The City by the Bay

[DickZ]

The City by the Bay
Part 1

Back in 1971, I was lucky enough to spend some time in San Francisco and the surrounding area. This was all thanks to the U. S. Navy, as I was stationed aboard a destroyer that was undergoing an extensive overhaul at the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. For about five months, my wife and I, along with our first-born daughter, lived in a Quonset hut on the grounds of the shipyard. Maybe some of you folks aren’t familiar with the term Quonset hut – here’s an exterior view of one:

http://www.bakatronics.com/images/628-0710.jpg

And an indoor shot:

http://www.ourlosbanos.com/snapshots/eaglefield/eaglefield21.jpg

We only had three rooms – a combination kitchen/living/dining room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. It was the most austere place I ever lived in, but it was absolutely free of charge. We did lots of sightseeing during those months – not only is there a wealth of sights to see in San Francisco, but we also wanted to minimize our time in the Quonset hut.

Fisherman’s Wharf is one of the more popular tourist attractions in a city filled with tourist attractions. There are several well-known seafood restaurants on the wharf, and you get beautiful views of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge from here. These seafood restaurants are pretty expensive in comparison with those in less exotic settings, but as long as you don’t go there every day to eat, it is worth the cost difference just for the experience of being at Fisherman’s Wharf. We certainly didn’t eat at Fisherman’s Wharf every time we visited the place, but we enjoyed one meal at a nice restaurant called Alioto’s.

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/fishermans-wharf-picture.jpg

http://www.inetours.com/images/Tours/HHBus/F-Wharf_0728.jpg

In addition to the conventional high-priced restaurants, there are seafood vendors here, so you can buy some sea creatures to take home and cook them yourself, or you can eat them raw right there on the wharf:

http://www.alcatrazisland.us/images/fishermans-wharf-seafood-vendors.jpg

And there are lots of private boats moored near the wharf:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/fishermans-wharf-picture-2.jpg

Near Fisherman’s Wharf there are six major historic ships on display, plus lots of smaller craft. The place is called the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park. These vessels are all over 100 years old and represent an era long past. There are sailing vessels and coal burners that served in various roles such as carrying lumber or ferrying passengers and automobiles.

Here’s a picture of the park, which shows some of the old ships:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Historic_ships_of_the_San_Francisco_Maritime_Natio nal_Historic_Park.jpg

And a virtual tour, if you want to see some of the individual vessels, or if you’d like to learn a little about them. If you are actually at the park, you can have a real tour of these vessels:

http://www.nps.gov/features/safr/feat0001/virtualships/

And the park’s website:

http://www.nps.gov/safr/

Ghirardelli Square is adjacent to Fisherman’s Wharf. Since they make fantastic chocolate, you can top off your great meal at a Fisherman’s Wharf seafood restaurant with a couple of pounds of Ghirardelli chocolate. And you don’t even have to walk very far to do it, which means you can keep all those calories inside yourself and not worry about losing any of them due to excessive activity in getting from one place to another.

The square has its origins in 1893 when a man by the name of Domingo Ghirardelli purchased an entire city block, to set up his planned chocolate factory. He must have been one of the luckiest men on the face of the earth because this place was eventually called Ghirardelli Square and I have no idea how often something like that happens. What are the odds that you live and work in a place and then by coincidence it winds up with the same name as yours?

His plant consisted of several buildings, each dedicated to a particular facet of the business. He also manufactured mustard, but that didn’t achieve nearly as much fame as his chocolate. Here’s an overview of the complex:

http://www.planjam.com/myimgs/ghirardelli.jpg

Ghirardelli’s company lasted until the early 1960s, when the firm was sold. The new owner wanted to continue making chocolate, but somewhere else that wasn’t in expensive downtown San Francisco. A real estate developer bought the land and buildings from the new owner, and converted the whole place to an integrated retail and restaurant complex, preserving the original individual buildings. It opened in 1964 in its new role, and has thrived ever since.

I can personally vouch for the fact that you can eat enough chocolate here to make yourself sick, so if you go yourself, try to limit your consumption to something reasonable.

Here’s an overall view of the complex:

http://www.planjam.com/myimgs/ghirardelli.jpg

And a closeup of the Cocoa Building:

http://www.joshgiles.com/images/uploaded/32_DSC00113.jpg

And the place looks especially good when viewed from the water at night, and even better when you’re looking in from the water:

http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicv/vfiles26610.jpg

And if you’re interested in the history of chocolate, here it is according to Ghirardelli, who should be an expert:

http://www.ghirardelli.com/chocopedia/history.aspx

Cable cars are one of San Francisco’s unique sights. They were required because of the steep inclines that many of the city’s streets have, and they have been operational since 1873. The cars run on rails, and there are cables below street level to pull the cars up the hills and to ease them down the other side. All you have to do in order to appreciate the magnitude of the problem is simply walk up a San Francisco hill once.

