A game of pinball drew us inside a café near the Lycée Victor Duruy where we were would have been attending a first year high school class had we behaved. The conversation turned to the subject of summer pursuits, an alluring if distant topic. The clicks of the bumpers and scoreboard battled with the shrill wheeze of the espresso machine and the clink of cups and spoons on the zinc counter. Each new customer brought in a gush of cold air that swirled the cigarette smoke around us. Perhaps capturing my restlessness to escape the café’s steamed-up windows, I declared: “I want to go to the U.S.”
John had spent six years in Washington, D.C., when his parents were stationed as foreign press correspondents for a U.K. newspaper. He was in a good position to advise me.
While he was born in France, he embodies the British disposition. He almost sports the ultimate stereotypical surname, which he spells with a “y” although it was still pronounced as if it had been written “Smith.”
Visions of a summer on the East Coast soon receded in favor of the other bookend. The cost of flying to the mythical California turned out not to be that much greater. Spurred by paradisiacal location shots from the television series “Colombo,” I picked Los Angeles without hesitation. John quickly argued against my choice, pointing out the city’s overall lack of charm, especially contrasted to its northern sibling.
My mom was not all that keen on letting her 16-year-old son travel across the world on his own. She offered to fund my trip to the same extend as if I were to go to the UK, bargaining that I could not raise enough money to cover the difference.
I picked up a small job with a neighborhood cleaners. Every Wednesday afternoon I would bring freshly laundered clothes at the Hotel des Invalides and pick up a sometime-odiferous pile to be returned the following week. In spite of its name, the facility is a stately hospital for war veterans, built under the reign of Louis XIV. (The same complex houses a museum and is the final resting place for Napoleon’s ashes.) It was a matter of a couple of hours. Even as I cannot recall how much it paid, I know it was enough to save for my trip.
The captain announced our final approach into Oakland airport, across the bay from San Francisco. In Bangor, Maine, where we had landed for refueling and immigration I had noticed live lobsters for sale inside the airport. What a concept! For the length of the cross country journey, there wasn’t much to see as the plane flew high above clouds. Below me now laid a vast expanse of dull brown hills. Only a sanguine public relations type could ascribe the word golden to the parched scenery, but that is summertime California. In the moments before the plane touched down early August 1977, I examined the wisdom of my decision.Near the gate where the plane stopped, an airport employee watched the world take off and land from under the shade of a palm tree. All was not lost.
I would return twice more to the Bay Area before moving to San Francisco in October 1981 and living there for seven years. This early association spans adolescence and early adulthood. The city functions as my hometown-away-from-home. Not a bad choice, uh?
San Francisco’s charms and ambience are well documented. Millions of visitors flock to the city by the bay attracted, possibly, by the fact that it is a most un-American place. Foreigners recognize the human-scale city and its real neighborhoods and applaud when a downtown earthquake-damaged freeway is not rebuilt. Americans fantasize about what life could be before returning to decidedly more sedate environments.
The Gold Rush and its seekers, the Beatniks, the Hippies, large Asian, Latino and gay communities have and continue to shape city dynamics as much as its fabled hills and the water that borders them on three sides. Often mocked for its liberal leanings, the city hangs left more than expected. At the 2004 presidential election, fewer than 17 percent of its residents gave their vote to George Bush. Not much chance for a Republican takeover. More striking is that the anti-conservative sentiment extends to each of the nine counties in the Bay Area, spreading beyond traditional liberal urban strongholds to capture the suburban heartland. The closest contest was in Solano County where Mr. Bush topped out with 41.62 percent. Cast the net farther north and south into rural areas and the Republican agenda is still soundly trounced. Not so to the east, however.
When he ran for his first term in office, Gavin Newsom was considered the most conservative of the mayoral candidates. That he would direct the registrar to issue marriage licenses to gay couples for a brief but heroic period casts him far to the left of his countrymen.
The Republican vision of life is heavily influenced by the religious right, which is more adequately described as a group of fundamentalists more totalitarian than religious. Moments after the 2004 presidential election I received an email of a reconstructed North American continent. It conveys our new, emotionally accurate, geopolitics - and a bit of wishful thinking. Unequivocally, San Francisco anchors the southwestern district of the United States of Canada.Which is why, trip after trip, I find myself “coming home” to a safe environment where the intransigence of the Middle Ages is kept at bay. I don’t shy away from a lively philosophical or policy debate, but there is virtue in not fighting every thing every day.
