Snapshots from San Francisco

I used to live in San Francisco. Now I live in Wisconsin, but whenever I go to see my family in California I take a day to go back to the city and walk around. This time I was alone, and took a notebook along.

1) Fresh out of the Embarcadero BART station at rush hour, there is a modest-sized triangle of cobblestones and benches, where no one goes but homeless people and pigeons. The homeless park their shopping carts and sit. The pigeons wander randomly, at least a hundred of them. You could easily pick one up. It’s hard to avoid stepping on them; they only scuttle away at the last minute.

2) Upper Montgomery Street. Steep hill, something electrical buzzing overhead. An old Chinese man with a world-weary look about him slides out of a door, which has a notice on it printed in both Chinese and English. Glassy eyed, hands in pockets, he spits on a pigeon and slides on down the hill.

3) Filbert Street steps up Telegraph Hill. Beautiful small gardens, fountains and hummingbirds, a acacia tree grown as a living gate frame. Foghorns in the distance. A clear glass reflecting ball patterned with a spiraling prism. At the top of this hill is Coit Tower. About ¾ of the people up here are elderly Chinese doing exercises: walking, tai chi, stretching, jogging. The rest are exhausted-looking tourists enjoying the view.

4) Back down Grant St. toward the waterfront. The street is so steep here that construction signs have to be placed in buckets of concrete, then wedged at the bottom to keep from falling and rolling downhill.

5) Down at the waterfront, tourist central. There is a cool breeze off the bay, carrying smells of sea lion, salt water, and sunscreen. I vow to get into as many tourist photos as possible today, but they’re so doggone nice that even when I get in front of their cameras they say “sorry”. Still, about 200 people will go home today with at least one snapshot of some lady they don’t know who got in the way.

6) Among the tourists, a middle-aged man with unravelling braids is passed out on a bench. He’s wearing a big jacket even on this warm day. A tag around his wrist reads Expedia.com. As I sit, a blonde heavy-metal looking guy with a Scandinavian accent pleads with me to tell him where the Amtrak station is, but I don’t know. I wonder why he’s so desperate.

7) A completely silver man.

8) As I’m looking out at Alcatraz, I hear a squawk to my left, as two pairs of the famous parrots fly by. As I grab my binoculars for a better look, some kind of crane goes flying into a tree. There are two of them, big old things nesting in the trees. (Black-crowned Night Herons, I found out later.)

9) An improbably slender woman with a classical Japanese face walks by, elegantly dressed and carrying a parasol to preserve her pale complexion. Maybe they have geisha houses here?

10) By Ft. Mason. Gaggles of tourists: tourists on bikes, tourists on Segways, tourists on foot. Pelicans fly by slowly, terns fly fast and dive. I hear the parrots from a fat old palm tree across the lawn, but I don’t go looking for them. Instead I head down to the Marina Safeway to buy something for lunch.

11) I sit down to eat by the pond outside the Palace of Fine arts. It is a reddish classical building with a big golden dome at the center, and columned walkways fanning out to the sides. Holding up the roof are statues, the most prominent being four ancient-Greek dressed ladies with their backs turned, looking into a square vat. I count about ten copies of this motif. Beneath the central dome is a bas relief of a bunch of guys wrestling centaurs, while a half-naked lady holds up her hair in the middle of it. Under the dome swans are asleep and more tourists are taking my picture. Cheese!

12) A mom and kids stop to throw some crumbs to a lone duck. The duck is bright enough to get the hell out of the way as the food is swarmed by seagulls. On the bench by me some high school kids tease the gulls, pretending to throw food more often than doing it. When they do, it’s pieces of fish sandwich, though, which the gulls probably like well enough to endure a little aggravation.

13) Crissy Field. This shoreline has one of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge, but I can only see a little of it sticking out of the bottom of the fog. After I walk along some more, I climb up a little and tie my shoe. When I look up a huge word “HYUNDAI” is floating in front of me. Of course it’s really a ship, but nothing is visible through the fog but this one word. Three foghorns now. Going on up the steps, there’s a banana slug on the path, so I pick it up and set it out of the way. They’re not as slimey as they look; actually they’re kind of sticky. A pair of redtail hawks are playing above, swiping at each other midair with their feet.

14) Presidio. They’ve made a whole seashore natural area of what used to be army land, including several beaches. New paths run through deserted cliffs, with birds darting out of scrubby bushes and ravens croaking overhead. I take the path and climb down a big talc-like rock to a beach that used to be inaccessible. A man is there with two young boys, who are dashing up rocks and into the surf, safety be damned, having a blast.

15) Moving south along the road, I see a sign pointing down a large sanddune that says “Sand Ladder”. It turns out to be a wide ladder set in the dune, leading to a beach which is obviously “clothing optional.” A park employee in a dunebuggy is yelling at a man who had been walking along the dunes (fully clothed), perhaps ogling. The man doesn’t appear to have enough English to understand what he’s in trouble for.

16) Up from the beach through Sea Cliff, beautiful mansions, roses always blooming, birds always singing. Even the weeds look upscale.

17) Clement Street. Full of dim sum palaces, laundries, import stores, huge produce stores with stalls spilling out over the sidewalk. “Heroes Club: the Art of Toys” caught my eye, but it was closed. A nearby store had electric guitars strung up like roasters. Then there is “Cheaper than Cheaper”, and the “99 Cent Depot”. A furniture store with a yellow dog sleeping on a bed in the window. There’s a tutoring school, lots of kids being brought in by their parents, even though it’s only August. The only store I stop in is a little grocery store, to buy a bottle of water. A Chinese TV show blares. Half the products have Chinese labels. Huge family packs of toilet paper, too big for the shelves, fall in the aisle. The prices are very reasonable.

18) I cut through Golden Gate Park to the top of Haight Street. There’s one of the new oval-shaped public bathrooms there, where you push a button to get into the big metal potty compartment. A homeless man, his shopping cart parked nearby, looks in the door, then comes back out and pees on the sidewalk behind the thing. I go have a look inside but the place is a mess. “Is it clean enough in there,” the homeless guy asks me. “No,” I say, “I think I’ll go use the one in McDonalds.” As I cross the street he yells after me, “Sure it’s clean! You bet it is! It’s clean all right!” I don’t argue, just keep walking.

19) My one planned shopping stop is off Haight Street a ways, a place called “The Sword and Rose”. Even though I have the cross-street and address written down I walk past it twice before I finally see where it is, between some Victorians and through a courtyard garden, with statues and a fountain. The inside is dark and nice smelling, small but with a rocker and a few other comfy chairs on a Persian rug. They make their own blends of incense, bath salts, etc. and feature cards, jewelry, and crafts by a few local artists. I buy a few things and talk with the co-owner quite a bit. Turns out he’s from Fond du Lac.

20) After a snack in a coffee shop, I head down Haight Street for the underground station. Why are there still hippies here? Some of them are pushing 50, others look maybe 20.

21) I go into the underground at Castro Street, passing by lots of men coming home from work, men stopping for stuff at corner stores, men holding hands.

22) There are no instructions at the underground station, but I figure out how to pay and get on. On the way from this city train to the BART station a cop stops me. “Where’s your transfer?” Huh? Nobody told me. So I have to show him my Wisconsin i.d. to prove I’m a rube so he doesn’t give me a citation.