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miss_ytHere, as promised, is the next part of the story about my California trip.
In spite of the fact that the West Coast time difference puts it three hours behind the East Coast, I had no trouble waking up early on our first morning in San Francisco. I got dressed and left the hotel for a walk - I wanted to get a look at Union Square, about a block away down Powell Street. Powell Street, running right into the heart of downtown San Francisco and boasting two trolley tracks (and a trolley turnaround, with a rotating table to turn the cars) is one of the city's major streets. At that hour there were many native San Franciscans going about, walking to work or riding the trolley cars or getting breakfast in one of the nearby cafes.
Although I tend to think of Philadelphia as having a very diverse population, San Francisco really puts it to shame. Spend an appreciable amount of time just walking around downtown and you will see every color people come in represented more or less equally in the crowd, and hear just about every accent there is. And that's just the people who live there. The tourists come from all over. On my walk I stopped for a latte at one of the aforementioned cafes and there was a German (I think) family sitting at one of the tables, eating their breakfast: later on the trip, I came across tourists from all over Europe, groups from Asia (particularly Japan) and even Israeli families in Golden Gate park and the redwood forests. It's as cosmopolitan as New York City, perhaps even more so.
I wandered around Union Square, where people were setting up chairs, tables and easels for an art fair, and then turned in the other direction and went up the street. On many streets in San Francisco, particularly those on an east-west axis, one goes "up" in the literal sense. I had heard of how hilly the city was, and seen pictures, but it didn't really prepare me for the place. Powell runs up and down a steep hill with terraces or plateaus of sorts at the major cross streets. I managed to reach the nearest terrace to the hill's peak but didn't go quite all the way to the top. Though I am a hardy and accomplished urban walker, this was too much for me. Did I mention that San Franciscans seem to be on the whole thinner and more fit than people on the East Coast? It's the hills.[1]
I went back to the hotel and found my family getting ready to go. I'd seen a diner on my walk and, since no one else seemed to be taking charge with regards to breakfast, I led them there (in fact, I chose where to eat breakfast the next morning too). The diner turned out to be a good choice: they had excellent omeletes and pancakes.[2]
Now, I must apologize, but I don't remember the exact order of the things we did during our time in San Francisco, and I may not remember all of what we did. We were running around all over the place throughout the trip and some of it just kind of blends together. But I'll do my best.
I was really excited by the prospect of visiting Chinatown and perhaps some site related to Emperor Norton.[3] We got to see Chinatown, in fact on the first day that we were there, but the rest of my family wasn't interested in Emperor Norton (and in fact they got annoyed with me for my insistence that we try to include some Norton-related activity in our trip), so I didn't get to do that. Happily, "Emperor Norton" narrated part of a boat tour of the San Francisco Bay that we took later.
Anyway, I was quite impressed by Chinatown. The one in San Francisco is, I think, the biggest in the U.S., certainly larger than the one in Philadelphia. We picked up some stuff there: cheap fleeces for my brothers (who had overestimated the average temperature of San Francisco and not brought theirs), some gifts for friends we were seeing later, and a set of red chopsticks in an embroidered sleeve (for me). I was also looking around for a baseball jacket with dragons embroidered on it, which I had seen a couple of people wearing, but didn't find one. I was upset that we didn't get to have lunch in Chinatown, but we had other places to go.
We had lunch in a touristy area of the docks. Benjamin wanted to eat at the local Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant (he always wants to do stuff like that - go to the chain tourist places rather than a unique local place). We ignored him and went to eat at a restaurant which claimed to be the orignator of soup in a "bread bowl." It wasn't the only place that made that claim, but its clam chowder in a hollowed-out sourdough loaf was pretty good.
We had gotten tickets for a boat tour of the bay. Originally we were going to get tickets for a tour of Alcatraz, but we learned too late that one needs to reserve for Alcatraz tours early, because it's the most popular tourist destination in San Francisco and one of the most popular in the country. Maybe I'll see it on a future trip. We settled for learning a little about it, the Golden Gate Bridge, Angel Island and the city itself from the educational recording that played on the boat journey. Most of it was narrated by "Captain Nemo" of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea fame, and some by historical figures (or actors playing them, anyway), including Emperor Norton. It was cheesy, but I actually learned some interesting things.
For instance, the Golden Gate Bridge was the first major construction project in the country in which hard hats were mandatory for the workers. The workers also had to wear safety lines and there was a large net under the bridge to catch them if they fell. There were still injuries and fatalities during the four-year construction of the bridge, but far less than there would have been otherwise. I also learned that Emperor Norton declared use of the reviled word "Frisco" a high misdemeanor and said offenders would be punished with a twenty-five dollar fine. That was something I didn't know about him.
