So you're still here? This is part 3, where I go to the Left Coast and beyond.
Another client I had worked with at Quantime was Field Research in San Francisco. They had a diverse portfolio of clients, some commercial, and one major activity: the Field Poll or California Poll. This had been started by Mervyn Field, a well-respected and astute pollster, many years before. I called my contact there, and he enthusiastically arranged an interview. So I went to San Francisco for the first time in my life.
San Francisco, especially for gay men and lesbians, is a wonderful place to live. We have a chair at the top table there, and have a lot of influence on the way the government there works. Our critical mass was achieved many years ago. Castro Street is a colourful place to walk through. The Golden Gate Bridge is breathtakingly beautiful.
The interview with Field Research went well--we went for dinner at a restaurant in Sausalito, a ferry-ride across the Bay. Seals cavorted in the water outside the restaurant. The work would be similar to what I had don at MarketFacts. They offered me a job and I accepted.
My friends John Teamer and Michael Foo (may they rest in peace) allowed me to stay with them during the interview and house-hunting time. I chose a one-bedroom apartment with huge closets on 577 Castro Street, and made arrangements to move again from Chicago to San Francisco. Field would pay the freight.
During my house-hunting I myself came up against discrimination for the first time. A nice apartment East of the Castro looked good, and I was interviewed by the owners. When it became clear that my boyfriend was a black man, the owners (who were Chinese) withdrew their offer. I reported them to the apartment-hunting agency and they were no longer able to list with them. However, it was educational and traumatic to be on the other end of racism for a change.
Sam would be accompanying me to San Francisco, after a visit East to see his family. A week after I got to SF, I met him at the train station, and our lives here began.
I enjoyed living in San Francisco for the most part. Sam and I were having some difficulties in our relationship; they culminated in our breaking up after about a year together, in March 1993. The work was very difficult, as Field, not having had the benefit of the cross-fertilisation which lots of Quantum users in the area brings, had very ideosyncratic ways of doing their tabulations. The work itself was somewhat strange, and there were many old tracking studies (studies done each month/quarter for a number of years for comparison purposes) that badly needed some revision but weren't getting it. I began making mistakes, and felt more and more unhappy in my work. This culminated with my discovery that an entire study which I had tabulated and sent to the client was fundamentally wrong because of a (tiny) mistake I made. I broke down at my desk and decided that I needed to find yet another job.
Meanwhile, I was doing the rounds of the bars (the Pendulum, on 18th St., was my favourite), but not netting any worthwhile relationships. MACT/San Francisco was taking up a bit of my time (but I enjoyed it), and I connected with Trinity Episcopal Church and the Rev. Robert Cromey, its Rector. It was a wonderful community which made me feel at home immediately. I have been very lucky in my religious communities of choice. So, I started to ponder what I would do. There was no other serious market research going on in town, and I felt it might be a time for a change in direction anyway.
I phoned my former boss, Joe Marinelli, in New York and asked him whether he'd heard of any openings in the industry that I might fill. I was desperate. He told me that he'd call me back in half an hour. When he called back, he asked me, "Do you have a passport?" I said that I could get one, and he told me that Quantime's London office needed a hand desperately. Testing of Quantum had lagged since I left the company. I thought about it for a split second and said that, if offered, I'd take it. After all, I'd never been to Europe, much less England.
Before I was to go to England, Quantime wanted me to go to Los Angeles to conduct some Quantum courses. I agreed willingly, as I had friends in town there who I wished to visit before leaving for the UK. So, I put most of my stuff in a storage room and went off to LA. I conducted the courses, and saw my friends, but a bigger challenge lay in wait. One morning, at about 4:30 am, I was woken by what seemed to be the biggest train wreck ever. It was the Northridge earthquake of January, 1994, and it measured about 6.6 on the Richter scale. While I had lived in SF for a year, I had never experienced such an earthquake there. The only one which was perceptible while I was there happened while I was in the Pendulum, and I suppose I thought they'd turned up the bass on the sound system.
All you can do during an earthquake is put your head under the covers and scream, so that's what I did. The hotel room remained intact, and after the quake we were led outside by a staff member. Our number included the couple in the next room, who were on their honeymoon. I'm sure that to this day they are dogged by funnypeople who ask them whether the earth moved on their honeymoon night. The hotel was mostly intact, except for $25,000 worth of damage to the light system in the ballroom, the crashed chandelier in the foyer, and the breaking of the front window wall, with effects that included a huge triangular shard of glass burying itself in the back of a sofa in the foyer. Had anyone been sitting there when the earthquake struck, they'd have gotten the shard right in the top of their head.
The ceiling over the desk I'd been using at the client's place of business collapsed. I'd have been killed had the earthquake struck 5 hours later. I was very lucky indeed. So, I finished the courses, got my UK work permit, and debarked for London on January 25th.
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