A Letter From San Francisco….Bye Bye

Bye.

A Letter From San Francisco….The End

Well, that wraps it up for this series of letters; it was fun writing them but so much got missed out; did I have time to talk about the Pelicans that seem to be flying on a continual loop around the edges of the city, Mitchell's Ube Ice Cream, the stateliness of the Palm Trees, the song of Mexican voices in the Mission District, the hunger/peace demonstration on a back street part of Broadway, and did I describe the clarity of the blue skies faithfully enough?

August is all but over and on Monday I flew out of San Francisco and back to Europe. As the plane banked over the Bay and began the tiring return eastward I looked back a final time at the city that had been home for almost two months and a thick layer of fog covered everything, starting way out east, and only the skyscrapers and Bay Bridge remained visible. Tendril like fingers of fog reached past Telegraph Hill and I realised that these thoughts and stories were already being swallowed up in the Bay.

This morning I woke at 1a.m, jet lag refusing my request for sleep and I lay listening to the silence that surrounds this house at that hour. There was no siren from the fire department trucks, no footsteps from people returning from the all night grocery store, no television from an apartment down the hall.

Suddenly there was rain and in my dozy state I imagined it to be the sound of Pacific waves, but the sweet smell of earth and pine that was liberated brought me back to this place, this forest where I live.

And as the storm passed I lay in the dark and listened to the sound of a single drip falling on a solitary leaf, something I never expect to hear in San Francisco.

A letter from San francisco....X

Last night I went across the city of San Francisco with one aim in mind, to finish these letters from San Francisco with that most problematic of the alphabet, X.

Did you know that if you measure the frequency of letters at the beginning of words in the English language X comes last!

Of course it would be fine if I could accept X for extra, then I could write about all the things that missed out in this extended letter, like The Onion Newspaper, the free weekly with news that isn’t true but could or should be.

Some of the headlines that entertained me during these two months were; Man running aimlessly with Olympic Torch For Past 3 Years, Revised Patriot Act Will Make It Illegal To Read Patriot Act, Sea Claims Flip-Flop, EPA Warns Human Beings No Longer Biodegradable and Hard To Tell If Wikipedia Entry On Dada Has Been Vandalized Or Not.

To be honest I was hoping that somewhere between its pages I would find a headline or name starting with an X but though I scoured each week’s edition I came up with nothing.

I considered drawing parallels between the rugged beauty of San Francisco, that never fails to make me stop and sigh whenever it surprises me, and Xanadu so I might get away with using the first few lines of the Coleridge poem:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

There is a “pleasure-dome” aspect to the city sometimes but then I never found an equivalent of the Alph that wasn’t the ocean.So last night I set out with a mission, but also a secret. The secret being that I had long, long ago decided exactly what X would be.

I took the bus from the corner of Fillmore and Turk, took a transfer ticket and settled down with my book. Dusk was creeping in and as the bus followed Fillmore towards the bay I became lost in the narrative unfolding on the pages in front of me. Looking up I realised I had no idea where in the city I was so instinctively I descended at the next stop. Looking around I saw that this was a premature act, crossed the road and waited for another bus which when it arrived would not accept my transfer. Things were beginning to fall apart. The dusk had become night and that had not been the plan.

I walked a couple of blocks and found a cross town bus to take me to North Beach and I got off at Washington Square Park, a small neighbourhood corner where normally people walk, sit, sleep, talk, play, wait and where tonight there was an open air screening of Fellini’s Eight and a Half.

Perfect, North Beach is the original Italian part of town and here one of the country's greatest directors and the original Italian dialogue filled the night air. Looming behind the park were the skyscrapers of downtown, ablaze with their own light, to one side a couple stood and kissed and above everything hung the almost full moon.

Perfect but no X’s here, so I continued past the Italian Restaurants and the seductive smell of cooked tomato and struggled up Rob’s hill for one last try to connect. He was out but his neighbour was in; I invited her to join me but her dinner had just finished cooking, so alone I crossed the glare of Broadway and the strip shows to the legendary bar Vesuvio.

I had been saving this, and took a seat in the window upstairs on the gallery.

Vesuvio, as you may remember from earlier in all this, is a bar across the alley next to the City Lights Bookstore. Inside it feels like a bar in the red light district of Paris, it is small, cramped, noisy and insistent. The ceiling is low and yellow, stained from years of tobacco smoke, though today smokers go outside to cough. The walls are crowded with newspaper clippings, prints, photos, posters and book covers - behind the bar are two large, engraved mirrors and in the corner is a wooden framed screen with sepia slides of 1920 bathing belles being shown.

Vesuvio is a bar first and foremost but also a visual record of the Beat Generation years and with time much could be learnt from the walls. Once someone left a note pinned up offering; “I Will Drive Your Car East”, someone had added, “No you won’t”.

It still attracts an interesting clientele, I met an apple engineer from Los Gatos further south who had just come back from Tokyo but unfortunately not even her name began with an X.

I like the upstairs part of this bar the best, up the narrow stairs at the end of the bar and you are on the gallery where you can look either down on the bar or better from the window seats onto the street below, edge of Broadway and its nightlife. In the corner you can even opt for the marquee-like booth and watch everything.

I sat down and looked out the window, a 1950’s Cadillac cruised past. Seconds later another, open topped and spitting flames from its twin exhausts. Honest. The waitress approached and excitedly I placed my order, two months of planning coming to a vibrant finale.

But.

They didn’t stock it, only Corona.

Disappointed I ordered a glass of red wine.

Ok I was very disappointed, but more so I was now hungry, in the excitement of finishing these letters I had forgotten to eat and now the memory of those Italian restaurants rumbled in my stomach. I drank up and left, re-crossed the neon of Broadway and climbed the slope into North Beach and followed the giant neon lit hand pointing to the Golden Gate Pizza.

The surroundings couldn’t have been a harsher contrast to Vesuvio, walls and ceiling made of shiny corrugated iron but the pizza smelled heavenly and a I waited, leaning on the counter my eyes drifted to the glass fronted fridge, and there it was, an ice-cold bottle of Dos Equis, Mexican Beer.

Perfect.
End of story.

Well, almost.

I had ordered Pizza to go and go was what I was going to do, but city, state or federal law dictates that they couldn’t sell me a bottle to go, only to consume within the corrugated iron Pizza Shed.

I tried to get them to sell it to me unopened in a brown paper bag, something that usually seems to work and allows many people to drink alcohol on the street, but not this time. They can be very strict, all the bars are strictly over 21 only and I know someone in their late forties who was refused admission without I.D.

So, did I compromise this series of letters and walk out with out drinking it or did I stick to my principles and eat my pizza at the table?

You will never know.

XX, Dos Equis, Mexican Beer.

A letter from San francisco....P

Free refills? Richmond?

A very American idea I think. Buy a coffee in a restaurant or café and they will keep filling up your cup until you drown.

And Richmond, a district in the west of San Francisco and my favourite, home also of the Toy Boat dessert café. If you buy a coffee at the Toy Boat and come back at any time that day with the same cup you qualify for a refill.

This is one of the initiatives of the owner, Jessie.

The only other male Jessie that I have, sort of met is Jessie James, legendary gunslinger. I don’t think there is a connection although Jessie does sell guns in his coffee shop. Toy guns, cap firing. In fact The Toy Boat would be a perfectly normal and typical Independent San Franciscan coffee shop with delicious homemade ice cream cookie sandwiches, fresh breakfast bagels and room to pass many an hour unhurriedly contemplating life if it wasn’t for the toys. Jessie collects and sells toys as well, in particular Pez.

This morning, on the way to take the car back to the hire place, which for some very long story is way over the Golden gate Bridge and up the Freeway (101) in a suburb called San Rafael, I stopped at the Toy Boat hoping to meet Jessie and to get a double cappuccino with cream cheese bagel to go.

Jessie's son served me and introduced Jessie who had just knocked over the display of organic chocolate bars. He had been trying to reach the “Stop Starbucks” petition that he has started up against the corporate giant’s plans of opening (yet another) outlet down the road.

