Posted on 12/16/2006 8:17:38 AM PST by Congressman Billybob
In more than twenty years of columns, I’ve never written one specifically for a new publication. But every rule has its exceptions. This is for the San Francisco News, launched just a week ago by my friends from the Canyon News in Los Angeles. And, if any place in the US is nostalgic to me, San Francisco is the place.
I graduated from college and got married in 1964. My intention was to go to law school, and I applied various places. Boalt Hall, at the University of California in Berkeley, gave me a maybe, so I drove to California to meet with the Dean.
He was impressed with my moxie, and said, “If we take anyone from the waiting list, we’ll take you.” On the strength of that statement, I moved to San Francisco. I found out days before the school year began that Boalt Hall was taking no one from its waiting list. So there I was, a resident of San Francisco all dressed up, with nowhere to go.
That turned out to be a good thing, not a bad one. For starters, there was our apartment at 127 Crown Terrace in San Francisco. For those who don’t know the City’s geography, I’ll explain the significance of that. For those who do know the City, bear with me.
That address is part of a complex of apartment buildings which were constructed in the 30s I believe, on the slopes of Twin Peaks, the highest point in the City. Most importantly, that point is above the fog line. So, when “the fog comes on little cat feet” under the Golden Gate Bridge, as Carl Sandburg wrote, we were above the fog line. When that white blanket filled the Bay and washed over Fishermen’s Wharf, Alcatraz and all the rest, it left just the towers of the Golden Gate, and of the Oakland Bridge, and Twin Peaks, above it.
Keep in mind the real estate axiom that value depends on location, location and location. I paid nearly half of my first income (as an insurance agent for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company), to rent that one-bedroom apartment on the seventh floor of an eight story building on Twin Peaks. And it was worth every penny, every month.
The second magnificent thing which happened in San Francisco was the birth of my first daughter, and first child. She was born in the University of California Medical Center, just up the street from the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets. It was all so San Francisco. The street outside the hospital had steps cut in it so you could walk up it. And it was there that I learned that curbing your wheels was not just a good idea, but a very expensive fine if you didn’t do that, to prevent your parked car from running away and killing someone.
My first job in an actual office was on Market Street, but I commuted by parking my car down the hill and catching a cable car to work. Years later I worked in urban planning, and I learned the story of the cable cars in San Francisco. The Supervisors, in their blistering ignorance, proposed to get rid of Andrew Hallidie’s cable cars from 1873, because they clogged the streets and interfered with traffic. The citizens rose up on their hind legs and wrote the cable cars into the City Charter, so the Supervisors could not touch them.
And now, those quaint relics are symbols of the town, as Tony Bennett sings, “Where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars....” They are also an efficient means of transportation. I was working in the Planning Department for Baltimore City when I read a study on urban transportation in San Francisco. The fastest way to get around the City was by cable car, averaging 14 miles per hour. The slowest way, just a touch slower than walking, was in a private car. So, both beauty and efficiency were served by the revolt of the citizens against the Supervisors to save the cable cars.
A mere column barely touches the surface of the pleasures of San Francisco, forty years ago. I’ll add just one more delight. The manager of the apartment I lived in was Mrs. McGinnis. She was a lady of a certain age, long divorced from but still good friends with her husband, whom I met one Christmas.
Mr. McGinnis was a part-time employee of the Wells Fargo Bank, who came out to every new branch opening they had. The reason was that he was their last surviving stage coach driver, who used to run the stage from Santa Fe to San Francisco.
Well, I’m now in the grandfather business, not the daughter business. And I live on a mountaintop, far from any blue water. Still, I offer this as a verbal Christmas wreath, not just to the folks in San Francisco, but to all who’ve shared these literary journeys with me. . - 30 -
About the Author: John Armor is a lawyer specializing in constitutional law, who may again be a candidate for Congress in the 11th District of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
- 30 -
John / Billybob
It still is. It once took me two hours to go 1/2 mile on a Friday afternoon. I think I could have crawled faster.
Anyone wishing to spend a day in San Francisco should leave their car at the Oakland Colesium and take the train.
And if its August, don't forget a jacket.
My brother who lived in San Francisco for many years said that if you didn't get an apartment with a view in that city, you got screwed.
As Samuel Clemens once said, "The coldest winter I ever saw, was a summer I spent in San Francisco".
Yep. I've sweltered in 95 degree weather in San Jose, driven 40 miles to San Francisco and been cold in 50 degree fog.
My wife and I took our motor home there once. We were climbing to the top of one of the hills behind a city bus on a street where every cross street is terraced, when the city bus went over the top the rear end went up in the air. You could see just about the entire under-carriage of the bus...my wife gasped and held on for dear life.
Yes, a beautiful city...
I fear you would find the current inhabitants to be several rungs down the evolution ladder, with many as obvious genetic defects --- from the time you spent there.
I live nearby, visit only when out of town/country guests at my home request it - and minimize the money I spend in the city proper, not wanting to subsidize the bastards.. For meals, we slip across the bridge to Sausalito.
Merry Christmas to you, partner.
I've always enjoyed reading your measured input to the forum.
Semper Fi
Brings back wonderful memories. At about the same time you were there in the city, I lived just around the corner (Taylor and Washington) from the trolley barn and would go the few down the hill to Chinatown and look for the restaurants with the longest lines of orientals...hmmm, mighty good eats.
Walk-around crab cocktails on the Wharf, cioppino, Ernie's, Chinatown, fresh hot piroshkis out on Geary Street, DUNGENESS CRAB, the Caprice in Tiburon, brunch with Irish coffee down by the Powell & Hyde turntable at the Buena Vista...
Slurp!
And a very Merry Christmas to you, too, sir.
...very nice. Thank you. Twin Peaks. What a place to live!
I really have trouble correlating what I knew of SF in the 60's and what I hear and read about it now. It was primarily a staid, Catholic blue suit and white gloves town then. Sure the entertainment and hippie parts were a little wild. but they did not run the city.
Thanks. And Merry Christmas.
A San FRancisco Bay Area, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas BumP
One thing I'll say about San Francisco - it's got flavor; something that my home area of Los Angeles had not one iota of.
I visited Paris before I visited San Francisco. I had thought that Paris must be the most beautiful city in the world. That was short lived. A few years later, we flew from Seattle to San Francisco and the pilot flew a circle around the city as we prepared to land. I saw the whole of the city with the bay and the bridges and I still can't imagine a sight more beautiful than that.
We have been back many times since and every view of San Francisco is just spectacular. Thanks for the great article.
San Francisco, one of the most beautiful cities in the world! It's one of the places I miss since I moved to Washington State.
I found that walking could be a little hazardous to your health a few times, what with people running red lights and such, but loved riding the cable cars around the city.
I lived in the old People's Hospitol, on the Presidio of San Francisco. My room was on the 6th floor, overlooking the city.
At the time, the bulding was used as a branch of the Defense Language Institute (1984).
And if its August, don't forget a jacket.
I had a conference in SF in July 1983. Mrs. jimfree joined me and we took a couple days after the conference as vacation. It was warm every day until we went down to the wharf of an afternoon. Temp dropped 30 degrees. Souvenir sweatshirts saved us from the cold evening.
Dad's company moved him from their LA to their SF office, and Mom, with a baby daughter in tow, followed after wrapping up the household in Glendale.
She says she arrived the week the Bay Bridge opened, which was convenient because they settled in Oakland.
So the elder brother was born in East Bay. If Dad's asthma could have resisted the cold and dank weather, he would have stayed. As it was, he got hemself reassigned to the office in his home town, Chicago.
So that's how I missed being a SF Boy.
I visit when I can.
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