I grew up in the city, in the Noe Valley district. It's always been a bit of a yuppie neighborhood and it felt like only people who are financally well off live there. I always felt like my family were the slums of Noe Valley.
On the corner of Church street and Clipper is Lovejoys tearoom. Before it was Lovejoy’s, it was a corner store and then a café. When it was a corner store, my mom would walk there with us to buy cigarettes after work or we would wait for the J Church. Right next door to the cornerstorecafelovejoys was a flat with a big bay window. In the window, I always saw this old man sitting at his desk, writing, looking out and smiling. He wasn’t that old then but at the time he seemed very old to me. He was very sweet and funny looking with this beard. He would wave to my mom every day. Some mornings when she was running to catch the J-Church for work he would make these exaggerated motions like he was saying, “Go, run!” and when she’d miss he would snap his fingers saying, “Darn!”
I also remember that he had a little dog. It was either a terrier or a shitzu and sometimes we’d see him out walking with the little dog trotting in front of him. I would always say, “Look mommy, it’s that old man from the window.” He wouldn’t say hi, but he would smile at us. He was this man we knew but didn’t really know anything else about. He had up these signs in his window. The one that caught my attention was, “I love my country, I fear my government.”
There was always something very comforting seeing him sitting at his desk. I really romanticized what his life must have been like. I had it in my head that he was alone and unmarried and a famous writer I'd never heard of. He was my own local celebrity. I made up my own little story and logic and I’ve never bothered to question the story until now.
We don’t live in Noe Valley anymore because we couldn't afford it. About 4 years ago, my mom, my sister and I went to have tea at Lovejoy’s. My mom sat down on the stairs to his house to smoke a cigarette and he looked at her and made an exaggerated gesture to her at us kind of like, “Oh my god, they’re all grown up.” She smiled and I felt a warm feeling that I remembered from when I was younger.
Last week, my friend Margi and I went to have lunch at Fattoush. It's a restaurant that is right next door to his house. We passed by and I looked up in the window because it's a habit. Instead of seeing him, I saw a sign saying that, “The man in the window” had died 2 days before. I looked at it and I thought, “God the man in the window died, that’s so sad.” I just walked on and I didn’t think about until today… And now that I have, I'm really sad that he’s gone. He was this sweet, funny thing from my childhood and I just took it for granted that he would always be there. One day, I just passed by and he wasn’t. I never even knew what his real name was until I read the sign.
Anyway I found this article about him, http://www.noevalleyvoice.com/2005/October/bist.html
Here are more of his words of wisdom:
Go with your heart.
Be kind.
When in doubt, do.
Forgive and forget.
Here is to Dean Bistline, the man in the window who will always be a happy childhood memory for me.