(6) SF's curiosities

One of many wonderful streets of San Francisco was named to honor Lech Walesa - maybe Lech Walesa Street is not a major route, it is not spectacular, either. But it was a nice surprise. Congratulations, Mr President;) (S)

The picture below was taken from a park on a hill - Alamo Square - and shows San Francisco's probably most popular landmark - the "Painted Ladies". They are seven wooden Victorian houses built in the mid-1890s, famous for their colors and elaborate carpentry. Usually they are photographed from the other side of the hill so the wonderful contrast between the painted ladies and the towers of the Financial District far behind them is properly presented. This shot is different since the day was overcast and foggy and nothing behind the houses was visible anyway;(

I don't know why this building looks so very American to me;)
Triangular buildings are quite frequent in San Francisco - in the vicinity of the hotel.

San Francisco's landmark is green Columbus Tower, which was built in 1907. The building was threatened with demolition in the 1970s, but Francis Ford Coppola bought and restored it and Columbus Tower is still standing full of grace:

Did I mention somewhere that the streets of San Francisco smell of marijuana? I couldn't believe my nose - the smell is omnipresent!!! No wonder San Francisco is called very liberal, life there still feels (smells) like the 1960s;)

Also cars parked in the streets look as if they remembered the 1960s;) (S)

Remember the fire escape stairs in the final scene of "Pretty Woman"? Well, they were not just constructed for the movie - they are real:

Below is a photo of a very famous bookshop - City Lights (at 261 Columbus Avenue), which has been a literary landmark of the city since the 1950s. City Lights was the first paperback bookstore in the country and it published the earliest Beat poets (starting with Allen Ginsberg's Howl). I bought myself quite a selection of books there, though they were not connected with the Beat Generation.

City Lights bookstore is located in a very interesting area - North Beach, which was frequently patronized by Beat artists, Here is the view of the building across the street:

Here is what you can see when you go out of City Lights and look right - the Transamerica Pyramid. So this literary center is quite literally in the center.

Another very popular spot in San Francisco is Fisherman's Wharf. In the area you can buy spooky souvenirs, garish T-shirts, mugs, caps and what have you because Fisherman's Wharf, which is at the northern waterfront, is swarming with tourists. It used to be a commercial fishing area in the past, but now fish can be bought on pier 49 in the early hours of the day only. The place has changed totally into a recreation area. Here is Pier 39, built from wood salvaged from abandoned boats. It is packed with shops, amusement arcades and restaurants:

Well, finally - the island of Alcatraz, which is easily visible from Fisherman's Wharf and takes you by surprise, because you do not expect it to be so close to San Francisco, no matter how many times you've seen The Rock (for Sean Connery, of course;). Alcatraz became a federal "maximum security, minimum privilege" prison in 1934 and was closed in 1963. All those who were considered incorrigible criminals beyond redemption were sent here. Inmates had minimum privileges: no newspapers, radio or TV, a vast majority never received a visitor even. What is more, inmates could see from their tiny cell windows the lights beaming from San Francisco and only imagine the hustle and bustle of the life which was denied to them. No wonder that out of 1,576 convicts ever imprisoned here 36 attempted to escape. 5 of them may have succeeded - nobody knows since they seem to have disappeared.

Here is Alcatraz seen from the ferry - gloomy, lifeless, and with no pelicans. The name of the island comes from Spanish and means the Isle of Pelicans. But, as the story goes, the name was not applied by 18th century navigators to this island but to another island in the area - now known as Yerba Buena Island.
Alcatraz ends the tour of San Francisco, which I made with the help of Fodor's Exploring San Francisco (Fodor's Travel Publications).

(5) San Francisco's landmarks

Like no other city in the U.S., San Francisco is known for its gay and lesbian communities. Gays and lesbians have become largely integrated and accepted in San Francisco's community since the 1970s, that is the time of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movements.
The symbol of Gay and Lesbian Pride is the Rainbow Flag, which was first used in 1978 in San Francisco. There are 6 colors on the flag: red=life, orange=healing, yellow=sun, green=nature, blue=harmony, purple=spirit.

