San Francisco
Trip Start
Nov 08, 2004
1
2
27
Trip End
May 08, 2005
San Francisco,
California,
United States
Thursday, November 11, 2004
The city is known for its liberal politics, and San Franciscans are justifiably proud of their heritage. The skyline's most enduring landmark, indeed, the Golden Gate Bridge, was part of FDR's New Deal initiatives. Cynical and/or Republican commentators have said that the downside of this heritage is a social benefits programme that has led to one of the country's worst homelessness problems and a culture where locals will protest about just about anything. True to form, when we arrived, our hotel was blocked by two competing protests, one for disgruntled hotel workers, the other organised by overworked massage parlour attendants. These later merged into a larger anti-Bush rally that was sweeping through the city.
Japanese Garden
Still, writing this from LA, where it is difficult to imagine the population mobilising around any issue apart from, perhaps, a shortage of Pacific Rim fusion chefs, there's something quite special about a city that so vocally wears its heart on its ethically manufactured sleeve.Like the rest of California, the mood after the Bush election win was pretty dour, with everyone from taxi drivers to restaurant chefs telling us that they were so pissed off they'd consider emigrating to Canada. One cartoon in the San Francisco Chronicle featured a map of North America divided in two, with the blue designated Canada incorporating the coastal US (The United States of Canada) and the rest marked red as 'Jesusland'. This doesn't seem so far fetched when analysts report that the election was won mainly on 'the morality issue' and President Bush appears on Doctor Phil talking about the God-fearing way he raised his daughters..
San Francisco is breathtakingly beautiful, the bay one of the natural wonders of the world. With its infamous steep hills, there are many great vantage points from which to get spectacular views, one of the best of which is the headlands of Sausolito, across the bay from the city. A friend of Zak's from his design days, Stacy, who lives in a fabulous house in Sausalito he designed himself, was kind enough to show us around Marin County, taking us to the stunning Muir Beach (where a sign advised that dogs should be kept on leads so
as to not stress out the protected bird life found on the beach) and chasing the sun around the twisting roads of the coast so we could get the perfect shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. We also spent a day wandering around the Golden Gate Park, where we stumbled upon the incredibly tranquil Japanese Tea Garden, from which the pretentious picture of a tea pot above is taken.
San Francisco is known for its cultural and ethnic diversity. The city's Angel Island was the equivalent of New York's Ellis Island, and saw waves of immigration from Asia and the Pacific islands. The city consequently has a thriving Asian community, and this is one of the best places to experience Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian cuisine (The Slanting Door, at the renovated Ferry Terminal building, has the best spring rolls EVER, and fusion restaurant Betelnut is also incredible). Another discovery was pumpkin pie milkshakes from Jack-in-the-Box, although I think this loses us some culinary credits. ..