He argues that it is things like that that destroy a neighbourhood and since Richmond, or at least the Clement part of it is still very much a local neighbourhood then the residents must fight such intrusion. The slogan of the campaign is “Friends don’t let friends go to Starbucks”.

Right on! I signed. The coffee was perfect and the slightly toasted cream cheese bagel was from paradise.

But the main reason I needed to speak with Jessie was about the Darth Vader Pez dispenser that I needed for my own collection and which was on display with the other hundred or so in his.

I am assuming here that you know about Pez, the candy dispenser originally marketed by the Austrian company as a substitute for smoking. They started in small tins and then a small-patented dispenser was introduced and then in 1955 they started to put heads on the top.

Jessie is the second enthusiast that I have met here in San Francisco. Just outside the city, past the airport you come to Burlingame, a suburb that would probably remain anonymous if it wasn’t home to the Pez museum run by curator and collector Gary.

Gary started out intending to sell computers but his collection of Pez attracted more interest so he converted his store into a small museum.

Although the parent company doesn’t recognise the museum “officially” and although from the outside it looks like a dentist's office, Gary has amassed an impressive exhibit, including part of the original factory sign and the original patent application. He has an original pre-war headless dispenser (in original packing) along with his own collection of, - well - many. He claims to have one of every Pez EVER, and not many people would dare to admit that.

He also admits to attending the yearly conventions in a Los Angeles hotel.

Gary is very tall, looking a little like an oversized Pez dispenser himself, but as a host he is impeccable. He showed me the rarest of his collection, the build your own face Pez which was quickly withdrawn from sale because of small digestible parts, which reaches 5000 dollars at auction. (Matt stop catching baseballs and invest in Pez).

He also told me the unlikely but probably true tale that e-bay was originally set up as a web site for the founder to sell and trade her Pez collection.

He introduced me to the first Pez of his collection, an astronaut that had a Colonel John Glen feel but in fact was not a human.

The first human Pez, everything before was either cartoon or fantasy, is a set of 3 Elvis (young, old and fat) currently on sale both in the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia (214 California Drive) and the Toy Boat Dessert café (401 Clement Street).

The amazing thing is that Jessie has never been to Gary’s museum, though since his own café is open from 7.30 to midnight he won’t have a lot of time to make the trip across the city.

So, Jessie was happy to sell me the Darth Vader Pez, and I got a Valentine’s Day Heart Pez too.

The Pez Company has a separate marketing department in America and Europe and so Jessie got quite excited about the possibility of trading with me, though I explained that in my quiet corner of France they are few and far between.

Almost as excited as I was to get a Darth Vader and a Heart - though I may not be able to compete with the weird stuff he found in Indonesia.

P for Pez (and love)

A letter from San francisco....R

Way back at the beginning of these letters, somewhere in M I think, I promised that R would be about my friend Rob. It seems as if I owe you an apology, as even with two months at my disposal I have been unable to link up with the man, and last thing I heard he was in the Mohave Desert learning to glide gliders.

I know his sister in law from university days and when I checked with her for Rob’s address she told me that he is never there, always at work even on Sundays. Seems that this is true as each time I called at his house there was no reply. His house is at the top of one of San Francisco’s, and probably the world’s, steepest street so you have to be very motivated to drop by. I tried cycling up once and just came to a complete standstill before beginning to roll backwards and driving is not an option as there is nowhere to park on his street.

I met his neighbour one time; she lives in the apartment below and answered my relentless bell ringing by taking pity on yet another “is Rob at home?”-caller. She is prettier than Rob but he is very handsome, looking like a cross between Leonard Cohen and Fred Astaire.

One night, completely by chance and against the run of things, he answered the door and we spent a little time together, sharing a bottle of Bordeaux in the kitchen of his apartment. It was the only place to sit as Rob’s flat is overwhelmed with books, they are piled everywhere, and probably all read or being read.

Rob has a heart of gold, taking in strangers like me without a blink. Within minutes he had already asked me if I needed help finding a job, had offered the loan of his car for a day and fixed me up with a lift to Los Angeles in a friend’s private plane, an offer I reluctantly turned down as I had only just arrived in the city of San Francisco and wanted to explore that.

Ok, I exaggerate a bit, the plane ride offer was 25 years ago the first time I had met Rob during my first visit when unannounced I turned up looking to sleep on his floor, but you see a measure of his generosity. I had to remind him of that this time as 25 years has passed and much of our collective memory with it.

When I recounted how that first night we had ended up naked amongst a bunch of his friends at the local hot tub he seemed to recall something, if only the unabashed openness of the young Californian or the institutional shyness of the new arrivee from England.

A friend quoted me a statistic that I am unable to recall exactly but which explained that a surprisingly high percentage of the population in this city is renewed every 10 years. Renewed as in replaced by newcomers that is, not renewed spiritually, which I think happens every day.

Rob is an exception, he was here at least 25 years ago, and he has the same job and same flat, just more books. How has he managed to beat the trend of restlessness that invades the city each decade?

By never being at home.

So, what to do with R? Maybe I can use it for a medley of musings, things that happen here but not at home in Europe? Right turns on Red lights? Replying to your mobile phone whilst driving? Reading for Dogs? Refills? Richmond district?

On of the decidedly good things about San Francisco is that you can turn right on a red light if the way is clear. For the restless and relentless this is a traffic godsend. But it is tempered by the wisest of road usage, that the car gives way to the pedestrian crossing at the same light. It makes total sense and makes movement more enjoyable.

Answering the phone whilst driving is however probably highly unsafe and the fact that this is still allowed here is surprising, as is the fact that the governor is an ex-Austrian body builder. Or maybe it’s perfect.

Reading for dogs, would you believe that? At the intersections of many streets there are rows of newspaper vending machines, you’ve seen them in the movies. The selection is eclectic, ranging from the national dallies (for which you pay) to those that are highly specialised and local (for which you don’t). It is here that each week you can pick up the Bay Guardian or San Francisco Weekly, the free listings papers. And, if you are lucky you will find Bay Woof, News with Bite for Bay Area Dog Lovers.

A dog’s newspaper!! Well, more or less. This weeks edition campaigns on the plan to introduce mandatory pet sterilization, Coyote attacks on two puppies and a fascinating article on cooking cordon bleu for your hound. There are adverts for canine acupuncture, homeopathy and flower essences, a professional dog runner (one on one) and a Canine Freestyle Workshop, that’s dancing with your dog.

And that leaves us with Refills and Richmond, but you have to wait for P to find out about that.

A letter from San francisco....I

Independence day.
America’s gain or England’s loss, should I celebrate or cry?
In fact I was torn between sea and sky, waking up way south of San Francisco in the Big Sur among the pools and lagoons of Pacific Ocean; emerald green, cobalt too, indigo, turquoise. Swirls of white foam, alone around rocks, anchored through the flaming brown kelp. Wet, shiny and smooth; approaching fog, clouding the way, suddenly clear; Monterey town lying between the city and this endless blue; crowds gathering early, nowhere to park; screeching gulls dispute the cut offs of red raw fish thrown from Fisherman’s Wharf, grey speckled harbour seals pulling it free; rows of tar black cormorant astride the bleached white breakwater, brown furry sea lions beneath; a solitary silver seal sitting on a rusty buoy.
The white ephemeral spray of a far distant whale; close up the black rubbery barnacled back of a cruising Humpback. A seemingly bottomless blowhole, the sound of its breath, then a leap, twisting free from the ocean, for a second or two motionless and then its joyous splash.
Independence amidst the fireworks of the sea.
Miles of dusty road, and empty sand towards San Francisco, people slowly moving to the shore; flashing lights of Patrol Cars trying to enforce the law, no fires. But, a line of flares, the gathering dusk, and the first fires lit along Half Moon Bay. Sleeping bags and mattresses set on roof tops, for the view; July 4th explode the sky.
The darkening Highway as we reach the city; stop lights help and hinder; the radio carries live the musical accompaniment, the dome of the Exploratorium, the road closed, a back way; Crissy Field by the bay, quick, on the sand, the tide closing in and there, and there, the fire in the dark night sky.
Happy Birthday.

