2010 Trip: San Francisco

29th June - 9th July 2010

I have decided to present all of my time in San Francisco in one post, for two reasons. Firstly, I’m just a little lazy and the thought of trying to remember everything I did for each of ten days scares me. Secondly, for some of those days, as I was nearing the end of the trip, I really didn’t do all that much! I will divide it up into sections, the largest being about my adventures within the city itself.

Hostel

I stayed in a rather awesome hostel in down-town San Francisco. It was well priced for the location and about 7 blocks from Market Street. Apparently it has one enough awards to be classed the best hostel in San Francisco. (USA Hostels, 711 Post Street).

The hostel provides an excellent kitchen for guests to use and also provides breakfast every morning - in the form of cook-your-own American style pancakes. Rather delicious, but possibly not what you want every morning for ten days. The beds were squeaky to even lie down on, but on the whole rather good.

Most nights the hostel staff organised some sort of event, a karaoke night, movie nights in there small cinema, in house parties, trips to local bars (one of which had a Tuesday night special of $2 a drink). It had a really cool atmosphere.

One interesting story of note was being rudely awakened at 2:30am by shouting outside of my room. There was much swearing, talking of calling the police, passports, paedophilia, “You’ve fucked me, I’ll be ruined for ever”, banging, screaming, and a sound rather similar to someone bang their head against a wall. I’m still not exactly sure what happened, but I heard from someone the next day who had been down in the foyer at the same time, that five cop cars had shown up and an individual and his bag had been dragged out into a cop car. Hmmm.

San Francisco

Most of the time I spent out and about in San Francisco I spent walking. I’m not sure if I would really describe it as a walker’s city, but it sure is interesting.

For those who don’t know San Francisco, it is a city at the end of a peninsula pointing north. Because of its location, it has a specific micro climate that keeps the city cool in summer and not too chilly in winter. To the east of the city is a massive inlet known commonly as the bay. All of the cities and suburbs that surround it make up the Bay Area - original, huh?

The centre of the city is fairly spread out, though arguably the diagonally running Market Street forms the centre of town. I spent a good amount of time walking around the area. The quiet and desolate financial district with massive skyscrapers that is just like all the others world wide, the city hall surrounded by the roughest neighbourhood in town. San Francisco has a serious problem with homeless people - more than 80,000 of them in the city alone.

Neighbourhoods in New Zealand tend to merge into each other and the only really abrupt changes one notices are between residential, commercial and industrial areas. Because of basically everyone lives in apartments and in a city this large the industrial areas are rather rarer inside the city limits, these distinctions don’t really exist. However, the difference between neighbourhoods is extensive, possibly more than anywhere I have been in the West before (In the East there are huge contrasts, but it is usually the poor on the street and the rich above). One can walk a block here and transition from a high class mall into an area rife with homeless wandering the streets. Maybe it isn’t more prevalent - but instead, one’s expectations are higher.

Interestingly, in the middle of the homeless district is the Orpheum Theatre, which was probably in a wealthy part of town at one point. Now it stands alone showing top class Broadway shows. The current season of Wicked has been running for about a year and is pretty stunning. The singing of the leads was amazing (though, I think that they may have been having sound issues as some of the diaglogue and chorus numbers were a bit hard to hear clearly). The plot and music was spectacular. This is a full-on musical, with a decent orchestra and an amazingly well choreographed stage. The props and costumes were pseudo-steampunk! Drools! A huge smoke breathing dragon over looked the stage, with orchestrated scene changes on a fully lit stage that were excellently done. The lighting itself was amazing and combined with lots of cool flying effects was amazing! But yeah, if you don’t know it the storyline itself is really cool, lots of interesting interlocking themes all relating back to the Wizard of Oz itself.

In addition to spending time in the centre of the city, I spent several days walking to the far reaches of the city. It forms a rough square about seven miles to a side.