I heard somewhere that the cable cars were invented so that when Rice-A-Roni would come along 85 years later, they would have something interesting to feature in their television commercials. However, I can’t get verification of that statement from any authoritative parties.

Here’s a closeup of one of the cars:

http://www.holiday-beds-direct.com/images/destinations/San Francisco Cable Car.jpg

And here’s one coming up a steep hill, with Alcatraz Island in the background (we’ll explore Alcatraz in the next episode of this tour). This picture of the car coming up a hill gives you an idea as to why the cable cars are necessary for navigating these steep inclines:

http://www.super8paloalto.com/images/cable_car.jpg

The Cable Car Website shown below has more information, as well as an interactive routine that lets you actually drive a cable car right there on your computer screen, by accelerating the car and putting on its brakes. You don’t get to steer because the rails take you wherever you go. In this way you can experience all the thrills of driving a cable car, without having to worry about falling into San Francisco Bay and getting all wet. You can also check out the machinery that makes all these cars go up and down the hills, if you’re so inclined. I think it’s pretty interesting, but we don’t all think alike. Here it is:

http://www.sfcablecar.com/

And speaking of inclined streets – maybe you remember from your early driving lessons that when you park next to the curb with your car facing downhill, you turn the fronts of your front tires toward the curb. When your car is facing uphill, you turn the backs of your front tires toward the curb. This way, if your car starts to slip, your tires will hit the curb and stop any further movement. Well, I had never actually done that anywhere - until I got to San Francisco. You can be ticketed by the police if you don’t properly orient your tires on San Francisco streets. It makes a big difference there.

Next up: Chinatown, the Opera House, Alcatraz, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the Palace of Legion of Honor.

[DickZ]

The City by the Bay
Part 2

San Francisco’s Chinatown is said to be the largest Chinese community outside of China itself. It was established in the 1850s. It is chock full of Chinese restaurants and stores, as well as homes. Chinatown is the most densely populated area in the United States.

Here’s an entrance to Chinatown. Back in 1971 when we were there, security checks before entering a particular place weren’t as much in vogue as they are these days, in the wake of various terrorist activities. I don’t know what Chinatown’s policy might be on getting scanned before you can come in, but it looks like they have the archways necessary for doing an airport-type security check before you are allowed to enter:

http://www.worldofstock.com/slides/TAC1482.jpg

I don’t remember the name of the restaurant where we ate because it was so many years ago, but I’m pretty sure it had Chinese food – at least the meal had a lot of white rice with it and we got tea in those cute little cups with no handles that burn the heck out of your fingers if the tea is hot.

We didn’t buy anything at any of the shops because I’m very opposed to shopping, but you wouldn’t realize that unless you’ve read some of my other stories. My watchword on shopping is “If I’ve gotten along without this item for this long, then I certainly don’t need it now.”

Here’s a typical Chinatown street scene:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Chinatown,_San_Francisco_07.jpg

And they seem to like lots of signs in Chinatown – and note that the ‘cable car’ in the picture below is just a bus dressed up like a cable car because it doesn’t even run on tracks:

http://www.worldofstock.com/slides/TAC1476.jpg

Here’s the Sing Chong Building, which is kind of like our Macy’s because it is a trading bazaar except that you can’t negotiate prices at Macy’s, but you can do just that at Sing Chong. This building was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake and fires.

http://www.pandagator.info/images/SanFran/sing-chong2.jpg

If you’re a little uneasy about how your bank has been doing in the recent economic crisis, you might consider moving your funds to the Bank of Canton in Chinatown. It used to be the Chinese Telephone Exchange, until the building was bought by the Bank of Canton in 1960. Back in the days when the telephone exchange was thriving, it is interesting to note that operators memorized everything by individuals’ names because they considered it an insult to people if one associated them just with numbers.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2005/2331149062_c0a525ca3b.jpg?v=0

San Francisco’s Opera House is a truly beautiful building. Its full name is the War Memorial Opera House – since it was completed in 1932, the war in the building’s name would be the Great War, which later would come to be known as World War I. It is one of the last Beaux-Arts buildings to be built in the United States, although the Main Post Office and Courthouse in San Antonio came along even later – in 1937 – and is also of the Beaux-Arts design. That building is discussed in my story Memories of San Antonio.

