A silver haired guy walks up and drops a business card in my lap as four guitar players, a mandolin player and a slappin’ stand up bass kick out a bluegrass version of the ’50s classic, Runaway. It says “Captain Democracy” and he’s running for Mayor of San Francisco. He launches into a mild diatribe.
“We started free thinking here,” he says, pointing to the ground inside Caffe Trieste in North Beach. “Cal-Berkeley was the home of the atomic bomb; we need some creativity back in San Francisco! That’s my platform.”
The crowd nods approvals. He turns and leaves.
Welcome to San Francisco
Welcome to San Francisco, that exotic city of hills where east meets west, high tech lives with crunchy granola and bohemian culture births movements and culture known around the world. The Beats, the Hippies and the Summer of Love flowered here as well as music from the Grateful Dead to The Dead Kennedys. The cities fabled attractions are seen on countless postcards and TV programs; Fisherman’s Warf, Pier 39, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and the famed cable cars. But we’ve done the tourist trail on previous trips. This time we’re exploring neighborhoods.
SF Downtown & Nob Hill
We toast our first night at the bar of a beautiful art nouveau gem called the Petit Café in the Hotel Monaco and staying on the French theme move to the second floor lounge at Le Colonial, a French colonial Vietnamese inspired establishment right out of 1920’s Saigon. We walk up Nob Hill and along Post and Sutter are cafés & bars with people spilling out onto the sidewalk. It’s dark and the comfortable architectural density, street life & cafes are not unlike London or lower Manhattan.
On the corner of Leavenworth and Post we see a three-piece combo in front of a royal red draped stage and displayed in the window is a great wine list. We’re in!
The bass player is laying down a groove. The notes come like heavy drops of rain on a tin roof while the rhythm guitar plays quarter-note chords. The drummer beats an old school drum kit to life prompting the guitar player to take the lead. He screams up and down the frets throwing notes like sparks off a welder’s torch. The room is buzzing. We’re in Cafe Royale and it’s full of locals savoring the bohemian art & jazz scene here. I feel like Sal Paradise in On the Road having just rolled into San Francisco and enjoying the “scene.”
We get a tip for a nightcap and enter a secret world on the corner of Jones and O’Farrell at a place called Bourbon & Branch. It’s a ’20s style speakeasy and a great place to stop for cocktails. The dark wood, red flocked wallpaper and “secret” bookcase entry into the backroom add to the vibe. The select and rare bourbons, rum, tequila and whiskeys don’t hurt either!
The Quiet City
I’m out early the next morning so I can have the city to myself. As I walk Geary Street the sidewalks are being hosed and cleaned. The echoing calls of seagulls bounce off the downtown buildings breaking the quiet. The air is crisp and the sky a brilliant blue.
I walk down through Chinatown where the morning bustle and activity increases. Big brown produce boxes line the sidewalks for blocks. Opened boxes create a wash of color as fruits and vegetables breathe the morning air. Butchers work their knives in front of hanging pigs while ducks, already golden brown, hang by their cooked necks with their sad faces bowed down.
My goal is Telegraph Hill. I climb up Greenwich Street and take the steps to the top. A glint of light flashes across my face drawing my eyes to an elderly Japanese man who’s practicing Tai Chi routines with a 3 foot sword. Is that even legal? The movement is beautiful and exotic, like a lot of San Francisco.
The view at the top offers a panoramic view of the Bay from the Marin Headlands to the East Bay. An exercise group steps through their Tai Chi too. They look like slow motion magicians pulling the fog into the Bay through the distant Golden Gate. I walk down the opposite side towards the Bay on the Filbert Steps and breathe in an aromatic bouquet of roses, lilies, banana trees and white sweet midnight-jasmine. The wooden platform trail descends an alpine woodland trail lined with cottages under the redwoods, oaks, palms, and rhododendrons – and if you’re lucky you’ll spy, and hear, the wild green parrots that roost here.
SF Ferry Building
From the top of the hill I had spotted the renovated Ferry Building, cum a world-class food market. I bee-lined towards it thinking - coffee with a bay view! As I stride through the front plaza under the clock tower its carillon bells exalt my entry, and with a Pete’s coffee in hand I watch a departing ferry stern recede from view. It disappears into the famous San Francisco fog blanketing the Bay, spewing its wake towards me. Outside the wall of windows facing the Bay birds huddle against the cool morning with their heads pulled back inside their feathers and thick blooded natives take seats next to them. I pull my jacket close, cap my coffee and catch a cab back to the hotel.
SF Shopping
We hit a bunch of neighborhood “main streets” around the city. The Union Street shops in Cow Hollow are perched above the Marina District and below Pacific Heights. In Victorian and Edwardian buildings we sample cool art galleries, antique stores and specialty shops. The Marina District’s main drag is Chestnut Street which runs along the northern edge of this affluent pastel colored neighborhood and we mingle with neighbors and families. Our favorite strip however is Fillmore Street and lucky for us Fillmore’s Spring Festival welcomed our visit.