A letter from San francisco....H

Someone told me that the scientist Oppenheimer, feeling guilty after the second world war because of his work on the atom bomb and being shunned by the scientific community thereafter devoted the latter part of his energy to creating the Exploratorium Science Centre here in San Francisco. Thus he went, so to speak, from blowing up our world to blowing our minds.
The Exploratorium doesn’t begin with a H, and nor does the Palace of Fine Arts which seems to occupy the other half of the building which houses the Exploratorium. But Hirschman does and he chose the Palace of Fine Arts to be the main venue of the Poetry Festival alluded to earlier under the letter K.
Jack Hirschman is the fourth poet laureate of San Francisco having accepted the post in 2006. He is 75 years old and is famous both as a poet and an activist though when I first saw him has shambling gait and slurred speech misled me into mistaking him for one of the homeless. His most recent volume of work, the Arcanes is an immense tome comprising over a hundred long poems. On the stage of the Palace of Fine Arts he read some of this work and his eloquence and outrage were clear.
As Poet Laureate he decided that one of the things he needed to do was organise an international poetry festival and at the end of July over a long weekend about twenty poets, representing almost as many different nations came together to make that happen. The focus of the festival were two consecutive free events at the Palace, but these were complimented by a series of smaller events in branch libraries around the city and readings in the cafes and bars of North Beach.
Two invited poets were unable to attend, as they were unable to secure entry visa from the United States government, one from Iran and one from Venezuela. Any political coincidence is probably highly intentional.
The Palace of Fine Arts has a beautiful stage in a large auditorium that was about half full each night. The poets read in their native language, English translation was shown simultaneously on a screen behind them. It was possible to loose yourself in the meaning of the words, the sound of the voices and sometimes both. Some were funny, some achingly beautiful, some distressingly tragic or violent, some over-intellectual using words for words sake, others were precise and clear. There was an ex-factory worker from Italy, an exiled English speaking Nigerian who wrote in Swedish, an American hip-hop and tap dancing rap poet from Oakland and a Syrian desert Princess who turned out to be the mysterious lady in red (see K).
Here is some of what I heard that evening.
“Day and night part at the top of a huge tree/ the sun climbs over the wall like an old man…here in this place of nowhere, forever…sometimes you speak with eyes lit by the fine gold dust that you beat and bang…abstractions of shit….if a woman leaps naked from the shadows towards a man’s heart…….to say love is the sweetest thing can only be said by someone who doesn’t know tiramisu.”
And a Syrian Desert Princess’s poem in full; “My happiness and I\ await\ the flutter of your steps.”
In one of the local newspapers a journalist commented that people used to come to live in San Francisco for the poetry.
This time poetry came to the city for San Francisco.
For Jack Hirschman.

A letter from San francisco....L

Lincoln Avenue.
There is probably a Lincoln Avenue in San Francisco.
After all there is definitely a Lincoln Park; it is at the western edge of the city and it borders an area known as Lands End. It’s a great place to watch the sunset, if there is no fog, and the view through the pine trees towards the Golden Gate Bridge is good too. Below are the rocks and crags of lands End and at low tide you can see the remains of boats shipwrecked here.
The Golden Gate Bridge is in the news this week as the authority that looks after it is facing a deficit of 87 million dollars and is trying to find solutions to the crisis that don’t necessitate raising the 5 dollar toll for cars. This charge is only asked for when you cross into the city and there is no charge for the walkers and cyclists that flock there as tourists, but the solution being looked at is corporate sponsorship. The idea is not to have slogans on the side of the bridge but to use the visitor area for advertising. I was thinking that maybe Matt could help out after auctioning his baseball (see Z).
It is a very beautiful bridge, both for its setting and for its form. In the summer a trip out on foot or bike can be disappointing as the bridge and view is often shrouded in fog, but it is also true that the sun is always shining on the other side.
If you drive across the bridge and head north you can follow Highway 1 along the coast towards Stinson beach, take 101 inland or cross over to the 80. The latter two will lead you out of the city to the Napa Valley, famous wine region but also home of the Petrified Forest.
If you follow the Petrified Forest Road from the 101 to the town of Calistoga and turn left at the flashing red light you will be on….Lincoln Avenue. And at number 1712 Lincoln Avenue, Calistoga you will find the Indian Springs Resort and Spa.
Calistoga is on the edge of an ancient volcanic region and the town is blessed with a selection of natural thermal springs that have been harnessed into spas. At the Indian Springs, named after the Wapoo Indians who first used the area, and elsewhere in the town, you can also enjoy a volcanic mud bath. A session goes something like this.
You are called into a changing cubicle, men on one side females on the other, and there you strip, wrap a towel and contemplate the bowl of fresh orange wedges sitting on a bed of ice. You eat one. Then another. They are chilled and refreshing. Then you pour yourself a glass of iced cucumber water. It’s delicious. Then another wedge of orange and frankly I could have been quite happy doing nothing else. Someone comes and leads you to the bathing area and there is a transition from palatial and expensive lobby to steamy, municipal swimming pool. Except it isn’t a swimming pool but a group of old fashioned baths surrounded by white painted pipes channelling hot spring water through the white wooden room. On one side the baths are full of grey volcanic mud and with difficulty but a little help you submerge yourself into the hot embrace. More mud is scooped on top of you until only your head not submerged, and this you rest on a small plank before accepting cucumbers on the eyes and more mud on the face. And there you just warmly ooze away and would eventually disappear if the assistant did not return after an allotted time to help you get out. And help is what you need. The body no longer responds to commands like “move” and what the mud has sucked in the mud is reluctant to allow out. But out you get and into a shower and then into a bath on the other side full of spring water, drift into oblivion and drink glass after glass of iced cucumber water. Finally you are almost carried into the steam room where you evaporate and then someone, I have no memory who it was, wraps you in a towel and lays you on a bench in the changing room, where oranges and iced water hover in your dreams and you sleep like a child; oblivious to the world racing past outside.
Later you may emerge from this cocoon and the wise would book into the hotel and sleep the sleep of angels. But Calistoga has another surprise for the curious. There are apparently three places in the world where there are Geysers that blow with such precision that they warrant the name Old Faithful. One is in New Zealand, a second in Yosemite national park California and a third here, down the road from the Indian Springs. On the edge of town, in a park reserved for it and a herd of Llamas and Fainting Goats, (so named because any sudden shock causes them to faint, a genetic mishap that caused them to be once used as a sacrificial diversion in flocks subject to attack by wolves; a trait that led to their almost complete extinction), is Calistoga’s Old Faithful, a Geyser that erupts every forty minutes or so.
In between there is nothing, not a sign, except a few wisps of underground steam escaping from the vent.

A letter from San francisco....N

N....notices.

When I arrived in San Francisco I took a taxi to the apartment that would be home for the next two months and, being a European and untutored in American ways, I was surprised to read the following notice on the front door.

“No Smoking. Attention, Video Surveillance. Warning. This area contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects and other reproductive illness.” - No welcome to your new home then.

Now I have, I believe completed my responsibilities of procreation but this was no temporary, written-on-paper notice. This was engraved into the glass door and thus a seemingly permanent as well as alarming warning.

I looked around and saw that as a rough calculation there were hundreds of people living in the apartment block and I saw a couple of them walking healthily out for the evening as I entered, so I had to assume that the locals were not too concerned.

Still I had trouble sleeping and it wasn’t just jet lag.

The next day I drove the hired car to the garage to fill up and as I stood there I noticed a clearly posted warning; “Prolonged, Long term exposure to vapours has caused cancer in laboratory animals”. What does long term mean? It was a big car and the nozzle didn’t seem to be high pressure. And after all this wasn’t the first or last time I was going to be doing this.

Now it seems to me, naïve as I am, that if you have an apartment building that is toxic or a fuel that is unsafe you have a greater responsibility to ensure that you don’t sell them, than to cover your ass by posting a disclaimer.

