San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)
Song of the Day 09/11/2023
San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) by Daniel Herskedal, Emile Mosseri, Joe Talbot, and Michael Marshall
Woke up this morning at 4:35 am, not intentionally, that is. Anxiety: 101%, dopamine: lacking, clearheadedness: surprisingly present. I decide it’s important not to dwell and get the day started immediately, so I meditate for 20 minutes (recording of: I am not my body… not even my mind…) then fall back asleep for roughly 40 minutes. 5:40 am now, out the door, run through Central Park, which turns more into a long walk with intervals of half-hearted sprints. It wasn’t the transcendent workout I desired… but then again, here’s the beauty of getting up early, or, in my case, interminable nocturnality: there’s always so much more day to be had, to be conquered, or carpe'd. And I say to myself: Don’t worry about all those thoughts in your head, it’s only 6:20 am, why not go to a yoga class before work begins?
Download ‘Classpass,’ create new account, use friend in Europe’s phone number to obtain yet another free trial, scour the app for yoga studios with classes within the next twenty minutes… but I’ve missed that boat, as all the morning courses tend to begin at 7 am. I do, however, find something else that conveniently starts at 8:00 am. It’s a workout studio on the Lower East Side that I know nothing about. It’s called Conbody. The class is titled ‘Manic Monday’ and it mentions cardio, or something of that ilk. Perfect, I say to myself. And on the train downtown I go. Fluorescent lights, bleary-eyed workers in scrubs going through their morning commutes, police officers patrolling for perverts and felons, angry MTA workers telling homeless men to MOVE BACK, MOVE BACK, DON’T MAKE ME SAY IT AGAIN. My heart is racing. It’s nice to be back home. Home, home, home.
Conbody, upon arrival, appears to be a deranged place. ‘You're here for Manic Monday?’
‘Certainly.’ I say
‘Perfect, first time? I’m Bobby, though your class won’t be with me today. It’ll be with-’
‘I’m Syretta, and I’ll be running things in the cell today. First time?’
‘Cell?’
‘Haha, that’s right!’ Bobby laughs, before adding, ‘Be sure to stay after the class to get your mugshot taken.’ And he points to a wall adorned with a painted latitudinal height marker, which is, of course, a gentle pastiche of a booked-into-custody snapshot.
‘OK.’ I say. ‘I’m down.’
On the way to the locker room, I notice another wall painted with information detailing the Lifetime Likelihood of Imprisonment of U.S. Residents Born in 2001. One in three black men, one in six Latino men, one in eighteen black women, one in one hundred and eleven white women, one in seventeen white men, etc. I change back into my workout clothes, the same ones I used for the extra-early morning run/walk, before making it into the ‘cell’, which has a prison cage for a door. The disorientation starts to dissipate, I’m getting the idea.
Inside the cell, all walls are painted black, one of them decorated with a long, horizontal mirror, which we all face. The 'we' involved is me, a hairy gentleman whose name I didn’t catch, another man named Austin, who works at the studio as an apprentice, and Benjamin, who is, you’ve guessed right, another man, short in stature but teeming with a particularly inquisitive, scared yet excited energy. When I first walk in, Austin, who is jacked, tells me how he doesn’t do any of this for the workout, but merely for… and he points both his index figures at his temple… ‘the power it releases here.’
‘That makes sense!’ I replied, perplexed, excited, ready to go, delighted to have chosen this experience over a boring run-of-the-mill ohmmmmm yoga class.
However perverse the inner critic might find this whole shindig, I’m into the novelty, I’m ready for more.
‘Wow, all men, never seen this here before,’ Syretta observes.
‘Just like prison!’ I say.
‘Well…’
‘Not really!’ Austin replies.
‘I’m’a be asking all your bodies some hard-hitting questions over the next forty-five minutes.’ Syretta says with determination.
‘Let’s go!’ Austin shouts, while Benjamin tightens his glasses toward his face.
‘Now, we’re gonna run through the whole thing with zero breaks, if I see you resting for more than 15 seconds, I’m gon’a speak up.’
