Prologue
It being mid-July, an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of vacation. And where better to begin one than San Francisco, the storied City By the Bay? We planned an auspicious starting date—7-11—which is all well and good if you stick to the lucky numbers. We later amended the date by a day, deciding to stay the night before our flight in Orlando at a Hampton Inn which featured free parking for a week and a mere $5 a night pittance after that, rather than paying airport parking fees. You could buy an NFL franchise with the cost difference. Unfortunately, this rankled the travel gods and when we hauled our bags out to the car the afternoon of July 10th, the durn thing had a flat tire….our first in a decade or so. We inflated the varlet and drove to Tire Universe in nearby Williston, where they removed the offending screw, patched the tiny deficit and sent us on our way.
Day One—The Journey
We fly Southwest because, among other things, the airline is largely dependable and has a reasonable ticket cancellation policy. The flight from Orlando to San Diego typically went off without a hitch but the subsequent leg from the latter to San Francisco was delayed an hour and a half due to fog at SFO, which brought us in at 5 p.m. When you get to San Francisco, with or without the flower in your hair, you will have to repair to the Rental Car Center to pick up your ride and to do this you will have to schlep your heavy bags up several flights of stairs to the fabulous Air Train. Once inside the Car Center, you will be greeted with a very long group of counters, a smattering of customers waiting in line at each, not a terrible wait considering the time of day. Except, of course at OUR counter, the Dollar Rent A Car booth, at which over a HUNDRED people were waiting. I thought they must have belly dancers back there, or at least free brownies, but no such luck. I looked at Siobhan. Siobhan looked at me. “Go see if somebody else has cars,” I told her, ready to trade my paid-for-with-Visa-points vehicle for the two or three hours of waiting it would require to get the Dollar car. When she waved from the Hertz booth, I abandoned my spot in line and wheeled my bag over, meanwhile calling Visa on the phone to try to cancel my reservation and save the points. Suddenly, the shrill voice of an anxious mother rang out, but not soon enough. Her ten-year-old kid, running amok with a luggage cart, crashed directly into me, the point of impact being my lower left calf. Didn’t hurt at all, I was amazed to discover. Until next day. And the day after that and the day after that. Collisions notwithstanding, I communicated my wishes to the busy lady at the Hertz counter and she ruffled her papers. I had sworn off Hertz a year ago after they told me the car Visa had paid for then was a four-cylinder, not entirely suitable for the mountains of Colorado, and I might give a second thought to upgrading to a far more expensive six cylinder. It’s always something with Hertz, but any old port in a storm.
“How much for the twelve days?” I asked the smiling pirate behind the counter, certain it would be a good bit more than the $470 in points the Dollar car was costing.
“That will be $2174, hon,” she reported. I almost fell on my head. “WHAAT?!? You’ve got to be kidding! Does it come with a marching band? Is it solid mahogany? Does it FLY?”
I looked at Siobhan. Siobhan looked at me. “Back to the Dollar counter?” she asked, needlessly. And back we went, cursing Hertz to the stars for the second consecutive year. At 7:15, we got our car. Not the car we were supposed to get (which would be available eventually with a teensy additional wait, advised the Dollar man), but a decent Toyota Corolla which, by the way, got spectacular gas mileage. After an errant pass over the Oakland Bay Bridge and back, we soon found our hotel, the Tuscan, two blocks from teeming Fisherman’s Wharf.
I Left My Cash In San Francisco
The Tuscan is a very nice hotel, pretty classy, good rooms, helpful staff. And a horrendous $50-a-night parking charge, twice what Mr. Frommer promised in his unreliable guide book. Turns out there are only FOUR hotels in the area which don’t charge for parking, which is worrisome since most new jollities like this start in California before sweeping across the country in a hurricane of greed. Every hotel we stayed at in California had a parking fee of at least $25 a night. When we eventually got to my sister’s house in L.A., I thought she’d be holding a little cash jar at the garage. Oh, and they even charge for bags in San Francisco. Only a dime, but there’s something incongruous about buying $150 worth of socks and having to add a dime for the bag.
