Pigs and Cheese in San Francisco

The Ferry building in San Francisco is in some ways, exactly what it sounds like. You can ketch the Ferry to Sausalito there, or if you are like me, you can catch lunch.

 

Crowded, yet surprisingly sterile, the hungry masses are provided a wealth of options. Tacos, burgers, and bears Oh my. I did see tacos and burgers, I got carried away with the bears bit, ya know, alliteration and all. With so many choices one can pretty much do as they please, and what pleased me, pleased me in a big way.

First, How can anyone pass up a sign with the tagline “Tasty Salted Pig Parts”?

I did not know that other word but it did not matter. It may just be a stall in a glorified food court, but in the case of Boccalone, the glory was well deserved. I have not been to any other food court vendor that had a locker in which it was aging its own meat. Besides, any place that can stay in business only doing one simple thing (salting pig parts), is likely doing it rather well. They are doing it well.

Having obtained a pile of prosciutto carried like a snow cone I walked around the corner for part two of lunch. Cheese. Good cheese.

Faux western kitsch normally repels me like a cattle prod, but this bucking bronco logo-ed shop had aged Gouda in the isles. Aged Gouda fixes everything. So does brie, Gruyere, and Stilton. The Cowgirl Creamery is better than their logo shtick implies. 

There was a line full of the lunch crowd standing at their window and I joined them. The chalk board told me I had my choice of brie and apple, ham and Swiss, or any variation of cheese and bread. I went with a grilled cheese and fig jam.

I chose correctly.

 

 

How Modern Racism Works

I once spent a week in a Manhattan office as a sort of test drive for a possible new career. The staff were friendly and competent, the work was interesting, and the opportunities were sky high. I liked the company well enough and they liked me. They liked me quite a bit. I was exactly what they were looking for. I had met the founder/CEO of this top notch firm in church. We were both serving in leadership roles and had worked together in differing roles there. He liked how I went about things and asked if I would consider a career change that would include coming to work for him. It looked like a great opportunity.

The moment I stepped off the elevator I saw that this was not like any company I was used to. Everyone was Mormon. Not just Mormon, but graduates of BYU. It is not normal to find such a place on the East Coast where Latter-Day Saints are about as common as Panda Bears. At all my previous jobs I was forced to spend an abnormal proportion of my conversational time explaining why I wasn’t drinking like everyone else, why I was wearing an extra layer under my clothes, or why I never dropped the F-bomb like everyone else. I found this a bit frustrating as I would have rather spent my time talking about literature, movies, or maybe football. Rarely did I get a chance as my Mormonism trumped my other interests, or at least trumped anything else that may have been interesting about me. None of that would happen here. If I took this job those days would be over. I was intrigued.

“I like hiring Mormons. I understand them, they understand me, and we can have a work environment more in line with my values,” The boss told me. “I can start off at a level of trust with a new employee that I wouldn’t have otherwise and in this business there has to be trust.” I don’t think this employer was completely against working with non-Mormons, I know that nearly none of his clients were LDS, but he knew what he was looking for, knew where to find it, and he just did what he knew. He knew Mormons.

In the end I didn’t take the job. We just couldn’t get the numbers to work. That was years ago and they are still going strong. I don’t know everyone there but I can pretty much guess a thing or two about whomever it was that took the job that I did not. I’m pretty sure they were Mormon, went to BYU, and were extremely capable. I think about them, and my experience there, quite often. Strangely enough I think about it when I read in the paper about affirmative action, racial profiling, and income inequality. I thought about it during the Treyvon Martin trial, the Cliven Bundy showdown, and now during the Donald Sterling drama. In all these cases there is so much talk about racism, or false accusations of racism, or reverse racism. Everyone has an opinion, everyone knows what should be done, and everyone, no matter what side they take, is upset.

So many are upset in part because we, the collective we, do not really understand how racism works. We think racism is, or happens when, we hate someone who is different. We think it is when we act out on this hatred in some way. While this may be one way racism works, it is very much not THE way racism works. The truth is that today, and in years past, for the most part racism works just like that office in Manhattan.

Racism happens when we simply show a preference for our own.

