Not 'Frisco - For God's Sake | GG Bridge and Marina District |
What can one say about San Francisco? In the mid-19th century CE, it was not much more than a one horse town, the furthest western point of the Pony Express. Then Gold! and the place boomed so that, in less than ten years, it went from bump-on-a-log to world class city status.
The City changes - at the start of the 21st century, the dot.com bonanza boomed and then went bust, prices skyrocketed out of control, and many people went back to where they came from, asking their parents if their old room was still free.
That was then. Now it is 2003 and the bubble has burst - people have fled San rancisco for cheaper places where they can maybe find work. Today the prices are starting to come down to something like a reasonable level and the City is getting a harder edge again, like the New York of BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY coke infested 80's, with odd little California twists. But under it all, SF still remains one the the greatest places I have ever seen or even heard of and the only place to live in the USA (except New York, perhaps). For me, anyway.
SF has more variety than anywhere else ("diversity" has become such a catch phrase term that it is almost a cliche now). Whatever you want, and whatever your budget (despite my bleak portrayal above), this town has got what you're looking for.
Appropriate to it's Gold Rush beginnings, the City that was once home to the notorious Barbary Coast bars and brothels still loves to tie one on. The only other city that comes close to the ratio of drinking establishments to population is Amsterdam.
San Francisco boasts 3,300 restaurants of every sort of cuisine - you got Mexican, Nicaraguan, Peruvian, Brasilian, and Salvadorean; you got Italian, French, German, English, Irish, Basque, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian, Greek, and Russian; you got Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Cambodian, Indian, Burmese, Indonesian, Korean, Vietnamese, Tibetan, Filipino, and Polynesian; you got Egyptian, Morrocan, Arab, Persian, Turkish, Ethiopian, and Eritrean. And of course American fare - hamburgers, barbeque, cajun, creole, 24 hour diners and huge breakfasts.
Each of these ethnic groups have their own festivals, most of them free street fairs in the summer. There are so many different kinds of people in San Francisco, that 62 languages are spoken in the public school system and you can take your driving test in 43 languages.
San Francisco has 14,000 Victorian homes and over 50 museums (including one for blotter acid art, anohter for tattoo art, another for eye diseases).
And, yes, it is stunningly beautiful and endlessly diverting - 42 hills, 29.5 miles of shoreline, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, cable cars, architecture, nightclubs, live theater, the best rep. movie house in the US (the Castro).... ad infinitum.
All this, squeezed into a peninsula 7 miles by 7 miles. With only 715,000 permanent residents. Last year, 16 million people visited San Francisco, and 96% of them said they would come back. The City was ranked "best city in the United States" by Conde Nast Traveler magazine as well as takng top honors fworldwide or restaurants and "fun and energy".
San Francisco gave birth to such culinary delights as cioppino, crab louis, chicken tetrazzini, and the ice cream sandwich, as well as drinks such as the martini, the mai tai, and irish coffee. Robin Williams, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Bill Cosby, the Smothers Brothers, Phyllis Diller, and Tim Conway all got their start in the SF comedy scene. San Francisco once had the most dangerous place in the world (the Barbary Coast), was the birthplace of the hippie movement and the Summer of Love in the 1960's, fueled the nationwide internet explosion in the 1990's and now...well, we'll see.
An impressive resume. But for me it will always be the people that make SF what it is - a wonderful, unique place that makes everyone who lives here swell up with pride, as if we had anything to do with it except for being lucky enough to live here. |
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