"San Francisco" San Francisco by ahendley

Riding a little cable car halfway to the stars is a thrill. And because people occasionally fall off, the thrill is not completely imaginary. You don't have to wear a seat belt or a helmet or racing leathers (although some of us would appreciate the leather if you can pull it off with panache).

Given the litigious proclivities of us Americans, it's a wonder the cable cars exist at all. A few years ago, I was on the jury for a civil case where a resident had been hit by a cable car and was suing the City and County of San Francisco. The case took two weeks and I learned far more about the mechanics and politics of cable cars than anyone needs to know.

Our most famous law suit occurred some years ago when a tourist named Gloria sued the City and County because she was knocked off a cable car. She claimed - and I'm not making this up - that the fall had caused her to develop an insatiable appetite for sex resulting in severe emotional distress. (American cultural tip: when all else fails, sue for emotional distress.)
The Village Voice in New York headlined its coverage with Sick Transit Gloria.

It's Clear Right Now but Here Comes the Fog

...was a summer in San Francisco'

Most San Franciscans know that Mark Twain said that, but according to nit-picking
Twain scholars, there is no written record of this quote.

As our great American philosopher Yogi Berra said, 'I never really said most of the things I said.'
Even if Mr. Twain didn't say it, legions of tourists did.

San Francisco has a Mediterranean climate which means wet winters and dry summers. It's during the dry summers that the fog plays its games. The conventional explanation is that the heat of the Central Valley sucks in the moist air of the cold Pacific Ocean in the form of fog. The fog doesn't usually distribute itself uniformly over the City, but seems attracted to the same parts of town as the tourists: Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, Alamo and Union Squares. Meanwhile, my own neighborhood, shielded by Twin Peaks, luxuriates under an azure sky.

My hypothesis, based upon the evidence, is that the fog is attracted not by the hot Central Valley but by the tourists. This is not a complaint. We love you and we love our fog.

Our best weather is in September and October. Little fog, less chance of rain, and the occasional balmy night. (No matter what the temperature is at 7:00 PM, never, never go out at night without a wrap.) It's no coincidence that the major outdoor gay events are scheduled for September and October: the Castro Fair, the Folsom Fair, the Dore Alley Fair.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a gay man knows the best time and place to party.

But the summer fog is not without advantage. It reminds us that one of the privileges of being an adult is that we can wear long pants.

MFK Fisher

We eat well in San Francisco.

In the most recent Condé Nast Travelers' Survey, San Francisco restaurants ranked higher than those of Paris. This is flattering but probably more an example of faulty statistical sampling rather than an accurate reflection of culinary reality. However, we do have credentials.

The Bay Area is home to Alice Waters, the Earth Mother of the New American Cuisine, who continues to welcome acolytes to her Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley.

Julia Child, a native Californian, has Bay Area connections. Her Boston kitchen is being disassembled stone by stone, like a Renaissance Tuscan shrine, to be reassembled in at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (Washington, DC), but her French copper pots will be displayed at COPIA in the Napa Valley. The Smithsonian will be stuck with painting outlines on Mrs. Child's pegboards where her pots once hung, sort of a secular Shroud of Turin.

Finally, the divine MFK Fisher lived in the wine country north of San Francisco, first in St. Helena then in Glen Ellen, from 1952 until her death in 1992 at the age of 83. (See photo of Mrs. Fisher, which in truth has nothing to do with San Francisco, dating from the years when she was leading a scandalous and sensual life in Switzerland and the South of France. But it is an elegant and evocative portrait, and we San Franciscans are susceptible to nostalgia and have a weakness for people who lead elegantly scandalous and sensual lives.)

In addition to cuisine inspired by these divas, San Francisco restaurants serve up home cooking from everywhere. San Francisco is a city of immigrants, both from other regions of the United States and other countries, particularly those of Latin America and Asia.
<p>If you enjoy your local Chinese or Thai restaurant, you might want to sample Vietnamese, Cambodian, Burmese, Tibetan or regional Chinese: Hong Kong, Singapore, Mandarin, Schezwan. If you have tried Tex-Mex at the Indiana Cafés in Paris, try the real thing in our Mission District, then try traditional Mexican cooking which is not the same as Text-Mex and varies depending upon whether the chef was inspired by Mexico City, Guadalajara or the Yucatan.

Fusion cuisine, which 'fuses' the Waters-Child-Fisher legacy with regional Asian and Latin cuisines, is still a hot trend although it has been around for at least a decade now.

• In a nutshell:Everybody's Favorite City