Labor Day O Labor Day

May I be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas? I thought so. Too late, but it’s been that kind of year, with months whizzing past like weeks and weeks being chewed up like days (but I still would like to spend one hour with you, just for a minute. Now wait a second!). An odd year so far. Downsized, in the style of the times. I don’t remember May at all — did we have one? — and June came and went so fast there was no time for a Giants swoon, although one was inevitable. The seasons, which once were so clearly defined, now overlap: basketball, baseball, football, opera and symphony, all running together. Christmas, the day that became a season, now goes on all year long, so may I be the first to wish you a Happy New Year. Too late there, too, eh?

Labor Day, the last long weekend of the year, although the sharper operators have become expert at stretching two days into three, and three into four and even disappearing for a week with no one the wiser. Which means they weren’t missed, so who cares? Labor Day has always seemed as faintly depressing as the slow, steady decline of the labor movement itself. San Francisco was at its feisty best — and its most prosperous — when it was the strongest union city in the land and proud of it. There was cockiness in the salty air, not to mention fisticuffs along the waterfront and picket lines at the drop of a contract. Solidarity is a good feeling. When you joined a union you became part of something powerful and possibly dangerous. It was important to bust the unions, so “they” did. Busted a lot of them but not all. If “they” decide to get the rest, “they” will. It’ll be easy. Solidarity left town a long time ago.

Holidays don’t mean much any longer in the troubled, restless country. Mammon long ago won the battle of Christmas. New Year’s Eve is as out of style as hangovers, the only thing it was famous for. In San Francisco, the only time a kid can celebrate the Fourth of July is during Chinese New Year’s. Memorial Day is as forgotten as those who died to make one necessary. “Remember Pearl Harbor”? Nobody does. Thanksgiving is celebrated by some as our only unspoiled and honest observance; Native Americans ignore it. If we have a real national holiday it’s Super Bowl Sunday, which doesn’t mean as much now that Joe has left. Arbor Day is OK for us secular humanists who will agree that only god can make a tree and he’d better keep making them, Sundays and holidays included.

The only good thing about Labor Day is that you don’t have to do anything special. No observances of any importance. What you wear or don’t wear doesn’t matter. You can just sit around for three days and do nothing but contemplate your navel or somebody else’s. Labor Day is for working slobs, and aren’t we glad we have a job to come back to? If the unions had held fast and those big paychecks were still coming in — the checks that created the first real American middle class — we wouldn’t be in so much trouble, and an army of old brothers wouldn’t be on the bricks, asking for spare change. People want to work. Nothing I’ve seen, heard or read convinces me otherwise.

Labor Day, a nothing day among holidays, but a landmark nevertheless. End of summer, obviously. After many a summer dies the tan and also the tanned, in increasing numbers. It’s getting dark earlier, which is fine with me. When it gets dark at a proper hour, you don’t feel so guilty walking into a bar. Labor Day used to mean baseball double-headers, but they seem to have gone the way of flannel uniforms and colorful socks. The fall socio-cultural whirl begins. Get the tux out of the garment bag (does anybody use mothballs any longer?). And for a little bit longer, we can dream of a Giants-Yankees World Series.

Labor Day also marks the end of the city’s most important season — tourism. The locals may reclaim the cable cars, if they can figure out the fare, and stop making cheap jokes about people walking around in their underwear. Most of the visitors are neat, clean and polite, and we can learn from them. Thanks to their presence, we may even tidy up the place — not that San Franciscans have ever gone out of their way to cater to tourists. It is not the style here. In the old days we were too busy turning out four daily newspapers, running big banks, canning coffee, brewing beer, sending big fishing fleets to sea, trying to find space along the teeming waterfront for ships from the seven seas. The food was good, prices were low, “name” bands played for dancing nightly in the major hotels. Market Street was lined with true movie palaces, half a dozen theaters catered to playgoers, nightclubs booked star entertainers, and vaudeville and burlesque were not yet dead. The tourists came, these wonders to behold, and had the good times they remember to this day.

Now that we need tourists, we don’t quite know how to go about acting hospitable.

Labor Day also marks the end of the city’s most important season — tourism.