One day I headed north to the water front, through San Francisco’s famous Chinatown, I then spent several hours walking past various piers, forts, beaches, wetlands. This included walking past one of the famous homes of aviation - Crissy Field. I was quite amazed with the variation of native flora and fauna - strawberries growing in the sand, a mole peeping its head out, nasturtiums covering the banks, and even a humming bird flitting around.

By the time I got to the Golden Gate Bridge, that afternoon, the fog and low cloud had cleared and the bridge shone in the afternoon sun. It was a pleasant, if a tad long stroll across it. It is not surprisingly the most photographed bridge in the world, it presents a stunning form visible from miles around.

Technically there is a foot path on either side of the bridge, one for walkers and the other for bikes (though for some strange reason, in the weekend the allocated sides reverse). In practice, tourists don’t read the signs so everything gets jammed up together. I walked across, sat around in the sun, and then back, catching a bus back into town.

One final interesting feature is that on each side of the bridge are five evenly spaced telephones for an on-call counselling service to try to dissuade the large numbers of people who attempt to jump of the bridge and kill themselves every year.

Another day I headed around the city in the opposite direction, my first port of call was the Golden Gate Park (which is not really close to the bridge at all). I spent a pleasant couple of hours strolling through it, not visiting the museums, attending the small but pretty Japanese gardens, being in the botanic garden and realising I am in a section of New Zealand natives, and watching lots of cute squirrels. I occupied my mind designing a variation of Fluxx, which I believe has the potential to be quite amusing.

I then headed up the coast, along sandy beaches and rocky outcrops, past old bathing pools left to ruin and new coastal suburbs. The track here was actually quite a fun walk and there were very pretty scenes looking out to the Pacific Ocean. I had always assumed that the environment portrayed in the GTA series was somewhat fictional or at best a cliché; however, occasionally you see a scene that could be perfectly mirrored in the game and you are forced to re-evaluate - this happened many times today.

By the time I got to the Golden Gate Bridge, this time from the other side, I wasn’t as tired as expected and decided to walk back to the hostel. I ploughed onwards, through the Presidio district (old Army base), down Lombard street to the world’s most curvy street, and back across the hills to town. San Francisco can’t be said to be flat!

Food Missions

I get whole section to talk about food! Woot!

Well, food in San Francisco is probably what one would call varied. They have lots of good stuff going. Basically, today’s America has a love affair with five things when it comes to food. They might surprise you, but they might not. Salads, fast food, organics, bagels, and coffee.

Bagels are pretty much as common as sliced bread here, they are a standard way to eat stuff. Rather than toast for breakfast, bagels are pretty common. Fast food chains serve bagels just so they don’t miss out on the trade. The most ubiquitous bagel of them all is a New York style bagel, that is with cream cheese - or as they would say in New York - with a schmear. Bagels come in the standard types - plain, poppy, seasame, cherry, etc etc. One slightly strange term is the ‘Everything bagel’, which just has mixed seeds, though sometimes over zealous bakers decide that adding garlic or onion is a good idea… If you like you’re bagel sweet or don’t really feel like that onion taste, it’s just not good.

Fast food, well it is as common as you might imagine, though it is probably not significantly more prevalent than NZ. However, there is definitely a superior selection of different chain stores. At least in the type of society I associate with in New Zealand, going to a fast food restaurant just isn’t really the done thing if one wants dinner. You can actually feel the vibe in the US. Dinner - right fast food is fine.

Though, one has to say something for fast food in the US - they do burgers and they are good. Basically everywhere also does vegetarian burgers!

Coffee is a strong part of the city psyche in the USA. One drinks coffee. Don’t argue, just do it. There is a Starbucks on a surprising number of corners, and where there isn’t a Starbucks, there is another coffee chain advertising that it is superior simply because it is not Starbucks. Coffee here tends to be slightly average compared to the coffee one finds in NZ in terms of quality - but you can certainly find boutique places if you care to look.

Salads are a catch phrase for something that is good for you in the US. One can find them everywhere - even in malls. I wish that was the case in NZ. I visited a Westfield mall in the centre of San Fran and one of the stands in the downstairs food court was a steak bar, but 90% of what they sold was actually salads. Meat is optional, top your salad with onion strings, salads served in fried tortilla bowls (awesome!). The portions are huge, they are cheap, and while dressed it is not totally excessive. In New York, salad bars are everywhere, just select what you want and they mix it from scratch.

