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USA West Coast |
| San Francisco | ||||
We arrived in San Francisco on 7th May after an 11 hour flight with no hotel reservation and took a bus into town for $1.50. The bus was full of poor Latino airport workers and some dodgy looking urchins. We were dumped somewhere south of market, or in SoMa as it's known, a grid of nondescript warehouses and grubby cafes. |
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We stopped at a store to buy a map. We'd decided to stay at the Interclub Globe Hostel, a travellers hangout on Hallam St, which gets rave reviews in "trippin out" magasine. The rooms here are very basic, (you have to make your own bed) but it's centrally located, pretty safe, quite arty and cheap! 
The Interclub Globe HostelThe SoMa area today is both grotty and trendy; ex-warehouses for the docks are now nightclubs, factory retail outlets and laundrette cum cafes. |
 We ate at the Brainwash café
opposite the hostel, a trendy laundrette cum café which is a
nice microcosm of SanFrancisco society. |
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| Exploring
San Francisco We woke at 5am, jet-lagged and were unable to return to sleep, so we decided to creep out of the hostel to check out the town. The civic centre is a few blocks north of SoMa, but it's not the city centre. These government buildings are home to bag ladies, vagabonds and druggies. They were just stirring from within piles of filthy linen and paper as we passed. It was way too early for breakfast, so we hopped on one of SFO's 'cable cars', as featured in Dirty Harry movies. These are one-car trams towed up the unbelievably steep hills of the city by under-street cables. They were built in the 19th century by the 'Nobs', rich railway tycoons who lived on Nob Hill. The trams should have closed down years ago, but are maintained principally as a tourist attraction. We ascended Nob Hill, past lavish houses. The stately homes owned by the tycoons are now hotels – somewhat beyond our means. |
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A
bit of history ... San Francisco, unlike the East Coast cities, developed only relatively recently. For the first 150 years of its existence it was a two bit fishing and farming outpost called Buenas Hierbas, part of Mexico, a Spanish colony. |
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| It became prosperous when gold was discovered in the nearby Sierra Nevada and grew rapidly – too rapidly. In those days, Gold Diggers would have to pay the equivalent of thousands of dollars for basic services, like a bottle of whiskey, a haircut, or a prostitute. The completion of the Pacific railroad, linking east and west coasts of the US however was crucial in turning SFO into the modern bustling transport hub and port that it is today. | ||||
| Chinatown We walked back from the wharfs on the north side in search of breakfast and filled our bellies with fried eggs, bacon and links. Next on the agenda was Chinatown. San Francisco has an enormous Chinese population, descendants of the coolies or Ku-li's that built the Pacific railroad. Even today it is an insular community and when pacing the streets in Chinatown you could easily be in Beijing; stuffed with delicatessens, temples, food stores and chinamen. Three is a 'tourist' side to Chinatown too, a street full of tacky shops selling packs of cards with nudes on and suchlike – to be avoided. From here, we wandered across to the now defunct quays on the west of the city. The ferry terminal here used to carry hundreds of thousands of workers daily across the bay, now superseded by the bay bridge. Chinese restaurateurs were catching Kingfish from the end of a jetty, and were doing surprisingly well at it. |
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The Financial District |
Financial
District We walked back into town, the smart financial district, towering skyscrapers and fancy city eateries. We stopped in disbelief to admire a ridiculously long stretch limo. I told Katie to stand by it and pretend it was hers so we could get a photo, but the owner clocked on to us, and invited us inside. This thing had all the trappings, cocktail bar with crystal decanters and tumblers, several sofa-like leather clad seats, TV, video, cellular phone, you name it. Just up the street was the Trans-American building, 50-odd storeys in a pyramid. Our guide said you could climb to the top, but this is no longer possible. However, there is a "virtual viewing gallery" on the ground floor. We just had to see this. The virtual gallery consists of 4 closed circuit TVs linked to cameras on the roof. You could rotate, dip, elevate and zoom in and out. The ultimate in voyeurism. All this tripping around made us a bit peckish, so we popped into a cookie shop for some chunkie cookies, before heading back to the hostel in SoMa for a rest. |
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Transamerica building from below - Our pal's limo |
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Market Street and the Castro Modern trams have been installed the length of Market St, which stretches several miles from 'downtown' to the Twin Peaks neighbourhood, via the Castro. The Castro is the hub of SFO's very prominent gay scene. It's said that it's but a shadow of its former self, when in the 70s it was pretty vulgar, and irresponsibly promiscuous. AIDS has changed all that, and now you're more likely to find shrines to the thousands of gay men, mostly young men, who've been cut down by the epidemic. It's still outrageously camp, and blokes stare into your eyes – (or worse), which is a bit unnerving. Katie bought some very trendy sunglasses from a shop here, after ogling the gay birthday cards, and of course, enormous selection of get-well cards. "Is that all you'd like sir?", meaningful glance. We moved on from the Castro to Twin Peaks, a delightful and peaceful neighbourhood which climbs steeply up two large mound-like hills. Originally, these hills were called "Huge Breasts" or something like that, but latter day American prudery changed that and many other explicit place names in America. Bill Bryson has written some amusing books on this. |
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From Twin Peaks you can see everything, the bay, the Pacific, the two bridges, the skyscrapers – a beautiful view, very uplifting. SFO is a bit like a city dumped in the middle of the peak district – dozens of hills. Unlike most US cities it is very walkable, and on the whole pretty safe. |
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| A
