San Francisco - A Treat or a Trial?
I was more excited about this trip than anyone really has a right to be. I think this is the case mostly because this trip marked the first of many in the year to come: San Francisco, Las Vegas in February, New York in March, Kentucky for the Rolex 3-Day Event in April, Europe in the summer, and possibly Germany for the World Cup next summer. For a girl who hasn’t done much traveling in her life, the itinerary here is giddifiying.The plan, which went slightly awry, was to drive up with an acquaintance - let's call her Nan - from Los Angeles. Saturday night was the only fixed event, a fondue party that served as a mixer for a lot of soul-sisters we’d met online. So we drove up to LA in her car, a pretentious Audi convertible that didn’t get the mileage my car got, but that I suppose she looked better driving.
Now, it’s about a six-hour drive from LA to San Francisco, and not a whole lot of scenery along the way, unless you count feedlots and several miles worth of the freakiest, Stephen King wannabe-murder-weapon windmills I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re not quaint, rustic windmills that could be used on the set of Man of La Mancha. No, the hills along I-5 near Livermore are filled with rows and rows of white, 3-bladed stiles, each turned in slightly different directions to catch whatever wind prevails. They group along the meadows, lurk behind hillsides, and march single file along the ridge-tops, only a few of their blades turning in the breeze. The rest stand silent and still, watching the cars pass, serving as sinister sentries along the freeway. Nestled among their feet are the bodies of fallen mills, blades jutting out of the grass like discarded weapons, and it’s not a huge leap of the imagination to suddenly see these quite and simple machines rumble to life, pulling their foundations out of the earth as they whip toward one another in fierce battle. They lock together, spinning each other about, blades whipping furiously, slashing and dicing metal into flying bits of shrapnel that pummels and crushes the ant-like motorists on the unsuspecting I-5. Then, just as suddenly, the fight is over and the wind-gathering soldiers return to their posts, leaving brethren and enemy alike behind to rust into the dirt.
These were my most exciting thoughts on the drive, as I was trying to come up with highly philosophical answers to my companion’s many relationship questions. “So, do you think it’s possible to break up with someone and still make them a better person?” “Do you believe that even though a guy’s father was a notorious womanizer, and the guy himself has repeatedly cheated on you, that you can change him? That if he loves you enough, he’ll only want to be with you?” “Is it possible to sleep with your ex who cheated on you and still be friends?”
How far is it to walk to San Francisco from the windmills? Would the windmills sacrifice me to their gods? Would it be worse than playing Dr. Ruth to this 30-year-old woman who can’t get over a guy who fucked everyone he met while also fucking her before, during, and after their 4-month relationship?
Actually, I still wasn’t irritated with her yet. It’s my bitterness in hindsight that causes me to rant so cruelly about Nan. Moving on…
We drove – or I should say, she drove, as I got the distinct impression she didn’t want anyone else driving her car, a very bad sentiment to have when on a road trip – directly to Fisherman’s Wharf to kill time before the party. I was mostly entertained at that moment by memories of my very first trip to the San Francisco piers.
My first time remains my best time. I had just moved to Los Angeles, friendless, jobless, homeless, and scared shitless. My best friend "Sue" was in grad school at Stanford, so every weekend I hopped in my hand-me-down-from-grandma ’95 white Buick Century and made the drive to San Jose (a route that never took me past the windmills from the seventh level of hell). On one such weekend Sue and I decided to take the tourist’s route around the Bay area, a driving tour led by a smarmy pelican.
Actually, it was the 49-mile scenic route denoted by a friendly, smiling seagull on many signposts throughout the city. Our severe lack of avian knowledge led us to believe it was a pelican (hey, we could only name two seabirds – the pelican and the seagull – so we had a 50-50 chance of getting it right), and our severe lack of the ability to make our own decisions caused us to believe said pelican was purposefully leading us on a wild and merry goose chase. (Note: a goose is not a sea bird. Just in case you were wondering.) Oh, it led us to all the right places: through Chinatown, over the Golden Gate Bridge – where we got a parking ticket (who knew?), Coit Tower, Aquatic Park, Presidio, the Palace of Fine Arts…but it also led us into a Walgreen’s, a completely random parking lot, as well as abandoning us several times in areas where the local shop signs were definitely not in English. Not even in the Latin alphabet. By the time we got to Fisherman’s Wharf, we cursed and screamed at the laughing, mocking pelican/seagull who had taken such unfair advantage of two blonde girls from Albuquerque. I’m fairly certain he chuckled at us, as well, when Sue neglected to put the car into gear at a stoplight and we nearly careened backwards down a steep hill into the arms of a waiting Jaguar convertible. That was fun.