Friends explained that this was the reason for the notices as there is a mentality of litigation in America that basically means that everyone is on the defensive. It also, maybe, partly explains why America is often seen as a frightened place.

Anyway, I bought some petrol and slept in the apartment a second night.

The next day I decided to buy a bicycle and I went around the thrift shops trying to find an appropriate cancer free, zero emission mount. In a shop in the Mission district I found someone who had all bikes on special offer. 100 dollars. I asked the owner why, as they seemed to be in good condition and he sighed and explained; “I’ve got too many and no one wants them at the moment.” Then, almost as an afterthought he added,” At the end of August everyone will want them but I can’t wait”

I asked him why and he replied, mysteriously “Burning Man”

Well, I don’t know where I’ve been the last 21 years but it obviously wasn’t in California because I had never heard of Burning Man before so I asked him what it was. He explained that it was a big event or festival or party that takes place in the Nevada desert at the end of August and is over 20 years old.

Seems a bike is the best way to get around the event, festival, party.

The first Burning Man event took place on Baker Beach in the city after someone separated from his girlfriend and decided to build an effigy so that he could burn his past. Apparently about 20 people witnessed the event, which he repeated the following year for fun.

The event got bigger and bigger and eventually moved to the Nevada Desert, became an event where you could only attend if you contributed something, then somewhere along the line got commercialised and now you have to buy a ticket.

It is a sort of Mad Max Glastonbury in the middle of the Desert and according to one participant surrounded by a dusty smell of death. Thousand s flock there, many from here.

I decided though that a trip North over the Golden Gate Bridge, and an hour up Highway 1 to Stinson Beach would be more fun.

Stinson Beach is a long curving beach where Pacific rollers crash in and people surf and jump in the waves. There is a small picturesque settlement of the same name where you can visit one of the Chaplin daughter's gallery or an almost perfect bookshop that used to be a restaurant that specialised in fried chicken served to the long gone ship builders of Sausalito or even buy coffee from one of the cafes and stay in a motel.

If you have between 1 and 3 million dollars you could even buy a house.

At the entrance to the beach, a small sandy climb through the dunes, you pass a large notice that is titled Swimmers and Waders Caution, and since I was planning to possibly do both I stopped and read it.

Included with the dire warnings about dangerous currents there was a graphic description of a Great White Shark attack that had happened in shallow water on this beach and the strong advice never to turn your back on the ocean.

I wasn’t sure that I would be able to swim all the way to Japan so envisaging a possible turn towards shore at sometime in the afternoon I continued onto the acres of sand.

I had a great time, the water was glacial but the sun volcanic and so the bathing was idyllic. I didn’t get eaten and I didn’t see anyone else being snapped up.

However, Lee who I met on the beach who has started a new form of body building class using weights and rubber bands and was the source of much of my information about Burning man, informed me that a triangular section of ocean, apexing exactly where I stood, contained the highest concentration of White Sharks in the world.

There was a moment when I was gaily frolicking in the crashing waves when all of a sudden the three surfers who were further out than me simultaneously rode a wave beach-ward and I found myself alone in empty ocean. I couldn’t see any fins but the picture on the warning notice flashed into my mind and I found that though I was happy to sleep in the apartment and fill up my car, I needed a body Japan side of me to feel safe in the Pacific.

So I turned my back to the immenseness of Pacific Ocean and swam to shore.

Fast.

A letter from San francisco....Z

Do you remember Mike Bacsick?
He was the unfortunate pitcher that pitched the ball that Barry Bonds smashed to create the all time baseball home run career-record, or words to that effect. (See B).

The latest news is that a certain New Yorker, Matt Murphy, caught the ball and now is planning to auction the sphere online. This is reportedly not because he is a money grabbing opportunist but because he needs to pay his way through college, and since Barry Bond’s 715th ball was sold for 220 thousand dollars over half a million is expected and Mr Matt Murphy should be able to choose a good college.

Unfortunately neither Mike, Barry nor Matt begins with a Z so I can’t really use that fascinating titbit as anything more than an introduction.

Edward Galland Zelinsky however does have a surname beginning with a Z and he amassed a collection of antique automata which his son, Daniel Galland Zelinsky has inherited and displays for free in the Musee Mecanique which you can find tucked inside an old wharehouse down at the end of Fisherman’s Wharf past the steam of the open air sellers of crab, mussel and clam.It’s a fairly arbitrary collection, including at least three “laughing policeman”-type attractions but as a reminder of how amusement arcades once looked it is fascinating.

But Z belongs to Zero Emission Vehicles, something you will see emblazoned on the back of many of San Francisco’s trolley Buses.

Muni, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, founded in 1912, has targeted the year 2020 to be an emission free transit system, and the Zero Emission vehicles that you see on the street are an important step towards this achievement. It is an admirable goal but I do find myself asking how the trolley bus can be called a Zero Emission Vehicle, running as it is on electricity. How is this electricity generated and is that production emission free?

Still as you cycle along behind one of these busses there are no toxic fumes emitted which in itself is a joy. It is also fun watching the driver leave the vehicle and reposition the antennae-like receivers at the back of the vehicle when they jump from their place on the overhead cables, something that seems to happen fairly often. It’s a contradictory thing that inside the bus the drivers often seem grumpy and bad tempered but whenever they are outside repositioning cables they are friendly and conversational.

Apart from the Zero emissions the Muni bus system has two other brilliant features. Firstly, the fare for an adult is fixed at one dollar fifty and that includes a ticket that allows you to transfer to another bus within the following two hours. Secondly, each bus has a push down carrier on the front that allows you to store up to two push bikes; so you can ride all day in one direction and when you are two knackered to continue you can put the bike on the front of the bus and ride back.

Unfortunately you must have the exact change to pay for the ticket otherwise you risk the wrath of God and toxic fumes from the driver.

And I wouldn’t dare to use the bike rack without a bit of practice first.

A letter from San francisco....E

I live in Europe and don’t travel to American cities very often.

When I do, one of the things that strikes me, usually the first evening when I lay in bed with jet lag unable to sleep, is how it sounds different; the traffic, the sirens, the street.

In the morning, unable to sleep because of jet lag, I wander these streets to gain an idea of where I am and one of the many things that strike me is the way it smells different too.

Here in San Francisco the streets have smelt of coffee, cinnamon, ocean, garlic roasting, tortillas baking and unfortunately in some places urine. But above all of these it is the smell of the Eucalyptus tree that surprises me the most.

San Francisco is perhaps not famous for its trees although many associate the redwood with California. Just north outside of the city, an hour’s drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and along Highway 1 and you will find yourself at Muir Woods, a protected forest of Giant Redwoods. They are mighty (further north at the town of Leggett you can still find a drive- thru tree) and you feel insignificant among them but unfortunately the experience is tempered by the presence of a lot of other insignificants relating to the same experience.

One section known as cathedral Grove actually needs to remind us to be quiet so as the experience can be closer to holy than the crowds ordain. If you go there take the four-mile hike through the forest to the beach, then you will be alone, except for the occasional mountain lion; it is heartening that the mountainous areas north and south of the city are still home to Cougar and Condor.

I like Giant Redwoods but it is not a tree that you can imagine to smuggle home with you on the aeroplane. The Red Bottle Brush tree however makes me want to do just that. Now in late summer the streets of San Francisco are full of these and they are in celebratory bloom. The street that runs along side Fort Mason is a festival of colour and everywhere you turn you see another.

Funny thing is though no one you ask seems to know the name of the tree; one man that I saw sweeping up under a magnificent specimen in front of his house in the Haight section of town told me the name was “very annoying tree”.

I persevered, asking anyone I met that fitted my mental picture of a horticulturist (modelled on an image of my mother-in-law) and was close enough to a tree for me to point. Some looked at me as if I was crazy, some said that they didn’t know and one suggested Indian Flame Something; fanciful, poetic but inaccurate.

It turns out the family name is Myritaceae, genus name is callistemon and species name is Rigidus. Which all goes to explain why I have chosen Eucalyptus for the letter E.

