June 2, 1997

For a change of pace this time, I am posting a combination travel diary and social commentary on the city of San Francisco, where I spent Memorial Day weekend. It is pretty jumbled, so beware....

There is a microbrewery in Soma called 20 Tanks...I had two beers, a porter and a special nitrogen-blended ale. The ale was interesting, the porter fairly good, but nothing memorable. The place did have excellent pizza though, and fairly nice scenery.

The traffic in SF is pretty nasty. Friday afternoon was trial by fire, but after that, driving went fairly smoothly. The keys to driving in SF are to be aware of the one way streets, and to remember that you simply cannot make a left-handed turn off Market Street. To go left when heading north on Market, you have to go one block further than you need, turn right, and curve around backwards across Market. Also the yellow lights are really short...maybe 5 seconds, so you gotta scoot to get through them before they turn red.

We visted the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA for short). My old KU college ID enabled me to become a patron of the arts at half price, but I more than made up for the savings by dropping $35 on a fabulous Keith Haring beach towel mural in the gift shop. The featured exhibit was an installation entitled "Icons" which showed common items of our consumer life as art. The objects d'art included Gap jeans, phonebooks, consumer electronics, the sweeping form of a Powerbook 540c, and photogrphs of the Houston freeway. The entire exhibit hall has an industrial look to it, enhanced by metallic display stands and corrugated metal floorboards. There were some thought-provoking pieces, including a display of a Lousiville slugger baseball bat juxtaposed with a shotgun. Objects of sport...or the tools of a killer? They also had a slide show displaying the original Macintosh icons by Susan Kare. Other museum exhibits that I will remember include a circle of 180 black poodles surrounding a baby, and a strange room painted to resemble the outdoors, with stacks of newspaper and a running faucet.

One of the coolest things is the number of gay couples raising kids. You see it all around the Castro. We sat in a coffee shop on 18th near Castro street and saw a male couple raising a beautiful little girl...she seemed so happy; you could tell she was loved; it is very heartwarming, a display of some real family values.

San Francisco is a very political city, the most political of any place I have been outside of Washington DC. It was a few weeks before a local election; they are having a referendum on whether to use public money to build a new football stadium, and everywhere you looked, there were signs "Yes to D&F" in favor, and claims that "if they build it, you will pay" opposed. But this election aside, politics are everywhere...grafitti, posters stapled to telephone poles, neighborhood newspapers, pamphleteers on street corners...very cool. The political spectrum of the city ranges from "limousine liberal" to socialist. Conservatism is not a factor in the city as far as I could tell. There are some economic conservatives (pro-growth developers, etc), but everyone seems to be a social liberal. Groups and coalitions are prevalent.

The gay community's politics seem very diverse. There are many divisions within the community as a whole, probably because it is so big and so un-threatened, there is time for lots of factional in-fighting. There are various political groups, two Democratic clubs, one more "radical" than the other, and many direct action groups. ACT-UP still has a chapter here. Overall, the gay community is very "loud and proud" - it is a big presence, powerful, politically active. The rainbow flags of gay pride are everywhere...hanging from windows, in front of businesses, on cars, on lamp posts...the feeling I got was that "this is our city" ... a great feeling that is.

The acceptance of gays in the city goes much further than laws, it is in people's attitudes. Gay couples are taken for granted. I felt safe and natural walking down the street holding my partner's hand, laying together in the park, and holding hands in any restaurant. It is just seen as unremarkeable. And it is so nice seeing others doing these things too. Everything is just so matter of fact. It is true integration and freedom.

We visited the San Francisco Art Institute Friday afternoon. A great school in a very unique building which resembles some kind of monastery, right down to the courtyard and bell tower. They had some (very good) student art on display, and the top of the building allowed for a great view of the bay. Afterwords, we had dinner at a place called the Stinking Rose, an Italian restaurant in which every dish contains garlic in some manner. Very very good!

