Birdland and the Banana Belt

I worked 16 hours at SFGH last night. The last half was on 6B, where I work with Trent, the erstwhile Marinite turned Realtor who tells me all kinds of stuff about the County I've lived in for 30 years, now trying to get "vested" so as to sweeten his retirement while one can still do that by working for the City. Also, Carlos with whom I have a few good laughs about Evo Morales of Bolivia and Alejandro Toledo of Peru (Carlos is Peruvian). I tell him I think Toledo is handsome, reminds me of an Inca warrior and I'd have him for my new boyfriend instead of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, whom Carlos thinks is a communist, if his politics were more like Chavez' or Morales'.
I listen to JB, a patient I know well, sing at the top of his lungs all night long without letup"Old King Cole was a Merry Old Soul and a Merry Old Soul ws He".
I love it. This patient is a huge black man whom everyone is afraid of because of the verbal abuse and the obscenities he spews when he's off his meds (which is often). What they fail to remember if they know him at all, is that he has never laid a hand on anybody and is a kind soul really, alternately calling me a bitch because I know his case manager "who had me arrested for nothin"', then hugging me and asking me about my son.
He has a grown son in Iraq.
Trent tells me about "birdland", a section in the flatter part of Mill Valley where the streets are all named for birds. If you live there you are pitied at cocktail parties in the County because it's lower class (although the median price for houses is probably 7 figures), "how can you stand it you poor thing?".
He has gone to cocktail parties where people who live in "the banana belt", a small portion of the town on the water of Sausalito, brag about the microclimate they live in, so much better, purportedly than in the hills where the real estate prices are so obscene one cannot do anything but drive by, hoping that if you have a dent in your car you won't be pulled over for being a "suspicous character" and questioned about your reason for being there.
The glitterati of Marin has it all balkanized into tax brackets and resale value.
I have lived in Marin for 30 years and never heard of these tags for various "neighborhoods" I thought I was familiar with.
Trent hates Marin and thinks all the people who were born and raised here have serious psychological problems, due to the sense of entitlement one can have when raised around money, whether one has money or not. I think he's right and it makes me wish I had gotten out of here long ago, when Bette did, taking her son to the wine country, to be raised among the lower income folks there who have nothing to do with grapes or wine.
Trent knows nothing of Lucienne Okeefe, who is anything but entitled, an activist of the highest order, with a rap sheet a mile long for civil disobedience. She's in her 70's and an ex nun who has lived here at least as long as I have, and has dedicated her retirement from the Longshoreman's Union to full time activism.
Or Norm "the Red" Gover, or Duncan Draper, or Kathy Rolston, who all more or less do the same.
HUGE accident on the Waldo grade last night, 2 people killed in a 31 car pileup when a drunk driver loses control of his vehicle after a deluge of snow and sleet, yes, snow and sleet, on the northbound lanes of 101 going into Marin from the City.
Traffic, myself included in it on the way home from work at 7 am, diverted through the banana belt to points further north.
I have the song "Old King Cole.." in my head as I try to discern imperceptible climate differences while driving through Sausalito.