San Francisco Vibe Users Manual, vol 1
San Francisco's Mood via stream of consciousness
Catch a ball at Pac Bell Park, watch the World Series bound San Francisco Giants
San Francisco is Home to Literary Figures: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassidy
Hanging out in the second floor window at Vesuvio. Browsing at the City Lights bookstore. Jack Kerouac and On the Road. Avoiding Broadway near Columbus unless strip joints are your thing. Allen Ginsberg's Howl. The Summer of Love. Haight-Ashbury. Berkeley-Beserkely just across the Bay Bridge. The 1989 Earthquake, Oct 19, 5:04pm, "The Day the Shift Hit the Land" The San Francisco Giants, playing in SF since the 1950's. The 49ers, both the gold miners and the football players. Candlestick Park, Pac Bell park, the Civic Center, Golden Gate park, the currently defunct and under construction DeYoung museum, the California Academy of Sciences, the Planetarium, and the new Asian Art museum. And a Starbucks on every corner ... more on that later.San Francisco History
The Mayor of San Francisco died more than 100 years ago .. the many stories about him may have occurred in the shadow of the TransAmerica Pyramid, located roughly at the original shoreline. That's right, everything east of the TransAmerica Pyramid is on landfill ... at the Marine Museum near Aquatic Park (near Fisherman's Wharf) are panoramic prints of daguerrotypes, an old style of photography. These prints show how water lots were marked off with timbers -- these lots became much more valuable and useful when they were converted to land via filling.The whole neighborhood east of Chinatown and Union Sqaure is a special part of San Francisco. This is the San Francisco that flourished after the Gold Rush era had passed. The real cash infusion into San Francisco occured during the Virginia City Comstock Lode period. This is when the grandest hotels and houses on Nob Hill were built, this was the Victorian era in San Francisco. You can tour the Octagon House of the Lillienthal house to see a real live Victorian from the inside.
The modern era is not so bad either. A walk from Fisherman's wharf up Columbus Ave to Union Street, and you find yourself in San Francisco's version of NYC's Little Italy, North Beach. Just take in the atmosphere and you'll understand the San Francisco vibe a little better...
Washington Square on a warm weekend day, park-hangers on hanging on the lawn in between two great institutions -- St Peter and Paul Church on one hand, and Fior D' Italia just across the green, that great institution of Italian food and San Francisco history -- serving minestrone at a minimum for over 100 years. Normally Fior D'Italia serves a lot more, in my opinion it's best to sit in the bar area with a view of the park No matter how much you might dislike Michael Savage, Michael Savage gets this city and Michael Savage loves this restaurant. Skip the trendy places and eat at a real Italian Restaurant, located right on Washington Square on Union Street, valet parking available.
These Italians serve great coffee, but if you are a corporate coffee freak, in San Francisco, there are more Starbuck's per square mile expect maybe for Vancouver, Seattle and NYC. Plus SF has real local coffee greats like Peet's. Now that Seattle's Best Coffee has been bought by Starbucks, Seattle's coffee scene is corporate and monopolistic.
Because of this SBC-Starbucks merger, San Francisco has the edge on the coffee market, beginning at Cafe Triest, another old Beat Generation hangout. There is a lot more to San Francisco than North Beach, but you could spend your whole trip there and not miss too much.
Back to the coffee mergers, hmmm, Microsoft is in Washington too.... maybe there's something about the Washington rain that makes big businessmen scheme how to destroy innovation and take over the world, but I'm sure Bill Gates and the Starbucks founder can't have too much in common except for monopolistic tendencies. It may rain in San Francisco, but there's enough sunny days to clear the fog out of the head.
Which brings me to my next joke, "Q What do you call the people on the streets in SF who wear shorts and have blue legs? A Tourists!" Nearly every morning in San Francisco you might walk out of your hotel room and exclaim, "What a beautiful sunny day! Surely Mark Twain was wrong, or at least global warming has changed things. Let's wear our sunny weather clothes!" Of course, since San Francisco in in California, you didn't pack a jacket anyway.
Then, around 2-3pm, you begin to understand what Mark Twain said about San Francisco, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." You will likely be far from your hotel room when the deep freeze sets in. As you watch the ocean fog move inland and swallow the entire Golden Gate bridge, you begin to realize that your teeth are chattering. Your legs will now turn blue, and you still have your shorts on, hence the joke.
Since this is not a unique experience, you may not be surprised to find that the tourist shops do a thriving business in cheapo-Chinese-import-Lands-End-knockoff fleece zip up jackets with some form of SF branded on the left breast portion of the jacket. The people with blue legs, shorts, and cheapo-knockoff-fleece jackets, those are your fellow tourists.
THE Bay Area's LOCAL RADIO - BEST IN THE WEST
Great local radio stations, the best concentration of college and public radio includes: SF - KQED FM 88.5 (National Puke Radio etc etc) -- San Mateo KCSM 91.1, THE BEST JAZZ IN THE WEST, that last remaining jazz station in the Bay Area since the demise of KJAZZ -- From Los Altos Hills Foothill Junior College it's KFJC at 89.7 FM. Formerly from Cupertino, now from Santa Clara is KKUP FM 91.5, playing a great variety of local DJ selections ranging from real Bluegrass to real Reggae. While KKUP 91.5 is mostly non-political, you can tune up to Beserkley and hear the radical left at FM 94.1 KPFA (Kludge of People For Anarchy, whether they know it or not!). To round things out, for a more serious listen and slightly less BS, tune into KSFO 560 AM (formerly home of Michael Savage) or you can get Michael's Savage Nation at the newly reformed KNEW 910 AM with a good selection of right-leaning radio hosts. Oh, Yeah, that booming beacon of the west for decades is located in SF, listen to Bill Wattenberg weekend nights on KGO AM 810. You can listen to the other hosts, or you can skip the commercials and hear the same thing back across the bay at KFPA (formerly noted Kludge of Puppets For Anti-Capitalism, AKA Useful Idiots.)
Bill Wattenberg made a "TV in a film" appearance in Dirty Harry, do you remember? Dirty Harry and Steve McQueen movies are part of San Francisco's film heritage. With Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan character trouncing bad guys on both sides of the bay. Once classic scene where Harry jumps from a bridge onto a kidnapped schoolbus was filmed north of the Golden Gate in San Rafael. Parts of Bullit appear to be pieced together from the Presidio and Pacifica / Half Moon Bay coastal roads, aka Hwy 1.
(oh, yeah there's a little film called the Maltese Falcon that was made here. Heard of Dashiel Hammett? See St. John's Grill near Union Square.)
The Eastwood and McQueen movies truly captured the essence of San Francisco -- right down to the traffic jams and rude taxi drivers. The chase scene in Bullit may not compete with Too Fast, Too Furious, but it sure makes me feel nostalgic to see how so many neighborhoods have changed so little in the last 30-40 years in San Francisco. I wish they would close the roads for me so I could zip around like McQueen.
On Grant St. at the corner of Bush is the Chinatown Gate.
O'Doul Gate, named for Left O'Doul. Lefty O'Doul's is a classic restaurant off Union Square, established in 1954. Lefty O'Douls features Giants memorabilia.
A view of Pacific Bell Park baseball stadium from the backside, on a fishing pier.
On Grant St. at the corner of Bush is the Chinatown Gate.
