A bike ride on a warm night

This piece was featured first on Mar 5 for One Good Thing, a weekly newsletter brought to you by Alexis Madrigal about his take on Bay Area art, culture & nature. Subscribe today.

We do not get warm nights in the Bay Area very often. Our neighbor the Pacific Ocean prevents this most of the time. We’re talking, maybe, five, ten nights a year when you step outside in a t-shirt and it feels… perfect. When this happens, you must go out.

And so it was that I found myself at Tamarack, a wonderful radical venue, with my friend Jesse, going to hear some poetry on Friday eve. The poets were great. Two from New York (Wendy Xu, Jonathan Larson) and Berkeley’s own Alan Bernheimer. The upstairs at Tamarack can get warm. It was. Everyone dewy, more energy held in the air.

After the reading, the scene outside was Brooklynesque, people lingering because it felt so good to exist, organismally. Summer shard right to the heart.Then there was some gallivanting through downtown Oakland, but the hour grew late, and it was time to head home.

It was time for one of the great experiences of the modern world: The cross town bike journey on a warm night.

I rolled up Telegraph through the light chaos outside Crybaby. I pedaled past the Legionnaire and Beeryland, young people spilling out into the street (and the bike lane) as they encountered each other hopefully. I felt perfectly unobserved, a mere camera for their “Last Night Was a Movie” moments.

The people on the sidewalks thinned. I headed north into the forgettable blocks before the the 580 underpass that leads into Temescal.

There, the night was alive with people, their outside voices dopplering to and away from me. Date night at Co Nam, hand on hand on table. Wobbling two-by-two into Tall Boy. Wide-stanced poses outside The Avenue, the boys talking with the boys. And a glorious scene outside 51st and Tel, friendly and loud.

Here were people living. Here were people living in their city. A city that has seen more than its fair share of troubles over the years, troubles that might just be a couple blocks over, or a couple hours away. But not right then.

I was a little sad when I hit the home stretch, under 24, and up towards Alcatraz. I wanted to start over, reverse time, back past the revelers, back to the downtown shenanigans, and the poetry reading, to hear again, from Alan Berkheimer, “You’re killing yourself, so you can say ‘There’s more where that came from,’” to hear from Wendy Xu, “Today there has been so much talk of things exploding /

into other things, so much that we all become curious, that we / all run outside into the hot streets

and hug. Romance is a grotto of eager stones” … Yes, into the hot streets, to hear my friend Jesse talk again about his translation of the Popul Vuh: “we’re going to write down the words, / we’re going to write down the ancient words, / which are the source of everything done.” Ancient words in the root-place!

Could this be how time and life work? The wheel going round. Does it have to carry me only north and not back in a loop right back south?

Such are the thoughts you have on nighttime bike ride through our perfect, potholed city on the warmest February night on record.

Tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow), we will ask, “Was it climate change?” Tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow), we will worry about risk. Tonight (tonight!), we ride with the wind on our skin and the voices of the people in our ears.

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Alexis Madrigal, Co-Host, Forum

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