fired all the guides. She is screaming that now the bus has been stolen.
He notices over her shoulder that the reservation board is lighting up like a Christmas tree, the place is packed with people, and then his phone starts pinging like crazy:
Reservations! Inquiries! Pictures of the Bus, now on the road, still blocked from view! Requests for Interviews! Concierge Calls!
Just as Owner gets to the front of the line, a video appears on his phone:
Still screened off, the Bus is sitting at a red light, other VWs are following and honking, pictures are being taken, wild hippie music is blasting. Packs of kids. Their dogs.
Bus still screened off, we can see a very animated Hellie giving what looks like a heckuva tour to a very happy bunch of people.
When Owner is asked if he can be helped from the other side of the window, phone still blinking, he stammers “, N-n-no.” Phone still going crazy, the SF bureaucrat shoves a wad of money at him and tells him “Have a Nice Day!” As soon as the bus, still obscured, rolls through the Twin Peaks picture spot, cut to break.
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—Second Half—
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-Scene Five-
Owner now stands at the back of the line at the Fed bureaucracy. Everything here is all shiny, new, 1984, marble, and cold cold cold. Harsh lighting. Security is everywhere. Mirrored sunglasses. Barking dogs. Machine guns. Noticeably different from the SF bureaucracy.
(After intermission, the second half of each episode would begin with Owner standing in line at the other bureaucracy, SF or Fed, with three 30 second phone calls, mimicking the job applications at the opening of the show. One of the three would be episode-oriented, and the other two would be fan submitted ‘video-reviews’ of tours they supposedly took in the past. This would be followed with a communication to VWJG in the Haight.)
For the pilot, it would be desirable to get famous people sending in these 30 second reviews and playing the guides fired.
So… Back to the back of the line at the Fed bureaucracy, VWJG on the screen. Owner is trying to track down the guides he ‘let go’ at the beginning of the episode. VWJG tells him they were already hired by SKYY Tours. (This could provide future cameo appearances if we get famous people to play them.)
VWJG says he sees the bus coming up Haight Street and shot switches to out of garage’s shadowbox. He and Fed and SF cops are staring out the garage door and up the street. “Far out. Chill. Dope.” He says even the Cops are impressed. There is a hubbub and everybody is looking up the street. Just as we begin to hear the bus and it’s loud hippie music, others run over to obscure the view of the bus as it passes.
Bad Cop runs out, waving something and it. It shocks him.
“Did it look stolen to you?”
“Nope.” Munch. “Not to me.”
“Not to me.”
“This is San Francisco. They’ll bring it back.”
“Yep.”
Behind them, Pops lowers the lift, gets in Hippie Trippin’s other, non-grafitti-ed bus, and drives out front of screen.
“Did Pops just steal that hippie bus?”
“Nope.” Munch. “No…”
“Naaah.”
“This is San Francisco. He’ll bring it back.”
“Yep.”
Heads shaking, they turn back into the shop.
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The bus, still obscured, rolls past Dolores Park and we…
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-Cut to break-
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-Scene Six-
Cali is still staring into phone, out back of Wharf Pick-Up Spot, mayhem behind her. She is talking to Owner who is still in line line at the Fed bureaucracy. Over shoulder view, shows people filling the pick up area and a reservation board still lighting up like crazy. She tells Owner that the DeHoSe, (Dept of Hmlnd Scty), is due any minute to investigate what they called “an act of hippie bus terrorism.”
Owner mumbles that the 2PM guide won’t be in for a tour that is now booked, (…cuz now he works for Sky Tours!), so Cali might have to do the tour herself. Cali’s hi-pitched whine revs up a notch. The thought of having to do the tour in place of the guide will always be a major source of stress for Cali, and she is left with the impression that a new guide on their way in. Cali hangs up when she sees Pops, who had just parked the plain bus from VWJG’s garage at the curb. His eyes turn wide, looking to get away because he knows the truth and she doesn’t.
Just then a Sky Bus rolls by.
(Every time a Sky Bus rolls past a shadow box, it darkens and the lights flicker.The shadowbox will momentarily filled with smoke and coughing. If one parks at the curb, the whole place goes dark.)
Pops disappears into the smoke and the DeHoSe Agent emerges out of it. Cali turns away from the camera, toward the counter, and assumes the DeHoSe agent is the new hire.
(The DeHoSe agent will always be depicted as shifty. He will always be too close, on your left when you just turned away from him on your right, in the room you go into when he was just in the one you left. Coke bottle glasses, and hearing bad enough to misinterpret everything, give him an excuse to always be in your face. Do I even need to mention the bad breath?)
When Cali turns back to the DeHoSe agent, he is immediately smitten speechless by her. Mistaking him for the new guide who was promised, she duck walks him into a uniform and wig, then into the beat up bus left by Pops, loads it up, and, still staring moonie eyed at Cali, he drives it away.
Hellie’s still obscured bus, still leading a parade of sorts, drives down Lombard Street and we go to break.
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-Scene Seven-
Owner in line, half way to the front at the Fed building, Cali on the phone. When she happily talks over him to tell him his newly hired guide showed up and the tour went off without a hitch, he finally admits he laid the guides off and a new one wasn’t expected.”
“What! A second bus stolen in one day! Oh Em Gee! Gotta go!”
As Cali turns toward the door, switching the view to over her shoulder, we see the tour group who had taken off with DeHoSe come stumbling back in, seeming a bit dazed.
They say they were driven around the corner, shown a badge, interrogated, some gizmo was waved at them that left them a bit confused. Then they were asked for their ‘Papers’. That’s when they notice that one of them is missing… Disappeared. They look alarmed. A couple look at each other and shake their heads knowingly.
Just then a Sky Tours bus rolls by, darkening the place. When the light flickers back on, the remaining five guests are no longer on the other side of the counter. Disappearred. Coughing in the Sky Bus smoke, a breathless Mandy hurries to the counter.
Searching for her Grandma, it eventually dawns on them that it is Hellie who is driving the painted up bus.
Cut to Hellie leading the mayhem down Lombard Street, cutting to break as it leaves the screen.
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-Ending: Episode One-
Owner view, one head back at the Fed bureaucracy. Cali is on the phone, saying she can see the bus coming up the street. We start to hear it.
Owner tells Cali to “hire the driver, don’t let her get away!” Mandy is hovering nearby.
With the view coming from the back of a pick up spot still packed with people, Cali is now up near the door.
Camera slowly pans forward.
We start hearing bus sounds and hippie music. We see Mandy sneak away.
Then a Sky Tours bus rolls by, camera still panning forward.
When the dust clears and the lights come back on, Mandy and Hellie are nowhere to be found, and the hippie bus parked at the curb now fills the screen, painted up beautifully, seen for the first time. Another Sky Bus rolls by, and we switch to the Owner closing sequence.
(The closing sequence will mimic the opening one with 3 30-second video calls with the tour finishing up at the pick up spot in between. These spots can be used for plot purposes, perhaps establishing the “hippie moral of the story.” Hopefully leaving our viewers something to think about as the credits roll. How can we get every old Republican who used to be a young hippie to re-connect with those root …laughter … especially at them selves. One of these will be used to cut ties with the week’s guest guide.)
Interspersed between the 30 second video calls will be quick cut shots of the tour ending. Plot lines resolved. Identities of incognito famous guests revealed. Seeds for future episodes planted. Not all tours will end well. Not all tours will end!
The episode will always end with Owner stepping up to the bureaucracy window just as the shade comes down, ‘Closed for the Day. Come back Tomorrow’. Immediately cut to pick up spot view just as the bus drives off in the twilight. As soon as the bus leaves the screen cut to credits.