Some of the initial meetings of the world’s best diplomats to set up the United Nations were held in this very same Opera House, but I think they had to tell the opera singers to be quiet while they were having the meetings. Or maybe the opera singers kept on singing while the meetings were going on, and that explains why the United Nations has been so confused for the entire time it has been in existence.

And the United Nations Charter was signed in the Opera House in 1945 by President Harry Truman on behalf of the United States. Here are a couple of exterior views of the building:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/San_Francisco_Opera_House.jpg/800px-San_Francisco_Opera_House.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/War_Memorial_Opera_House_(San_Francisco).JPG

And the interior, which seats about 3,200 people:

http://www.goldmanprize.org/files/GEP_Ceremony_593.jpg

If you’ve seen the old movie Foul Play with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, then you know what the Opera House’s interior looks like, because the movie showed a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado in process while the police were scrambling around searching for some wannabe assassins. I won’t say whom they wanted to assassinate because you might see the movie someday and I don’t want to ruin it for you. It’s actually a pretty good movie even though it probably won’t ever win any Academy Awards.

Alcatraz Island is an island that was most recently used as a federal prison, but usually the natives just call it Alcatraz by itself because that’s less trouble. Here’s the island viewed from the air:

http://www.nps.gov/alca/historyculture/images/Alcatraz_Aerial.jpg

Some people call it The Rock but I don’t know why they do that, since it’s an island and not a rock. Maybe calling it The Island makes it sound more like a serene vacation spot than a robust penal institution, so I’m just guessing that they went with The Rock instead because that sounds a lot more appropriate for a prison.

Well, whatever it is – rock or island – it’s sitting in the middle of San Francisco Bay, where it started out as a lighthouse, then became a military post, and then a military prison, and finally a federal prison. I don’t know why it kept changing hands so often, but it might indicate that nobody wants to stay there very long.

And here’s a shot we checked out earlier when we were talking about cable cars – this view shows the island in the background, so you can get more perspective on where it is than you can get from the aerial picture above, that zeroed in on only the island itself:

http://www.super8paloalto.com/images/cable_car.jpg

Famous criminals like Al Capone served their terms here because it was said to be a prison from which nobody could escape. It is claimed that there were no successful escapes ever made from Alcatraz, and that there were 36 unsuccessful attempts. The prison was finally shut down in 1963. It’s now a tourist site, and you can take a ferryboat from Fisherman’s Wharf over to check it out. I think you can even see the prison cells, if you’re into that kind of nostalgia.

The Palace of Fine Arts was originally built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, which honored the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 and the discovery of the Pacific Ocean centuries earlier. Speaking of the Panama Canal, at the same time I was writing this part of the story, I was in the process of reading David McCullough’s The Path Between the Seas, which amazingly enough is all about that very same canal! I just can’t get over the coincidence.

The centerpiece of the building complex is probably the most recognizable:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Palace_of_fine_arts.jpg/800px-Palace_of_fine_arts.jpg

The Palace of Fine Arts is patterned after various styles of Greek and Roman architecture, because it was built many years before our current modern architecture came along to introduce us to the fantastic practice of using pathetically unimaginative straight lines and boxes that are totally devoid of any creativity whatsoever, but which are much easier to build than the old-fashioned architecture. The Palace of Fine Arts is a beautiful set of buildings, but more than that, the complex also houses art works and scientific displays, and there is a theater in which performances are frequently given.

Because of its beauty, many weddings are held here with the above building as a backdrop, and many movie and television producers have found a way to work the buildings into the plots of their various shows. We had already been married before coming to San Francisco so we weren’t able to have a wedding at the Palace, but we hung around there for hours on end hoping to be in a movie or a television show. Alas, neither of those ever happened.

There are other several buildings which make up the total complex:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/San_Francisco_-_Palace_of_Fine_Arts.jpg

And some detailed views:

http://cache.virtualtourist.com/2406075-Palace_of_Fine_Arts-San_Francisco.jpg

http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicc/cfiles35783.jpg

http://thump01.pbase.com/g6/82/265582/3/80831657.Npo1hOeM.jpg

The Palace of Legion of Honor was a gift to the city made by a wealthy sugar baron and racehorse breeder. I don’t know if he became a sugar baron just because his horses liked sugar, or if he was a sugar baron before he was a racehorse breeder. The building’s design is based on the Palais de la Legion d’Honneur in Paris, which explains why the two buildings’ names are so similar, except for the fact that they are spoken in different languages and you have to use different accents when you say the names so people won’t think you’re confusing the one in San Francisco with the one in Paris.

Here’s the building’s wonderful exterior:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Palace_Legion_Honor_SF.jpg

The San Francisco version was completed in 1924, and houses a wonderful European art collection, much of which is French. I’m guessing that the one in France reciprocates, and therefore features an American art collection. But I’ve never even been to Paris, so I can’t be positive of that.

