The most striking thing I noticed on my visit to the Marina on Sunday was the insane number of people running along Marina Blvd.
Every side street I walked up was nearly empty, almost eerily so. I would wander for blocks without passing a single person. Once I headed toward the ocean, the scene flipped entirely.
In the space of two blocks, I moved from an empty ghost town to a chaotic 5K free-for-all. It’s as if the whole neighborhood got struck with a simultaneous notion to burn a few calories. There were so many runners moving along Marina Blvd that were it not for the lack of any discernible unified direction, I would have sworn there was some sort of race going on. The walkways by the Marina Green were a non-stop slide show of sleeveless shirts, stretch pants and sweat stains. It’s as if the entire neighborhood is sponsored by Under Armour.
The volume of runners was certainly helped by the fact that it was Sunday. It was also the first sunny day in a while. Nevertheless, this is not a scene you see in other parts of the city. I live by Golden Gate Park, another runners haven, but I have never seen anything like this. I can’t imagine what could possibly strike a whole neighborhood to all at once need a self-esteem boost. I do understand the self-perpetuating nature of a work out culture like this. Every one is in shape, so you get in shape to avoid feeling bad about yourself, which makes the people around you feel compelled to be in shape. It’s push-up peer pressure.
The Marina is stunning in every possible sense. The views, the people, the houses, they’re all just beautiful. There is, however, a calculated feeling to that beauty that rubs me the wrong way. True beauty is effortless. It’s a sunset over a lazy mountain or a few strands of hair falling haphazardly across a woman’s face. The beauty of the Marina is marked with an inescapable sense of effort. The neighborhood was built on once worthless marshland and it seems to be overcompensating for that fact today.
The runners on Marina Blvd. are a small microcosm of this sensibility that I perceive. I have no doubt the more intimate my knowledge of this neighborhood becomes, the less accusatory I’ll be. Will the Marina present some complex secret cultured side that lies beneath the veneer of desperate superficiality? I don’t know.
What I do know is the second I got home from my visit, I hopped right on the treadmill.
Thanks for this. Such honesty. I appreciate your desire to be, as you put it, "less accusatory" as you get to know the neighborhood. A question: how many of the Lycra-clad are from the Marina and how many come there to show their stuff!?
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a quote, about how true beauty is only in a destroyed scenery. Gotta find and post it later. Its lovely.
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