San Francisco

A week ago today I was on West Cost time, returning from a trip to wine country and getting ready to board a sail boat. A week ago today I was in San Francisco. I took my daughter and I don't think the city has quite recovered from our visit. We expected to be let down, but we we're. I can't wait to go back, and who knows, maybe we'll both live there some day. Meg says the city's not big enough for both of us. I think it is.

We did most of the mandatory touristy things, but I didn't fall in love with the city until the morning I woke early, grabbed a cable car and took it up Fisherman's Wharf. I ran east toward the bridge. The weather was cool and overcast. I couldn't get over the fact that what I was doing as an agenda item on my vacation was what others were doing as part of their Saturday routine... walking and running and playing with their dogs, all with the Pacific Ocean as their backdrop. We all ran toward the Golden Gate Bridge as if it were a plastic post card put up to inspire the day's activities.

On this particular morning, the bridge was shy, showing only her ankles. I knew she was there. I could smell her and I pleaded with her to come out and dazzle me. She had something better in mind.

I ran out to the invisible bridge and back to the cable car. Now I road back down to Union Square as if this city somehow belonged to me. I was pretending, like a young girl who dresses up in her mother's high heals and plays the lady of the house. The tourists stood beside me and I imaged they believed me to be a local. I was after all wearing running shoes, dripping with sweat and not sporting a camera around my neck. My bubble burst latter when I found out that the locals don't take the cable cars.

I wanted to claim this city as my own. We boarded a sail boat at 6:30 PM to take in the Sunset cruise (Goldengatetours). One of the tour guides had just returned from an earlier voyage. She admitted she'd never seen an evening quite like this one. We were all in for a show. We sailed toward the lady who had been so shy earlier that same day. Now she was the queen of the City by the Bay. As we approached her, I started to see another character in this fantastical cast, the fog. He started sneaking over the ridge, crawling on his belly in hopes that no one would notice him. We did and were delighted just the same. As we came about and set our sites on the city, we could see the reflection of the setting sun and the early evening sky lighting up the cityscape.

Sunday Meg and I jumped on one of the city buses running up Market street and headed for North Beach. Today's plan was for me to "run on the beach", check out Golden Gate Park and finally shop like crazy in the Haight-Ashbury district. Now, we began to feel more like locals, we were on the bus after all. I changed at the visitors center and hopped on the wide walkway closest to the ocean. Again, I marveled at how this spectacle was a place people actually called home. This was no California scene I had ever seen. There were no umbrellas or coolers and sticky mobs of humanity. This was real life and the Pacific Ocean just happened to be a part of it.

Once I was twenty minutes into my run I headed back the way I came. I could see that the sand was firm near the water and that people were scarce, or just minding their own business, so I ventured onto the sand for the return trip. I tried to pretend that running on the surf, trying to keep my sneakers dry and watching dogs chase after sticks longer than their own bodies and glimpsing those crazy surfer dudes out in the rip tide didn't impress me in the least. This was just another day. Yeah, whatever!

We did eventually make it up to the where all the hippies used to live. Meg was in heaven. It was everything she hoped it would be. Here the homeless were younger, cooler dudes... with dogs. For some reason I was a sucker for the homeless with the dogs. What did I know? Maybe they were going to fatten them up and eat them if things really got rough? Nah.

I agreed to meet Meg two hours later. I found myself a little hole in the wall where the Sangria kicked ass. The rest of the evening got even better as Meg and I made plans with the various local characters we had had the pleasure of meeting along the way. My new friend treated me to a local taco joint. More carnitas!! Man, if I died on an overdose of burritos that might not be a bad way to go. Next stop was the Red Room where the only thing on the menu are martinis. I had a Manhattan and my friend had dirty gin. All together, we hit four local hot spots you'd probably walk right by if you didn't live there. That's my kind of evening.

Meg will have to get her own blog.

We left San Francisco the next day. Travel is great until you wind up sitting in the Atlanta airport for four hours after getting next to no sleep the night before. Philadelphia welcomed us at 2:00 AM with its usual nasty, hot, sticky weather. I could not imagine why anyone would want to call this place home. I call it home now, but only because I have to. Sorry locals, but it's hard to see what's good about this area.

I could go off on a rant about the Philadelphia area, what's bad, what's good, but this is supposed to be about San Francisco, and I don't want to ruine that! San Francisco rolled out the red carpet for us. We love you City by the Bay. We'll be back one day very soon.