Lest you imagine progressive politics result in utopia, the region does not escape the social ills that besiege the country. San Francisco employers may pay what is the nation’s highest minimum wage at $9.14 an hour, but housing costs are astronomical. Across the waters, Berkeley, the über-radical People’s Republic of Berkeley, tops the list of the most economically unequal city of its size in the U.S., with a staggering wealth distribution that combines despair and delight in a matter of a few kilometers.
If the social and economical goals pursued by Bay Area policymakers strike you as eminently progressive, it is partly because your assessment contrasts the regressive fantasies of the rest of the country. Stacked against other social democracies, the record grows far weaker.
Elisabeth and I stopped for lunch in San Juan Bautista where a fair had the joint packed in spite of a very average menu. We toured the grounds of the local mission, one of 21 Franciscan churches built along the coast between 1769 and 1823. This one played a central role in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” Before embarking on this trip, I rented the first episodes of “The Streets of San Francisco,” to kick start the memories. The pilot lacked momentum and focus, but the other installments of the mid-70s television series capture a certain edge-of-the-world grit.
It is short drive on back roads to Capitola, a bohemian little burg next to Santa Cruz. We paused for a drink on the super tiny terrace of Mr. Toots, a friendly upstairs coffee house on the Esplanade with view of the lagoon, beach and ocean. On our very first visit millions of years ago, we overlooked the stairs and instead walked into Margaritaville on the first floor, a Mexican restaurant without the feel of a coffee house. Ten years later, as I hiked around the ridges that ring the Santa Fe Ski Area, I ran into a woman wearing a Mr. Toots shirt, which begged several questions. In a previous life (every one in Santa Fe has a previous life), she had been a manager there. Small world.
We proceeded up the coast on Highway 1 instead of the more direct, faster but potentially more congested inland freeways. At Pigeon Point, we checked out the lighthouse and imagined a wind-buffeted overnight stay at the adjacent hostel. It costs $24 for a dorm bed or $65 for a private room, but we had booked an inexpensive motel in San Francisco’s Marina district that would be our base for a week of museum and dining.
With a City Pass, we were able to hop on Muni buses, streetcars and cable cars to get to several museums and attractions. With each passing year, the pricing structure condemns cable cars to the exclusive use of tourists. At $5 a shot, it is more an amusement ride than transportation. It is delicious fun to stand on the running boards and lean out as they race down hills. And the smell of steel cables grinding against wheels is yummy!
I am getting quite familiar with the Asian Art Museum but I don’t tire of its galleries. The Legion of Honor is a neoclassical building with classical collections. It, too, plays a role in Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” A cast of Rodin’s “The Thinker” occupies the center of the courtyard. The Musée Rodin houses the original next to my Parisian high school. Outside is a memorial to the holocaust.
The De Young Museum’s perforated and textured copper façade confers a striking appearance to the renovated museum. Over time, it will adopt a patina that will blend with its Golden Gate Park surroundings. From the top of its Trojan Horse tower, views stretch in all direction. The magnificent and unbelievably manmade park ends at the windswept coastline.
The Hiroshi Sugimoto installation of large-format contemporary photographs influences the passive viewer to accept that seeing is believing. It’s only when we realize the models belong to another century, prior to the invention of the medium, that the manipulation surfaces. 
We showed up just in time to follow a docent on an introductory tour of the Museum of Modern Art’s collections. Her narrative teased the audience and probed the significance of the pieces, but she did not voice authoritative conclusions. In doing so, she lets modern art fulfill its unique function. Our intrinsically personal response forces us to shed the traditional passive nature of art viewing. The Olafur Eliasson exhibition asks us to reconsider time through an interplay of light, color and water in large-scale immersive installations that affects our subjective perception. “I don’t think my work is about my work. My work is about you,” says the artist.
No dim sum this time. Great restaurants abound San Francisco, everything from holes in the wall to upmarket dining rooms. The average quality is much higher than in most cities. It renders selection less haphazard. In many cases hype makes it tricky to sift past the effusion of publicists (self-respected restaurateurs hire them – not an entirely positive development) to find an eatery that does not reek, however pleasant the stench, of formulaic calculations.
