— Themes & Plots —
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Cali’s Biology
Cali runs things at the Wharf. Think Mary Tyler Moore in full blown hectic-crisis mode, or Audrey Hepburn at her coochie-cooing best. Or Rosie O’Donnell enraged. Maybe even…
She’s not going through ‘the change’, but she can see it from here. The tone of each episode will be set by Cali’s biology, set during her call to Owner at the beginning of the episode: flirty, weepy, confrontational, horny, lethargic, yada-yada-yada.
Though she’s never wanted a husband, much less kids, all of a sudden they seem like the most important things in the world…
On even numbered days.
With the Owner always stuck in line somewhere, most shows will revolve around some crisis that she is doing her biologically out-of-control, hectic–crisis best to solve. Usually while seeking Owner’s advice, yet doing her best to keep him in the dark. Usually in cahoots with Pops and VWJG.
She has a huge heart that is always being led astray. Prone to leap before she looks. She is ambitious, with dreams bigger than running a hippie bus company. She attends the San Francisco Clown College one week, something just as absurd the next, always up on the latest diet and self-help fads. Talks about running off to join the latest front page crisis, but never quite gets around to it.
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VWJG’s Chemistry
He runs the Garage on Haight Street and here things are much more laid-back, slower–paced, ‘San Francisco-y’. The vibe, interactions, and lifestyle will be in sharp contrast to the more frantic, corporate, tourist, ‘hi-pitched whine’ setting off Cali’s biology at the Wharf. (Some weed gives you the munchies. Others bring on the paranoia. Just saying…) He attacks the same crises as Cali but comes at them from a Humboldt County, genetically-modified THC-enhanced different direction. VW never heard a conspiracy theory he wasn’t eager to pass along. …especially to Fed Cop. Things come easy to VWJG.
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Wharfitude versus Haightitude
At the Wharf, the businesses, attitudes, pace, and people passing on the sidewalk will be fast-paced, from all over the world, and representative of all that is worst about the frantic-paced, fear-driven, selfish, neon, plastic, alcohol-fueled, franchised corporate sameness that is everything “out there”.
In the Haight, things are Mom & Pop, slower-paced, friendly-faced and neighbors with a twinkle in their eyes. The Haight is militantly anti-franchise and the foods, souvenirs, stores, and how people enjoy their jobs will be noticeably different.
A major theme of the show will be showing how everywhere else in the world is starting to look exactly the same. And the prices we pay for such a thing.
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Hippie Trippin’ Tours versus Reach for the Sky, Inc.
Sky Tours are the dirty tricks playing, big corporate, New York-based competition. All employees will have thick regional accents: New York, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Carolina, Texas…
Each Sky Tours guide, played by the Sidewalk Players, will assume a just-as-preposterous foreign accent when doing private tours, sometimes both in the same episode.
The main nemesis at the Wharf will be Cali’s Sky Tours counterpart. (think Danny Devito)
As much as the hippie buses are characters in and of themselves, so too are the sky buses. Every time one rolls by a shadowbox set, it will grow dim and the lights will flicker. If it parks in front of a shadowbox, things grow dark and the electricity goes off. The Sky Tours pick up spot at the Wharf always has a smoky haze from bus exhaust, and the sound of coughing coming from within. Passengers will never be seen when atop the buses: off-screen and only heard. Every once in a while, one will fall off while leaning over taking a pic of the hippie bus. The windows on the bottom will look like prison bars, forlorn passengers looking thru them.
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SF Cop versus Fed Cop
From the Bridge and Presidio being on Fed land to the DeHoSe lurking about the Wharf, pot laws to the TSA, not to mention half the lines Owner is standing in, much opportunity exists for comedy and tragedy here in Nancy Pelosi’s district.
The Feds are perfectly positioned to be the bad guys. Except for Nancy, of course.
The overbearing, overblown comic menace that is the DeHoSe* will always stick to the letter of the law, rely on tech stuff that doesn’t work, and be out witted by SF Cop. (*short for Homeland Security, rhymes with Gestapo.)
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Mandy and Hellie
This relationship is rife with storylines:
Homelessness
Veteran Care
Mental Health Care
College Costs
Graffiti
Children raising their Parents
Changing relationships of Children and Grandparents
A major multi-season thematic element will be putting a face to those people who live on our streets, especially those who can’t access mental health care, …use their struggle to re-enter the main stream as a major element moving plot forward.
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Huddled Masses Hippie Outreach
The Teen Outreach in the Haight gives voice to America’s youth, as played by the Sidewalk Players. The lessons they learn from the Old Hippies they find there gives a voice to our Elders. Most of their angst and sarcasm will be directed at those in the middle who are running things into the ground.
(This theme of young people finding common cause with their Elders, (Bernie!), is also present at Moonstruck’s, Mandy and Hellie‘s relationship, and will pop–up on tour and at the Bureaucracy.
This enables every issue to be examined from completely different perspectives. Using the Sidewalk Players enables the show to include the wide gamut of both good and bad ways of viewing things: Everything is on the palette.
