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Come unglued in time?
Here's the tale of three typically offbeat San Franciscans who do just that. Bay Time Detective Mikki Bingo moonlights at Lusty Lady and volunteer cooks at Glide. Mikki's sole employee is Pete Bingo, her inventively incompetent grandfather. Their client, Sharky Bate, is a gazillion year old hip-hop bottom fish who flip-flops from petrified to putrefied. Stumbling through epic timequakes, our titanic trio pits wits with nefarious foes in their unending quest for truth, “justice” and a truly affordable apartment.

     My cell phone wretches melodious—the Beer Barrel Polka.
“Pete Bingo, all the above and more—at your disposal.”
     “Gramps, it’s Mikki. You’re on assignment.”
     “Dangerous stuff, huh?”
     “You wish. Just tailing a tail.”
     “Hmmm…, the tale of two tails. Who’s our pigeon?”
     “Archer, first name Miles. Voodoo, extortion and rent money for us.”
     “Archer, Archer,…rings a bell.”
     “He’s competition, gramps.”
     “Ten-four. Where’s the tag?”
     “Outside the Golden Gate Bridge gift shop. Ten p.m. And, gramps, for the sake of the goddess, for once—be PROMPT!” Three hours to kill. I stroll into the HA-RA for some liquid companionship. Finger a victim at the bar and sell him a gross of business cards and a Dead Devil car alarm. Life’s good.

     Here’s the bridge, not forty minutes past the appointed hour. I bump into Mikki.
     “OUCH, what the…”
     “Sorry, Mikki darlin’. Damn this fog. But, see—I was keepin’ an eye out for you. The other one…, well, I figured I should disguise mysel….”
     “Right—as Warren Hinkle?… O.K. gramps, here’s the lowdown. See the cops over there?”
     A brace of boys-in-blue crane over the railing, peering down, pointing their flashlights at not one, but two bodies floatin’ on the bay.
     “What about tailin’ the tail?”
     “One floater’s our tail—Miles Archer.”
     “Oh well, like I always say, ya win some and ya…”
     “Gramps—listen. I saw everything. First, the guy Archer’s tailing jumps. I shadow Archer. He’s fidgety, staring up to the top of the bridge, mumbling, whimpering. Sees me but acts like I’m invisible. Rants about this guy George White. Archer reaches into his pocket, demands I take

this stone.’ She shoves it in my face. ‘See? Looks like a flatfish—like a small sand dab. Anyway, Archer insists ‘Here, you take it’, that he can’t stand being ‘unglued in time’ any longer, and dives over the railing — just like that!” 
     “Easy come, easy….”
     “No—listen. The moment Archer slips me the stone I’m like hardwired to a mainframe. Suddenly I know George White’s an ex-journalist, DEA agent. He runs a CIA sponsored LSD brothel on Telegraph Hill. Here’s the address. Be discreet, and be careful. Get the lowdown on MKULTRA, Operation Midnight Climax—and check for signs of the Illuminati.”

     So I huff an’ puff three smokes on my way up to White’s place, knock, an’ to my delight three beauteous and bumptious gals hidin’ nothin’ beckon me in all ruby-lipped and jiggly-wiggly.
     “Where’s Georgie boy?”
     A toilet flushes, a door swings open, an’ I’m face to face with this lardo cue ball luggin’ a super-sized martini in one hand and a relief pitcher in the other.
     “Yeah, what is it?”, says he.
     “Archer sent me.”, says me.
     “OK, have a beer.”
     I gotta question White, but figure, what the hell, the teensyest bit of fun first ain’t hurtin’ no one. The Hispanic lovely hands me a tall cool one. Deep breath, single swill. “Brrrrrrrup!…”
     By now the gals, they’re swarmin’ all over me, an’ soon I’m startin’ to feel funny—funny like I ain’t never felt before. Stuff comes into my head—strange stuff. I’ve never seen, heard, felt or tasted stuff like this—patterns in a million sponge colors, electric cackles, hints of liverwurst, lavender and onion—hell, I’m floatin’ off—who cares—bells, whistles and cushy landing on some far, far, far away…

     Wakin’ up and I’m lying—no kidding—in some damn shrubbery.
So I pick the leaves and stems off, draggin’ my sorry ass down Telegraph Hill. Guess it’s tomorrow. Seems I lost timechunks somewhere. Man, I’m hungry. Focaccia beckons. I wait for Liguria to open—an’ meantime peddle business cards an’ fly swatters. Damn if The City don’t need some flies.
     Mikki finds me perusing North South China Herbs’s display window across from Fior de’ Italia. They got this stack of dried crucified lizards collectin’ dust in a basket. I’m thinkin’— “Viagra works fine, but maybe lizard brew’s cheaper.” I dunno.

     “Gramps, let’s cruise—it’s hit the fan.”
     She shoves me into her old caddy ragtop, doohickies ta burn. “What did you squeeze out of White?” she asks.
     “Truthfully, I don’t remember.”
     “Something’s happening, gramps. Something weird.”
     “Yeah, so…”
     “So I’m stepping inside the Transamerica when—it vanishes! Suddenly I’m outside facing hundreds of masted ships anchored where the Financial District should be. I turn to a burly sawed-off redhead putting the make on me. Gramps, this guy reeks. Claims he’s Shanghai Kelly!”
     Makes perfect sense to my drug addled mind. Shanghai Kelly, the most ruthless crimp ever to walk the old Barbary Coast—well over a hundred years ago.
     “Mikki, let me tell you something…”, but my mind wanders off into fields of wheat and clover.