I don’t know that the Eucalyptus is particularly “Californian”, I have marvelled at them many times in Spain for a start, but they grow well in this city, sometimes large.

The seeds that litter the floor can look like they fell from an aristocrats tweed jacket but the leaf is simple but possesses an aesthetic combination of curve and arrow, it is impossible not to pick one up and put it in your pocket or scrapbook.

They are not ubiquitous to the city, days can pass without being aware of them and then suddenly their bittersweet smell calls to you and you stop and turn.

Some of the most beautiful lie on the edge of Golden Gate Park, the long strip of “pre-park” known as the Panhandle. Even though this area of tree and grass is bordered by three lanes of traffic on each side it is the Eucalyptus that you smell, not the gasoline, something that also happens down in the Mission alongside Highway 101 as it races to leave the city.

If it were not for this surprising smell it would be easy to miss the Eucalyptus here in San Francisco.

Fort mason is a very beautiful place to walk standing as it does on a rocky peninsular skirted at some distance by the road, and leading from the Marina (and possibly the world’s biggest Safeway) to the calm and beauty of the beach hidden and often forgotten at the end of Fisherman’s Wharf past the Cannery.

There are very beautiful and colourful Bottle-Brush trees lining one side, cyclists, joggers and dog walkers to dodge, the weird twisted and tortured growth of bush trees (sorry I don’t know the real name but you will recognise them from this description if you see them), the Piers of Fort mason, The Golden Gate bridge, a strange statue and sightings of sailing boats, seals and Alcatraz Island all clamouring your attention.

But then suddenly you sense the pungent smell of Eucalyptus and surprised you stop and turn.

A letter from San Francisco....B

Mike Bacsik would be a good subject for the letter B. He is the guy (that everyone will forget) who pitched the ball the other day when San Francisco’s Barry Bonds broke baseball’s career home run record and set a new one at 756.

Unfortunately I’m not a baseball fan so I find it difficult to get excited about it, though there is one story I like. The baseball stadium sits alongside the water of the bay and each game a flotilla of small craft gather hoping that one of these home runs, particularly the 756th would be struck out of the park and then they can dive in and fight to be the owner of the historic ball. Apparently some folk inside the stadium take the opportunity of each huge crowd roar to throw a ball out into the water, which if anyone dives for will be found to have the word sucker engraved on it.

If I was a football fan I could probably make something of the fact that David Beckham arrived in California recently to play for a team in Los Angeles and the same day saw his shirt for sale down town in a Market Street shop. Unfortunately since his arrival he has been injured and only appeared on the substitute bench and the fans have taken to booing him.

So I have chosen Steve McQueen.

The Cannery is an old fish-canning factory down near Fisherman’s Wharf that has been converted into boutiques, bars and restaurants. The area is a largely expensive, tacky tourist trap full of shops selling Alcatraz Prisoner t shirts, woolly jumpers for anyone who forgot to pack wisely for the summertime in San Francisco, chocolate, key chains and that very gift you really don’t need.

There is also a small outdoor stage where street performers work and this month, for no apparent reason other than the love and celebration of celluloid, the Cannery has organised the open air screening of films made in or about the city; each Sunday evening at about eight or as the sun sets.

I went along to see Steve McQueen in a film I hadn’t seen since I was 14, the year that the film was made. Bullitt.

It was a good film then and it still is. Ok, compared to today’s action films the beginning is pedestrian and the assasination amateur, but once the film kicks in it as good as anything contemporary.

Free film night at the Cannery (The Cannery Rising) consists of a few of us gathering in the open courtyard and shifting the benches opposite the stage to around the small screen set up in front of the DVD projector. It is all gloriously low-key, low tech and family, but presented with such enthusiasm and joy that it was one of the best night outs I have had. The organiser introduced herself and asked each of us if we were locals or from out of town, went on to outline the programme of the next four films - each a week apart but a decade apart in production. Bob was available making popcorn in a microwave oven set up on a trestle table behind the pillar.

There must be something about San Francisco and open-air cinema; there is a programme this summer throughout the parks and even downtown in Union Square as well as this Cannery event. I saw Casablanca in Union Square earlier in July with about 400 other people. Some had taken carpet to sit on, others chairs - camping or deck. There were small tables set up, picnics, meals and bottles of wine shared amongst friends. When Rick appeared on screen we all cheered, the cheers and applause at the end was as good as the baseball stadium's.

In the Cannery we were a more intimate crowd but when those two cars started the chase up on the screen, through the streets of the city we were watching in, we too cheered. Some of the hills in San Francisco are really frightening to drive down for a newcomer, and to drive up seems impossible, it feels as if the car will just come to a halt and even topple over. In Bullitt some of the sequence is filmed from the car and in an open-air cinema you feel as if you are on a roller coaster.

Next they are showing Escape From Alcatraz though as it explains on the programme, along with the warning “remember to bring blankets and extra layers of clothing just in case it’s a chilly and foggy typical summer night”, there is always a chance that in case of “inclement weather the movie night will be postponed.”

I don’t think there is much chance of that, as in the two months I have been here I haven’t seen anything but blue skies. Bluer than Steve McQueen’s eyes.

A letter from San francisco....T

Two thoughts came to mind tonight. There is never enough time, and time stands still.

For me the first is certainly true about my summer break that is drawing too quickly to a close and I think the second is true when you fall in love, probably when you die, certainly when you are with someone who dies and then at other, random, possibly unexplainable times that are individual for each person.

Tonight was one of those.

I had left the apartment to go up Fillmore to the local bookshop, Book Browser, with a vague intention of maybe having a coffee on the bench outside the coffee shop next door before watching the people of Friday Night stream past.

Entering a slight meditative trance as I browsed the books on the table set up outside, a changing selection set by one of the owners inside, I became unaware of the taxis and cars that cruised past, the couples strolling, some hand in hand others out together for the first time and unsure how, or if, to proceed.

Slow Man (a novel), Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar (understanding philosophy through jokes), A Writer’s San Francisco (a guided journey for the creative soul), The Bird Artist (another novel).

And then time stood still and I became piercingly aware of every detail around me. I could shift attention from book titles (all of which I will probably buy) to the smell of burnt garlic rising from the pizza house down the hill, to the shine of the toenails of the girl sitting on the bench, to the labyrinthal patterns on the wall of the coffee shop, the neon reflected in the SUVs as they turn on the stop light, the tone of a voice, someone’s gait, the number of times they had crossed the road.

But most fixedly on the earthy and incandescent music coming from the violinist standing in the doorway of the furniture shop.

He was standing back near the door, framed on one side by an ugly leather sofa, on the other by two white and chintzy armchairs. Wearing a tweed jacket and black trousers, black-rimmed glasses, clean shaved, heavy eyebrows, he could have been a professor.

Everyone was walking past unaware, un-listening and missing a moment of beauty. The girls left the bench, I sat down. It was dark, the night fresh, fed by the breeze from the ocean. The girls came back. I made room. They shared chocolate, the music played on. The woman in pink top and silver hemmed white slacks crossed the road for a third time, a family of four headed down hill. The man walking alongside his date for the first time had put on his jacket that earlier he carried on his arm; his date wobbled on her diamante encrusted heels. The man at the next table closed his book and looked around. A woman struggling with a full plastic bag climbed the hill, laughing.

The violin played on.

The man from the coffee shop, going home for the evening, recognised the girls back from a summer trip and stopped to talk, I gave him my seat on the bench and went to talk to the violinist.

Then I took my bike and swept down the hill, feeling the time rushing past, precious few Friday evenings like this left this summer.

I wish I could make it stop, there is never enough.

Time.

A letter from San Francisco...D

Dump.

The guy who founded Gap stores, starting here in San Francisco, who is now a many times billionaire was in the news this week because he has decided to house his extensive art collection in his own private gallery which he will have built on hitherto open space near the Golden Gate Bridge. Not everyone is happy about this.

It coincides with a series of adverts for the shop that have appeared on bus stops around the city depicting an Audrey Hepburn-type beauty in classic pose. Otherwise the museum scene is fairly healthy.