The museum features several sculptures by Auguste Rodin, including a copy of The Thinker in the forecourt. There are also paintings by Rembrandt, Gainsborough, El Greco, Rubens, and Monet. None of these artists were mentioned in Aunt Shecky’s Art Quiz, which probably explains why I got such a poor grade on that quiz.

Here’s the copy of Rodin’s The Thinker which is in San Francisco (there are actually more than twenty copies of The Thinker scattered around the world’s various museums):

http://www.tlinn.com/images/travel/north_america/ca/san_francisco/2007-07/p7ssm_img_1/fullsize/148-0764w.TheThinkerInCourtyard_fs.jpg

If you want more information on the specifics of this museum’s collections, you could check out this site:

http://www.famsf.org/legion/index.asp

Next up: Lombard Street, Golden Gate Bridge, Union Square, Nob Hill, the Pacific Union Club, the Fairmont Hotel, and the Mark Hopkins Hotel.

[DickZ]

The City by the Bay
Part 3

Russian Hill in San Francisco features forty-degree slopes, so the people living here make sure their cars stay in great shape - especially the engines and brakes. One of the streets on Russian Hill - Lombard Street - was created in the 1920s as a way to deal with this kind of extreme slope. Eight switchbacks were provided in a winding pattern so drivers don’t go straight up or straight down. It’s called ‘the crookedest street in the world’ and it features some fantastic houses and flowers, as well as a breathtaking view of the San Francisco Bay.

It’s quite beautiful to look at, and it’s certainly unique, but I don’t think I’d care to live there, despite all the notoriety it gets. Besides having to deal with the steep hills and the sinuous course up and down them each time you leave your house or come back to it, you also encounter an inordinate number of tourists taking pictures. I haven’t been to all the streets in the world myself to measure exactly how crooked they all are, so I’m just taking someone’s word for it that Lombard Street is truly ‘the crookedest street in the world.’

Here’s a view looking UP the hill, in which you can get a glimpse of the winding roadway:

http://www.reliablerides.com/images/lombard street.jpeg

And a view looking DOWN the hill:

http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/california/images/s/california-lombard-street.jpg

There are also stairs for pedestrians, but they don’t wind. They go straight up and straight down.

There’s a movie that we’ll view later that has Lombard Street along with some other sights, but that will be a while yet because the movie also includes some places we haven’t gone over yet.

I had always heard exciting stories about the Golden Gate Bridge, so I was very happy to finally see it in person. However, I was shocked to learn that it’s red rather than gold. I don’t even know how they came up with the name Golden Gate Bridge instead of the Red Gate Bridge, but whoever named it must have been color blind. At least that’s my guess, and you’ll probably agree when you see the picture of the bridge because you can’t see even the slightest hint of gold.

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/golden-gate-bridge-picture.jpg

The bridge is described as an art deco suspension bridge. Construction began in 1933 and was completed in 1937, which is the timeframe that lots of art deco was produced.

When we were there in San Francisco, there was an ongoing story about how painters would begin working at one end of the bridge and proceed day by day toward the other end. It would take them about a year to paint the entire bridge red in this manner, and as soon as they finished, it was time to start over again at the first end. I don’t know if this is true or not, as I never actually saw these painters in action. But it sounds at least as reasonable as some of my other theories on other matters that I just figured out myself.

Union Square is a downtown shopping, hotel, and theater district. The name comes from the days of the Civil War, as rallies in support of the Union Army were held here. Tourists flock to this area to shop, so I stayed away with a passion. I don’t know why all these people like to buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have, but lots of people do just exactly that.

Here’s the crowning glory of Union Square – it’s the Monument to Admiral Dewey’s victory at Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish American War in 1898, many years before Dewey lost that famous presidential election to Harry Truman even though the Chicago Tribune thought that Dewey was the winner because they couldn’t wait until the outcome was actually known:

http://www.inetours.com/images/Snglimgs/UnSq/Dewey.jpg

Here’s the 1948 Tribune’s account of the election:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2008-01/34569547.jpg

Of course, this wasn’t the Chicago Tribune’s only major screwup. During World War II, right after the US Navy was able to inflict heavy damage on the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway, the Tribune actually put out a story that much of the Navy’s intelligence was collected by breaking Japanese communications codes. Most people of at least subhuman intellect in the United States would have figured it was better to keep things like breaking enemy codes a secret, but the Chicago Tribune thought differently. The paper must have found its reporters at the Charmin School of Absolute Morons.

