J.D.’s Columns

Hail Caesar San Francisco        I worked with Caesar Romero. Not the one who danced with Carmen Miranda and Betty Grable, not the Caesar Romero who acted with Tyrone Power, Burl Ives, Rod Serling, and Freddie Prinz, and not the fellow who played The Joker to Adam West’s Batman on television.       This Ceasar Romero was a janitor, a green card custodian two years out of Nicaragua. We buffed floors, cleaned toilets, fixed faucets, painted, filled water coolers, emptied the trash and washed the windows together in a seven-story building situated in the heart of the Tenderloin, San Francisco.      The Tenderloin is a rasty part of Baghdad by the Bay. At the time we performed our custodial magic, the district was becoming a landing spot for Vietnamese folks, ten city blocks in transition from a haven for street hookers, flop houses, soup kitchens and sex toy shops to a home for Asian versions of the s...