The district in which the gay and lesbian communities live is the Castro - in the 1970s it became the largest GL neighborhood in the world. A famous gay person associated with the Castro was Harvey Milk, who in 1977 became the first openly gay city official in the country.

In the Castro you can see a higher-than-average proportion of men in the streets, and you notice that they care about the way they look - quite a nice view it was;). Since keeping fit requires appropriate facilities, Gyms are frequent at Castro Street:

Gays have been present in San Francisco ever since the 1840s Gold Rush, which turned San Francisco into a booming city. You can imagine thousands of fortune seekers, mostly single men, who arrived here when the news of the discovery of gold near Sacramento spread: the population rocketed then from 812 in 1848 to 20,000 in 1949. They were called "49ers". The community thus created was quite lawless, women were scarce, family and local community pressure was absent, plus, there was hardly anything to do in the town in free time apart from drinking. And drinking, as you well know, removes inhibitions;)

Another wave of gay freedom came with WWII, when San Francisco became an outpost for military operations on the Pacific.
After a period of severe police harassment in the gloomy 1950s, the political upheavals of the 1960s allowed Gays and Lesbians to enjoy relative peace and quiet.

Another interesting neighborhood in San Francisco is the Latino district Mission, originally called Mission Dolores. It was founded in 1776 by the Spanish colonizers. The Latino population in San Francisco grew significantly between the 1950s - as a result of the post-war boom in jobs in factories and shipyards - and the 1980s which saw a huge influx of immigrants from Central America due to the political turmoil in their mother countries. Here is a surprisingly quiet and very neat street in the Mission District.

The huge hamburger is a sign that San Francisco Latino people feel "vury Amurkin";) (S)

Latino people are God-fearing people, so Mission Dolores Basilica is a central point in the area. At the back of the Basilica there is a park offering beautiful greenery.

The western part of the city prides itself on one of the largest urban parks in the world - Golden Gate Park (405ha). You begin to grasp the park's size when you want to get to one of the hundreds of points of interest hidden in its greenery and you get lost instead. Here is the Conservatory of Flowers - a splendid example of SF's Victorian architecture.

Located in Golden Gate Park is the de Young Museum, which contains a major collection of American art. On the way to the museum's entrance you pass a huge stone. When you look carefully, you will notice a fissure in the stone and in the pavement - it was caused by the 1989 earthquake.

Michael de Young was a publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, who organized a midwinter exposition in the park in 1894. The museum was built as a memorial to the Expo and given the name after de Young's death in 1925.
Here is the Museum building:

When I visited the Museum, there was a special exhibition titled "The Glass Garden" by the artist Dale Chihuly. I loved it, (just take a look at his website - a marvel!)

San Francisco is best visible from the Bay - here is a view on Telegraph Hill - once an area where artists lived, now the most sought-for addresses, where houses cost millions of dollars because the view is so beautiful. The streets are not though - very steep, very densely covered with (quite narrow) houses.

Sitting at the top of Telegraph Hill is Coit Tower which was designed to resemble a fire hose (well...). Coit Tower has a very interesting history - it was named after a remarkable lady, Lillie (Hitchcock) Coit, who was obsessed with fires and firefighters. At the time (she arrived in SF in 1851), fires blazed very frequently, not to say regularly, in the city so she had a lot of opportunities to join the firefighter crew of which she was an honorary (and exotic) member and combat fires.

Brought up to be a lady, Lillie preferred to wear men's clothes, smoke cigars and play poker - the woman who made subversion her lifestyle (her contemporaries probably called her eccentric, you might call her a drag king;).
Coit Tower (64m) was completed in 1933. It was built for $100,000 left by Lilly after her death as a memorial to SF volunteer firefighters.

The walls inside Coit Tower are covered with murals in the tradition of Diego Rivera (better known probably as Frida Kahlo's unfaithful husband). The murals, which were created in the early 1930s, depict the laborers of SF and display leftist sympathies of their creators. They are very typical of the 1930s in style and contents.

