Yellow Bird, Golden State

ONE OF THE BAY AREA'S CHARMS is the ubiquity of cheap motels along the coast. I’m told that European vacationers love these places. Germans especially—they’re just nutsig about the cheesy architecture, the modest accommodations.

In their minds, evidently, it’s all quintessentially American.

Heimat Land!


Some of these places offer music and dancing.

Fannie’s good friend, Grant, is the music guy for Nick’s Sea Breeze, a restaurant and motel in Rockaway Beach, a cove in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco. Said Fannie, “we should take in Grant’s band, Friday night. I think he’d like that.” So that’s what we did, me, Fannie, and Elroy.

Nick’s lounge/dance hall, which has been in operation, I think, since 1927, is pretty cheesy all right. The classiest thing in the room is the Naugahyde.


Last night, for some reason, most of the customers at the periphery of the tiny dance floor were members of the motorcycle club The Henchman. Most of the rest were geezers in their best dance outfits. Regulars maybe.

I wondered if I counted as a geezer yet. Not quite, I figured. But soon.

Grant’s mom, Roberta, was there. She came over and sat with us. She’s a great lady, 97 years old, originally from Minnesota. She came out to the coast in ’42, started some businesses.

I think she’s got big money. She dresses like it anyway.


And she dances!

Poor Grant. He’s obviously a terrific musician (piano), and his mates seem accomplished enough. His girl singer, a leggy blond, is talented, albeit green. (Grant told me she’s a loan officer by day. “Sweet girl,” he said.)

Mostly, Grant and Co. offered a set of auditory Cheez Whiz—a predictably incoherent mix of pop standards, rock chestnuts, disco schlock, etc.

The crowd loved it, and so did I.

THE DAY BEFORE, Grant had come by for one of his occasional free haircuts. He and Fannie were yucking it up about that silly old song, “Yellow Bird.” Fannie seems to like just about anything that can be played on a ukelele. She’s a bit of a kitschaholic, I think. Grant, on the other hand, is a jazz musician, so I figure he hates just about everything he hears, though he’s wise enough to hide it. He listens to Weather Report.

Nice guy.

Still, while perched on Fannie’s bronze chair (nobody seems to know why the word “hell” is etched into it), he commenced mocking this particular song. Jamaican, I think. 1957.

So, last night, Grant and Band suddenly broke into “Yellow Bird,” complete with vibes and, at one point, Grant’s lunatic kazoo.

We were in on the joke and laughed. Meanwhile, the crowd didn’t notice anything different. Not the Henchmen, not the old hoofers, not the nearby barflies.

I looked over at the bikers. I kept hoping Grant would do “Tequilla.” I know he knows it.


FROM NICK’S, you can see and hear waves crashing dramatically a hundred yards to the left. The Nicksters train searchlights onto the waves to make sure nobody misses ‘em. Maybe they amplify them, too. Not sure.

“Look at the size of those waves!” shouted Elroy.

Roberta sipped her coffee, while Fannie sipped her ice-water and I sipped my Stella Artois. Fannie and Roberta seemed to have a lot to say to each another. I just smiled.

I’m pretty deaf, so I have no idea what anybody said to me, but even Fannie was having trouble communicating, what with the noise. At one point, Grant shouted out the name of his next number: “Mack the Knife.”


“Macro Knife?” asked Fannie. “What? Are they gonna do a cooking demonstration?”

“No, ”Mack the Knife,” shouted Elroy. But it was no use.

We left there pretty happy. Went home to watch Dexter. Lots of cool Cuban music.

Fannie woke me early this morning for my long trip home. She slowly mounted the stairs, warbling: “Yellow bird, up high in banana tree. Yellow bird, you sit all alone like me.”

ESSENTIALLY, the state of California is Cheez Whiz smeared onto natural magnificence. At least, so it seemed to me today, as I entered cheapy gas station markets and blew past Magic Mountain, Knotts Berry Farm, and Disneyland whilst listening to White Stripes, Neil Diamond, and the Be Good Tanyas.

Sunny says hey.