Red Hat Summit was in San Francisco this year; it was my first time in San Francisco; my first impression? BART mocks any airport to CBD run in New Zealand. I cannot imagine what someone used to the BART would make of the shambles that is transit from the Auckland airport to the city, but the thought gives me shame. And while the Pride parade was the day I flew in, by the time I worked through customs and whatnot, it was all over, alas.
My first hour or two in Downtown I found myself thinking there are now fewer beggers in SF than Wellington. By the evening I would come to realise how stupid that opinion was, as I went looking for dinner past 5th and 6th street, and discovered that street-pissing and pervasive poverty are thicker on the ground by a couple of orders of magnitude. You can move from thousand dollar dresses in the window of the Dolce & Gabana store to incoherant, aggressive rambling burnouts, people shooting up in the space of a block.
Also: Maybe San Francisco would stink less if there were any public toilets. I know, I know, socialism. But sometimes socialism means not having to wade through human filth.
And holy fuck the police carry big batons. More like small staves. It’s more disturbing than their sidearms - they’re bigger than any riot baton the NZ police use. But while there was a moment of levity watching police sitting in the back of the ute like it’s a San Fran Technical…
…in general the security culture is one that didn’t make me feel safer; the police are everywhere, but I got little sense they were there for me to “ask a policeman”, and more to whack the unruly. But the police are only the half of it; there are security guards everywhere, doing their best to look like cops, and often considerably more in-your-face. All this made me feel more nervous: I was worried about the guards, and anxious about why so many of them seem to be needed.
From there Dave, James, and I wandered out in the general direction of the California Academy of Sciences. We took in the mandatory Painted Ladies with a few score of others, and ended up threading our way over the hills between Third Street and the Academy via Haight Ashbury, because why not?
On the way we encountered something I’d heard about, but not seen, and hadn’t really believed existed outside cheap jokes in sitcoms. This is a DMV in the morning, and the queue is already wrapping around the building. How does anyone do government departments so badly?
Haight Ashbury is pretty polished and toursity. It stinks of incense, but in the way you’d have incense at a place drawing tourists wanting a slice of 60s pot nostalgia more than anything else. There are shops full of psychedelic-themed souvenirs, cafes and bars. There’s also, you’ll note, cables for the mass transit everywhere. Next time a Wellington Council official tells you they’re outmoded, tell them you wish we had SF’s public transit problems.
It’s also a place of chain stores. Not just the Ben and Jerry’s on the famous intersection, but the Dr Martens store where I managed to pick up my beautiful Triumphs of Camillus print shoes. Which has lead to me ordering a number of other art print Docs. I may have developed a shoe problem, so thanks for that SF!
There was also a more conventional drug dealer having his day ruined by a pair of undercover police; seriously, they were fishing bags of marijuana out of his pockets, his shirt, hell, his socks. After a moment I paused to reconsider the wisdom of pointing a telephoto lens at a pair of American police. Because that seems like the bit where the story goes very bad, you know?
That said there’s a few somewhat more offbeat stores; the dead things shop, for example, with sparrow’s head jewellery, collections of turn-of-the-last-century medical apparatus, and the like. This, along with the guys who kept walking up and asking me if I wanted a taco, or offering to guide me to the best taco place in town, stopped it feeling entirely like a theme park.
(I’m not sure what’s up with the tacos, but I have a fair suspcious Haight Ashbury does not have that many Mexican food enthusiasts. I think they may have been whispers selling drugs.)
Golden Gate park is large; as we went in it looked, though, like a homeless camp, with people everywhere. A cop on a dirtbike buzzed about, keeping an eye on proceedings; for me it was one of the heartbreaking moments of the trip - within sight of the camp a mother was playing with twins, who were squealing and gurgling happily on their outing with their not-at-all-homeless mother. Almost everyone behind me had started life as one of those happy little babies, and I doubt their parents or they imagined dossing down in the park would be the path their life would take them too.
The Academy of Sciences is amazing: two linked domes, one of which is big enough to comfortably hold a 76 foot plantetarium screen; a three story tropical rainforest environment with South American butterflies, frogs, and birds, all built over a large aquarium. There are exhibitions on First Nations arts, colour theory, and so much other material that James and I spent four hours there, and probably only say three quarters of it, if that. The only thing I didn’t like (other than running out of time) was not having the girls there, who would have adored it.
From there we went looking for non-foot transport back to Downtown; we struck out for Inner Sunset, which it turns out is a lovely suburb. The little ice cream shop - creamery in the local parlance - we went to made very good ice cream. It felt like the kind of place I’d want to live if I was living in San Francisco myself - a nice village-in-a-city kind of feel. I assume this means it would be literally impossible to afford.
After taking some time for dinner (pizza joint that served buffalo wings in a sauce that looked like they were trying to solve San Francisco’s toileting problems by serving poo on a plate), I decided not to pass up on a chance to see the DNA Lounge; after having read jwz’s blog for longer than I care to think, including his trials in getting his club up and running, how could I not?
Anyway, it was Hubba Hubba burlesque or the Goth/Industrial night. I didn’t really have the clothes for the latter, so I thought I’d give the former a whirl, and it was good fun; at the end the MC suggested, tongue in cheek, that we take our happy smiles next door to “ruin the goths’ evening.”
Having walked out there from Downtown, I hung around for a while; when I ran out of oomph I asked some of the locals (including Hubba MC) if walking or busing would be the better option. It was suggested that on a Monday midnight there would be nothing good happening between DNA and Downtown. I was expecting a bit of a wait for a bus, but one turned up within a few minutes (on, apparently, a quarter hourly cadence), and whisked me back into town. Both the bus rides from Inner Sunset and DNA cost $2, far less than the same distance in Wellington.