And, finally, the view from Coit Tower - far ahead the Golden Gate Bridge is hiding in the fog. No wonder people are ready to pay millions to have it every morning - click on it to make it grow.

(4) Walking in SF's districts: Financial and Chinatown

In the center you can see the hotel in which I stayed during my week in San Francisco - the Westin, at 3rd and Market Street. Market Street is probably the most important street in SF, as it runs through the city from the Ferry Building to the south-western fringes of the city. It can be compared to Fifth Avenue or Champs-Elysees.
The hotel is located in the vicinity of the Financial District, and it offers beautiful views from your hotel room window, provided you are high enough (I was on the tenth floor and it was high enough).

(S) Here is another view of the hotel - the picture is taken from Yerba Buena Gardens. Yerba Buena was the name of the town when California belonged to Mexico and was not California yet but Alta California. Yerba Buena became San Francisco in 1847, when it was claimed by the U.S. Now Yerba Buena is an arts center and a nice recreation area.

And here another view from Yerba Buena Gardens - the Westin hotel is on the right (barely visible), it competes with the Hilton on the left. Amidst the huge hotel buildings you can spot a church - what a difference from European architecture, where a church or a cathedral building would dominate the landscape.

(S) San Francisco's Financial District is a forest of sky-scrapers where commercial offices are located. When you enter this forest, you feel quite surreal, with all the glass and metal reflecting the neighboring buildings. Even clouds are not real, as they are mere reflections of those in the sky. Here a most beautiful view on the Hobart Building - San Francisco's landmark. The building is situated at Market Street and Montgomery Street. It was completed in 1914 and with its 87 meters was the second tallest building in SF at the time. A standing ovation to its designer!!!

And here is another view of SF sky scrapers:

SF architects thoughtfully combine the old and the new: here is what may have been considered a sky scraper in the 19th century:

Another landmark among San Francisco's many symbols is the Transamerica Pyramid built in 1972. It does dominate the city's skyline with a 65-m tall spire on top of the 48th floor of the building. The best view of the Pyramid is from a distance (S):

The Financial District is best viewed from the sea, except that the fog can seriously spoil the spectacle. With the fog it seems that the buildings are so tall that they reach the sky.

It is hard to point to a center in an American city in the way centers are identifiable in European cities, but Union Square seems to be such a center in San Francisco: it is pedestrian friendly (you can sit down with a cup of coffee at a table in a sidewalk cafe or on the many wide steps), it is green, it offers space for street (and not only) painters and - most importantly - it is surrounded by big-name department stores, fashion outlets and luxury hotels.

Neighboring with the Financial District is San Francisco's Chinatown - a very distinctive ethnic neighborhood. Chinatown is not big (only 24 blocks) and it gives shelter to the largest Asian community outside Asia (around 75,000 people). Out of over 7 million Asians living in America, 35% live in California. No wonder SF Chinatown is quite crowded (S):Chinatown differs from the Financial District also because, with so many people crowding its sidewalks, it is not so neat after all. Chinese immigrants were forced into Chinatown in the late 1800s due to racist restrictions. It seems that every nation must find themselves a whipping boy, and Americans once blamed all their problems and failures on the Chinese (the crisis after the Gold Rush, the Great Depression), forgetting that it was mainly Chinese workers who were hard-working enough to persevere in the harsh conditions at the construction of the American railway, for example. (S)

Neat or not neat, the district adds color to the city as Chinatown architecture is very exotic (read: fascinating) to a European traveler;) (S)

(3) The Bridges of San Francisco

The Golden Gate Bridge is the most easily recognizable view associated with San Francisco. The bridge was built in the 1930s and at the time had the longest suspension bridge span (the longest suspended roadway between the towers) in the world. The bridge is 2.5 km long, and its towers are 48-story high. The bridge spans the strait which is called the Golden Gate - it connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Surprisingly, the Golden Gate was never seen by the Spanish explorers from the Ocean and it was only in the 18th century that a European exploration team found it as an obstacle in their way north. This picture was taken from the ferry:

