San Francisco: How To Use the Shower
Over the bay, along a very, very long bridge, a turn in-between hills, and we were in.
After 11.5 hours in a winged metal tube, we arrived in a city which is legendary — but not very significant on a global scale. Influential — but small, at 1/8th of the population of London. Rich — but backward in its infrastructure.
Jetlag is actually fairly easy to manage. Just stay up a little bit longer. And then, just as you start to feel like collapsing into bed, have a double espresso — and stay up a little more. Repeat until it’s 22:30 local time wherever you are. Then go to sleep.
So we went out for a double espresso. In a 24-hour Starbucks, sat an old man with a French textbook and a vintage laptop. He was doing his homework. It was 21:35.
Behind him, a man with obvious drug issues was having a cappuccino. A glamorous lap dog, of the kind you see peeking out of expensive purses at London Fashion Week, was making him company.
The man with the French book looked at me like I was merde (was this because I took a picture without asking him?); the man with the lap dog — like I owed him a coffee. Which I know I didn’t.
This Starbucks was not at all welcoming. And it was coming up to 22:00 local; 06:00 London time.
So we finished our drinks and left quietly. It was nearly bedtime.
If you’re new to America’s West, — like we were, — expect a plumbing shock. Your stereotypes about how showers work will make you completely useless. You fumble, and swear, and scratch your head, and then you give up and go down to reception. They give you a picture manual on how to do your ablutions the American way.
This manual in hand, you will locate a tiny knob hidden underneath the tap. You will have to first twist it, then pull it, then count to three, then release it, and then, finally, jump back as the shower sprays a ton of very cold water on you.
Repeat in every hotel you visit.
It’s only in the morning that you first meet one of the biggest draws of San Francisco: its sunshine. From a gloomy +8 in London, to a sun-drenched street which was oh so obviously not European. Everything looked wonderfully different — and people, it seemed, knew how to use the light to their advantage.
Right in the middle of San Francisco, lies historic Chinatown. This is where the city was born; where it very nearly died just before the gold rush gave it a shot of adrenaline in 1849; and this, too, is where the city is now changing and growing.
But, even as skyscrapers go up in the financial district which encroaches upon Chinatown, many things remain unchanged.
Old men play cards in Portsmouth Square. They make threatening gestures as you come near: partly, I think, because they don’t like to be photographed; and partly because they don’t want anybody to see their hand. Next to them, another group of men were playing go. The board was hand-drawn on a piece of Amazon packaging.
As an elderly woman meditated, a group of teenagers in bright red uniforms were planting grass, washing pavement slabs, and generally making themselves useful. They were volunteers from a local school, doing community work, — just like we used to do back in the Soviet Union.
A man with a newspaper in Mandarin looked on approvingly, glancing up whenever a teenage volunteer in a particularly bright top walked by. He threw a ball of paper on the floor, — was he being untidy? Or clever? Was he using the paper as bait, to attract her attention?
But Chinatown is in trouble. Rents have gone up, mostly — according to the locals — because of Airbnb. People who used to live right in the middle of San Francisco are now being forced out. Some of the Chinese families are moving to North Beach, the traditional Italian quarter.
For a tourist, this erosion of boundaries can be a bad thing. In a lot of cities, it would take away atmosphere and replace “mom and pop” coffee bars with Starbucks; and traditional pizza parlours, — with MacDonalds.
Not here. The identity of different parts of this city stays very much alive, despite this mixing of populations.
As do many other symbols of San Francisco, like, for example, cable cars and old trams.
Built to negotiate San Francisco’s steep hills, cable cars borrow technology from the mining industry. A very similar set-up was used to ferry carts loaded with gold ore up from the pits.
A long metal cable runs underneath the street and pulls wagons, which are attached to it via a primitive clutch. Powerful motors drive the whole system from a central hub.
Miguel, the driver of this particular cable car, — the guy in the hi-viz jacket, — told us his job takes “one month to learn, five years to master”.
His main control is a huge lever, which he sometimes heaves with his whole bodyweight; and sometimes just feathers with his fingers. And his foot rides on a wooden plank, — a crude footbrake.
Unless you’re really good, Miguel says, you’ll never have proper control of the wagon, — it’ll jump and jerk around. You can only be smooth, he told us, when your fingers get covered in calluses from the lever.
But controlling the cable car is only part of the job. You also have to chat to tourists, entertain them, and, above all, make sure nobody falls off. Riding on the outside is legal and even encouraged — it is, Miguel says, a vital part of “the cable car experience”.
In Pacific Heights, a well-heeled neighbourhood, we took a walking tour. Most of the guide’s comments about this area had the words “millions of dollars” attached to them.
He was clearly trying to impress us with property prices. But we did arrive from London.
Sensing the futility of this tactic, our guide changed tack and started pointing out “really old buildings”. But, when you live in an extremely ordinary Victorian house built in 1905, a mansion constructed in 1908 is nothing to write home about.