The Chronicle does a great job describing neighborhoods and restaurants. I used Open Table for reservations after querying Zagat for suggestions.
We returned to old favorites Brandy Ho’s (Sichuan) in North Beach and Straits Cafe (S’pore), now located upstairs in a trendy Market Street emporium. Greens opened in 1979 when the concept of a vegetarian restaurant equated bland fare and drew blank stares. I have incorporated the farro salad with cucumbers, parsley and mint, and the grilled ricotta salata (a term that I momentarily confused with insalta, or salad) in my own repertoire. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to be perched on a Ft. Mason pier with a view of the marina and Golden Gate Bridge. Greens gets its produce across the bay from the Green Gulch Farm, operated by the San Francisco Zen Center.
Tiny Chez Maman serves a straightforward but satisfying basic French menu on the slopes of Potrero Hill. I wanted to try the Cambodian dishes at Angkor Borei but it was closed. We headed up Cortland Avenue instead to discover a lively Bernal Heights neighborhood (snazzier than when we lived on the other side of that hill) and settled in comfy Valentina Ristorante. Comfy and convivial but unremarkable. And by that last descriptive I do not wish to imply that it was deficient, just that it did not leave me with a notable aftertaste. That I would not return does not imply dining there was substandard. If I am to eat out, I want it to leave a lasting impression.
Tiny Chez Maman serves a straightforward but satisfying basic French menu on the slopes of Potrero Hill. I wanted to try the Cambodian dishes at Angkor Borei but it was closed. We headed up Cortland Avenue instead to discover a lively Bernal Heights neighborhood (snazzier than when we lived on the other side of that hill) and settled in comfy Valentina Ristorante. Comfy and convivial but unremarkable. And by that last descriptive I do not wish to imply that it was deficient, just that it did not leave me with a notable aftertaste. That I would not return does not imply dining there was substandard. If I am to eat out, I want it to leave a lasting impression.
The Saigon Sandwich Shop (560 Larkin St. in the drab and draft of the Civic Center district) cranks out economical (under $3) goodies to a long line of customers that crowd its diminutive floor space. It also sells Vietnamese drinks, savories and sweets that must be tried on faith since the staff’s English is limited. A delectable spot!
Calculating minds will notice that four of the seven restaurants mentioned above serve Asian foods. Not a coincidence. When I was in Singapore, I ate only Asian meals and loved it. A trip to San Francisco and its omnipresent Asian population fulfills this aspiration. A great part of my seven years in the city were spent in North Beach, a neighborhood only nominally Italian. Most of my shopping for produce was at Chinese markets. Elisabeth and I developed a fondness for pineapple buns, a pastry we came to call pollopoi, its bastardized English approximation. Yours for 35 cents. Other indecipherable items beg the adventurous, the gourmand who wishes to feats on dried turtles and other imported special specialties.
The following four coffee houses – ever so important in my register –display a distinctive atmosphere. Espresso Roma is a chain - yes, a chain - of funky places to relax. (Not to worry, Starbucks.) We visited the one on Fillmore near our hotel. The Grove, on Chesnut, is an airy and relaxed restaurant that serves three meals a day. I cannot pass up a business named Momi Toby’s Revolutionary Café. Get to Hayes Valley and figure out what Pancho Villa has to do with this establishment. The properly rebellious Café Lo Cubano in Laurel Heights also preps for a fight.
Over in Berkeley, Brewed Awakenings (“There is no life before coffee”) serves good drinks to an intellectual crowd in a leafy neighborhood steps away from campus. In the flatlands, the small portions at Alice Waters’ informal Café Fanny did not impress Elisabeth much. The breads and pastries concocted at the Acme Bakery (also at the Ferry Building in San Francisco) next door shroud the small patio with wondrous scents.
Before a bus tour of movie locations throughout the city, we walked the planks of the Balcutha, a square-rigger, afloat since 1886 and moored at the foot of Hyde Street next to other historical ships.