It was on this trip, as well, that I had my first taste of chowder in a bread bowl, leading me to forever want to fly Southwest out of LAX, for there is a Boudin’s in the Southwest terminal. We missed the last boat to Alcatraz, so instead had an adventure with the Bush Man. I have spoken with numerous people who either live or have lived in San Francisco, and about half of them know of the infamous Bush Man (and a Google search reveals his actually is the “World Famous Bush Man”). As we walked down the Wharf, we were fortunate enough to witness his act, which is to sit on a milk crate holding some pathetic-looking bush branches in front of his face. People stream by him on the Wharf, not paying him any attention at all – after all, he’s not doing anything, just sitting there.
Just when you’ve dismissed him from your mind, however, you start to walk past him, chatting to your travel-mates about the Alcatraz inmate pajamas you just bought, when BOO! the Bush Man yells and jumps out at you, shaking his leaves in your face. The entire street seems to be in on the joke, because everyone is laughing, and once you’ve ascertained you won’t have a heart attack, you laugh a little bit to cover how girly you sounded when you screeched in fright. And then you find a good place to watch for and laugh at the next unsuspecting victim.
We watched the Bush Man do his act without falling victim to it, then marched along the tourist traps, oohing at the views of the bridges and avoiding the temptation to spend $20 on $3 “handmade” necklaces made in Malaysia. After discovering we’d missed the Alcatraz tour – where, of course, we’d hoped to have a guide like Phil Hartman from So I Married an Axe Murderer – we strolled back down along the street.
Throughout our entire trip, Sue had been joking about how Asian she was becoming (the Bay area has a large Asian-immigrant population, and Sue was one of the few non-Asians in her Mechanical Engineering program at Stanford). She insisted on showing me her tiny cell phone, and pointing out every pimped out “rice rocket” we passed. I, on the other hand, was trying to keep an eye peeled for the guy with the tree branches. I could see a large crowd across the street watching for something, but I just couldn’t see where the Bush Man had moved to in the short time since we’d first seen him.
“Oh, check it out, there’s a rice rocket right there.” Sue pointed across the street at a white 2-door Honda Civic, with custom taillights, super-sonic spoiler, racing stripes, and chrome wheels. I turned my head, let down my guard for just an instant and—
“ROOOAAAARRRR!” the Bush Man leaped out at us, rattling his foliage in our faces. We both screamed and jumped off the curb, stumbling into the street, narrowly avoiding being missed by a speeding hansom. The surrounding crowd broke out in happy guffaws. I frowned at all of them. They were not smarter than us. They were not better. I knew the damn guy was there, I knew he was going to get somebody. I just couldn’t see him. That meant that any one of the schmucks laughing at us could be the next schmuck. I hoped it was true.
Even worse, as we walked away, our faces red and our hearts racing, the Bush Man yelled after us, “Bet that’s the biggest thrill you girls have had in months!” Sadly enough, he was right.
This time, I didn’t even catch a glimpse of the Bush Man, which was too bad because I really would have enjoyed seeing him scare the pants off my companion.
No, we visited Boudin’s, then trekked to find something sweet, which meant Ghirardelli Square, of course. On the way, we glanced through the items for sale from the sidewalk vendors, and I found my first opportunity to partake of my current travel-memento plan: I want to buy a piece of local art from every city I visit, preferably from a local vendor/artist. A photographer was selling his images of San Francisco, and had produced some fascinating pictures with creative processing. He had a series of city scenes – a trolley, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Wharf, etc. – that seemed a little blurred, their lines agitated, as if they were vibrating, in motion. He explained that he’d taken the photographs with a Polaroid camera, and then, because the Polaroid film is “soft,” he was able to place it in solution and shake it about a bit, producing those vibrating lines I so adored. He then photographed that image, and the resulting picture was what I wound up buying. I can’t wait to put it up on my wall.
Then, because the sun had set and my companion couldn’t handle the “chill” (couldn’t have been less than fifty degrees), we sat for an hour in Starbucks. Nice. Go to a new city and sit in Starbucks. That’s the height of cultural immersion, right? They didn’t even have a local flavored coffee. Not even a deviation from the standard Starbucks “buy more expensive shit with our name on it” décor.
Judging it time to be leaving for our party, we headed off down the Wharf. Finally, I got a chance to look into the odd storefronts – resulting in my companion buying a great pair of shoes I wanted but didn’t come in my size that I jewed down for her – including “Babushka,” a store that sold only Russian matroshka (nesting) dolls. Definitely better than Starbucks.
Finally, we made it to her car and paid $18,000 to get out of the parking lot. We traveled back across the Bay Bridge to get to our party. (On a side note, as an American citizen who grew up several states away from any interesting bridges, I am fascinated by them. I want to be on one when the winds and/or earthquakes make it sway. I love to stand and look at them during the night, when they are illuminated by thousands of bulbs, a lighted connect-the-dots. Who changes those bulbs, anyway?)
