The Far West

I live at the far west end of the Jack London District. Our building is isolated from residential neighborhoods by formidable barriers—the racing, dirty, fumy freeway, the Port of Oakland, BART, the estuary, San Francisco Bay, and the western terminus of the Southern Pacific Rail Road. Look south and see one of the largest rail yards in North America and the fourth largest container port in North America. Look north to where the shadow of the freeway above us divides us psychologically at ground level. To the west is the silvery Bay Bridge skipping toward San Francisco off Treasure Island (Treasure Island!). And to the east the airport, rail lines, and warehouses of haute industrial Oakland.
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Amtrak keeps a huge yard as our neighbor on Third. Seventh recalls an early day when the factories weren’t quite so huge and this stretch of Oakland was called the Harlem of the west. But much of Seventh is boarded up now and even Esther’s Orbit Room, that landmark club, is empty, its awning falling to tatters, a starburst hole where a rock hit the sign.
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We are like an outpost of civilization here; my building some urban iteration of The Swiss Family Robinson. We are the only residence in the sprawl left behind when the freeway, the Post Office, and BART sewed this formerly vibrant neighborhood into a pocket. We sit like a fort out on the prairie in the mid-1800s when Custer and similar generals waited weeks for supplies and munitions.
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Thus we are alone and turn to each other for companionship and neighborly ways. The trouble is, the people I live with here are exactly the kind of people my mother would not let me play with as a child or go out with as a teen. They drink, smoke, stay up late, scream, drive fast cars, wear short shorts, you name it. We were made for each other and know it.