74. “Hello, My Dear!” San Francisco:

(Across America by Amtrak - 1. San Francisco and Santa Rosa: 8 to 13 October, 2024)

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On the afternoon BART train from SFO Airport into town: a glance at my phone to see the wifi sources lists three “Esteban” phones on offer. Two Hispanic bears are sitting opposite me, nuzzling and holding hands. The train is approaching San Bruno.

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Breakfast at the Local Diner:

The late 20’s, grubby-black T shirted, barrel-chested Hispanic counter guy is cheerfully greeting every each customer as “My Dear!” with hypermanically disorganised enthusiasm while also striving to wrangle a difficult customer the phone. He gives up; hangs up.

“My Dear, we only do cow milk here. We are stuck in the ‘70’s here, My Dear!” while sweeping a gesture out from the confined Orders counter to the well-worn burnt orange and maroon wall tiles, mission brown furnishings, bile coloured floors and those 1960’s fluorescent ceiling strips filtered through curved-edged cheese-grater-style grids, with fly spots, diffusing the harsh light.

On the traditional diner menu pages (well-thumbed and glued to the wall), anything containing fruit is ‘delux’. “French Toast Delux, My Dear?”  The coffee has a gritty acidy edge. The mountain on my plate is cheapish and filling. “Make sure you eat it ALL up, My Dear!”

The other diners are an emaciated 40’s bloke in a wheelchair and his younger carer, and a teenage couple, straight off an overnight bus sharing a single order of eggs for breakfast. Beyond the wall decorations of ageing earthquake landscape sepias; spotted baseball and basketball posters is the slushing and loud humming of an overly happy “dish-pig” out back.

Beyond the grimy window is San Francisco’s main drag: Market St, with its remnant grand post-earthquake architecture of banks, department stores and once-fine hotels. The rush of inbound commuters hurries towards City Hall and the Federal Buildings, carrying paper-bag breakfasts from the subway, trolley buses, silent fly-wheel red taxis and the passing parade of colourful, elegant, 1930’s streetcars on the tourist-friendly route from Fishermans Wharf to the Castro.

Good morning (My Dears)!

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Yesterday, on arrival, it was Tuesday afternoon, again…

Freshly post-flights, caffeined and showered: walking north towards the ferries in a semi-lagged-daze. It’s called Mission St with some  (contemporary) reason: two blocks north of the theatre and City Hall area where I’m staying, things are suddenly very-down-at-heel. Despite the glint of new skyscrapers just another block away. Clustering around three charity shelters are bedraggled humans with meagre belongings in plastic bags or children’s strollers. About a third of the bodies are slouched in semi-derelict wheelchairs draped in plastic bags, some with incrementally more mobile friends to assist. Companion dogs are cuddled, calm and well cared for, all quietly waiting for admission. Most pedestrians are on the far side of the street so as not to barge through the clumped crowds around charity doorways. Surviving local restaurants are trying to put on a cheerful face, but I don’t think I’ll be venturing down here after dark for a feed.

There’s a big, uniformed navy presence in town. A US aircraft carrier is moored near Embarcadero and open for ticketed inspection. Red naval helicopters and the Blue Hornets are doing aerial acrobatics over the peninsula. It sounds like the city is being intensively strafed a couple of times each day.

Walking back along Market St, you quickly learn to avoid closed buildings or shuttered shop fronts. The adjacent pavement turns suddenly nasty in patches: its a mere 20 metres from designer T shirts, jewellery and food to clusters of persons with crack pipes dealing and sniping and sharing. On the next block is one of several legal marijuana dispensing businesses. My hotel, half a block from Market and 7th, faces a massive but recently closed growers’ market. The pub has a shuttered coffee shop of its own. (The hotel itself is better than fine). The former coffee shop doorway has broad, flat, well-lit handrails, regularly used by street folk to roll their own.

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Wednesday: Moderately-jet lagged-nice-day-out-for-lunch following “Breakfast, My Dear!”:

The fast ferry across the bay passes a fog-muffled Golden Gate Bridge on the left, zipping though icy wind towards Larkspur. Lovely, redolent name: “Larkspur”. Its alternate spelling is: S-A-N Q-U-E-N-T-I-N… and the vast, threatening, 4 storeyed, beige faux-adobo prison lurks in barred and barbed threat on the headland into Corte Madera Creek and Larkspur wharf, staring balefully back towards Alcatraz island. In the shimmering distance a fine line of cloud obscures the upper skyscraper storeys of San Francisco’s glossy CBD.

It takes a near-kilometre 15 minute stride to make the SMART train up into the hills to Santa Rosa. It’s a former interurban line, shut down in the 1940’s, revived recently so little diesel rail cars link suburbs then small rural towns and villages from the ferry to the local airport. And it is a delight: chugging from the California-low-rise suburban business centre of San Rafael, through dormitory suburbs of terraced “condos” and small business estates, around inlets and lakes lined with camper vans, through Novato then Petaluma and vineyards, small farms and villages and shingle-roofed houses with protective roof-storks basking in morning sunshine.

This is the kind of leisurely service where locals know their train conductor by name so there’s much catching up of family and sports gossip. Cyclists station-hop as part of their daily commute (the ferry is exceedingly cycle-friendly as is San Francisco’s Market St) and grocery shoppers have left their cars at home.

 The WOWwow of the horn and the slow train bell announce Santa Rosa Downtown station. For me, this is lunch. For half of the passengers who are not cyclists, students, families and workers (it’s free travel if you are over 65 and local) this also seems to be lunch.

Business has returned to Railroad Square in the form of fancy cafes and restaurants and bars. The original grey granite station house and tall semaphore signals have been preserved as a local history centre. Once-grand Hotel La Rose (three storey grey granite matching the station) dominates the square. The gregarious over-65s disperse to eat. I find myself in the near-silent A’Roma Roasters confronting a vast sandwich and a mellow French roast in near silence as the surrounding students and online workers intently study their screens. Across the road, a young actor is pacing the carpark grass verge in shorts and hoodie, learning his lines and shouting rehearsed emphasis with balletic gestures.

The station house museum is of passing interest and has free restrooms (if there is a free restroom grab the chance in this part of the world. They’re very hard to find when actually needed…). The very American slow “clink, clink, clink..” of a train bell approaching the station level crossing is time to return.

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Thursday breakfast: “HeLLO, My Dear!”

#USA #SanFrancisco #BART #PeopleYouMightMeet