We then took the MUNI subway out to The Castro to visit one of dad's friends and former co-workers, John Markoff. He used to work in the same office with Dad at the New York Times, but moved to California a few years ago and now works for the Times there, mostly on tech articles. When we got out of the subway, there were a lot of rainbow flags in evidence. Mom was trying to explain to Benjamin that this was the "gay area" of San Francisco: I pointed out the flags and made a reference to the "gayborhood" in Philadelphia. This prompted Benjamin, who has a theatrical nature and a typical teenage boy's sense of humor, to start singing "Who are the people in your gayborhood?"[4] This conjured up a mental image of chippendales dancing on a Broadway stage and singing it in baritone. The "gayborhood" song also became one of the running jokes of the California trip.[5]
Dad had told us that John Markoff's house was only a few blocks from the train station. This was misleading, because San Francisco has big city blocks, and in this particular area, walking 1 block horizontally meant going that much or more vertically. We were totally winded by the time we arrived. It was worth it, though: John's house has a great view and he and his wife had put together an excellent dinner (with which we had good wine, some of which was provided by my parents). I also talked to John about the new Macs with Boot Camp and whether it would be good for me to get one to replace my aging Dell laptop: he agreed that it was a good idea (since he's a Mac person himself), but warned me that I might have to shell out an extra $100 dollars for a copy of Windows if I wanted to run PC programs on it. He also told me that I don't necessarily have to use Boot Camp: there are other utilities which will let you run PC programs in the Mac OS so long as you have Windows installed. Hm.
Fortunately we did not have to walk back down the hills at night. John drove us to the MUNI station in his car. Unfortunately, the MUNI did not run that late and we had to wait for a bus. Pro: the busses in San Francisco are electrically powered, clean, and run smoothly. Con: the busses seem to be packed like sardine tins at any given hour of the day.
Okay, since this entry has already reached epic proportions, I think I'll save the next day for another installment.
[1] I may be exaggerating, but only a little. Later that day I learned the trick of walking up the hills backwards, which makes navigation more difficult but puts less strain on the legs.
[2] Although we never did find good bagels on the West Coast, or so my brother Daniel - for whom bagels are a breakfast staple - claims. Since he's been attending Columbia University, he's become such a fucking Manhattan elitist. He also made a point of saying "how quaint" about a number of things on the trip, although to be fair, I made more of the "quaint" comments when we were in L.A.
[3] Emperor Joshua Norton I is one of my favorite historical figures, although he is unfortunately not that well known outside of San Francisco. See the Wikipedia article about him to learn more.
[4] In case you didn't pick up on it, he was singing to the tune of Mr. Rogers' "Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?"
[5] Along with Daniel's "how quaint" comments, a reference to a certain episode of South Park that we saw on our first night in the hotel, and a made-up rap song about cows.
Third installment: Ghiardelli Square and the Japanese Garden
In spite of the fact that the West Coast time difference puts it three hours behind the East Coast, I had no trouble waking up early on our first morning in San Francisco. I got dressed and left the hotel for a walk - I wanted to get a look at Union Square, about a block away down Powell Street. Powell Street, running right into the heart of downtown San Francisco and boasting two trolley tracks (and a trolley turnaround, with a rotating table to turn the cars) is one of the city's major streets. At that hour there were many native San Franciscans going about, walking to work or riding the trolley cars or getting breakfast in one of the nearby cafes.
Although I tend to think of Philadelphia as having a very diverse population, San Francisco really puts it to shame. Spend an appreciable amount of time just walking around downtown and you will see every color people come in represented more or less equally in the crowd, and hear just about every accent there is. And that's just the people who live there. The tourists come from all over. On my walk I stopped for a latte at one of the aforementioned cafes and there was a German (I think) family sitting at one of the tables, eating their breakfast: later on the trip, I came across tourists from all over Europe, groups from Asia (particularly Japan) and even Israeli families in Golden Gate park and the redwood forests. It's as cosmopolitan as New York City, perhaps even more so.
I wandered around Union Square, where people were setting up chairs, tables and easels for an art fair, and then turned in the other direction and went up the street. On many streets in San Francisco, particularly those on an east-west axis, one goes "up" in the literal sense. I had heard of how hilly the city was, and seen pictures, but it didn't really prepare me for the place. Powell runs up and down a steep hill with terraces or plateaus of sorts at the major cross streets. I managed to reach the nearest terrace to the hill's peak but didn't go quite all the way to the top. Though I am a hardy and accomplished urban walker, this was too much for me. Did I mention that San Franciscans seem to be on the whole thinner and more fit than people on the East Coast? It's the hills.[1]
I went back to the hotel and found my family getting ready to go. I'd seen a diner on my walk and, since no one else seemed to be taking charge with regards to breakfast, I led them there (in fact, I chose where to eat breakfast the next morning too). The diner turned out to be a good choice: they had excellent omeletes and pancakes.[2]
Now, I must apologize, but I don't remember the exact order of the things we did during our time in San Francisco, and I may not remember all of what we did. We were running around all over the place throughout the trip and some of it just kind of blends together. But I'll do my best.
I was really excited by the prospect of visiting Chinatown and perhaps some site related to Emperor Norton.[3] We got to see Chinatown, in fact on the first day that we were there, but the rest of my family wasn't interested in Emperor Norton (and in fact they got annoyed with me for my insistence that we try to include some Norton-related activity in our trip), so I didn't get to do that. Happily, "Emperor Norton" narrated part of a boat tour of the San Francisco Bay that we took later.
