Another location, fairly familiar, but later in the year and thus colder than we are used to. Cable carred down to the Wharf, followed by a our clam chowder in a bread bun, a first for son, even tho he has lived here for 12 years, I guess you don't do the touristy things when you work every day in a place.My objective, not achieved last time, was to see the pelicans.
Pottered onto quay 9 and there they were, stalking high above on the fishery buildings waiting for the trolleys of fish to be maneuvered and to drop some tasty cargo, obviously we have timed things wrong, before.
First time I was here was in 1969 I guess, -with Him Who Shall not be Named, now consigned to the devil, hopefully not literally, but I hope he singed his conscience on the way through at least. For reasons best known to twenty year olds we had hitched across America in a matching pair of deeply fringed leather jackets and too little impulse control, but then that is befitting our age. Little would get achieved unless young [even older] people did daft things at times.
It was daft and dangerous, but we survived and stayed in SF for about a month, a bit late for the whole Haight Ashbury experience, didn't even get into a Grateful Dead concert. That might have changed our lives - instead after too much speed we decided to change our plans not take up the offer of a place at Albuquerque University,but to Greyhound back to New York, but return to Europe and an archaeology degree at Durham. Quite a contrast.
SF hasn't changed that much, they were putting in the ground work for the Subway then I think, and I swore never to descend into the depths, but of course one does in the course of a life time, several times.
Now each time we visit I am amazed by the sudden eruption [not the earthquake] of new, exotically shaped buildings, emerging shiny and purposeful defying any thought that life could ever have been fulfilled without them.
In contrast the numbers of crazy people muttering the streets seems to proliferate, it makes for uncomfortable tourism, counter intuitive to ignore the urgent, if private ranting of intense, and mostly, black faces.