There is a long running Matisse as sculptor exhibition in one of the main museums at one end of the scale and a fascinating exhibition inspired by cross border immigration, legal and illegal in a tiny gallery down in the Mission district. The latter is free to enter, the former, like other museums in San Francisco, is free on the first Tuesday of the month. A fairly complicated formula to remember and plan visits around.

However if you want to visit the City Dump you can do it for free but only on the third Saturday of the month.

The Dump might not be a museum nor seem to be an essential visit for the tourist in San Francisco but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the trip across town to the Southside.

The Dump runs an artist in residence programme, something that is unique in the U.S.A. It is also something that they are rightfully proud about. The New York dump does have a resident artist but here it is something different. In San Francisco the artist is paid by the Dump, given use of a studio for three months and has 24 hour access to studio, equipment and tools as well as the Dump; up to 8 artists are chosen each year, some part time, and come from all disciplines and in the past has even included a mother and son team of instrument builder and composer.

The idea is to encourage recycling awareness by inviting an artist to rummage and create and finally exhibit. The initiative began several years ago when folk at the Dump heard about a local woman who was cleaning up the streets around her house.

Apparently she discovered discarded love letters and through careful cleaning was able to compile both sides of the communication that she assembled into some sort of scrapbook.

She started to clean up further a field, came to the attention of the Dump people and when they invited her down to see the way refuse was processed she was horrified and inspired by the amount of free art material available.

The third Saturday of the month visit is really designed for potential artists in residence to learn more about the way it works but is also the only opportunity for outsiders to visit the sculpture garden that has been created on site and which houses some of the work that has been created, along with salvaged plants and paths made from the demolished downtown freeway.

The dump is a smelly place much loved by seagulls, and the visit includes a great presentation where you learn about the efforts that are put into recycling and the horrendous quantity of rubbish that is tipped into landfill everyday; you also get to visit the artist in his studio.

The present incumbent is Nemo Gould who is a kinetic sculptor. This means he understands and uses electrical components in his work and was very excited about some transformers he had salvaged.

He exhibits in September but some of his pieces are finished and I hope it doesn’t spoil the surprise to say that he has a beautiful television set with dancing corkscrews.

The visit is both humbling and shaming. It is incredible how much waste we as a species produce, and incapable we are of dealing with it. We were recommended to look at a series of articles in the L.A.Times called “Altered Oceans”, and if you have read this far I would recommend that you check it out online too. It is frightening stuff.

The other basic message of the visit is you can’t believe what people throw away. Someone asked those responsible for overseeing what arrives to keep an eye out for a working lap top computer. Their reply was, “what make?”

A letter from San Francisco...J

John Coltrane.

Wander down Fillmore Street during the week and you might not notice the glass windows and pulled down blinds of number 1286.

Wander down there today and you might notice me sitting in this internet café though. It’s my first time here and it’s weird to see the other eight people who are all sitting at separate tables, each with a drink and an open laptop. Some are looking worried as if they were doing homework, one guy is very intensively focussed though he is also plugged into his I-Pod so he may be grooving. The guy next to me is looking at a map but I can’t see whereof without appearing rude. The woman opposite has a slight frown and is chewing her nails……but I digress.

Wander down Fillmore with a little more attention and you might notice, in passing, the poster on the door of 1286. It depicts two soprano saxophones arranged in the form of a cross, black line drawing on a white background.Wander down Fillmore on a Sunday morning at about 12.30 though and the sound of A Love Supreme played by four or five saxophones, and I guarantee that you will at least look in through the open doors. You might even be tempted in. As those inside will gladly tell you; “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

1286 is the present home of the John Coltrane African Orthodox Church; as its name explains, a church dedicated to the memory of St John Coltrane and the service begins with a beautiful and organic rendition of A Love Supreme in which the Reverend, Dean, and Chaplin (not Charlie) all play saxophones. They are accompanied by drums and keyboard, bongo drums and double bass as well as any tambourine taken up by the congregation.

The Reverend will also improvise on bongo or tambourine, sing, cajole the congregation for being too silent and dance with any of the worshipers who get up and jive.“Let us sing all songs to God” is proclaimed from the life size image of a sanctified John Coltrane and that’s what happens at 1286, every Sunday until 3pm.

There will also be a lesson, a reading, probably sung, and prayers.The church was inspired by an apparently miraculous concert given by John Coltrane and witnessed by the Reverend who realised that he was witnessing a man touched by the Lord and so dedicated his church and ministry to the man, using his music for the liturgy every Sunday.

Although at times it is difficult to see where the jazz solos end and the service starts what is very, very apparent is the love that emanates from this tiny church so easily overlooked in “God’s own country”. And even though the Reverend is a passionate orator and his sermons, whether on Love, Piece and Perfection in all Creation or Unity in Trinity will inspire and reside with you, it is this sense of joy and love that you will leave with if you wander down to Fillmore 1286 on a Sunday at about 12.30. enter and stay a while.

http://www.coltranechurch.org/index.htm

A letter from San francisco....Q

In 1968 San Francisco started to recognise that certain places within the city deserved the official status of Historic Landmark.

The first building so honoured was The Mission Dolores which, built as it was in 1782is the oldest building here. The most recent addition to the list is the James Lick Peoples Laundry, which received the accolade three years ago, though there are other, more recent decisions still pending.

Number 100 on the list is the truly inspiring Castro Theatre, a cinema built by the Nasser brothers (who produced the first Lucy show) two years before Charlie Chaplin made his film The Gold Rush. This weekend marked the 85th birthday celebration of the event and the cinema hosted a three-day celebration.

On Saturday I rushed through a short stack of hot cakes and maple syrup at the 24-hour café around the corner and went along to the matinee of Bugs Bunny cartoons and Laurel and Hardy’s film Way out West. Entrance price of 25 cents, the original 1922 admission, was payable at the toll house-like box office that stands separate at the centre of the foyer.

Inside the building is breathtaking. It can seat 1600 people, and although it wasn’t full it was close. The ceiling looks as if it is made of leather and the walls are decorated with what look like Greek pillars. The effect is sumptuous, with a small hint of Bordello. There is a stage in front of the screen, it was originally a vaudeville stage, and set into that is a Wurlitzer organ; it is one of the few remaining cinemas equipped to show silent films. Sweeping red curtains fronting the screen, the circle like the bow of a ship and the slope of the stalls to the seats at the front all combine the sense of expectation as you enter the auditorium.

We were treated to a spoken welcome from one of the Nasser family that still own the Castro, a short film explaining the history, a trivia contest and interviews with the current Wurlitzer player; then the cartoons and then the main attraction.

I returned the next day to be sure not to miss the projection of the silent film Phantom of the Opera with live Wurlitzer accompaniment, the film being totally upstaged in my opinion by the Wurlitzer and player rising triumphantly from the orchestra pit to stage level at the finale.

Before the event I had been worrying obsessively about how to complete this alphabetic trip around San Francisco, one or two letters proving stubbornly elusive. U had been one, and I had even considered going to the Ukele exhibition currently in town, or using the fact that the original idea for the United nations was born in this city before visiting the University Botanical Gardens.

This weekend I was able to settle Q.

I was late for the screening of the Phantom and as I settled into a seat in the centre of the third row the last trivia question rang out; What is the name of the last remaining Laurel and Hardy fan club in operation?

Seems I was the only person in the theatre who knew, so I won a Castro Cinema T-shirt.

Q for quiz then.

a letter from San francisco....U

Now, U is one of the letters that has been worrying me about this self imposed “I have to have something for each letter of the alphabet”.

Sure I could always fall back on “United States” or “Unexpected Events” (the writer of the series comes from San Francisco) but both solutions seemed to me to be unacceptable (much as Zinfandel Wine seemed too easy for Z.

For one moment i thought i might have to go to the Evolution of The Ukulele exhibition at the museum of craft and folk art, so I was very happy the other day when I was idly flicking through the San Francisco Chronicle and came across an article about the Amorphophallus Titanum. And since yesterday was one of those days that John Steinbeck once described as having air “washed and polished like a lens”, I decided it was time to escape the simmering concrete of downtown, suffer the crash of gears and snarl of steel on the freeway, amongst the struts and girders, bars and bolts of Bay Bridge and head east across the blue bay to the University of California Botanical gardens.