Almost finally - organics. If you want to sell anything in the US, just label it organic and it will do fine! The choice of organic products is huge and it has reached the main stream. The Whole Foods supermarket I talked about in one of my New York posts is not isolated - this is a main stream chain across the US with hundreds of stores. I indulged at one of their buffets in San Francisco and took a few bits and pieces back to the hostel to cook with. The quality and selection is excellent, and the price is actually pretty reasonable.

While they don’t fit into my list above there are a few other things to mention. Firstly, supermarkets. One can’t find real supermarkets inside a US city - apart from Whole Foods and they are not hugely common. The closest one comes is Walgreens. Except, these are technically pharmacies (apparently because pharmacies can sell food but supermarkets cant sell drugs), about a quarter of the shop is actually food.

IF you manage to find something actually fresh in a Walgreens you are doing well. I do not exagerate - there is NO fresh produce section - NO fruit, NO vegetables. Given this one must drive outside the city or shop at small dairies that are fairly common. They tend to sell most things, though only a few are any good (the one at the top of Nob Hill is the best I found in San Fran). Alcohol is cheap - a necessary bonus!

While the ability to cook one’s own food is a little lacking if one doesn’t know where to look, the choice of places to eat is pretty good. Let me just mention a few - there are excellent Thai restaurants all over San Francisco that can produce a Pad Thai superior to anything in New Zealand. There are a few places around that do self-serve frozen yoghurt. Often they don’t have a huge number of flavours, but what makes it cool is they have a buffet of things like fruit, berries, chocolate bits, nuts, and other exciting confectionery to sprinkle; they are pay-by-weight.

Finally, I should mention a terrific Indian buffet restaurant originally named ‘Naan and Curry’. For about US$14 including tax, one can stuff oneself on delicious Indian curries. The price might not seem extremely cheap, but choice here is key - one doesn’t often get to try 10+ curries and the trimmings in one meal. Yum.

4th July Celebrations

On the Saturday, 3rd of July, I headed west to the Fillmore St Jazz Festival which ran throughout the weekend. Basically they fill up the entire street with food stalls, market stands, and stages of live Jazz music. It was bustling and packed. For the most part, it was near impossible to find a place to sit.

There were four main stages and a number of smaller street side performance areas. Bands would start playing fairly frequently. I saw at least six different acts, mainly local, but all of pretty high calibre. The was a couple of Jazz Quartets, an easy listening Jazz band, a big band, and even a band called Native Elements which played something closer to R&B and Island music, than Jazz, but they were probably the highlight.

I have to say, Jazz has never inspired me that much, and while the culture is pretty cool, I just don’t get that much out of the music. This is probably why I have never been that attracted to Swing, and the same probably also applies to a lesser extent to Salsa. But, this was pretty cool.

Native Elements gathered a rather large crowd and produced great music and a terrific atmosphere. Everyone was up dancing, even the old guys at the back.

The type of food on offer here was quite interesting, it was a fairly eclectic mix - battered zucchini, garlic fries, beer on tap, bubble tea, various things bbq’d, tacos, gyros and fish ‘n chips. It was an excellent place for people watching, with an interesting mix of different races relaxing rather than busy going about there work, as such I took some rather cool photos. All in all it was a very amusing day.

The next day, the 4th of July itself, I had a fairly laid back day. In the evening, I walked over the hills to join the rest of San Francisco around and along the coast from Pier 39. As a tall white guy, I was dragged in to help some black street performers, I chilled out to a rather excellent cover band playing classic American rock.

As the evening progressed, everyone made their way to the water front. I actually got a position fairly near the end of the pier by arriving an hour before. By 9:30 the place was packed, the barges were out in the bay, small boats had gathered in the bay, the light house on Alcatraz was sending a beam of light glancing around the dark bay.

