San Francisco

I was now in Petaluma just 30 miles or so from San Francisco, so I decided to spend the day in San Francisco, which I only vaguely remembered from being there forty years ago on my crosscountry trip with Elise.
I drove the car a few miles to the nearest bus stop with a bus going to San Francisco and hopped on. It was a two hour trip for what I might have done in 45 minutes by car, but I was glad to let someone else do the driving. I also had an extended conversation with the bus driver. Usually bus drivers are a pretty taciturn lot. The best of them will give you the information you ask for with a nod of the head or as few words as possible and not much more. They never chat with a passenger as they drive. This one was an exception. We talked mostly about his previous acting career including a stint at a dinner theater in Media near Philadelphia. He was also part of a road troupe for a year that traveled around the country performing adapted versions of the classics for schoolchildren.

I could have gotten a guided bus and walking tour from the KOA campgrounds (just one of their many services including a swimming pool) but I had a copy of a self-guided walking tour from the AAA book and decided to do that instead.
It was a good decision. I couldn't begin to describe all the things I saw in my six hours of walking around San Francisco - uphill and down - so I'll just list the highlights:
First though one of the few things I do remember about San Francisco from my previous visit was that our day in San Francisco was a chilly, overcast day with a strong chilly wind blowing. Today in San Francisco was a chilly, overcast day with a strong chilly wind blowing. History may not repeat itself, but weather evidently does.
.... the two Afro-American street performers tap dancing at the intersection where one of the cable cars turned around
.... Chinatown with crowds of people up and down the main street, including one store which was selling live white birds the size of pigeons but not a bird I recognized. While I stood there, a lady bought two. The owner grabbed them and stuck them into a bag for her.
.... a walk up Telegraph Hill (with a couple rest stops along the way) to Coit's Tower and a great view of the city
.... a sign beside a parking garage that said "Electric cars charged here" Once again, California leads the nation!
.... The main headquarters of Wells Fargo, which is my bank It looked very sturdy and solid, which I took as a good sign
..... Seeing the street sign that said Jack Kerouac Street. Kerouac was one of my favorite writers from the Beat Generation back in the late fifties.The street itself was short and not very impressive. It's like the city wanted to acknowledge that Kerouac had been there without especially honoring him
.... one of the real highlights of the trip for me was stopping in City Lights Bookstore, founded back in the '50's by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was one of my favorite Beat poets back when I was an English major at Penn in the late fifties. I must have spent close to an hour there wandering among the shelves and ending up in the poetry room on the second floor, sitting in a rocking chair and rereading poems of Ferlinghetti which I still remembered from that long ago time
.... Little Italy where I had the best pizza I've ever eaten, at least 3/4 of an inch thick with chicken and vegetables
.... Union Square where I wandered through the art exhibit
.... Washington Square with a statue of Ben Franklin and people picnicking on the grass just as if it were a warm summer day - which it wasn't
.... Fisherman's Wharf swarming with tourists wandering in an out of the various souvenir shops
.... about the only thing I missed was a ride on a cable car, but there were long lines of people waiting for their turn, and I was too eager to be on my way and seeing things to wait in line.
All in all it was a great day and a pleasant change from the natural scenery I have been enjoying.