Most of the action is between Jackson & Bush where high end design shops mix with funky kitschy antique and “junk” shops. Every shop offers wine tastings and hors d’oeuvres. Bars and pubs are open to the street and a live band fills the warm air with rock and blues. Unlike a lot of the city the street is lined with shade trees and down the side streets, offset by a cerulean blue sky, are the grandest Victorian’s you’ve ever set your eyes on. This is where the young, beautiful, trendy, fashionable and affluent hang out.
I had to take a quick look at Billy Graham’s famous Fillmore Auditorium too – legendary for playing host to counterculture giants like The Grateful Dead, Jimmie Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin and continuing right through to Black Flag, The Dead Kennedys and Johnny Rotten’s PIL, it’s on the corner of Fillmore and Geary Streets.
Go West Young Man
de Young Museum, in Golden Gate Park
Today we head to the western reaches of the city. We’re jumping on the subway system called BART. We take the N-Judah line to Golden Gate Park and the de Young Museum where we chance upon a retrospective of Vivienne Westwood. Vivienne was married to Malcolm McLaren and was the fashion force behind the Sex Pistols and the punk rock scene. Ah, glory days. We reveled in the exhibition. If you see the clothes you used to wear in a museum does that mean you’re a dinosaur?
We also went up the viewing tower at the deYoung. Definitely do this. It offers a sweeping view of the west side of San Francisco. You can look out across the verdant greens of Golden Gate Park, the hills climbing up Twin Peaks and across the rooftops of the Richmond and Sunset Districts as their elevations drop to the winking Pacific.
For dinner we head to Cole Valley and a restaurant called EOS. The restaurant is at the corner of Cole and Carl. What a great little corner of San Francisco. I feel like we’ve found a secret little neighborhood. It’s a handsome residential neighborhood of three story Victorian homes and beautiful tree lined streets. What a comfortable place. Every bite of food at EOS was a surprise and a total sensation. The food was Asian Fusion. The chef was Asian magician.
Afterwards we walk down Cole three blocks to Haight Street; ground zero for the hippie movement in the late ’60s. We end up at Amoeba Records. This is one of the greatest hippy dippy, punk rock, alt music, all-music stores on the planet. I love all the Fillmore West concert posters for sale. That’s a bonafide San Francisco art style you don’t see anywhere else. As the Ramones squawked Gabba Gabba Hey at us over the store speakers we lingered and browsed. We looked at old Cramps records, Beatles and Bob Marley. Holding hands, we left.
SoMa & South Beach
Our last day here we walk under the elevated Freeway heading to the Bay Bridge into a diverse neighborhood of warehouses, auto repair shops, nightclubs, residential hotels, art spaces, loft apartments, furniture showrooms, condominiums, and technology companies. It’s not picture postcard San Francisco. There are no hills here, the fog doesn’t settle here and it’s usually sunny and warm! I like the freshness of the post modern and contemporary architecture peppering the area and the trendy bars & restaurants.
AT&T Baseball Park in San Francisco
We stop in bacar on Brannan St. Young professionals pack the bar area and a three piece jazz combo plays in rhythm with the oyster shucker. It’s a big and handsomely designed space in an old warehouse with an extensive and very good wine list. We walk through South Park, modeled after a square in London. It’s an oval shaped park lined with warehouses turned offices, Post Modern and Contemporary townhouses, lively Victorians and a few dilapidated buildings not long for this world given the pace of development in the area.
The park is a green oasis and smells of eucalyptus. The clink of glasses, laughter and conversation float out from the South Park Cafe and Cafe Centro. We continue to 2nd street for a beer at the 21st Amendment. mingling with high tech professionals and blue jeaned internet millionaires. Further down 2nd Street we stroll the beautiful South Beach Marina where we take a lap around AT&T Park back to King Street and Berry Street where we see a completely new neighborhood along the China Basin channel. This is not the San Francisco of postcards. It’s all brand new. If I was an architect I’d move here because I get a buzz off the post-modern architecture. We sit a spell at District and retreat for Jalisco Mexican cuisine and tequilas at Tres Agaves.
Walking back to the hotel the kaleidoscope that is San Francisco spins for us. A woman is singing opera on the sidewalk outside the Hotel Utah as a rock band carries its gear inside. An assortment of geeks, Goths and hippies eat a late night meal at Whole Foods and a skateboarder barrels down 4th St. in his business suit. A homeless man asks us for money staring with a tired and stoned out face, tourists wait for the cable car, a drummer bangs on overturned pickle buckets, reggae wafts out from Starbucks, the café crowd sits under the palm trees in Union Square and we watch them watch us make our angled way up the street.
Instead of finding our plane tickets we want to find another place to hang out, to indulge in more California wine and artisanal food, to pull our jackets close as a visible fog rolls up the street, to crest the top of a hill and look down over descending rooftops to billowing sails on the blue Bay, to while away more time in the ever spring golden sunshine daze of the white city.
-Bob Welch
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