After the Saulsalito fireworks had finished on the other side of the bay, we slowly got underway. Two barges presented identical displays to the coastline, and we were almost directly between them. The displays were fairly impressive, though marred a little through low cloud. One could hardly see the large fireworks at all - all they achieved was to illuminate the clouds. But, very pretty.

Twenty minutes later it was all over, I found myself along with half a million others making my way out of the area. The streets were packed and this continued all the way along the north coast of the peninsula. I really do feel sorry for those who were trying to drive anywhere. By 10:30, I was back at the hostel.

North - Marin County

Today (6th July) I ventured north of the city. My plan was to visit Muir Woods and use public transport to get there and back as tours to the area are rather pricey (one is looking at around about US$80). So after grabbing a few pancakes at the hostel, I headed down to the Civic Centre (about seven blocks away) and grabbed the bus to Marin City.

I chatted to a local Bay Area girl who was heading north to see some friends. She was in the middle of a degree in Native American Studies and Local Governance and Policy. She told me about the wide variations (in wealth, culture heritage, and customs) of suburbs in the Bay Area and the vast differentiation between them. As I had myself noticed, one can walk just a block here and be in a completely different neighbourhood. This is even more extreme than the New York boroughs where neighbourhoods just merge into each other.

We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and headed north on the 101 Freeway. Marin City, when we reached it, is basically one of those wide open malls, surrounded by housing estates. For those in Christchurch, think Tower Junction. From here I planned to catch the 66 bus direct to Muir Woods. Well, that was the plan. As I looked around the sparse neighbourhood, I found the bus stop for the 66 bus, along with a big sign - only running on weekends and holidays. Unlike the last 3 days, this no longer applied.

I thought that I couldn’t have read the timetable totally wrong, so I thought I would wander over to the Park ‘n’ Ride, just down the road and see if the bus still went from there and just avoided Marin City. I could either go along the Freeway, which didn’t seem to have any footpaths, or head up the hill. While the hill presented nice views, an insight into a fairly wealthy California suburb, and even deer grazing on the slope below, the road didn’t continue down into the next valley.

I ended up bush wacking down an over grown trail, startling a deer, and wandering along a road to the Park ‘n’ Ride. This particular piece of road was obviously frequented by trucks for two reasons - a) they were passing all the time, and b) the wild fennel on the edge of the narrow road was covered in diesel residue which disgustingly got all over my clothes.

I made it to the Park ‘n’ Ride, only to discover that bus 66 really wasn’t running and the West Marin Stagecoach, which stopped only a few miles off target, had been by 10 minutes before and wasn’t due for another 3 hours. Yay! So, not knowing exactly where bus stops were, the speed on the road, the distance to Muir woods, I constructed a worst case senario and a cut off time to start returning and started walking. It seemed like a good idea at the time!

So I wandered along Route 1, at this point a narrow winding road that continued up through suburbia and up into the hills. Lots of traffic and no room to walk made the journey a little hairy. This was compounded with heavy San Francisco fog that descended as I got higher. Drivers looked at me with a look of disbelief as they passed.

Eventually, there was a sign - only 3 miles to go! I left the ecaluptyus forest and came out onto the tussock highlands (yeah, it was quite a climb). And then after following the ridgeline, taking cool photos, the road plunged through more hairpins down into the valley.

A few hours after starting, I found myself at Muir Woods. This is a protected area of coastal redwood forest. Very beautiful, full of tourists, big wide flat boardwalks. I paid US$5 to get in, though I later discovered I could have just walked in if I had had a map and known where the trails were. I walked up the valley, admiring the views, and then took a steep zigzag track out of the forest.

Acending from redwoods to mountain conifers to tussock, reaching the top and finding the bus station just in time to catch the stage coach back to Marin City. Phew.

From here, I wandered down the shore line, full of marinas and rough boat yards to the township of Sausalito. Which had a slightly Nelson-esque feel about it, but without being nearly so awesome.