The Golden Gate Bridge can be crossed by car (six lanes altogether, three in each direction, it costs $4 to drive to San Francisco, it's free when you drive out of SF), by bike and on foot. I took this picture walking towards SF:

The Bridge is painted the color called international orange for two reasons: first, it makes the Bridge visible in the frequent fog; second, it helps prevent corrosion. Here is a nice view on the Bay, with the Rock (Alcatraz) visible between the gigantic ropes:

When you walk over the bridge and look carefully around, you may spot the following notice:

Originally, I found the warning of the fatal and tragic consequences of jumping from the bridge amusing, given that it takes just one look down the bridge and you can guess it yourself. But then, the Bridge is frequently covered in thick fog, so maybe a potential desperate swimmer has to be informed of his/her precarious location:

The majestic tower's peak hidden in the fog. The picture below was taken from the ferry, just click on it...

And, finally, driving along the Golden Gate Bridge:

The Golden Gate Bridge may be the most famous bridge in America, but it is the Bay Bridge (the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge) that was to be the longest in the world when it was completed a year earlier than the Golden Gate Bridge (1936). This Bridge is 13 km long and it took three years and the lives of 27 workers to construct it. Here the steel figure of a huge spider welcomes you on the way to the pier from which to view the Bay Bridge:

The Bay Bridge can be crossed by car only (the above-water sections), if I remember correctly, there are 5 lanes for the cars to drive along. This picture was taken on the way to San Francisco - another $5 or so:

The Bay Bridge is a complex structure: the top above-water section leads to SF; when you drive out of SF, you go along the lower section so you feel almost like in a tunnel. The invisible under-water section of the bridge is actually a BART tunnel which connects SF with Oakland.

The view from the Bay Bridge is impressive - on the Financial District in the background and the historical Ferry Building. When it was constructed (1903), the Ferry Building served as a harbor - ferries carried about 50 million people a year. Even now a few ferries to Oakland or Sausalito depart from the Building - to continue the tradition. Very romantic;)

(2) If you're going to San Francisco...

My first impression of San Francisco was a slight disappointment - cold and windy, nothing about the weather inviting you to sing along Scott McKenzie's song playing in your head: If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. What flowers? What hair? I would much rather wear a hat, and a warm one.

The bracing cool and strong winds are the effect of the city's location at the Pacific Ocean and the fact that it is a peninsula - surrounded by water from three sides. The city, which has a population of about 800 thousand, is connected with Marin County and the pastoral hills of Sausalito (I heard Robbie Williams has a house there, as do many other celebrities and millionaires) by the famous Golden Gate Bridge from the North and with Oakland, which was once a favorite site of the Black Panthers, and Berkeley with its University of California campus by the long Bay Bridge from the East. Together they form San Francisco Bay Area populated by just over 7 million people. The Bay Area is connected by a network of underground (and overground) railways called BART (The Bay Area Rapid Transit).

BART is practical and fast, but San Francisco is famous for its manually-operated cable car system (well, system is too big a word, since cable cars go along just two routes, and they are basically tourist routes). Tourists then squeeze in to get a ride - I did, too, and it only cost $5;)

Cable cars were introduced in the 1870s, and the promoter of this idea was Andrew S. Hallidie, who, as the story goes, witnessed an accident involving horses which hauled a streetcar up a very steep street. He could not stand watching the suffering of the animals and propagated the idea of the cable car.

Cable cars have been operating in the same manner since they were introduced: there is a driver inside (usually very funny, noisy and talkative to entertain tourists on board), who has to leave the car at its final stop and push it onto the circular platform and then turn this platform by pushing the car. In this way the car turns around

and then is pushed away from the platform back onto the railway. It is only then that tourists may get on board.

The cable car takes you for a ride along San Francisco's streets - here is a very typical SF street, calm and empty on a Sunday morning.

(S) San Francisco is however associated with very steep streets, since the city is situated on many hills.

(S) One of the most famous steep streets in SF is

Lombard Street.

(S) And here's a nice view from Lombard Street on the hilly city.

(S) One more look at another typical street to end S-F tour part 1.