You have to leave the freeway and slip along shady boulevards, start to climb towards the wooded hills and there in an almost perfect valley fold, neither halfway up or down you see the Cacti and redwoods of the Botanical garden.

A young boy, about five years old was crossing the car park and stopped to ask, “Are you going to see the big flower?”

Amorphophallus is the largest flowering structure in the plant world, originally from Sumatra in Indonesia but today doing its stuff back of Berkley. And thousands had already come and visited. The gardens are beautiful; worthy of a visit for themselves but it has been two years since the last Amorphophallus event, and the first time in 12 years for this particular specimen.

A lot of the time the plant resembles little, a sort of stone like root that does nothing. Then it sends up a single leaf that in fact looks like a tree and then after a few months goes back to being inert. But every once in a while (12 years in this case) it sends up a leaf that turns into something else (a spadix) and people get excited. The Botanical Garden has documented the event on its web page and you can check it out here;

http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/program/event_des/titan.html

In the tropical greenhouse six of us listened wide-eyed to the enthusiastic explanations of the volunteer who was on permanent duty to answer every question we could think of. (A paintbrush was used for pollination, Toucans sometimes eat the fruit).

It was the little boys third visit so he had witnessed the exceptional three-inch a day growth, but all of us had missed the smell. The flower is also known as the corpse flower as when it opens it emits the smell of rotting flesh to attract pollinating beetles and flies.

The local free newspaper the Bay Guardian described the event so well in its listings that I’ll quote directly. "The flower’s name comes from the ancient Greek words amorphous, meaning misshapen, phallus meaning penis, and titan meaning giant. So there you have it. There’s a giant misshapen penis flower booming at the University of California Botanical garden. Are you really going to miss this?”

No way!

A letter from San francisco....Y

There are a lot of museums in San Francisco but in a recent “readers poll” for the free magazine San Francisco Bay Guardian it was the deYoung museum that was voted top.

It is situated in the middle of Golden Gate Park, the great swathe of green that was created in the western part of the city and now runs from the top of Haight Street all the way to the ocean. The park itself is well worth a visit, it’s a “something for everyone” sort of place; slightly moth eaten Buffalos roaming not-very free, slightly grungy hippy hill, placid boating lake, nicely smelly rose garden, statuesque and sometimes swimming turtles, enthusiastic and free Lindy hop classes on Sunday and best of all the sumptuous spectacle of the roller skating dancers; and from the top of the deYoung tower you get a panoramic view of most of this and the city aside it.

When I visited there was an exhibition of work from the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. Hiroshi seems to mix photography and some fairly personal and interesting philosophy. Or perhaps it’s musings, and maybe its fairly eccentric musings.

There was a series of seascapes that were inspired by the question: Is it possible to view a landscape today and see it as primitive man saw it?

Hiroshi says yes with the sea, no with everything else.

The photos apparently all of ancient seas - but to at least one casual observer, the same one - had a pleasing calming aura, but his photos of cinema screens were both brighter and for me more interesting.

Here he tried to answer the question what would happen if he exposed the film to the entire light of a film as it was projected?

A bright white but blank screen is the answer but the resulting photos are powerful images, just a shame that they were all taken in empty auditoriums.

The best thing I think though was one photo easily overlooked in his series on American architecture where he pushed the depth of field to extreme limits to blur and obscure the irrelevant and leave a ghost like image of the essential.

It was not the cross of light that remained in a grainy church that caught my imagination as much as the blurry Twin Towers standing starkly alone in a landscape hidden to the camera. If he went there today all that would remain is that which you can’t see in the photo, a strangely enigmatic thought.

Now you may point out that deYoung is not really a Y, so since every first Tuesday of the month is free museum day I went to see another photographer.

Joachim Schmid, is a German and his exhibition ‘Photoworks 1982-2007’ is in town until October. He comes over as both genius and completely crazy, probably the ideal combination for an artist.

He founded the Institute for the Reprocessing of Used Photographs having claimed that no new photos should be taken until the old ones had been used up. He was submerged by donations but first among them were a collection of studio portraits from a professional photographer.

They had all been systematically cut in half to avoid reproduction but Joachim was inspired to match halves together to create some startling images and then re-photograph them.

At other times he collects discarded photos in the streets, reconstitutes torn ones and catalogues them. The collection is now too large to exhibit so at each gallery he makes a random selection. There were about 100 on show here.

This almost makes him the photographer who doesn’t take photos, which is another enigmatic thought and a good place to finish.

The museum by the way was the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts, downtown at Third and Mission so that’s..Y

A letter from San francisco....W

White Zinfandel Wine.

The other night we were invited over to the other side of the bay in Oakland to have dinner with Martin, a local artist, jazz drummer and magician who also happens to be a big fan of the circus and has notched up an impressive, though also worrying, 130 visits. I have to confess I watched him the other night and he still laughs at every joke.

I got lost following the handwritten directions to his house and ended up in a decidedly risky neighborhood which offered a last chance to buy some ice cream, requested by our host, and a bottle of wine.

There was a liquor and grocery store on the corner, heavily defended by an iron grill over the windows and door, so I parked as close as legally entitled and ran the few yards to gain access. This did not look like a place to loiter, nor to find a bottle of wine. But there in the bottom corner of the floor to ceiling fridges that ran the length of the back wall, I found a bottle, a jug really, of White Zinfandel.

Zinfandel wine (which I would have used for Z if needed) is a Californian wine. Apparently it was once believed that the grape originated here but in fact it was at the outset an Italian grape. Its one of those “hearty red wines, with a hint of pepper and cherry”, so imagine my surprise when my jug of White Zinfandel turned out to be a hearty rose colour. Assuming from the surroundings that the owner may well have made the brew in his basement with engine oil and disinfectant I paid the money and ran, not wanting to seem aggressive by questioning.

Martin, who lives at the better end of the street, seemed unfazed when I offered him the bottle, in fact red white wine seemed perfectly acceptable to him. The fact that it was ice cold passed without comment too, though to my friends in France this would have been heresy. In fact our early conversation centered on the three tubs of Hagen daz ice cream, one of which was new to both of us, banana split flavour. Martin showed me his tub of black, raspberry chocolate, which he considers to be the best and we discussed the new “Special Reserve “ series of flavours, before settling down to look at some of his artwork.

Well he is a very talented man, obviously obsessive (how else could you explain those 130 visits) shamingly energetic and productive.

Apparently when he first arrived in California and being a fan of Chaplin (whose film the Goldrush features a boot eating scene using a giant shoe constructed especially by a liquorice factory in San Francisco) he organized a party and invited all the people still alive who had worked with the great man.

Anyway, next to the framed signed photo of Chaplin is one of Martin's most interesting works. It is part of a series of Trompe d’oeil pictures that he created for an exhibition, and at first look seems to be a letter that is attached to a framed piece of wall. As you try to pick it up you realize that not only is it a painting but that the letter is written backwards and needs to be viewed through a mirror to be understood. The mirror is in the drawer under the painting and has the same monogrammed name as the solicitors to whom the letter is addressed. The letter is from Harry Houdini and requests that on his death his coffin should be lined with pillows stuffed with letters sent to him by his mother. It is apparently a reproduction of a real letter that Harry Houdini wrote to his solicitor, and should be seen as indicative of the detail Martin puts into everything, his painting, his jazz, his magic and his hosting.

The necessity of which seems to have escaped the makers of White Zinfandel wine, which is in fact dark pink, and uses the same grape as Red Zinfandel, only with the skin removed.

A letter from San francisco....V

Ventana Wilderness.

There are two ways to drive south out of San Francisco. Route 101, a sometimes 8 lane freeway that takes you out past the airport and which is hot, crowded, noisy and insane, or Highway 1, which you can pick up by Golden gate bridge and is considered by many to be a national treasure.

