By Mike McGinty

“What kind of tamales?” I asked.

“Chicken, pork, and vegetarian. You want to order some?”

I had walked into the dry cleaner’s around the corner from my apartment to pick up some shirts, and suddenly I was being presented with menu options. Wasn’t this the place to go if you wanted to get rid of shirt stains? You know, like when you have a forkful of, say, pork tamale, and you’re not paying attention and it ends up leaving a red trail of tomato sauce down your front? Maybe this was a racket: we’ll sell you food that’s sure to stain your shirt, and when the inevitable happens we’ll clean the stain for you.

“She’s a friend of mine and I told her she could sell her tamales here.”

Well, I was all over it. I love tamales. It was lunchtime. They were only two bucks a pop. Sold and sold. I bought four. They were delicious.
But my satisfaction in buying authentic, fresh, homemade tamales didn’t stop at my stomach. What I loved about the whole thing was how my dry cleaner’s friend needed a place to peddle her yummy wares in this challenging economy, and my dry cleaner was only too happy to provide it.

And I, as a Castro resident, was only too happy to support this enterprising lady, who had figured out a way to make a buck in tough times. It called to mind a question that had been nagging at me for a good while: Is community recession-proof?

For months now, the economy has been pretty much all you hear about on the radio. With Britney behaving herself these days, what else is there? My daily work commute is 40 minutes each way, and just about every morning and evening drive-time DJ has something to say about the global meltdown. Especially on NPR, which these days stands for Neverending Pronouncements on Recession. The housing market is kaput. The Big 3 auto-makers are right behind. Emerging countries aren’t investing in their infrastructure like expected. China’s GNP is down. Layoffs abound. Unemployment is at a new high. It’s got me walking around in a funk, looking at people I pass on the sidewalk and wondering how they’re holding up in the face of this storm.

Around the neighborhood, it’s hard not to see the signs. Sure, Levi’s just opened a new store on Castro Street, but nearly everything was 50% off when I was in there a few weeks ago. All American Boy has closed. And most of the other merchants are offering deep discounts on huge portions of their inventory. (Except for Hot Cookie. Where’s the love?)

What effect is all this having on Castro residents as they walk down our streets? Are they distressed by what they see? How many of us have been laid off? Who is suffering? Who is scared? Is it the guy I saw at Café Flore the other day at 10 a.m., reading the weather page? I was there working on my regularly scheduled non-commute day. But I wondered if he was trying to steel himself for a day of job hunting. Or if he was trying to get his mind off his plight.

And what about community? Will the dire predictions and the relentless multi-billion-dollar bailouts erode any sense of goodwill we might have for each other? As usual for the holiday season, my mailbox filled with solicitations for contributions from nonprofits. These were all causes I care deeply about and have contributed to in the past. But this year I threw away more of those envelopes than I care to admit, a little apprehensive about giving away too much of my money just now. I seem to recall a postcard in the pile, promoting the latest Dining Out night. Will this fundraiser, a great community-builder, suffer when people stay home to save their money? Will economic angst give birth to an “every man for himself” mentality? As Castro recycling bins fill, what will happen to us?

Most important, how will the answers to these questions change our familiar landscape? Maybe our urban hikes take us somewhere other than the department store-strewn sidewalks of Union Square. Maybe we watch pay-per-view instead of reserving choice seats at the Kabuki. Maybe the most popular social outlets change from bars and restaurants to volunteerism and activism. And when we do go to the local watering holes, maybe we let the bartender pour well brands instead of asking for the top shelf stuff. (Okay, maybe I went a little too far on that last one.)

I’m not suggesting that the bars could turn into ghost towns, but many retail stores already have so I suppose it isn’t totally outside the realm of possibility. It points to the simple fact that when it comes to more fiscally efficient (read cheaper) ways to engage with the world, we’re all going to have to get a little creative to get through this. I myself have adopted a friend’s suggestion to mix baking soda and hydrogen peroxide with a few drops of peppermint oil for an effective teeth whitener that’s about 500% cheaper than Crest Whitestrips and more than 1,200% cheaper than a dentist’s whitening treatment. I’ve turned myself into a busy little chemist, and if that’s not getting creative I don’t know what is. Santa even brought me a mortar and pestle this year.

Tamales at the dry cleaner’s strikes me as another example of the creativity I’m talking about. It answered “What will happen to us?” in a promising, hopeful, wonderfully Obama way. Each golden roll of corn meal deliciousness proclaimed to me that we will all rally in the face of this storm. We’ll help each other out. My landscape had changed in a small way but I was able to shift gears pretty quickly and go with the flow. I’m all for one-stop shopping, and as my dry cleaner asked “Chicken, pork, or vegetarian?” I thought “We’re gonna be okay.”

Fast forward a week, and I’m picking up more shirts. “Are you going to have those tamales in here again this weekend?” I asked. “They were awesome.”

“No.”

Turns out someone complained to the building owner, who put a stop to wash-n-fold-n-lunch. Not even the dry cleaner herself knows who spoke up, or why. I can only imagine he or she doesn’t like Mexican food.

So now I’m not so sure about this whole community-in-recession, all-for-one-and-one-for-all thing. The tamale lady could have made $800-1,000 a month. That’s a nice chunk of change in a recession. Or anytime. But someone felt threatened or offended enough to deny her that, which I find more than a little sad and not very community-minded at all. Now she has to come up with a new way to make ends meet. A new answer for the crisis we’re all trying to deal with.

I don’t know what her answer will be, but my teeth are getting whiter every day so I’ve started practicing mine: “Mortar and pestle? What mortar and pestle?”

Mike McGinty is a Clio-winning copywriter whose personal essays have been published in the anthologies I Do/I Don’t: Queers on Marriage, Identity Envy, and From Boys to Men, as well as on Gay.com, Outsports.com, in the Noe Valley Voice, and in Bookmarks, Betty, San Francisco Bride, and American magazines. See his blog at mikemcginty.com