…find our similarities and accentuate them. Find our differences and laugh at them. Let our youngest and oldest generations find common cause by seeing things through each others eyes. Let the rest of us reflect on our role in things as those eyes turn their gaze toward us. No limits.)
Back to the HMHO plot line…
By calling it “HMHO ” and having it be partly government, this can be used to abuse both healthcare and Fed funding.
Every high school in America, not to mention a bunch overseas, has that kid who fancies themselves a hippie. …all will eventually show up on Haight Street. Usually penniless, road-weary, and looking for love and drugs, not always in that order.
Played by the Sidewalk Players, this enables anything from saints to serial killers, Paris to the Upper East Side, Nebraska to Steeler Nation to enter the storyline.
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HMHO Director – “Moms”
Think Patty Hearst then. Earth Mother now. All we know about the feisty, older Director, when she shows up in the second episode of the first season, is that she was appointed overnight by some shadowy Board of Directors in New York City and with her comes seemingly unlimited funding, as opposed to the day before.
(The graffiti uproar in episode one leads to the introduction of this character in episode two:
the claim is that she has been sent here to shake things up.)
When asked about her past, she says she had been growing pot in Humboldt County since fleeing the Haight-Ashbury after the Summer of Love, ‘67.
And now for the Rest of the Story…
As a major plot line unfolding over seasons, we come to find out that Moms was a “Weatherman”, a 60s University of Chicago Terrorist, in hiding until Obama pardoned her.
When she ran off to join the Weathermen, she was the heir and eldest daughter of a Nob Hill megaMansioned, old, old, money family. A Founding Fathers kind of family.
Ashamed, her half-brother, Kane, closed up the mansion and moved to New York. From there he was elected Senator and has been in DC for decades. (…still does his banking on Wall Street 😉
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The Senator
This half-brother, the Senator, is the shadowy power behind everything corporate, Fed, bad-guy-big-and-small, that stands in the way of the hippie bus company. He owns Reach for the Sky, Moonstruck’s, etc. He can get the Feds to mess with you. He represents everything that is worst when Washington and Wall Street are in cahoots with each other. He is why Owner is always in line, Fed Cop messes with Hippie Buses, Etc. This character represents the kind of comically overbearing menace that can be brought to bear by all things ‘out there.’
(As a Haitian friend once put to me so succinctly: “You are either for the people. Or you are against the people.”)
The HMHO was originally Senator’s evil idea to “draw the riff-raff of America’s leftist youth” to de-stabilize the neighborhood and sell it out to franchises. The Ass Director is Senator’s son, and he was, and is, the kids’ nemesis, skimming and disciplining harshly. After her pardon Moms takes control of the family fortune, including the HMHO. With the Ass Director having been interim Director since its inception, and in place to be the Senator’s spy, Moms shows up with lots of money and attitude, looking to make a difference, but without revealing her identity, possibly even to her nephew (or son from back in her hippie days? Hmmm…) She will naturaly be simpatico with Pops and VWJG, and at odds with her brother and all things Wall Street and Washington.
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Pop’s Wheelin’ ‘n’ Dealin’
Pops will be the focus for much pot humor. Lives in the shadows. He’s a resident dealer, grower, and knows everybody. He’s the Hippie Witch Doctor who knows his way around peeing in the Fed cup. He is always sent to put out fires at the last minute.
As a dreamer, he will bond with VWJG and act as go-between with Cali, who kinda scares him.
He is a dreamer whose latest idea is something already there:
Ride service! …Uber 🙁
Dating service! …Match dot com 🙁
Review service! …Trip Advisor 🙁
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Tensions on the Tour
The pace of each episode will be set by a single tour and its adventures, sometimes central to the story, at other times just a timing device. Not all tours will be good. Not all tours will finish. Day tours and Night tours. The whole world shows up to take hippie bus tours in San Francisco.
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Seasonal Pacing & Episode Backdrops
A certain number of the following would be used as the background for specific episodes each Season. (i.e., every Season episode one through three would be fog Season, four fire Season, five the holidays, et cetera.)
Sometimes these ‘backgrounds’ will be central to the story, or the very message itself. At others, they will only be the mind boggling footage scrolling by outside the bus.
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Fog Season
Fire Season
Holiday Season
Rainy Season
Tourist Season
Football Season
Warriors Season
Fourth of July
Chinese New Year
Union Street Easter Parade
Pride Week
Fleet Week
Cherry Blossom Festival
Bay to Breakers Race
Escape from Alcatraz Race
SF Marathon
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
Polk Street Drunken Santa Claus Nite
Burning Man
Movies in Dolores
Mavericks Surfing
Presidio Picnics
Hayes Valley Movie Night
CastroTheater Singalongs
Thirsty Thursdays
Fort Mason Fridays
Protests in Civic Center
Marriages at City Hall
Symphony in Stern Grove
GGPark Bandshell Concerts
Tai Chi, Falun Da, & Jazzercize in Wash Square
Scoots
The Haight Free Clinic
Public Nudity
Haight, Castro, North Beach Street Fairs
Presidential Motorcades
Franchise Burning
Street Cars, Cable Cars
The Mint
The Pissoir
Political Campaign Season
– San Francisco isn’t gonna run out of storylines Any Time Soon –