Rice-A-Roni, The San Francisco Treat

Scottland and I found ourselves wondering if Rice-A-Roni really was a San Francisco treat, as we sat in afternoon traffic while trying to cut across the city from Coit Tower to Golden Gate Park. We had arrived in 'Frisco several hour earlier, having driven all the way there from Davis. The drive was much shorter than I realized. Davis is 73.7 miles from downtown San Francisco. It's a pretty short drive, as long as you don't get stuck in traffic. Even if you do get stuck in traffic (like we did while going over the Bay Bridge) the drive isn't bad.

Our first stop in San Francisco was the SOMA/Castro area. We met up with Steve, a friend of Scottland's from Canada. Steve was visiting SF while his partner Andrew was in Monterey giving a talk at a conference on language related topics. Scottland, Steve, Steve's friend Joe and myself got lunch at a place in Castro named Harvey's. I'm guessing it was named after Harvey Milk. The food was all right, but the restaurant (like much of the rest of the Castro) was kind of dirty. We wandered around the area for a bit after that. Like the first time I saw it, I found the Castro kind of disappointing. It's supposed to be the center of the gay universe, and I simply found it dirty, run-down, seedy and thought the people all generally looked a bit on the haggard side. If the Castro is emblematic of what it means to be The Gay, then I think I'm pretty happy to not be tightly dialed into The Lifestyle.

After our sojourn in The Castro, Steve and Joe parted ways and Scottland and I had the exquisite pleasure of attempting to drive through down-town San Francisco. It was INSANE. The streets were completely full of traffic and everyone was honking, weaving and dodging, stopping in intersections and generally being hyper-aggressive. Oddly, it didn't bother me one bit. Although I can appreciate the staid and placid nature of Seattle drivers, sometimes the extreme level of niceness gets on my nerves. I'm generally a lot more willing to be an asshole while driving than other Seattlites. San Francisco, while not pleasant to drive in, felt like it was more up to my speed. Scottland thought I committed myself well, as I was able to weave and dodge in and out of the best spots in traffic with the best of them, once I understood what was expected of me.

I had wanted to visit Coit Tower the first time I visited San Francisco, but couldn't as I was stuck using public transportation and couldn't figure out for the life of me which bus I needed to take to get up there. This time, things went much better and eventually, we managed to meander our way to the 2nd (the 1st being the Golden Gate Bridge) coolest depression era public works project in the city. It's pretty obvious where it's located considering that it sticks straight up into the sky, but the actual path there is much less obvious. All the roads there are steep and narrow, and cars are parked every which way. Scottland was my navigator and he performed admirably. Once we got within a few blocks of the spot, signs led us the rest of the way. We decided to park on a street near the tower, instead of trying to go up to the lot. So, we had a nice little walk along the path the winds up around the hill to the tower.

At the tower, we paid to take an elevator to the observation tower. The tower is 210 feet high, so only around 40% of the height of the Space Needle. However, it's on a steep hill in the middle of the city, so the views from the Tower are nearly as good as the views from the Needle. Scottland was obviously quite disturbed when we first got to the observation deck, but he calmed down after a bit and started taking a bunch of photos with his camera. After we had our fill of panoramic views of San Francisco and the surrounding areas, we took the elevator down and took a look at the really interesting murals in the large room surrounding the tower gift shop. These murals were all done in the early 30's and can be quite socialist in content at time. They're very interesting to look at, as there are a lot of little details that start popping out at you after you look at them for a while. The picture I've included here is an abstract portion of the mural that sits right over the entrance to the central elevator waiting area.

After Coit Tower, Scottland and I again braved city traffic to make our way to Golden Gate Park. The driving this time wasn't as bad, once we got out out of the area immediately surrounding the downtown core of the city. Of course, once we got to the park we discovered that there had been some sort of Reggae festival at the park, and the main boulevard through the park was closed down. So, we parked the car and walked around for a bit. Once we were done parking and after I took a phone call from Ron (who had a great time at Burning Man, apparently) we got back into the car and drove to the west end of the park through one of the non-blocked roads. I wanted to see the beach.

I think it's odd how the west side of San Francisco fronts on the Pacific Ocean, and yet that part of the city is something that's hardly even mentioned. I suppose it has something to do with the beach in these parts resembling the beaches in Oregon, IE not very warm and kind of windy. I still thought it was beautiful. The part that we were on was the location where the main road through the park connects to the Great Highway near the Cliff House and where the Sutro Baths used to be. It was cold and windy, but the sun was going down and the whole scene was quite pretty. We looked into getting dinner at a restaurant that was right next to the beach with a beautiful view of the setting sun. Unfortunately, the wait was 45 minutes and we kind of wanted to get back onto the road.

After that, we wandered through the southwestern parts of the city a bit in order to get back onto I-80. Scottland thought that this part of the city was very nice, and he wouldn't mind living there if he had to. He wouldn't want to live in the other parts of the city, though. I sort of don't blame him. It seemed pretty ran down, considering how astronomically high property values and monthly rents are. I guess that part of the city is also where all the good restaurants are, which is important to know. Eventually, we found ourselves on the Bay Bridge, and made our way home from there.

If you'd like to see all the pics from our trip to San Francisco, look at the following link.