During my seven years in the city, I never heard about the Columbarium where ash remains are kept. A neoclassical repository on the outside, it has a romantic interior of vaults and niches. A goodhearted caretaker, Emmitt, took us on an informal tour and regaled us with his wit and compassion. Only two cemeteries remain in San Francisco, one at Mission Dolores and the other at the Presidio. All the others – and there were quite a few – were dug up and graves relocated to Colma at the turn of the 19th century. Officials cited public health as motivation, but I would not be shocked if land speculation played a role. Entire neighborhoods today sit on sites of former resting grounds. Colma is a small burg a few kilometers south of the city with far more people underground in its 17 cemeteries than living above ground.
Even though we had gone on the cruise before, we signed up for an early evening excursion on the bay. Undeterred by the persistent undertow and sustained gusts, we sailed into the setting sun. Our ship dodged numerous wind surfers that zipped past us. Elisabeth’s stomach almost surrendered …
If San Francisco qualifies as my hometown, a more precise allocation would relocate me just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. It is where I spent the bulk of my inaugural visit back in August 1977. At the time, the realization I would be staying outside of the city disappointed me. I wanted to see San Francisco, not its suburbs.
Save for a couple small settlements, the population centers on the coastal range’s eastern foothills, facing the bay where the thermometer peaks much higher than on the shores of the Pacific.
Marin, often characterized outside of the Bay Area by its eccentricities, epitomizes the progressive California mindset. Counterculture types anchored floating homes off Sausalito in the 1960’s. The houseboats enjoy expansive views of Angel Island and the city beyond. Because they were not on land, they did not have to pay property taxes. Once mocked for their inferior standing, these homes now command small fortunes.
Today’s derision is tomorrow’s sensation.
The western half of the county encompasses thousands of hectares of protected public lands. My personal interest in outdoor exploration was nourished on many Sundays when the 76 Muni bus would deposit me at Rodeo Beach for the price of a local fare. Minutes from the dense urban core of San Francisco, the Marin Headlands, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, present an incomparable scenery of rolling hills that dissolve onto a craggy shore. A few ridges away, the redwoods of Muir Woods blanket the lower slopes of Mount Tamalpais. Birds frolic at the Audubon Canyon Ranch above the tranquil Bolinas Lagoon. The lands of the Marin Municipal Water District fill in the space before majestic Point Reyes, where we headed for a brief visit.
These are not marginal lands, set aside because they are inaccessible or not suited for development. It is a stunning landscape that was saved from urban encroachment by visionaries.
A backpacking trip in August 1977 brought me in the middle of the Point Reyes countryside with Roy and Ed, two brothers acquainted to someone in my host family. We carried so much that we could have homesteaded our camp site. It was hell! To this day, I carry as little as strictly necessary when I hike - and I am I quite conservative in that definition. But the experience itself, outside of the beast of burden drudgery, introduced me to a surreal park where the damp of the fog rapidly capitulates to the warmth of the chaparral.
The Bear Valley visitor center sits atop the San Andreas Fault, the point of friction between the North American and Pacific plates. The epicenter of the 1906 earthquake that wreaked havoc on San Francisco is near here. A misaligned fence tracks the earth’s movements.
Portentous skies placated the beach and obscured the view of the lighthouse. The deserted shoreline gives pause to the temporal concerns of the world, already of sufficient distance to be irrelevant. In its place, a benign solitude marshals introspection.
It would have been a perfect day for a hot chocolate under a blanket. The Bovine Bakery in Point Reyes Station trades on its cute name, but it could have worked if it weren’t so far.
The rare autumnal clouds cleared and revealed a rocky coastline in Sonoma County. Winds still lashed at Bodega Head, near the town of Bodega Bay made famous by Hitchcock and his birds.
With the summer crowds back in their year-round hovels, the solitary grandeur easily inspires awe. The few visitors who cling to its exhortations mesh into the landscape.
We did not have time for wine tasting, but I did want to check out Copia, an educational center that conflates the experiences of the table. The pesto class was fun, but too short to teach anything beyond the basics that I already know. The “Hungry planet: What the world eats” exhibit showcased how 30 families in 24 countries view food and how they consume it. Its important message should be part of Copia’s permanent installations.
In Sonoma, we stopped by the state’s northernmost and last mission. Established under Mexican rule, its purpose, we learned, was to keep an eye on Russian expansions up the coast at Ft. Ross.
