I left my heart
In San Francisco
High on a hill
It calls to me…
—Lyrics by Douglass Cross (1953)
When you look at San Francisco on a map, jutting between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, you find the mirror image of St. Petersburg, sandwiched between the Gulf of Mexico and Tampa Bay. Our elegant Sunshine Skyway isn’t as famous as their Golden Gate, but the cities have other similarities, so it’s tempting to think, This may be us in 50 years. (Of course, we’d need a governor who wouldn’t cancel the high-speed rail we voted for, and a mayor who supports same-sex marriage.)
Jeanne and I recently returned from a week’s visit there, a bit heady from breathing the liberal air of The City, as its natives call it. Inventive, inclusive, hard-working, generous and young, San Francisco is either the promised future of America — capitalism with a conscience — or a bright flame that the meaner spirits of our natures will quench as we close the borders of our lands and minds. A country, like a person, contains all possibilities, and has to choose.
People have problems. San Francisco has 750,000 people, so it has a lot of problems. The biggest problem is its limited space, which inflates prices, and they’re solving this not by building up and ruining its walkable beauty, but by constructing dependable transportation. For 75¢ we took a combination of buses, trolley buses, cable cars, and light rail to get around, and usually back, to Noe Valley. Sleek new air-conditioned vans, most notably the “Google buses,” hum by, gathering up and returning the young engineers and workers in nearby Mountain View and Silicon Valley. This free service pays for itself because its passengers pore over their computers while going back and forth — a great solution, economically and ecologically.
San Francisco, like St. Pete, is a city of distinct neighborhoods: Castro, Fisherman’s Wharf, Haight-Ashbury, etc. We stayed with friends who live in Noe Valley, a hilly bustling section whose picturesque front steps and tree-lined sidewalks pulsate with young couples of varying colors and genders pushing strollers, walking dogs, buzzing around the multitude of coffee shops and cafés. This involves a good deal of walking, and our informal survey indicated that The City has a very low obesity ratio. (On our own walking tour, we visited City Lights Bookstore — on a corner between North Beach and Chinatown — admiring the poster of handsome Jack Kerouac, who died in St. Petersburg.)
Where education and immigration meet and mingle, hip culture is the norm. Within two blocks of our friends’ place are dozens of small ethnic restaurants — but also more mundane shops: shoe repair, used clothing stores, plumbers, a Whole Foods Supermarket (and a little Saturday market like our own); almost everything one needs can be reached on foot.
It takes a certain amount of money to live here — a strong middle class, rather than a split between the rich and poor. The crowds display a general equality, not at all exact; this isn’t some sort of faceless socialism, as its critics suggest, but a truly bubbling melting pot. The general goal doesn’t seem to be money, but living the good life — life as a work of art.
There are of course some extra-expensive neighborhoods, like Pacific Heights with its beautiful mansions. While there, we were taken for lunch, by a friend of our friends, to the Presidio Social Club, from which we could see the twin towers of the Golden Gate Bridge lifting through the morning’s dense fog. (Remembering the movie, The Presidio, we looked around for Sean Connery, but no luck.)
Lastly, we went to a ballgame at AT&T stadium, overlooking a section of the Bay called McCovey’s Cove, reminding us of our own Al Lang Field. A full house (41,000 cheering at every pitch) watched the Giants beat the Brewers, 5-2. Still, I think the Rays are a better team, and CL’s esteemed (and soon to be former) food critic Brian
Ries says Tampa’s Fly Bar & Restaurant is better than theirs, so there’s no reason to be overly reverent:
I left my harp
In San Francisco
Next to a gull
Who cawed to me…
—Lyrics by Warren Baker (2010)
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2012.