And Syretta wasn’t lying… An intensive 45-minute bodyweight cardio circuit proceeded, no stops to be spoken of or had, soundtracked to 50 Cent, Missy Elliot, Puff Daddy, Drake, Lil Wayne, Usher, Nicki Minaj, surprisingly no Eminem. The tyranny of words did eventually escape me, and instead of looking around and forming descriptive sentences in my head, inside that millennial-bourgeois $20 per class pseudo prison cell, I was jolted, assertively, into the present. What else could I have asked for? This is amazing, I thought, as Kanye West’s Black Skinhead blared over the nightclub-worthy speakers. I even began mouthing the lyrics and received a high-five from both Syretta and Benjamin, the latter establishing a comfort of presence as the workout progressed.
‘I love my cell-mates!’ Benjamin squawks as the class winds down.
‘And we love you.’
Afterward, I talk to Austin a little more and get the full story: Conbody is indeed a nonstop, ‘prison-style fitness method.’ It was founded by a former inmate, named Coss, while in solitary confinement, and is entirely run by former inmates. The studio’s mission is to de-stigmatize the formally incarcerated community and help ease their reintegration into society. And, of course, they provide free workouts for prisoners across New York and the United States. What was initially bizarre, if not tacky, with context became both impressive and admirable.
‘I found this after doing time for a few years and it’s really changed my life,’ Austin says while showing me some press clippings. ‘We have a real, nice community here.’
They took my mugshot. In the first one I pouted, like someone sad to have been arrested, and in the second one I smiled, then I grabbed my backpack and went back out onto the streets of New York City, a place I’ve sometimes deemed a prison of one’s own making. And, albeit not entirely, my mind’s somewhat changed.
Second grade, 10:30 am, seven years old, the year 2001, a Tuesday in September, sunny, 74 degrees Fahrenheit. Ms. Botnick, in English class, is going over some of the most culturally vibrant cities in the US, and for whatever reason, we were for a while stuck on the city of San Francisco… ‘Like New York, but with a distinct kind of vibrancy, something different in the air,’ Ms. Botnick said. Oh cool, I want to go there, I thought. And slowly, weirdly, while still images of the Tenderloin and Golden Gate Bridge projected toward the whiteboard, the principal bolted in and called Ms. Botnick out of the room. She came back in with concerned, red eyes and kind of stood there for around a minute without saying anything, before continuing her lesson on San Francisco and all the beauty and charm to be found in what was then, to me, an exotically charged cultural capital that must be way better than Manhattan. Twenty minutes later someone’s parents abruptly came and picked their kid up to take them home. Then another, and another. ‘Oh, a building downtown collapsed.’ Ms. Botnick explained to those of us who remained. ‘A building downtown?!’ A classmate said. And everyone looked toward me, as I was the only kid who lived downtown. 'It wasn’t Gordon’s building', Ms. Botnick said. Then we all started to laugh. And then, something new I couldn't comprehend, we were all moved to the gym in the building’s basement, where the whole school sat and waited for their parents to come pick them up. ‘Don’t worry everyone! It’s just that a building, or actually a few buildings, downtown collapsed, and we’re going to take the day off and calm down and be safe with our families.’ OK, I thought, so a building or two fell down. What’s the big deal?
One by one everyone left, and then it was just me, four other students, the principal, and a couple of teachers who hadn’t gone home yet. My dad sprints in, covered in sweat. ‘I got the bloody last cab I could find, it was a miracle!’ He yells, in his thick, thick, Scottish accent. And he explained to me, and my sisters, who were retrieved right before and waiting inside the cab, what had happened. ‘You mean they’re gone forever? Like… forever?’ ‘Yeah!’ He said. ‘I can’t fucking believe I found this taxi.’ And as we sped down Lexington Avenue back toward our apartment on Thompson Street, facing a massive, white cloud of smoke and debris, I thought for the first time about loss, grief, the idea of something iconic and meaningful being there one day and then, without any signal or warning, gone the next.