Captain Pike's Ship Log II

Well, we had a good time in San Francisco. We saw a lot of stuff right in the city, never got over to Berkeley or Oakland but did get up to the Muir Woods -- just north of Sausalito a forest full of thousand year-old trees, like looking up at a starry sky, it puts things in perspective. Above, Little Miss Wonderful's steady telephoto hand captures this skyline shot 20 miles north the city!



I had forgotten about this artist, Yves Tanguy, a surrealist, which I had found very intriguing as a kid. The idea that you could paint in this manner and be thought of as serious was very interesting to me. His work conjures up images of alien landscapes, with objects eerily familiar, yet, clearly obtuse. This fellow's works are actually hanging in two museums in San Francisco, The Fine Arts Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, the latter, I was able to visit (free on Tuesdays). I saw some more work from a great Chilean artist, Roberto Matta, check him out. An odd fact on Matta is his birthday: 11/11/11.
http://www.matta-art.com/

Below is a shot of the cops, nonchalantly cruising through Golden gate Park.


It was a real funny thing for me, having visited San Francisco back when I was wild and crazy; then to come back later, married and in a wheelchair. (No, now, no particular order of detriment) For one thing, it seems to be a haven for the homeless. Unchecked mental illness and alcoholism run rampant throughout the afternoon and evening. I had done such a great job picking the right hotel using Travelocity that I forgot to consider what neighborhood we would be in. The "tenderloin area" sounds tasty enough but is probably the last place you'd want to actually stay. I heard from a reliable source that if you are willing to register as a homeless person in San Francisco -- I suppose they give you a homeless ID card with your mug shot on it or something, anyway, if you're willing to get on that list, then you get paid every month! There are people from all over the country living on the streets in San Francisco.

San Francisco is a city of mass transit: there are the MUNI-buses, the BART system, Amtrak comes there, there are streetcars and cable cars. I rode on everything except Bart and actual cable cars. Cable cars, not to be confused with streetcars who receive their energy from overhead wires, are actually pulled up the hills, physically, using tables connected and running through slots in the street! Years ago, they went out as all bad ideas do, but lo, no, they were brought back by popular demand (taxpayers). Turns out, a fairly successful miner from the area, conjured up the idea to haul people up Nob Hill in a manner very similar to how cars carrying ore are hauled out of mines. Sometimes these cable cars really have to struggle with their load -- often going at least twice as fast down the hill that they just labored up. Today, three cable car lines still exist in San Francisco, all of them servicing Nob Hill, an exclusive neighborhood.

My vast knowledge of Alcatraz before this little trip came almost completely from watching Burt Lancaster in The Bird Man of Alcatraz. I always assumed the all-famed Alcatraz was a couple of miles out in the Pacific ocean. Not true, it is actually right in the middle of the East Bay between San Francisco and Oakland. Supposedly, liberal administration of hot showers kept the men ill-prepared for a swim in the 45° bay. It must've been a hell of a temptation though -- on a hot summer day, if you were in Alcatraz, you would easily be able to see scantily clad members of the gender of your choice milling about the Fishermen's Wharf area. And then would come, Friday night, just think of how mad you might go, stuck on the rock with all that night life going on all around you! It doesn't seem like it is that cold and it's definitely not that far. Below shows "The Rock" amid S. F. and Oakland on the left.


Around here, there's not much to do on New Year's Day so a bunch of wackos that call themselves the polar bear club all jump in and paddle around in the surf off the rockbound coast of Maine in January. Maybe only people from California get locked up in Alcatraz.

Apparently, it's been quite a while since I've flown in a commercial aircraft. When did they start charging five dollars for that pitiful "meal" served on longer flights? And, if I'm not mistaken, I was charged another two dollars per bag to check my luggage on the plane. It's getting to be like the bus -- anyone can fly these days. When I was a young man, you often had three seats to yourself -- I remember once flying from Denver to O'Hare with 104 fever -- I just laid out, put the middle seat's seat belt loosely around me and passed out for 3 1/2 hours. I sweat like a pig on a rotisserie spit, but I was chipper in Chicago, I guess the flu flew! I also remember mowing lawns when gas was $.32 a gallon.

On the way to Golden Gate Park, it was kind of sad to see a faded rendition of Jerry's face, done in graffiti style, still visible to the trained eye on a weatherbeaten brick wall, high at the end of Haight Street.

We went to a place called the Exploratorium, something than I expected would be like Boston's Museum of Science, but I felt this place was much more hands-on and just fun. There were a lot of optical illusion objects, I had to record a couple.



And then there was this, separating the lavatories, ALL THE LINES ARE PARALLEL!