First Day in San Fran

I was going to San Francisco, but unfortunately I had forgotten to wear flowers in my hair. That’s one cardinal rule violated already. Still, I was looking forward to the trip. I have yet to meet someone who hated San Francisco. Heck, I have yet to meet someone who even mildly disliked. Everybody I spoke to praised the city to high heaven. It was heaven on the East Bay, apparently. I remained skeptical. How great can it be, I thought, if it doesn’t have its own NBA franchise?

We approached the city via the Not Golden Gate Bridge. I don’t know what it’s name is—I only know what is isn’t. We didn’t have a particularly good view of San Francisco as we approached. Some of that was due to the fog. Some of it was due to the fact that I was asleep at the time. I woke up as we got nearer to the hotel. I jerked my head up, blinking and rubbing my eyes, and immediately saw at least three liquor stores. I started to get a little nervous. What had I gotten myself into?

That, of course, was before I saw the hotel. The hotel was fine. It looked very nice, actually, with an old-fashioned vertical sign out front and a classy little canopy beneath that. The neighborhood around it…failed to live up to those standards. If you walk across the street you can visit Frenchy’s, “Your Adult Superstore.” We had arrived just in time, actually—Frenchy’s was having a sale! If we wanted, we could have our pick of “1000s of New Toys!” or enjoy a “$7 Private Booth!”

But I didn’t get my knickers in a twist over Frenchy’s, to use a very appropriate metaphor. Heck, I figured, the store added some color to the neighborhood. Better an adult superstore than a boring supermarket or strip mall. Anyway, it’s not like I expected the Waldorf-Astoria. We were paying $50 a night for room and board, not $500. For that price I expect nothing more than four walls, a roof, and no hypodermic syringes concealed in the mattress. And two of those three are negotiable.

First on the agenda: napping. I had slept in the car on the way up, but one nap is never enough, particularly when one has had to wake up at three in the morning. I settled down for a quick fifteen-minute doze. Like most of my fifteen-minute naps, this one stretched on for an hour or so. Next: some preliminary exploring. I explored the bathroom and found that, contrary to my fears, the toilet and sink did indeed work. Then I explored the closet, the hallway, and the lobby. That was just preparation; now I was ready to explore the city itself. I said a quick prayer to St. Tom-Tom, patron saint of Not Getting Totally Lost in a Strange City, and stepped out onto the street.

Before we left for San Francisco, I had asked a co-worker to recommend a few places worth seeing. He thought for a minute. Then he left for a couple minutes and came back with a map of the city. Laying it out on the table, he pointed to a place called Eddy Street, circled it, and told me to stay away from there at any cost. He didn’t get into specifics, but my imagination supplied all that. Needless to say, after walking for one block I found myself on Eddy Street. A homeless guy loitering on the corner gave me a funny look. I fled, screaming.

After narrowly escaping rape and murder on Eddy Street, I wound up on the streets of Little Saigon. I kept a nervous eye open for the Viet Cong. Little Saigon is less a neighborhood than an endless series of Vietnamese restaurants, each seeking to outbid the other with absurdly low prices. One store offered a pair of sandwiches for less than $2. How much lower can you go? I half expected a shopkeeper to come running out and stuff a sandwich in my mouth, shouting “EAT! EAT FOR FREE!”

After Little Saigon I wandered into Little Phnom Penh, which was nothing but a smoking wasteland of bones and spent shell casings. Sorry, I realize that was in terrible taste. Let me start again. After Little Saigon I wandered into a wide, tree-lined plaza, beyond which stood San Francisco’s City Hall. It impressed me in a good way. Sure, it resembled a knock-off of Congress, but so does every other city hall. Big dome—check. Columns—check. Stone carving of naked women representing “Justice” and “Equality”—check. But the San Francisco City Hall had gilt on its dome; not many other city halls can claim that. It looked quite beautiful. I’m sure it would have looked even better if the sun hadn’t been concealed by a dense, impenetrable layer S.F. fog.

Later that evening we visited Chinatown, still unwinding from hosting the 2008 San Francisco City Olympics. Oh man, this was the most amazing part—the signs were written IN CHINESE! Not English—CHINESE! No, wait there’s more. They don’t even use English letters! I’m serious! They use these weird symbols that look like a game of Pick Up Sticks got out of hand. God only knows what they said. I preferred to make up my own translations. We ate dinner at a place I dubbed “Kidneys for Sale.” The food was quite good. The chopsticks were impossible. I tried to eat with them, gave up, and proceeded to use them in a light saber fight with one of my tablemates.

Our final stop of the night brought us to the Mission District, ground zero for San Francisco’s hipsters. They breed there, I think. They bump into each other, start admiring one another’s thrift-store-bough clothes, and BANG! Nine months later the world has a new aspiring ‘zine writer. People told me the Mission District gets a bit…sketchy at night. Wrong! It gets really, really, REALLY sketchy. Every storefront is either a Mexican place serving cheap fried brains or a seedy-looking club. Homeless guys push shopping carts full of garbage up and down the street. I never felt threatened, though, because I’m a smooth operator fully at home in the city. Plus, I had about a dozen friends with me. I could offer them to the homeless guys as a sacrifice.

The night ended a little late; that made me grumpy, as I missed my usual bedtime of five in the evening. We hitched a ride back to our hotel on one of San Fran’s cable cars. Here’s something no one tells you about those trolleys. They make the world’s most ominous noise, a metallic rattle that sounds like the death call of some bizarre alien creature. At night, the sound turns the streets into a weird sci-fi world; you hear a strange twanging noise echoing in the dark. Quite a strange sensation.

So that’s the first day. Coming soon: the third day! I mean, the second day. I know how to count. Seriously.