I am busy spending a month in San Francisco: partly holiday, partly to write. What a town! It’s going to be a blast.
The first three days of my trip coincided with a long weekend, the last gasp of summer holidays for Americans before autumn begins in earnest. I’m staying with my friend, Samantha Wales, who took the opportunity to show me around the bay area and get me orientated for the weeks ahead. First up, we explored her neighbourhood of Russian Hill, then down into North Beach and a Chinatown that looked as though it had been plucked straight from the pages of Tintin and the Blue Lantern. We tried the foodie delights of the Ferry Market where everything on offer was organic, free-range, low GI, non GM, low salt, low calories and with an almost zero carbon footprint. You couldn’t get a burger or a Coke for love or money.
Later we crossed the Golden Gate to an art fair in affluent, bay-side Sausalito. Endless stalls of expensive art lined the water, bands played cheesy rock, yachts cruised by within hailing distance with the young and the beautiful sprawled on their decks. From Sausalito we drove north into Marin Country in a queue of gaper traffic to Stinson Beach and Point Reyes. The coastline looked, felt and even smelt like the Cape. Mountains plunged into the ocean, waves pounded black rocks and the veld was alive with bees and bugs. Black-and-white buzzards swooped over the car, prowling the updrafts for rodent minnows.
On other outings we skirted San Francisco’s own, rather unappealing Ocean Beach, down to pretty Point Montara Lighthouse and Half Moon Bay where surfers tried to milk something out of a sloshy two-foot wave. We made the obligatory stop, for a surfer like myself that is, at Mavericks, one of the most powerful waves in the world. From the parking lot it was a half-kilometre walk to the beach. Rounding a bluff I hoped to see a feathering giant on the outer reef, but it was pancake flat. We paid our respects to the Mark Foo memorial, just a pile of rocks with “˜Foo’ crudely engraved on a stone. This legendary Hawaiian surfer was killed while trying to ride a giant here in 1994.
Back in San Fran, Samantha is back at work and I’m getting into the rhythm of this remarkable city. Coffee shops, museums, galleries, parks. There’s so much to discover in the month ahead. I’ll keep you posted “¦
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