And speaking of Dewey, if you're as big a cat lover as I am, you should check out the story of Dewey, the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, which is described here:

http://www.amazon.com/Dewey-Small-Town-Library-Touched-World/dp/0446407410/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229614003&sr=1-1

Or see Dewey in a movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jGpvvLmwbs&feature=channel

Union Square is the ultimate in shopping, but I hear that the prices are so expensive that you shouldn’t go shopping here unless you are so rich that you pay lots of taxes. If you don’t already pay lots of taxes, you can’t afford to shop here.

However, there’s something right here in Union Square to offset the high prices of the shopping. It’s a booth where you can buy half-price tickets to various performances, and they even let you stay for the entire show when you buy these tickets. I was afraid they would kick us out after the first act or something like that, but we were allowed to stay all the way until the end. What a relief! It would have been very embarrassing to be pulled out of the theater by an usher, right in front of all the full-paying customers who got to see the whole show, merely because we only had half-price tickets.

Nob Hill is a small area in downtown San Francisco that is filled with people who pay lots of taxes because they all have way too much money. They live in fancy mansions which are very showy. In fact, someone once started calling the district Snob Hill instead. It was initially built in the late nineteenth century, but if you remember from your history classes, there was a big earthquake in San Francisco that took place in 1906, and the earthquake triggered fires so all but two of the Nob Hill buildings were completely destroyed. There were several palatial mansions belonging to railroad tycoons that were leveled.

The Pacific Union Club is a private club that is now housed in one of the only two original Nob Hill buildings still standing after the earthquake and fire – it was initially the residence of a tycoon. This building is the first brownstone constructed west of the Mississippi River, as all the previous brownstones were built east of the Mississippi for some reason that I can’t figure out.

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/photos/PacificUnionClub.jpg

The Fairmont Hotel is the other Nob Hill building that survived the earthquake and fire. It is across the street from the Pacific Union Club. While we couldn’t go into the Pacific Union Club because we weren’t members, we were able to enter the Fairmont to see the lobby.

Here’s the exterior:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Fairmont_Hotel_(San_Francisco).JPG

And the magnificent lobby:

http://www.alamedainfo.com/Fairmont_Hotel_San_Francisco_Lobby_002.jpg

Here’s a website where you can see a few additional pictures of the hotel, check out the various dining rooms to see which one you want to eat in tonight, and make reservations if you’re so inclined:

http://www.fairmont.com/sanfrancisco/

Next door to the Fairmont is the Mark Hopkins Hotel, which is named for one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad. The Central Pacific was one of the companies that helped finish the first transcontinental railroad shortly after the Civil War. Hopkins’s mansion wasn’t finished until 1878, and he died before then so he never got to enjoy it. The house was eventually leveled by the post-earthquake fires of 1906.

The hotel opened in 1926 when they were sure the fires were all out. Here’s the hotel’s exterior:

http://www.alamedainfo.com/Hotel_Mark_Hopkins_San_Francisco_PC.jpg

And just the front door, which doesn’t show up very well in the overall exterior view:

http://www.kiwicollection.com/upload/topten/1171504824-Mark_Hopkins(7).jpg

An aerial view:

http://usabirds.free.fr/San Francisco/Downtown/nob hill/nob hill mark hopkins hotel/nob hill mark hopkins hotel 3.jpg

I looked around in the hotel for several hours trying to find what is called the Top of the Mark, until someone eventually told me that it is on the highest level of the hotel. I don’t know why they didn’t tell me that sooner, before I had wasted all that time looking in all the wrong places.

The Top of the Mark used to be considered one of the world’s great bars, but I understand that now it’s pretty much filled up with people wearing ballcaps, tee shirts, torn jeans, and sneakers while they babble incoherent gibberish into their cellphones. It’s a whole new world out there, and lots of places that were great before, are now littered with these brain-dead phenoms.

Here’s a view of the city looking towards the Golden Gate Bridge from Top of the Mark:

http://www.alamedainfo.com/Top_of_Mark_San_Francisco_PC.jpg

Next up: Coit Tower, City Hall, Market Street, the Ferry Building, and the BART, which has absolutely nothing to do with the Simpsons and everything to do with the Bay Area Rapid Transport System.

[DickZ]

The City by the Bay
Part 4

Coit Tower is an unusual looking structure that some people think resembles a fire hose nozzle. It was built in order to beautify the city, and sits atop Telegraph Hill in downtown San Francisco. It was put up thanks to an endowment left by Lillie Hitchcock Coit when she died in 1929. She was a volunteer firefighter despite being one of the wealthiest people in the city, and she was also known as being rather eccentric. Her affinity for firefighters apparently stems back to her being rescued from a deadly fire at the tender age of eight.