On Saturday we had breakfast at Noah's bagels, then shopped the Casto in the morning...it seems run over with fashion shops, boutiques and gay gift shops, catering to tourists like me. Anything that can have a rainbow slapped on it and a price tag attached, it was for sale! It was a fun sunny morning shopping, talking, and watching all the cute guys. I had the chance to stop and browse in A Different Light Books, which is a bookstore specilizing in gay themed books...they have thousands of titles, I could have spent days browsing there. ADL Books is the best bookstore I have ever been to...except it is way too cramped; you can barely move when it gets crowded (and it usually is).

On Saturday afternoon we hiked through the residential neightborood of the Castro (steep hills, beautiful homes, great views) over to the Haight-Ashbury district, famous for the "Summer of Love" some 30 years ago. It was a commercialized hippie Disneyland. We had psychadelic shops, poster and music stores, a used clothing store (for that retro hippie look), smoking supplies and pipes, and coffeehouses. If the Castro has the rainbow, Haight has the Grateful Dead logo, which was attached to anything that could be sold. I don't want to be too harsh on the Haight...it was a fun place, and like the Castro has a good sense of history...something big happened here...a social movement began here...and if many years later it is for sale, that's America!

After "doing the Haight," we hiked to the top of the nearby park, which was a heavily wooded hill allowing for a near panoramic view of the north half of the city. It was a nice day, and was so peaceful. SF is truly one of the world's most beautiful cities.

On Sunday morning we went to the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum. It was actually pretty underwhelming. I've heard so many good things about it, and while it was fun, it wasn't terribly memorable. The layout was nice, and it had lots of Macintoshes on display :-) but many of the exhibits were "down" and it seemed too focused on basic (as opposed to applied) science for my taste. But it was still worth going.

In the afternoon we went to Fishermans Wharf and the Ghiradelli plaza. Big mistake. The sourdough bread was fresh and the chocolate delicious, but the place was just swarming with obnoxious tourists. It was no fun at all, so we quickly booked over to Berkeley, got there right around sunset. We had dinner at a pizza place called Zachary's, where the pizza was just incredible, but the staff ran the place like the Soup Nazi of Seinfeld fame ran his restaurant. Next door was this cool bookstore that sold used "seconds" of first-run books. Unlike store of this type in the Midwest, the Berkeley store has a ton of great political books. After dinner we drove through the night campus and down the city's main drag, Telegraph Street.

San Francisco has a ton of gay newspapers. There is the Bay Area Reporter, which is a real newspaper, focusing on politics, community news, entertainment, in short, a regular newspaper. Then there is Bay Area Times (I think, I forget the exact title) which has longer features stories, more national news, and more community even listings. Then we have Frontiers, a glossy-cover magazine emphasizing feature-length articles. Then there is Oblivion, which is a very detailed and well-written guide to bars, clubs, and other places of entertainment. Finally, there were a couple of pretty crappy bar rags whose names escape me. These are just gay newspapers. There are also 2 big general-audience "alternative" weeklies, and more neighborhood newspapers than I can count.

One thing that struck me constantly about SF was how beautiful it was. The sky was an incredibly crisp blue, the breezes fresh, and the sun never too hot, never too cold. Nights were cold, but days were great. And the scenery was everywhere...houses on the hilds, great views, that awesome skyline, the bay and ocean in the distance. The whole place is just awesome to look at.

OK, the bad shit, just to let you know I was paying attention. Lots of litter, some bad areas full of pawn shops and peep show booths, and of course, lots of homeless people. No two ways about it, there are a lot of them. Oh yeah, and the gas prices are 30 cents higher than they should be.

The SF main library is a tour de force. Brand new, totally wired, cool architecture with an atrium, neon, and skylights, and special centers for many groups: Asians, Latinos, African Americans, and gays. The gay reading room had a cool mural on the ceiling with the names of famous gay people throughout history.

We did wine country on Monday. We drove for an hour into the Napa Valley to the Mondavi Winery where we took the tour. It was quite interesting and I learned a lot about how wine is made. And also that sniffing the cork makes you look like an ignoramus to the knowledgeable wine geek. You stiff the wine itself, not the cork. After the tour, we got to sample some wines, and ended up buying a couple to take back with us. After the tour we had lunch at this cute little Italian place, complete with a bubbling water fountain.

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