Preference for our own is a precarious thing. It makes sense. It’s easy. It’s also very exclusive and insular. Not only is it those things but it is also the justification most all overtly racist policies or groups have used to justify blatant discrimination. Most of those who supported Jim Crow laws did not claim to hate black people, they simply wanted to “protect” their own. Real estate agents and neighborhood alliances didn’t say black people were horrible, they simply wanted to make sure white people could live amongst their own. Labor unions, employers, and colleges never had to say they hated minorities; they only had to say that they had a level of trust in the abilities of their own.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not necessarily calling that office full of Mormons racist. Nor am I calling the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints racist. But I will say that all the people in that office were white. There were also no Jews. There were plenty of women and during that week I never heard one person say anything negative about any group previously mentioned. But the level of niceness, affection, or broad respect for humanity possessed by those who worked there didn’t, and doesn’t matter to any black people; because they aren’t there. Unless something changes, they never will be either.

That is the problem with a racist past never being addressed by the “non-racist” present.
The group we belong to now, and what that group has or does, is a direct result of what the members of our group did before. So, if that office would like to stay Mormon forever, so be it. Who cares right? It is one company, one office, what’s the big deal? In the grand scheme of things there really aren’t that many Mormons, especially in New York, so why even bring it up? I bring it up because this office is how modern racism works. That office is Mormon not because the people there hate anyone; they simply have a set way of doing things. The same could be said for Ford, Bain Capital, Tiffany & Co., the United States Senate, NBC, CBS, ABC, Morgan Stanley, Stanford, any local police department, the carpenters union, and on and on and on. Wall street firms don’t have to hate black people, they only have to really like Wharton graduates. Wharton doesn’t have to hate black people, it only has to really like the children of alumni. Alums don’t have to hate anyone, they only have to really want their own children to get into a great school. It goes on and on, spirals down, down, down.

The only way things will ever change is if someone intentionally changes it. It really isn’t enough to simply not be racist. Not hating someone is not the same as giving them a chance. Really, what it will take, and I call out that Mormon office because my own personal bias tells me that Mormons, my people, should be great at this, is to think of someone other than themselves. Look at someone new and give them a chance. Do the uncomfortable thing. Open up and let someone new in. Realize that if people are people, then “strangers” deserve the same sort of favoritism we give the familiar.

 

Vegas

Doctors and scientists agree that an elevated body temperature is particularly dangerous in that it can cause permanent neurological damage. If a human body reaches 100.4 degrees the person officially has a fever and should report to the nearest hospital for treatment. It was 106 degrees yesterday in Las Vegas.

At nine in the morning I step through the plaster facade of Paris onto the sidewalk but have to stop short to avoid colliding with a shirtless man drinking something red from a fishbowl.

He was walking by himself but he was in no way alone. There were plenty of strange objects, all of them large, filled with colorful liquids being carried and sipped from, by all sorts of partially clothed people. The people came in all sorts and all ages and in large numbers. They were speaking German, Spanish, and drunken gibberish.

“Yeeeeeeeeah! Duuuuuude. Check em out broh!” “Heeeeey, whoooooooie! Yeah watch me drop it!” “Whoo-o whoo-o! Whoo-o, whoo-o!” Such poetry being shouted by middle aged divorcee’s or twenty somethings from Ohio State sounds pretty much the same. No matter how it looks or sounds, the prevailing impression is that those saying it are sweaty.Nine in the morning or nine at night it doesn’t matter. At both times it is 106 degrees outside and everyone is either drunk or trying to get there. Inside it isn’t quite as hot.

I was there to have dinner with the Teamster’s. When I arrived I was shown to a table with two six foot tall blonde women who said they were sisters, a Jewish lawyer whose father was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, and an Ex-Mormon who worked in the dairy industry. No one thought our grouping remarkable in any way.After dinner I walked back through the maze of lights and bells towards my room. Groups wearing sashes and tiaras, or red hats and teddy bear sweaters, or suits with black shirts all gathered around various tables and machines shouting.One grey haired man sat at a machine holding a lit cigarette down at his waist. He was staring off toward nothing doing nothing and saying nothing, but everything around him was lit up and making noise.

Everyone there is trying to have a good time. I know this because the shouting, the billboards, and the gauntlet of salespeople are telling me so. They offer me free drinks, free admission to a striptease, a chance at winning $100,000. After the fifth encounter I simply stop responding. I just want to watch the fountains dance in front of the Bellagio or listen to some live music with something more than just a bass line.

A bunch of guys wearing bespoke suits are pausing to take pictures with women wearing sequined g-strings. I wave my hand aside as one of the ladies moves to step in front of me. I smile at her and shake my head no.

I’m in Vegas and everyone is here to have a good time. I’m ready to have a good time. Business is done so now its time to play. I’m not against fun. I’ve never thought of myself as boring or a prude but by ten o’clock I was headed for my room. I didn’t feel bad about it. I was ready for fun.