Cow Palace 


     A few miles south of downtown San Francisco, within easy howitzer range of the Transamerica Pyramid, sits a monument to free-span roof systems called the Cow Palace, a rectilinear barn, built before the rediscovery of the dome, with a main floor plenty big enough for a rodeo, circus, or monster truck crushorama. There is off-floor seating for, say, eight thousand folks. During one winter in California, I was inside the Cow Palace three times.
     The Grand National Horse Show and Livestock Exposition is held yearly there. A few memories linger from my attendance of this event..........The Sons of the Pioneers, looking more like the Grandpas of the Pioneers, lowered from the catwalks on a swaying stage, singing "Cool, Clear, Water" while twenty roving carneys, with ice chests and suspenders, worked the crowd yelling "Beer, Cold Beer."........Monty Montana, straddling a bored paint gelding, twirling two ropes at once, smiling too widely for the teeth to have been his own........Bobby DelVecchio, from the Bronx, New York winning the bullriding......and Bud's Pride, touted as the first fertile Beefalo bull, (cross between a shorthorn and a bison) bringing a cool 1.3 million bucks at auction.
     The second visit to the Cow Palace was for a performance by the Rolling Stones. Mick made his entrance to the Cow Palace in the bucket of a black self-propelled cherry picker, adorned in a navy pinstriped three-piece serge suit, no shirt, driving himself down the center isle of the floor, swooping way out over the fans as he sang "Lady Jane."
     The third time came after I saw a sign-up sheet in the City Lights Bookstore for volunteers to set up folding chairs for a speech by E. F. Shumacher, promoting his new edition of “Small is Beautiful.” in which Shumacher sets out guidelines for minimalist lifestyles and voluntary simplicity, Those are reasonable enough notions unless you are already living too simply to be able to afford food. I did wonder why the Shumacher folks had chosen the Cow Palace for the event. Maybe small didn't seem all that pretty when it came to book sales. I signed up. I wanted to look a bit deeper into the guts of the big old building.
     On a Friday evening I carried folding chairs until both hands were blood-blistered. Fifteen minutes before kickoff, when it was becoming evident that the one hundred voluntary simpletons in attendance were going to be rolling around like BBs in a boxcar, I wandered out to the lobby to have a smoke. There I met Abraham, a beefy professional custodian, wearing a faded Cow Palace Staff vest, smoking a Camels stubby and nipping on a pint of mid-'70s Mad Dog.
     He poured a gulp of the syrup into a paper cup for me We stood in the very same industrial-strength doorway through which Mick had driven his rock and roll contraption a month earlier. Five young devotees were arranging the stage. When it came time for the sound check, a woman in a gypsy skirt took the microphone and began.... "To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler....."
     Abraham took another slug of the wine, looked at me, and said, "Ya know, I’ve been here twenty years, and ya learn something new every day on this job. I figured this Small is Beautiful thing was going to be a Midget Pride jockey gathering, but, by God I always figured Willie Shoemaker was a man." 

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