San Francisco, California
I had a hard time deciding what image to put on my Places page to represent the city newspaper columnist Herb Caen immortalized as "Bagdhad by the Bay." I rejected the standard Golden Gate Bridge shot as clichéd, Becca and me sipping piña coladas in the Tonga Room as too esoteric, the Japanese Tea Garden because I couldn't find a photo that really does the place justice, the aftermath of the 1989 earthquake because I couldn't find any of my photos from that week at all. For a while, I used the picture of Becca playing with the black sand in the Exploratorium which appears below left — when B was small, we went to SF regularly and spent hours and hours fiddling around inside that wooden box of iron filings — but ultimately decided that, although it says "San Francisco" instantly and unmistakeably to the two of us, it would make anyone else scratch his head and wonder where the hell it was taken.
Finally, I decided to go with a shot from our most recent visit, in March of 2003: a truckin', slightly woozy signpost marking the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. Can you get much of any more San Francisco that that?
San Francisco is what more American cities ought to be: a place with actual character, a city that's different from everywhere else. I have been there many times — my brother Richard and sister-in-law Terry lived there for several years, but I was a regular visitor long before they moved there and have continued to pay my respects since they headed north to Sacramento. I love the clams-and-garlic pizza in North Beach, the Chicken Anyhow you used to be able to get from a little stand in the courtyard of the Cannery, the shops at Ghirardhelli Square, the street musicians and mimes, the now-alas-gone-Chapter-11 Tower Records on Columbus and Mario's Bohemian Cigar Shop and the Caffe Malvina and the hundred ancient Chinese men and women practicing slow-mo tai chi moves on Washington Square, the carousel and the sea lions at Pier 39, the seafood market at Fisherman's Wharf, the side trips across the bay to Sausalito and Tiburon and across the Golden Gate to Muir Woods and up to Mount Tamalpais — and, yes, the cheesy imitation tropical rainstorm that punctuates happy hour at the Tonga Room, and a pot of jasmine tea and a dish of Oriental crackers at the Japanese Tea Garden in the park, and playing with the black sand at the Exploratorium inside the Palace of Fine Arts....
If you forced me to pick one favorite place in the USA, San Francisco would probably have to be it.
Return to Places.