Anyway, I was quite impressed by Chinatown. The one in San Francisco is, I think, the biggest in the U.S., certainly larger than the one in Philadelphia. We picked up some stuff there: cheap fleeces for my brothers (who had overestimated the average temperature of San Francisco and not brought theirs), some gifts for friends we were seeing later, and a set of red chopsticks in an embroidered sleeve (for me). I was also looking around for a baseball jacket with dragons embroidered on it, which I had seen a couple of people wearing, but didn't find one. I was upset that we didn't get to have lunch in Chinatown, but we had other places to go.
We had lunch in a touristy area of the docks. Benjamin wanted to eat at the local Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant (he always wants to do stuff like that - go to the chain tourist places rather than a unique local place). We ignored him and went to eat at a restaurant which claimed to be the orignator of soup in a "bread bowl." It wasn't the only place that made that claim, but its clam chowder in a hollowed-out sourdough loaf was pretty good.
We had gotten tickets for a boat tour of the bay. Originally we were going to get tickets for a tour of Alcatraz, but we learned too late that one needs to reserve for Alcatraz tours early, because it's the most popular tourist destination in San Francisco and one of the most popular in the country. Maybe I'll see it on a future trip. We settled for learning a little about it, the Golden Gate Bridge, Angel Island and the city itself from the educational recording that played on the boat journey. Most of it was narrated by "Captain Nemo" of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea fame, and some by historical figures (or actors playing them, anyway), including Emperor Norton. It was cheesy, but I actually learned some interesting things.
For instance, the Golden Gate Bridge was the first major construction project in the country in which hard hats were mandatory for the workers. The workers also had to wear safety lines and there was a large net under the bridge to catch them if they fell. There were still injuries and fatalities during the four-year construction of the bridge, but far less than there would have been otherwise. I also learned that Emperor Norton declared use of the reviled word "Frisco" a high misdemeanor and said offenders would be punished with a twenty-five dollar fine. That was something I didn't know about him.
We then took the MUNI subway out to The Castro to visit one of dad's friends and former co-workers, John Markoff. He used to work in the same office with Dad at the New York Times, but moved to California a few years ago and now works for the Times there, mostly on tech articles. When we got out of the subway, there were a lot of rainbow flags in evidence. Mom was trying to explain to Benjamin that this was the "gay area" of San Francisco: I pointed out the flags and made a reference to the "gayborhood" in Philadelphia. This prompted Benjamin, who has a theatrical nature and a typical teenage boy's sense of humor, to start singing "Who are the people in your gayborhood?"[4] This conjured up a mental image of chippendales dancing on a Broadway stage and singing it in baritone. The "gayborhood" song also became one of the running jokes of the California trip.[5]
Dad had told us that John Markoff's house was only a few blocks from the train station. This was misleading, because San Francisco has big city blocks, and in this particular area, walking 1 block horizontally meant going that much or more vertically. We were totally winded by the time we arrived. It was worth it, though: John's house has a great view and he and his wife had put together an excellent dinner (with which we had good wine, some of which was provided by my parents). I also talked to John about the new Macs with Boot Camp and whether it would be good for me to get one to replace my aging Dell laptop: he agreed that it was a good idea (since he's a Mac person himself), but warned me that I might have to shell out an extra $100 dollars for a copy of Windows if I wanted to run PC programs on it. He also told me that I don't necessarily have to use Boot Camp: there are other utilities which will let you run PC programs in the Mac OS so long as you have Windows installed. Hm.
Fortunately we did not have to walk back down the hills at night. John drove us to the MUNI station in his car. Unfortunately, the MUNI did not run that late and we had to wait for a bus. Pro: the busses in San Francisco are electrically powered, clean, and run smoothly. Con: the busses seem to be packed like sardine tins at any given hour of the day.
Okay, since this entry has already reached epic proportions, I think I'll save the next day for another installment.
[1] I may be exaggerating, but only a little. Later that day I learned the trick of walking up the hills backwards, which makes navigation more difficult but puts less strain on the legs.
[2] Although we never did find good bagels on the West Coast, or so my brother Daniel - for whom bagels are a breakfast staple - claims. Since he's been attending Columbia University, he's become such a fucking Manhattan elitist. He also made a point of saying "how quaint" about a number of things on the trip, although to be fair, I made more of the "quaint" comments when we were in L.A.
[3] Emperor Joshua Norton I is one of my favorite historical figures, although he is unfortunately not that well known outside of San Francisco. See the Wikipedia article about him to learn more.
[4] In case you didn't pick up on it, he was singing to the tune of Mr. Rogers' "Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?"
[5] Along with Daniel's "how quaint" comments, a reference to a certain episode of South Park that we saw on our first night in the hotel, and a made-up rap song about cows.
Third installment: Ghiardelli Square and the Japanese Garden