Here’s what the tower looks like – it’s a reinforced concrete structure of the Art Deco style. We have a closeup followed by a more distant view of the tower:

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/FIP/SF-00008-C~Coit-Tower-Telegraph-Hill-San-Francisco-California-Posters.jpg

http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/2101052/CoitTower-main_Full.jpg

Besides the unusual exterior, the tower’s interior is also known as the home of many mural paintings developed under a public works program. The Government paid artists during the Great Depression to do this kind of work. There were 25 participating San Francisco artists who contributed to this project, and some of them painted several individual pictures.

Here is a sample of the artists’ work in depicting a grim scene from the Depression:

http://indospectrum.com/images/photos/san-francisco/cd019_coit_mural1.jpg

And here are ALL the murals for anyone who wants to see more of them – just click on the thumbnail of each mural you want to examine more closely:

http://www.travelphotobase.com/s/CAFC.HTM

San Francisco’s City Hall opened in 1915 – a Beaux Arts classic. This building replaced its predecessor, which was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fires. It was designed by Arthur Brown, the same man who designed the War Memorial Opera House and the Coit Tower.

Here’s the classic exterior:

http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicv/vfiles4635.jpg

http://afod.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/sf-city-hall_hdr-large-e-mail-view.jpg

And a fantastic Rotunda:

http://www.architask.com/images/city_hall_large.jpg

Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were married in the Rotunda in 1954, and the Rotunda even appeared in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Indy and Marian walking down the steps at the end of the movie.

Market Street is such an important street that it’s been compared to the Champs-Élysées in Paris or to Fifth Avenue in New York City. I’ve never been to Paris so I don’t know how Market Street compares to Champs-Élysées. I have been on Fifth Avenue once - on a week day. I was foolish enough to be driving a car and I was terrified by the other drivers – all I saw were cab drivers, delivery trucks, and me. The cab drivers and delivery trucks were such aggressive drivers and didn’t really care much about hitting other vehicles. I wasn’t able to do much sightseeing – I had to concentrate exclusively on avoiding collisions.

Here is Market Street as viewed from the Twin Peaks, which are two mountains considered to be the exact geographical center of the city. In addition to Market Street, this view shows lots of other streets, too, and I can’t even tell which one is Market Street.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Market_Street_San_Francisco_From_Twin_Peaks.jpg/800px-Market_Street_San_Francisco_From_Twin_Peaks.jpg

Here’s an unidentified building (to me, at least) on Market Street near Financial District, that is very attractive and is the same shape as the Medical Arts Building in San Antonio. If anyone reading this should happen to know the name of the building, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could let me know what it is.

http://www.zanzig.com/travel/m006/image66a.jpg

The Sentinel Building was begun just before the 1906 earthquake and fire. Since just the steel frame was up at the time of the catastrophe, it survived, and the building was finished by 1907. By 1970, the building was beginning to show its age, and nobody was helping keep it young. Fortunately, the movie director Francis Ford Coppola came along and bought the building. He then proceeded to renovate it, and has continued to operate his own business in the building.

Here’s what it looks like today – it’s the green building in the center of this photo:

http://www.sfcityscape.com/wallpaper/desktop/sentinel_1024.jpg

And a little closer:

http://www.virtourist.com/america/san-francisco/imatges/26.jpg

In both of the pictures we just looked at, we can see another building that is somewhat distinctive - the Transamerica Pyramid.

http://benjaminwey2000.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/transamer-11.jpg

The pyramid is no longer occupied by the Transamerica Corporation, who built it, but it still keeps the Transamerica name.

The Ferry Building is a terminal for the ferryboats that cross San Francisco Bay, and is at the waterfront end of Market Street. Its main feature is its clock tower, which is patterned after a twelfth century clock in Seville, Spain. It rings like Big Ben in London, which means you never have to go more than fifteen minutes without hearing gongs from these bells. Here’s what it looks like:

http://jeantessier.com/images/OfficeWindowSF.jpg

Unfortunately, in the 1955 classic movie called It Came from Beneath the Sea, a monstrous octopus pulled down the clock tower that you see in the picture above while people were running wildly around in some kind of a crazed panic. I guess the clock tower was later rebuilt because it now looks the same as it did before that monster came along. And that same octopus pulled down a span of the Golden Gate Bridge as well, so he was pretty devastating to this area. However, they have since fully recovered from all that damage. It’s a good thing they were able to blow up the giant octopus by embedding a torpedo in its brain and then exploding it before he could cause any more trouble to any other landmarks.