Another few kilometres later, I got to the ferry terminal and caught the ferry back to San Francisco. I found a seat at the front of the boat and listened in to a tour guide describing some of the history of the Bay Area, and especially that of Alcatraz as we passed close by. Very interesting. The bay was quite still and grey, which is apparently uncommon.

South - San Jose

On the recommendation of several friends who grew up around San Francisco, I decided to head south to an attraction in San Jose (remember - Spanish pronunciation: ho-zay). My plan was to take the Caltrain, a regular service between San Francisco and San Jose and everywhere in between (on the 7th of July).

Unfortunately, I misjudged how long it would take to walk across town to the Caltrain station. I made it just in time to watch the train start moving and leave the platform behind. In my defence, if my watch had the same time as they did, I would have made it - just. So I had to wait around for an hour. This time I made it to the train with plenty of time.

It was an interesting two story train, featuring that American diner look with far too much ridged chrome. Inside, the top story featured a single row on each side of the carriage, in a mezzanine configuration that looked down on the seats below. It seemed a little odd. An hour and a half later, after whizzing through famous Bay Area suburbs we made it to San Jose. The centre of Silicon Valley. On the way we passed Palo Alto and Mountain View, think Xerox PARC (invention of laptop, modern UI, etc) and the Googleplex (Google Headquarters).

I had hoped to visit some of these places and the nearby Computing Museum. Unfortunately, they are either not open for visitors, or in the case of the latter, closed for refurbishment.

Anyhow, I got to San Jose and noticed the change in climate - San Jose falls outside of San Francisco’s micro-climate. The temperature here is not tempered by the sea breezes and was scorching hot. Eventually, I found the appropriate bus stop and caught the bus through the suburbs (I’m pretty sure that all of San Jose is just suburbs, everywhere!).

My destination was the Winchester Mystery House. I’m not sure if it was worth an entire day trip, but the journey was interesting and the story behind the house is pretty cool - even if a lot of it is in the telling. I will do my best to relate the story of this strange place.

Mrs. Winchester, a recent widow, moved to San Jose in the late 19th C. For some reason she spent the next 38 years renovating and expanding the 8 room farmhouse she moved into. By renovating, I mean every day - until the day she died. By the time she passed away the 8 rooms had become 160. In the process over 600 rooms had been created and most subsequently changed.

The entire house was built without blueprints (except one unsigned consent for one of the three elevators) and designed by Mrs. Winchester, who had no experience in this area. It features interesting features like doors that open to nothing on the second floor, sideways banisters, doors that can’t open and never did, windows in the floor, cupboards that couldn’t hold a cup, and a low riser staircase that has seven corners and 44 stairs to go up a single floor.

It features quirky features as ways to spy on the household servants, an in built gas lighting system, an electronic servant call feature that specified the particular number of room the call came from, pneumatic elevators, some absolutely stunning stained glass windows, a carriage hall where the carriage could be driven into the house for her to disembark, a furnace that was only lit 3 times, a room with 4 fireplaces and 3 furnace vents, and an entire wing that was closed after the 1912 earthquake never to be reopened until after her death.

Apparently the house used to have a seven story tower, but that collapsed in 1912 as well. And why would someone build such a structure. Well several theories exist, but the evidence that exists suggests that Mrs. Winchester believed that she was haunted. Her family (in law) had made there fortune selling weapons (in particular the Winchester Rifle was a famous weapon in the ‘Colonisation of the West’). All of the people the weapons had killed were out to exact their revenge on the family - starting with her husband and son, before she moved to San Jose.

A psychic told her that in order to appease the spirits she had to provide them with somewhere to live and continue building it. So she did.

She may well have been a little batshit crazy, but she seems to have been a fairly astute business woman. She managed the construction on the house, expanded the family business, and had a large set of orchards that provided tinned and dried fruit across the country. Many of the technological innovations in the house, while in some cases impractical, often ingenious, she invented herself. A massive machine for drying fruit fills one of the outhouses. A quite surreal place.

I spent a few hours here before making my way back to San Francisco. I had planned to jump off and wander around Mountain View for a while, unfortunately it was getting rather late so I didn’t get a chance.