     “See Gramps, this cop, you know him—Pennrest…”
     “Sure, the psycho creep hadda crush on you—‘til ya kicked him up to soprano.”
     “Well, Pennrest claims he saw everything at the bridge.
Says I pushed Archer over!”
     Nice, my grandkid, smart as a whip, beautiful, talented an’ set up to flop for murder one. “Did Archer say anything else before he jumped?”
     “Yes, but none of it makes sense.
First the George White stuff, then he says The City holds puzzle pieces, and that it—whatever IT is, has been here from the beginning.”
     I’m thinking a cozy Irish pub—talk up the barkeep an’ ignore
soccer on the tube. Mikki interjects.
     “Pete, what do you know about the Bohemian Club?”
     “I know Bohemian beer.”
     “The Bohemian Club, okay—once a bunch of scruffy misfit writers, poets and artists, the club got hijacked by the planet’s most powerful men—industrialists, bankers, politicos. Their clubhouse is just off Union Square. Come summer they party at their Russian River enclave, frolicking in drag, staying filthy drunk and, some say, plotting all manner of international devil-doing.”
     “Sounds great. Wish they’d invite me.”
     “Yeah, well Archer said we’d find a puzzle piece there, too. As if we could get in. Anyway, it’s someone who wants it all.”
     “Everything and everyone?”
     “Exactamento.”
     “So how do we crack this nut?”
     “Take a breather. We’ll catch up tomorrow.
Eight p.m. Top Of The Mark.”
     “Your wish. My intent.” With a tip of my pith helmet and the two finger salute I hasten back to the HA-RA.

Beer Barrel Polka—considered by Pete Bingo to be the pinnacle of human musical expression.

Golden Gate Bridge—completed in 1939. Everyone’s favorite spot to end it all.

Warren Hinkle—SF’s own swashbuckling columnist/dog lover. Picture

MKULTRA—CIA’s long running mind control project.

Operation Midnight Climax—from 1955 to 1965 journalist George White, at the behest of the CIA and with the full cooperation of SFPD, ran a brothel on Telegraph hill. Guinea pig johns were dosed with LSD. White took notes, sitting on the pot behind one-way glass, slurping martinis by the pitcher. Befuddled clientele no doubt pondered which end was up and where to put it.

Illuminati—an all-powerful society so secret even it doesn’t know if it really exists.

Telegraph Hill—named for the semaphore, an early form of telegraph, once situated at the top of the hill. An observatory followed the semaphore. Today, Coit Tower, built from a bequest by fire-fiend Lillie Hitchcock Coit occupies the site. Check out the ground floor Depression-era public works mural.

Liguria—focaccia, more focaccia and only focaccia. Snag a fragrant slab of this pizza-bread and cross the street to Washington Square. People-watch while chomping down the yummiest ultra-cheap lunch to be had. Line up early for your slice, because they close the doors the moment they sell out.

North South China Herb—alas, this fine old musty apothecary is no more. But its memory lingers on in the confines of North Beach’s latest Italian deli.

Fior de’ Italia—this nation’s oldest Italian restaurant

Transamerica—tallest and perhaps most distinctive building in town. Was widely disliked when first built. Occupies the space where that famous literary and art haunt the Montgomery Block (Monkey Block) once sat. Yerba Buena Cove’s original shoreline ran through the center of where the Transamerica now stands.

Financial District—i.e. Yerba Buena Cove. Yup, all those big buildings sit atop landfill. Numorous Gold Rush era ships are mixed in that fill. How’d you like to be forty stories above liquefying fill the next time an 8.6 hits, hmmm? The Financial District

Barbary Coast—Where the action was back when San Francisco was aptly tagged “the wickedest place on earth." Named after pirate haunts of North Africa, the Barbary Coast was Disneyland meets dens of inequity. Creep joints, deadfalls, gambling and dance halls, opium dens, unimaginably creative bordellos, shanghai “boardinghouses”, cock fights and uncounted booze joints vied with one another for the entertainment dollar of the eras best and brightest. Thuggish “rangers” preyed on unsuspecting victims, Mickey Finns were the drops of the day, and colorful characters like Oofty Goofty, Big Bertha, Dirty Tom McLear, The Galloping Cow and The Dancing Heifer provided entertainment the likes of which we’ll thankfully never see again. The Barbary Coast went through many changes in its sixty plus years of existence. The end to it all came with the upholding of The Red-light abatement act in January 1917.

Bohemian Club—founded by legitimate bohemian artists in 1872. How it morphed into the Caucasian rich and powerful ultra-conservative-guy version of Animal House in the woods is a puzzler. Weaving Spiders Come Not Here is their motto, meant to suggest that no deals are to be cut at their two week long bacchanalia each summer. And if you believe that, why I’m selling some sunny oceanfront property in North Dakota…

Russian River—deep in the redwoods and wine country of northern Sonoma County.

HA-RA—if Bukowski, Burroughs or Henry Miller had lived in present day San Francisco the HA-RA would be their bar.