415 Day

415 Day at La Raza park. The faces are there, the faces, the minds, the bodies, the gestures that refuse to disappear. 415 and the temperature hovers between 415 degrees and 415 degrees below zero. The city sometimes feels like a freezer but as Al Robles said, "Soon the white snow will melt". All the young sisters and brothers flashin' Frisco badges of honor. Those tattoos, those scars, the letters SF in bold letters cut into the flesh, bruises of valor, bruises of honor, bruises of survival that no cop's badge can kill. It was a gathering, a remembrance. It was 415 Day, a day dedicated to our area code, our way, our story, our history, our blood, our pulse, our beat, our murals, our tongues of poetry dipped in wine and spitting up blood fire as the pain and love and heartbreak and the spirits of homegirls and homeboys who have passed on to the other side ferments in our lungs and on this day--415 Day--we release it into the air of La Raza Park and it spreads across the city in unified smoke, sweet cleansing smoke like the smouldering sage settling into the skin, giving the fog direction, moving slow like a lowrider procession reaching the highest peaks of consciousness as the speakers blare street symphonies, oldies that refuse to get old. And it rained, a light rain that got heavier like small talk that suddenly got deep. It rained last year on 415 Day at Crocker Amazon but that too was beautiful. We come together despite the gentrification and the ugly attitude that has settled in the city and has fermented in its lack of style and grace and class and its attempt to turn the park into "Cracker Amazon". We come together and share our laughter, our 415 laughter, our memories, our songs, our soul of Frisco--OURS.