The party held an enormous amount of fun, as it was a group of like-minded women who didn’t mid sharing their more outrageous views and snarky comments. A cheese fondue course followed by a course of “pasta” and liquored up chocolate fondue left me with a stomachache the next day, but a gigantic smile on my face, and a whole troop of new friends. Unfortunately, my driver was staying with an ex-boyfriend who apparently still had some veto power over her, because after one phone call she insisted we ditch the party so she could join her pal. Unhappy but stoned enough to be unable to argue, I followed her out.
My day in neighboring Mountain View with my high school buddy Dan was much more enjoyable than my time spent in Nan’s cloying company. Dan took me on yet another driving tour, but since he actually knew where we were going, we needed no mocking seagull to lead us about by our noses. We headed up to the hills along a rolling, twisting, narrow lane, pausing for the numerous cyclists struggling up the endless incline. At the top, we took in vistas all around, the Bay on the east side and the California coast (though mostly hidden by low clouds) on the west. Our viewing time was cut short by the fact that we had not been smart enough to wear Eskimo gear (and strangely, Dan did not have any in his Outback, though he did have skis, skin calipers, and what I suspect are several “science” experiments). The chill wind bit through our T-shirts and convinced us it was time to head out for our Super Bowl party.
The party was large enough to provide me with a $40 win in the betting pool, and to provide enough of Dan’s former fraternity brothers for him to play a disastrous round of beer pong (a sad and pathetic 10-3 loss). I gave Nan a call at halftime to give her directions on where to pick me up – I would be on her way back to LA – and was forced to leave a message. When she finally called me back, the game was over, even The Simpsons was over. I gave her directions and settled down to wait.
An hour after that, I had lost half my pool money in the post-Super Bowl poker game, and she was calling me again, this time to tell me she hadn’t left yet, and wasn’t planning to leave for another thirty minutes. Speechless, as I looked at the clock and estimated that I would now not get into my bed until something like three a.m., I ground my teeth and reminded her that I had to work the next day. “Oh, sure, we’ll get there,” she promised.
She finally “got there” at eleven p.m., after I’d discovered that a fellow poker player’s father could have given me a ride home seven hours previously (I’d have been in bed already!), after she’d gotten lost and wound up halfway back to San Francisco again.
And she was shocked when I got in the car and was angry. She’d been sick, she claimed, though I looked around the car and detected numerous fast-food remnants in addition to the fact that several of my CDs had been removed and presumably listened to. This was not the car of a woman who has spent the entire day with her head in a toilet. Again, she refused to let me drive, even though I knew this route like the back of my hand from my many visits to Sue. So I in turn refused to enter into an in-depth discussion with her of why I was so upset. Um, hello, I could have been stranded there. Had she informed me at three, four, even five o’clock that she didn’t think she could make the drive home, I could have caught a ride, rented a car, hopped on a train, even got on a bus. But at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night, the options tend to be severely limited. What if she hadn’t felt like driving back at all? I’d have been stuck, and I never once got an apology. What I did get was a defensive “I just drove an hour to come get you!”
Wake up, girlfriend, and find a map. You were coming from Pacifica, I was in Mountain View. Mountain View is on the way from Pacifica to Los Angeles. You just hopped off the freeway to get me. I, on the other hand, drove 45 minutes out of my way to meet you at your house in Pasadena to start the trip, a 45 minutes I would have to repeat in reverse after you were snuggled in your own bed.
So since she wouldn’t let me drive, I handed her the directions and went to sleep, though I repeatedly had to tell her that no, I would not discuss this with her while I was so angry, and I understand that she was sick, and I’m sure she’s not a bad person. I did resist the urge to tell her, “Jesus, shut the fuck up. If I’d been dating you, I’d have fucked anything that was quiet.”
When I woke up next, she was lost. I sullenly directed her to keep going the way my directions and all the road signs were telling her to go, and I went back to sleep. I woke up when we stopped for gas, but still, she would not allow me to drive her baby blue Barbie car. Finally, I woke up at her house, managed to extract all of my CDs from her precious CD-changer (ostensibly the reason we took her car), and got the flock out of there. My head hit my own pillow at 4:30 in the morning, giving me exactly three hours before I had to be up for work.
All in all, this trip was enjoyable, but it did reinforce my decision to travel only with my mom or my best friend from now on, or on my own, of course. I think I can face down the scary windmills. I can find parking, I can navigate, I can stay as long as I want at a party, I can not wait for thoughtless, ill-bred airheads to come pick me up while they dither with their ex-boyfriends.
Okay, maybe I should pick a route that doesn’t involve windmills. I’m just saying. You never know when those bad boys are gonna go.
posted by Lyle Skains @ 2:46 PM
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