In the end, we just settled for a nice walk. And, in one of the city’s parks, I started counting dogs. I lost count when I got to 40.
In 2007, a survey showed there were more dogs than children in San Francisco.
Most cafes and restaurants have food and drink bowls ready for four-legged patrons. There is a whole bakery dedicated just to dog biscuits. Even the biggest and burliest of men can be seen with tiny pooches under their arms. A dog walker told me he was paid $150 a day.
Looking after a dog may be expensive, but at least a canine doesn’t need a spare room.
So, when you get a dog, you don’t have to move to a commuter town. Instead, you just find a local pensioner and hire him to look after your dog while you work.
If you work, that is. A lot of people seemed to simply spend their time outside, enjoying the sun, the weather and the vibe.
And so, we wandered around the city, soaking it in. Here was a Victorian street, just like ours. Here, a busy embankment packed with tourists and sellers of fridge magnets. And there, just underneath a skyscraper, a man was cleaning some office worker’s boots.
It’s easy to do street photography in San Francisco. You’ve got the saturated colours of street furniture, the sunshine and the shadows; and the relative emptiness of the cityscape makes it simpler to isolate shapes and characters.
American street photography has a peculiar style to it — a lot of it is built around strong characters, contrast and urban geometry.
I can see why. This country has a visual style, and imposes it upon a photographer.
But bits stick out of the Americana.
We stumbled upon an Orthodox cathedral. Outside, the street furniture was American. But the characters, — very Russian. A woman was talking to a priest in the slow Californian accent. She looked, and carried herself, as if she had just stepped off a train from Voronezh, a provincial city in Russia.
In the City Hall, a Buddhist monk was doing research for an event his monastery had planned for later this year. Groups of people around him were getting ready for their own ceremonies: weddings, Spanish coming-of-age celebrations, recording births and naturalisations.
Hours earlier, Chinatown, a very inclusive and open part of the city, and its historic cradle, had set the tone for our visit. And, it seems, for the city itself, too.
An open and welcoming place, a stereotypically American melting pot, which does have a distinctly European aftertaste to it.
It does take at least three days to walk its streets properly; and to talk to its characters. But it’s well worth it.
Practical Advice: San Francisco
Public Transport.
Cable cars are $7 a ride. But conductors often cannot be bothered to collect the fare.
Buses (trolleybuses, actually, — San Franciscans seem unable to differentiate) and the underground are $2.50. In theory, this buys you 90 minutes of public transport.
Every ticket is supposed to be torn off the reel at a pre-printed mark indicating expiry, to the nearest half-hour. In practice, drivers — who sell tickets — cannot be bothered with this and just tear off whatever takes their fancy, often for hours ahead of the 90-minute expiry time.
Public transport is cash only; no change is given.
Uber and Lyft compete in San Francisco, just like elsewhere in America. Lyft does not exist in the UK, so you can get some nice fat discounts from them as a new customer.
Communication
Public Wi-Fi is patchy and very slow. In one hotel, I measured a speed of 512 Kbps — yes, it felt like going back to the early 2000s.
If you want to buy a local sim card to use 3G, check that your phone will support American frequencies. My travel Android (bought in Russia) did not, so I wasted $50 on a sim card which I was unable to use.
Restaurants
Recommended: Roam Artisan Burgers (skinny buffalo burger in a lettuce wrap); Begoni Bistro (Chinese, great dim sum; don’t break their model ship). Not recommended, despite high TripAdvisor ratings: Biscuits and Blues (dull food, questionable music); R&G Lounge (Chinese, bland, expensive, “I’m sorry, I think I also ordered a soup? — Oh yes. I forgot. (Shrugs shoulders, walks away)”.
A lot of the food is far from healthy — but then, I suppose, you would expect it. This is America. 68% of adults are overweight or obese.
Coffee
Northern Beach is espresso heaven. Just like Rome, except you pay in dollars.
Quirky places
Musee Mechanique — a museum of penny arcade machines from the good old days. Touristy, but huge fun. Pay your quarter and fly a fully mechanical helicopter simulation around a circular track.
Sea lions — there is a famous sea lion colony just off Pier 39, in one of the most touristy bits of the city. The animals — dozens of them — have been there since the 1980s. Their antics are fun to watch, but, like all marine animals out of water, these oversize seals do everything in slow motion, so it gets tedious after a while.
Cornology (Columbus Avenue) — did you know you could have truffle, chocolate and Parmesan popcorn? Also, the owner is really nice. He asked me to say hello to the Queen. So if you see her before I do, tell her there’s a guy in San Francisco who’s got a bag of popcorn for her.
City Lights book shop (Columbus Avenue) — this is where artists and writers of the beat generation used to spend most of their time. A unique selection of books — you can easily spend the rest of your life there. Puts Amazon to shame.
Legion d’Honneur — a simulacrum of a provincial French museum transported into the middle of a really nice park. Full of second-tier European art, proudly presented to the public, — because they don’t really have any first-tier European art to proudly present.
Or go back to the preface and the front page.