Touch of Night Life We walked down from Twin Peaks to Haight Street, another very long street, where most of SFO's best bars are. It grew dark, and we grew thirsty, so we decided to sample some of these places. We were surprised to find crowds of people outside every bar, on a night that was not particularly warm. Surely they couldn't be packed out this early in the evening! They weren't. These people were smokers, exiled from the interior by Californians latest crackpot law. Obviously, the yanks learned nothing from the era of prohibition. From what we saw, this ban on smoking made it even more attractive and 'dangerous' for youngsters who were getting a kick out of lighting up in dark corners. The first place we hit was called Thunderbolt, or something like that. It was a beer drinkers paradise with around sixty difference varieties on offer, all with names like Thunderbolt, dogbolter and so on. Many of them were pretty vile and all were very powerful. On empty stomachs it only took five pints to get pretty well pissed. We met up with a group of 3 German blokes on their holiday who laughed uproariously at anything and everything. "Ha ha ha ha you english are very funny". We moved on to the Mad Dog in the Fog, a 'pub' owned by an Englishman, and decorated with football scarves. By this time, the Germans decided they'd had enough and went to bed leaving us to drink ourselves into oblivion. |
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Fisherman's Wharf The Rough Guide derides Fisherman's Wharf as a fake and overpriced tourist hang-out. Well, we quite liked it. Sure it's touristy, and pricey, but it's also very lively, lined with shellfish restaurants and bars. It's from here that you get the boat to Alcatraz, but tours are booked up days in advance, so we failed to get there. (Bloody tourists) Instead we went aboard the USS Pampanito, a fully restored WWII submarine, built in 1943. The self-guided tour was great, describing in detail what life was like aboard and how it all worked. It looked unbelievably cramped and unhealthy, and I found it hard to believe that it sailed with 80 men aboard. I think I'd have gone crazy after 75 days in that thing. We wandered along the wharf in the sunshine, stopping at Lou's for lunch. Lou's is a well renowned (and deservedly so) music club and restaurant. It was a beautiful day, so we ate outside, listening to the live blues music emanating from upstairs. The waiters, as is usual in the US, were overbearingly nice, dishing out a free plastic necklace to each customer (nice!). I had a good and spicey Gumbo Ya Ya with crab. Katie had fish dippers. It was pricey but fab! |
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 Bikers on Fishermans Wharf |
As we finished picking the crab from it's shell, there was a thunderous noise in the street. A biker gang was pulling up on immaculate throbbing Harley's, which momentarily drowned out the music. They got lots of attention from agog youths and adults alike, which they relished. Unfortunately, some killjoy cops pulled them over on some pretext, which rapidly wiped the smiles from their faces. | |||
| Golden
Gate After lunch, we walked along the coast for miles along Marine Bvd and beyond to Golden Gate Bridge, where windsurfers fluttered like butterflies in the powerful cross winds. I have to admit to a tinge of jealousy as I watched them fly. We took a wander round Fort Mason at the foot of the bridge, an old naval station which used to defend the entrance to the bay. It never fired a shot in anger, and narrowly escaped demolition to make way for the bridge in the 1930s. The bridge is very beautiful and the government have sensibly prevented any development on the opposite side of the bay, thus providing a dramatic rugged hilly backdrop. |
 Golden Gate |
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| Cruising on down the West Coast | |||
| San
Francisco Departure By the 10th May, we decided to bid farewell to San Francisco, since we were becoming dangerously attached to the place. A weirdo on the bus told us that if you stayed in SFO for more than 3 days, you'd end up there for life. He'd arrived for a weekend from San Diego 7 years ago. "It's the food, it's just so good" he said, pulling out a bit of garlic from his pocket. "Garlic man, I just can't get enough of it". |
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| We were going to LA, and after checking out the price of buses, we decided to hire a car instead, since it was about the same price, even accounting for petrol. I asked the woman at Budget how much it was to hire different types of car. "All the same price, $40" she said. "What even a big monster bastard car?". "Yep". "Well, I'll have a big monster bastard car then". By 10am I was driving off in a brand new Ford Taurus, and picked up Katie and the bags from the hostal. We gave a lift to an Australian who was going to the airport. We were glad to get rid of him, he had a severe B.O. problem. |  Cruising down the coast on Highway 1 |
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| Carmel
to Arroyo Grande We drove south onto Highway 1, the scenic route to LA, which hugs the rocky coast for a couple of hundred miles south, a fantastic cliff-hugging drive. We stopped at Carmel, a lovely coastal resort town with superb sandy beaches. But it's not the beaches that attract the crowds – it's the mayor of Carmel, Clint Eastwood. Clint didn't seem to be around, so we left, driving south for another couple of hours to Big Sur, where the road stopped. It has crumbled into the sea, hundreds of feet below. We had seen signs saying that the road was out at Big Sur, but we supposed we might be diverted. We weren't, so we had to retrace our steps all the way to Carmel and take a minor road inland across formidable wooded hills. We drove for miles without passing a single town, just a few farms. It started to get dark when we passed a solitary and exhausted German cyclist. He waved us down, asking for a lift, but we only had room for him, not the bike, so he declined. It was an hour's drive back to civilisation, so he's probably just about made it now. We pressed on South on the Highway 101 as far as we could get towards LA before it got dark. This was an utterly boring drive requiring copious use of the cruise control. We had a pretty crappy meal at a Denny's restaurant (apart from the fabulous Oreo Ice-Cream Katie had) and got a bed at an Econolodge in Arroyo Grande – a motel. It wasn't bad for $40, huge bedrom, TV, pool and free breakfast. By the next day we were in the City of Angels, Los Angeles |
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You
are reading the story of Adrian and Katie's travels through the Americas
between May and August 1998.
Adrian and Katie put the rat race on hold for a year to travel the world.
Adrian & Katie's World Tour News - USA West Coast Last Updated: 9 May 1999 Web Page by Adrian Ball (email: adrian.ball@virgin.net)