When we were there in 1971, the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (called BART) was mainly a topic of discussion because it didn’t exist yet. I remember hearing all about how the construction was underway, but I never got to ride a BART car because it didn’t begin operating until 1972, and we left San Francisco in late 1971. It’s a pretty high-tech operation with space-age looking cars – at least it looks a lot more so than our Metro system in Washington, DC:

http://www.abstractcore.com/pocket/archives/images/bay-area-rapid-transit.jpg

Here’s a pretty nice virtual tour of a few of the city’s major sights, given by the concierge of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. You can see a short movie that includes some of the places we’ve already visited in this story:

http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/intercontinental/en/gb/locations/city-tour/video/SFOHA

Next up: Temple Emanuel, some Victorian houses, and the Conservatory of Flowers.

[DickZ]

The City by the Bay
Part 5

Temple Emanuel was built in 1926, and is the oldest Jewish congregation west of the Mississippi. Its dome looks very similar to our dome on my very own Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, which is described in my story Memories of San Antonio. However, with regard to Temple Emanuel, I don’t know if that means they have the oldest Jews west of the Mississippi, or the oldest building in that region. I am sorry to say that we never made it to this temple during our stay in San Francisco, so I couldn’t get that question answered.

Here’s San Francisco’s Temple Emanuel:

http://www.san-francisco-home.com/SFpics/TempleEmanu-el.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2389/2442712828_f12da4b7d6.jpg

While Queen Victoria never actually lived in San Francisco, and for some reason didn’t visit the city even once during her long and illustrious reign, there are nonetheless lots of Victorian houses scattered around the city. In fact, one of the classic images of San Francisco is called Postcard Row because it shows six beautiful Victorian houses against a backdrop of the San Francisco skyline. Here are two views, which show the skyline in the background:

http://www.byoh.com/images/Postcard_Row_6242.jpg

http://www.mlewallpapers.com/image.php/id/San-Francisco-Postcard-Row-123.jpg

And a closeup:

http://z.about.com/d/gosanfrancisco/1/0/I/D/postcard_row2-MJ_Alcantara.png

There were said to be 48,000 Victorian homes built in San Francisco between 1850 and 1900, but most of them were lost in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. In the relentless drive for ‘progress,’ many surviving homes were later torn down to make room for the more modern houses of today.

Fortunately, the Haas-Lilienthal House remains, and it’s even open to the public for tours. It has a Queen Anne-style circular tower and is furnished with authentic period furniture.

http://www.inetours.com/images/Victorians/Haas-Lilienthal_5949.jpg

An interior view:

http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/752/394499.JPG

If you want further details on the Haas-Lilienthal House, including floor plans and a virtual tour of the interior, check this out:

http://www.sfheritage.org/house.html

The Whittier Mansion was one of the first residences in California built of stone over a steel framework, which allowed it to survive the earthquake. It was built for William Frank Whittier, who earned his fortune as a merchant and in shipping. Most of the thirty rooms in this house have carved paneling of mahogany, golden oak, and other exotic woods.

The California Historical Society occupied this building for almost forty years, but the house is now a house again. The Historical Society has moved to a less opulent place. I don’t know who is now living in what is still called the Whittier Mansion, though. I thought the new resident was someone named Jackson, but I was told in no uncertain terms by a San Francisco expert that I just don’t know how to interpret signs correctly.

http://www.noehill.com/noescripts/one_picture.asp?theImageFile=%2Fsf%2Flandmarks%2Fl afayette%2Fwhittier_mansion_bay_view.jpg&theImageID=&theWidth=800&theHeight=531&theAlt=Whittier+Mansion+in+2008&theServer=www.noehill.com&theURL=%2Fsf%2Flandmarks%2Fsf075.asp

There were mansions other than Victorians, as well. For example, Stetson House is a beauty, but didn’t survive the earthquake and fire. It belonged to James Stetson, who earned his first fortune in hardware, and then enlarged it in the cable car business.

http://www.scripophily.com/webcart/vigs/stetsonhouse.jpg

The Spreckels Mansion was built in 1913, well after the 1906 catastrophe, by a sugar magnate, Adolph Spreckels. I think he invented sprinkles that go on ice cream, but the Patent Office won't let me go through their records to confirm this. Mister Spreckels is the benefactor who also donated the Palace of the Legion of Honor art museum to the city, in 1924. The mansion is built in the Beaux-Arts style of architecture. Here’s the mansion as it stands today, and it’s now owned by romance novelist Danielle Steele:

http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/752/394598.JPG

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1423/1455491358_865d464167.jpg?v=0

San Francisco Architectural Heritage maintains a website which might interest those who are interested in the city’s buildings, and ongoing efforts to preserve the ones which are worthy of saving – and there are many:

http://www.sfheritage.org/home.html

If you’re really into Victorian homes, you might want to check out the following site, but it’s probably got a lot more information than most of you would want.