Highway 1 runs along the coast, hugging it, embracing it following every twist and turn of the Pacific. It runs North of the Golden gate bridge too, but if you drive south, through the city and the suburb of Pacifica (very good place for learning surfing apparently) you start to cross what will be Pumpkin fields in the autumn and after an hour come to Half Moon Bay. From then on you are on a small two-lane highway, the Pacific Ocean on your right, farms on the left.

And nobody.

The next town is Santa Cruz but before you arrive there are many bays, creeks and beeches where you can poke around in tide pools or sleep with the sound of surf in your ears. Of course there are many reminders that camping is prohibited but that doesn’t stop people doing it.

So everyone camps by the sea but moves on early in the morning before the authorities start work.

After Santa Cruz, highway 1 follows the sweep of the bay and takes you to Monterey three hours from the city, next is Carmel though it is difficult to say where one ended and the next began, then there is The Carmel River beach, an almost perfect little bay of pebbles, mysterious blue sea and dark brown kelp beds off shore.

This is the beginning of the Big Sur and another hour will take you to Big Sur River and the Pfeifer Big Sur state park. Another half mile and the visitor centre is where you check in and register for the 10-mile hike along the pine ridge trail, through the Ventana wilderness to Sykes hot spring.

I first heard about these hot springs when I visited the Big Sur in 1985 and since then I have wondered what the experience would be like.

Well, it’s a long walk. And it takes about five hours to arrive. And it gets hot and you can’t carry enough water AND food AND tent to sleep in, though on the return trip I saw someone carrying a guitar - and the last 10 miles are the worst.

Oh and its really hard to find the springs when you get there.

But you can see the distant ocean sometimes, smell the eucalyptus, walk under some unimaginably high redwoods, watch the blue jays darting through the pines and pick wild sage and fennel.

The springs are natural hot springs that rise halfway up a small cliff, and overtime and with a bit of help from humans, they have created five pools in the cliffside where you can lie and soak, occasionally taking a cool bathe in the river that flows alongside.

And you can watch small trout watching you and watch the water lizard dive.

And feel good.

A letter from San francisco....A

Market Street is the main drag in San Francisco, a bit like Oxford Street in London, and similarly you will probably hate it, avoid it and end up going there constantly.

Market Street Gallery is a small art gallery next door to a grocery store in the seedy part of Market Street, near the skid row hotels and the smell of street piss.

Tonight though the gallery was decorated with pink ribbon, glasses of wine were at hand and a few beautiful people made it there to celebrate the opening night of the fifth annual Altered Barbie exhibition. Me too.

Around the corner the Barbie Ball, a sister event and maybe funnier, was in full swing but in the gallery the results of artistic Barbie mutilation, adaptation and inspiration were on display. And sale if you had a spare 200 dollars, or so.

There was Barbie as the Madonna, transformed as hot rod racer and jet fighter plane, an abstract painting of garish colour with stuck on plastic Barbie shoes which was quite nice, a very low key yet pleasing series of ceramic tiles based on her image and an interesting fifties style nude photo with superimposed Barbie head.

And then there were the viewers, men in drag and pink ribbon, women in improbable heels and girly stockings.

And a beautiful black pussy cat, one of the few that I have met here in San Francisco which seems to be very much a dog loving town.

Someone I met, who was walking six dogs, explained that there are more dogs in San Francisco than children. It’s probably true as I have seen very few relatively.

On Saturday the local park is advertising a “Dog Days” where apart from free micro chipping and agility courses, there will also be a canine good citizen test, a dog communicator, holistic pet products a dog caricaturist and dog massage.

The latter probably FOR your four footed friend, not BY.

I didn’t have a drink at the gallery; the day was surreal enough already.

A...Altered Barbie

A letter from San francisco....S

Stencils

Stenciled Graffiti.

Like every big city, and many smaller ones, San Francisco has its share of graffiti. Some appears aimless some visionary.

For the first time here though I noticed that people were also using the pavement as their surface. Many people don’t look at their feet as they walk, but here, once you do, you begin to see another world unfolding. At first it just appeared to be artist signatures but then I started noticing the stenciled work. Someone was cutting stencils and spraying onto the paving stones. A foot in a high heel shoe, a butterfly, a cheeky butler, a woman’s face with the text “evil has a sweet side” and a pair of angels wings with the letters DS.

I started to photograph them and this morning whilst looking around the Lower Haight section of town I saw stenciled the words “walk with me” and an arrow. So I did.

Laugh with me, share with me, smile with me, believe with me, grow with me, trust with me...

It continued and I followed each turn, each road crossed, and I wove my way through the streets to the Mission District and Dolores Park. And there I found the stenciled love story of which I had heard and had in fact left the house with the vague intention of finding.

The stenciled love story is a series of graffited text that can be read in a 4-mile area of the city, and read in different order and towards one of four endings. It was a beautiful day; the sky was a crisp blue with just an occasional lost thread of mist drifting over so I set off, backwards at first trying to recreate the story.

“She tells him about the dream journals that she’s kept since she was 12, filled with watercolor sketches and the lyrics of subconsciously composed songs.”

That was an extract.

However graffiti, even when artistic and well planned, remains a criminal activity. Here in San Francisco damage up to 400 dollars is punishable by a 10 000 dollar fine and/or a year in jail. Above 400 dollar damage can be a felony, up to 3 years away and a 50,000 fine.

And then there are the vigilantes to contend with.

Peter bray a volunteer with Graffiti watch reportedly gets up two hours before work every day to paint over graffiti he finds in the mission district where he lives.

I would blame him as being responsible for the fact that I never found the beginning of the story, though he claims in an interview in this week’s free newspaper that he doesn’t bother with sidewalks, because no one looks.

Which means I will go out again and try to find the beginning of “She loves the moon”

A letter from San francisco....O

Ocean Beach
San Francisco being as it is on a bay is surrounded on three sides by water. Two of these sides are bay (and therefore ocean really) the third is pure ocean pounding in from Asia.

Jump on a number 31 bus and for one dollar fifty you are there, a fifteen-minute drive from the corner of Turk Street and Fillmore where we are staying. As you drive along Turk street you pass the police patrol installed to try to quell local gang activity and then you rise up to the University campus. From the top you can already see if the ocean is covered in fog, or clear, then you descend past the guy who does up old Dodges, Lincolns and Cadillacs and Turk becomes Balboa and takes you due west to the ocean.

The last section of the drive is through the residential area of Richmond where the street gets wider the houses lower and the colours more pastel and there is an inescapable feeling of suburban seaside town. It could be Margate, or san Tropez. At this point the ocean stretches from Cliff house far south into the haze of the hills behind half moon bay. A swath of green interrupts the villas and flats where Golden gate Park reaches the shore and then the sand dunes rise up and obscure the houses behind.

The shore forms an immense sweep of sand and wave, five lines of breakers and a constant rumble. The wind can be intense, the sea can be “kick ass cold” and when the sky is blue the sand is too hot to cross bare-foot, but it is beautiful. At the edge of the city, at the edge of the Pacific.

By the waters edge the sand is hard and compact, a perfect place to run but also to sit. Some people surf, some kayak, there are always one or two children screaming excitedly in the waves, always a sand picture. Some people sleep, others walk, there are sand gliders, tai chi classes, sunset gazes, today there was a group of Frisbee spinners and acrobats. Dogs love the place and many of San Francisco’s professional dog walkers come here, and there are always gulls, sometimes a hundred together standing, watching. Pelicans swoop low over the water in long unbroken chains and past Cliff House, at Baker Beach I followed a group of Dolphins. It’s forbidden to have fires on the beach but people do and at night it creates a primeval beauty.

Sometimes a storm changes the detritus strewn on the beach; this week suddenly there were hundreds of jellyfish, and a complete laundry basket, but you will always find broken shells, opened mussels, a crab part, a single shoe, feathers, here and there smooth pocket size pebbles and seaweed, in strands, in tangles, in single threads or uprooted matted embrace. If you are patient and search steadfastly you will find unbroken sand dollars.