US here we come

Wednesday 21st May – another bright blue warm day, though chilly in the morning and after nightfall. We did some shopping in the little tourist-oriented shops by the wharves. Prices are very cheap compared to Australia. I bought a wind-jacket for $25. A similar one that I’d bought in Canberra (also made in China) had cost me $150.

We went on a ferry ride around the bay, right up to the Golden Gate bridge – the water was too rough to go under it – and then over to Alcatracz Island, the site of the famous/infamous prison. It was a great trip and I took many photographs from the ferry. (We’re having trouble again loading images onto the blog, but hope to send some in a separate post later). A pre-recorded audio broadcast from the boat’s speaker system provided a pretty solid description of the sites and I was happy to hear some oral history excerpts that further brought it to life. When we approached the Golden Gate, there was an actor reading from a transcript of an interview with an Italo-American labourer who had helped build the bridge. It was very effective. But even more effective was an actual sound recording excerpt of an interview with someone who had done time at Alcatracz. I must say it was quite a chilling experience for me to get so close to that prison. It really looks spooky from a distance.

Later in the afternoon, we decided to head off by taxi to Haight Avenue, best known for its intersection with Ashbury, where all the hippies once gathered and briefly thrived in the late 1960s. Our interest was also in a record store on the avenue called ‘Amoeba Records’, which boasted a stock of one million items. The store is like a warehouse and Joey was in his element there, again carefully buying several CDs that are important to him. Hannah was bored but was the usual ‘little trooper’. Joan and I were also fascinated with the place. I’ve spent many years trying to find a Jimmy Cliff CD that has his version of ‘I can see clearly now’ and, yippeeee!, I finally found it. ‘Amoeba’ had about 30 Jimmy Cliff CDs and only one of them had that track on it – so I was very happy. As usual, the price was cheap compared to what we’d pay in Australia. (I like the optimisim and faith in humanity, not to mention rebellious spirit, in so many of Jimmy Cliff’s songs).

We strolled along Haight Avenue up to Ashbury – it was all a bit heritage-like and commercialized. There were a few homeless people, asking for ‘some change’, but they were very different to the utterly destitute folk we saw sleeping on church steps in NYC. These seemed more like people who had a choice but had decided to live outside the system. I even walked by a young couple, who were really healthy looking and bright eyed, yet they were sitting on the pavement, dressed like 1960s hippies, asking for money. They seemed to be ‘getting off’ on it – and I suspect they had good homes to go back to once it got too cold on the street. Very different to what we saw in NYC and indeed other parts of Frisco. I was never into the Haight-Ashbury peace/love ‘Grateful Dead’ scene, even back in the 1960s. It struck me back then as a road to nowhere. Was it Marx who said history repeats itself: first as a tragedy and then as a farce? That sums up the Haight very well. Or at least my impression of it, based on one visit.

I put ‘nude yoga’ in the title of this post and here’s why. Earlier in the day, when we were doing some shopping around Fisherman’s Wharf, we noticed some police standing around a skinny looking dude who had been sitting on a fold-up chair near the corner of a busy intersection. We walked by slowly and could see and hear one of the police really yelling at him, saying “Don’t you realize how egocentric this is?!”, and the skinny bloke quietly and calmly responding “I have a right”. To which the big cop yelled: “Other people have rights too”. Anyway, my natural instinct was to identify with the skinny chap and to oppose the cops. However, my daughter Hannah, who had been walking ahead of us, pointed out that what had happened was that the skinny guy had been engaging in ‘nude yoga’ at that street corner. I must admit it did change my attitude to the situation. Egocentric indeed! It goes to show you really need to investigate a situation before leaping to a conclusion.

A final note: I turned 57 the next day – May 22nd – and we celebrated on Wednesday night at a really nice seafood restaurant overlooking pier 39. More than that, our table overlooked the bay, the sea-lions on ‘their’ pontoons, the boats in the small boat harbour, looking out to the mountains on the horizon. And a beautiful sunset. The food was very good. We strolled back to the hotel along the waterfront, walking briskly because the breeze was chilly. Street musicians of many kinds enhanced the ambience of the night. It was a birthday I won’t be forgetting in a hurry.

Barry

Tags: , Alcatracz, Amoeba Records, Golden Gate bridge, Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 5:05 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.