http://www.inetours.com/Pages/SFNbrhds/Victorian_Homes.html

The Conservatory of Flowers is a fantastic Victorian greenhouse with a large central dome, flanked by two wings. It was built in 1878. I don’t know if the structure we see today survived the 1906 earthquake, or was re-built after its predecessor was destroyed.

http://www.smartdestinations.com/design/images/sanfrancisco/attractions/SFO-conservatory.jpg

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/sf/2-6-bethany2.jpg

http://mongabay.com/images/20050831/0175_highland_forest_room.JPG

Next up: Treasure Island, Muir Woods, Sausalito, and Big Sur.

[DickZ]

The City by the Bay
Part 6

When we first heard that Treasure Island is in San Francisco Bay, we were afraid to go there because we were terribly concerned about possible encounters with one-legged pirates who may have had a patch over one of their eyes. But we eventually learned that this particular Treasure Island is artificial, and has absolutely no pirates, even though it was named for Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale. It was created by using landfill that was dredged out from the bay, back in 1937. It has been used for various purposes over the years, including U.S. Navy installations. While the Navy still owns the island, it doesn’t use it any more, and the whole place will eventually become totally commercial, including stores and residences. There is an extensive re-building project going on now. Here it is – Treasure Island is the FLAT island in the picture – it’s next door to Yerba Buena Island, through which the Golden Gate Bridge passes.

http://oldbluejacket.com/images/Treasure_Island_Aerial.jpg

Muir Woods is a few miles north of San Francisco, and you can see lots of Giant Redwood and Sequoia trees. Now if you’re looking for something other than redwoods and sequoias, you should probably go somewhere else because you’d be disappointed in Muir Woods – trees are about the only thing there. President Theodore Roosevelt declared this area to be a national monument back in 1908, and his declaration still stands today. It was named Muir Woods after John Muir, who was a famous naturalist. He founded the Audubon Society, which concentrates more on birds than on trees, but then, birds have to have a place to live, don’t they? And trees are usually the best place for these birds. So it makes perfect sense - to me, at least.

Here are some scenes in Muir Woods but there aren’t any birds visible in any of these views.

http://www.redwoodhikes.com/Muir/Muir Woods girl.jpg

http://www.quoia.net/images/photos/redwoods.jpg

http://www.desktopscenes.com/Scenes from Muir Woods (2003)/Path to the Woods.jpg

Here’s some additional information on Muir Woods – probably more than what most of you would be interested in.

http://www.inetours.com/National_Parks/Muir_Woods_NM/Muir_Woods.html

Sausalito is a unique town just north of San Francisco. There are lots of houseboats here, some land reclaimed with landfill, and lots of streets are actually below water level. In the past, most people moved between Sausalito and San Francisco by using ferryboats – most notably, the EUREKA which was discussed in Part 1, as it’s now part of the San Francisco Maritime National Park. Ferries still operate, but they aren’t as necessary now as they used to be, thanks in part to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Some views of the town are reminiscent of similar views of Rapallo and Portofino, in Italy (which were discussed in my story A Grand Tour). Here some shots of Sausalito that highlight this feature:

http://www.boatingsf.com/photos/firstbatch/sausalito-19.jpg

http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/00/18/63/dd/sausalito-view.jpg

http://cache.virtualtourist.com/2303912-Travel_Picture-Sausalito.jpg

And here are some of the houseboats which were mentioned above:

http://photos.igougo.com/images/p41725-Sausalito_California-Sausalito_Houseboat_Community.jpg

Big Sur is a region along the California coast that provides some wonderful sights of the land and the ocean together. It’s about ninety miles long, and is situated south of San Francisco. Because of its beauty, it has been used in movies for many years, and some movie stars have taken up residences in the area.

http://www.mikelevin.com/BigSurBridge800.jpg

http://geography.berkeley.edu/ProgramCourses/2003_Field_Pictures/SouthCoast/0312_BigSurHighway.jpg

http://www.davidanthonydurham.com/blog/uploaded_images/Big-Sur-774901.jpg

http://commonmisadventures.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/big-sur-afternoon.jpg

Well, folks, that about does it for this tour. Again, thanks for coming along.

You might want to wrap this up with a review of the city. Here’s a video tour that includes some of the sights we’ve gone over such as cable cars, Lombard Street, and Postcard Row – but sometimes the movie hangs up:

http://www.virtourist.com/america/san-francisco/video.htm

And here’s a virtual tour, comprised entirely of still photos:

http://www.virtourist.com/america/san-francisco/

THE END