“So you’re saving the best till last” said my lovely host – a good friend I’d not yet met – as I left Portland and headed off for San Francisco. Maybe he was right. I loved Brooklyn and New York and, though it had been a while since I’d been there, it was very familiar. Familiar and comfortable and kinda like home.
How I got to be 61 and this was my first trip to San Francisco, I’ve no idea. How much of life’s culture has been wrapped up in the place – in the name, the very words, the music. The jazz, the Beats, the hippies… Ok, not so much the punks cos I never really did get American punk. But everything else. How had I never been there? No idea.
For me it was off-the-scale exciting. It was something different. It was also exactly what I needed after New Orleans (too hot and touristy), Austin (too hot and I didn’t get the buzz), Portland (too grey and I didn’t get the buzz) and The Drive (already it’s a week ago and I’m still seeing white lines).
I started the third day of driving – the third day? Oy – with renewed energy, largely because there was No Way there was going to be a fourth day.
As the 101 wound its way through wine country, past names and places My Fine Wife had talked about, the skies began to lighten and – whisper it – the sun poked its head out. Driving round the hills, through Robin Williams Tunnel and out the other side to the Golden Gate Bridge… As I approached the bridge, a cloud descended and covered this huge, iconic structure with mist. Sunshine would have been nice, but this made it look magical and mysterious. Either way, it’s a beautiful, a really gobstopping way to enter a city.
I was always going to have a better time in San Francisco than the other places because… well, San Francisco, but the dice were loaded because, and again this made all the difference, I had someone to take me in and show me around.
Before I left home, I’d got in touch with a friend who knew the city and…
“I’ve got a lovely friend there. Drop him a line and he’ll give you a few tips”.
I knew I’d hit the jackpot when I dropped him a line and
“…perfect. You must stay with me. I’ll get the room ready”
The deal was sealed when, a couple of days before I pulled into town…
“Jed, hi. Listen, I might be a bit low key. The day before you get here, I’ve got to have two teeth taken out”
So much in common. We were going to get on so well.
This is how it went. I was driving round the Tenderloin area looking for the place to drop the car off. It was about 10.30am and there were one or two other cars on the streets. People walking across the roads, buses, taxis, cars… I had no idea where I was going and obviously 333 O’Farrell where the Budget Rent-A-Car place was didn’t exist.
Then…
“Jed. Hey. Is that you?”
My host. He’d taken the day off work and had schlapped to O’Farrell to meet me. How sweet?
And that’s how it carried on. He was an absolute sweet. Generous to a fault, interesting and just lovely. He was also a bit of an architecture buff, a history buff and completely in love with his adopted home town. Each day he took me around – the best Italian café, the best panini, different architectural styles, the Painted Ladies,. Haight Ashbury, Golden Gate Park, Castro, Ocean Beach, Chinatown, Italy, Bay 39 where the sea lions hang out… City Lights, the Beat Museum… We just went everywhere and everywhere we went he knew a story about. One day we were down at Fisherman’s Wharf and I was
“Oh, go on. Let’s get a boat, let’s go on one of these boat trips”
We took a boat round the bridge and went round Alcatraz… I love playing tourist with someone who lives in the city cos they get to play tourist too and you can see them falling in love with their own city again, remembering why they love it.
So that was it. Every day we went out and walked and talked and walked and talked, and every evening he left me to my own devices to go and play (I think he’d already used up his life’s quota of nights out).
The first day, we walked up to Haight – it was about 15 minutes from his flat – and, it was sweet and funny and odd all at the same time, I just laughed. Sure, it was a big tick off the bucket list, but it felt a bit more, I don’t know, somehow meaningful.
There’s not that many places I really want to go. Of course, there are loads of places I’ve not been, but there are loads of places I have been and – off the top of my head – I can’t think of anywhere that I’d be really pissed off if I died and hadn’t gone there. Back to Japan. Back to Australia. Iceland. Maybe Mexico. But if I didn’t do any of those things, if I didn’t go to any of those places… it’s OK. If I’d never made it to San Francisco… when I got to The Good Place I wouldn’t stop grumping about it. Anyway, not going to happen. Job done. Box ticked.
I was there three nights – and went to a great jazz club (Club DeLuxe on Haight), saw Lovely Sachalalala somewhere on Chestnut, and went out with a couple of friends in the Beat district (went to Vesuvius and some music bar where there was a fantastic blues trio. Guitarist had a bit of a Hendrix fixation but if you’re going to have a fixation on anyone…) and for the first time since who-knows-when got so drunk I had to be put in a cab home. (I was going to say “embarrassingly” but, you know, who cares?)
Club DeLuxe was very cool. Disarmingly straightforward – it was just a bar and there was a straight ahead hard bop jazz band playing. No entrance fee, there was a bucket on the floor by the band where punters could drop a few quid. The drinks weren’t cheap, but weren’t expensive and it just looked so easy. (So easy that this eve I’m having a drink with a friend with a view to setting something similar up in Brighton).
Lovely Sachalalala was our au pair when we first moved to Brighton and I hadn’t seen her for what must be 20 years and that’s really odd because that means that she must be… 40, which is ridiculous. Clearly, she’d used her wages on buying one of those Dorian Gray pictures because there’s no way you’re 40. Actually it was lovely, she looked so Californian, so grown up, but as soon as she opened her mouth…. Sacha. Just the way it should be.
Seeing Sam reminded me of why I didn’t take the voluntary redundancy. He’d been a student, left in maybe 2012 and was now married and had been living out here for six years. It was just really lovely – really lovely seeing him doing well and being happy, and really lovely because it’s just nice to have these relationships. The age difference? Pah. And anyway, what difference when you get so drunk you can’t actually remember how you got home?
I’d been wanting to go to San Francisco for so long, it was almost inevitable that it’d be a bit of a let down, especially after the low of the past week. But it just wasn’t. It lived up to all the hope. The look, the feel, the (I know…) vibe… It was just lovely and really seductive. OK, it’s apparently really expensive but I can absolutely see the appeal. I love Brighton and life’s here now, but I can absolutely see the appeal. And the weather is really nice. Sunny and bright and not to oppressively hot. It was disarmingly small, really easy to get around, really easy to get a feel for. You buy a bus ticket for $3, there’s a few key streets (Market, Columbus, O’Farrell…) and you can find everything off them, and say to yourself “OK, I’ll get off in four stops time, see what life looks like there. There wasn’t ever not a nice café. I loved everything about the place.
It was one of those It was, as Kerouac probably never said, a trip.