The Fisherman’s Wharf area, our base of operations, is as touristy as places get, full of the usual collection of trinket shops, sidewalk food stands, tour barkers, street artists and the requisite fleet of panhandlers indigenous to such overpopulated oases. There’s even a Ripley’s and a wax museum, if that tells you anything. (Question for another day: why in the world does anybody actually GO to a wax museum?) All the S.F. natives tell you not to stay at the Wharf because the area is “full of tourists.” But WE are tourists, too, right? So it stands to reason there must be something interesting to do there. Also, Fisherman’s Wharf is a transportation hub. You can get buses, streetcars, trolleys, taxis and all forms of tour vehicles there. The ferries to Sausalito, Tiburon, Alameda and points west leave from the Wharf and there are restaurants of every description open to all hours. They even have a colony of seals living just off Pier 39. Well, most of the time they do. We only saw two lazy stragglers still hanging around after most of their brethren had departed for the breeding grounds or, perhaps, the Renaissance Pleasure Faire.
Speaking of transportation, by the way, the local version is efficient, affordable and wide-ranging. Fifteen beans a day gets you a card (buyable at your hotel) which provides you with unlimited use of the trolleys, buses and streetcars that will take you anywhere and everywhere. Although we walked all over the place, on our first day in town we purchased two cards (total cost—$30) for the longer treks and saved a fortune on what the trips would have cost individually. Most of the bus stops have little computerized message boards which inform of the arrival time of the next vehicle and they are extremely accurate, eliminating an excess of waiting and wondering. After we were in town just a couple of days, we knew which buses went where and had an easy time getting around.
Day Two—Haight-Ashbury And Beyond
I haven’t been in San Francisco since the demise of the hippies, perhaps as many as 35 years ago. Haight Street was a barren wasteland then, populated by a few dreary head shops and a collection of derelicts that would have been right at home north of the Ice Wall on Game of Thrones. Now, things are rockin’. Several blocks of colorful retail shops of every description, only a modest number of beggars, less by far than the huge contingent populating Fisherman’s Wharf. We found an exotic sock shop and bought Siobhan a pile of them, everything from ankle sox to museum-worthy tights. She found some legwarmers, helpful in the climate, and wore them half the trip. The Castro area, made famous as the playground of San Francisco’s vast gay population, is another interesting shopping alternative for eschewers of mall sameness, filled with non-chain operations and clever little eateries. And no, the LBGTQ population will not abuse you or turn away your business. They like money, too.
The best shop in The Castro—for me, at least—is Alfio’s, which deals in men’s clothing imported from Italy. The hands-on proprietor—that would be Alfio—is possessed of a great eye, travels to Europe a couple times a year to purchase his merchandise and keeps his prices reasonable. Say what you will about Italian excess, their clothing for men is made better than any and always fits perfectly. Think lack of excess shirt material to stuff in your pants and you’ve got the idea. We spent over an hour, picked up a few items and left in a chipper mood. If you’re going to San Francisco, both of these neighborhoods, not too far apart, are worth a several hours visit.
Beach Blanket Babylon
Way back in 1974, a fellow named Steve Silver got a great notion to open a musical revue at the Club Savoy Tivoli in San Francisco. For some reason, Steve decided it might be a good idea to incorporate large hats into the proceedings, and the larger the better. “Large” eventually morphed into “preposterous” as the show marched on, eventually moving to the larger Club Fugazi in North Beach. The loose-fitting story follows a young girl named Snow White as she takes a fast-paced journey across the world in search of her Prince Charming, encountering along the way everybody from Mr. Peanut to Hillary Clinton to Louis XIV, with Carmen Miranda thrown into the bargain. The characters sometimes have overly generous coifs of lacquered hair and almost always hats of incredible proportions, one featuring a gigantic birthday cake, another the entire skyline of the city of San Francisco. Characters are also given other costume enhancements to lampoon their more obvious qualities (Hillary has a generous number of hip pads and a little derriere padding).
The songs, oldies all, are blasted out by a terrific collection of talent, including an extremely large (and agile) black woman and a white woman of similar proportions. In case you’re thinking we’re overpraising the cast’s musical abilities, you’ll want to hear from Michael Thomas, the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, who says “I like to see Beach Blanket Babylon at least once a year because the singers are so incredible. The show is such a brilliant, high-paced fun show.” Actor John Cleese of Monty Python fame claims “Beach Blanket Babylon is the most fun of any show, anywhere in the universe.” Both of them are absolutely spot on.
Next Week:
Tune in for further exciting adventures on Day Three of our Epic Journey as Siobhan and Bill cross the Golden Gate Bridge (twice), visit the park of the same name and ferry to Sausalito, all in a twelve-hour Bay Blitzkrieg. Wow. We can hardly wait!
That’s not all, folks….
