I wanted to leave a small interval between my experience of San Francisco and my telling of it. I’m not at my best when I’m pissed off and an email written soon after leaving there would have been a long, incoherent rant of rage. It probably still will be but at least now that I am a little bit calmer it might flow out better. San Francisco was a shithole. I went to the place with a totally open mind. I was looking forward to it. I wanted to enjoy the place, but I’m not going to look favourably on a city just because of it’s reputation. I’m still not sure why people like it so much. Sure, there are really steep hills that trams go up, there are nice views of a patch of water and something interesting once happened here in the 60’s. All evidence of the summer of love has been consumed, digested and shat out in the form of bums and junkies that plague the streets. Walking through San Francisco is like wading through a human cesspool.
My impression of the place may have been filtered through my first experience there. I arrived on the overnight train and got into San Francisco tired and hungry. After depositing my bags at the hostel I went in search of food but no sooner was I out the front door than some guy was asking me for money. I explained that I didn’t have a lot to spare as I had been travelling for three months. His response was to tell me that if he had been younger he would have beaten me till I pissed blood and taken my money. It’s lucky I was perfecting my bad muthafucker walk at the time as it is probably the only thing that saved me. The atmosphere of the place didn’t improve much from that point. I went around Fisherman’s Wharf, which was incredibly commercial and full of tourist hustlers, walked around to the Golden Gate Bridge and then down to the Golden Gate Park and the Haight district. Nothing really caught my eye as being worthy of the city’s reputation. Portland felt like more of a hippy town.
As I was walking back to the hostel a drug bust took place in front of me. Five unmarked cars pulled up and guys ran out to arrest a teen on a push bike. One of the cops dropped his keys and had to run back to get them. By this stage I was feeling less than loving. Disappointment was mixed with revulsion for the place. It seems Americans are willing to overlook certain problems a city has when evaluating it’s charm as a destination, but for me the atmosphere of a place is almost the most important part. San Francisco is the only city I’ve felt nervous in, apart from a McDonalds in Paris when a girl started beating her boyfriend up. The nicest people I met in the whole city were a couple of Swiss backpackers who shared a spliff with me but by that stage the whole experience was beyond redemption.
I spent most of the next day hiding in a record store but did take a wander around Chinatown which was big but lacking in charm. To compound matters my only jumper got stolen from the hostel while I was using their computer. This turned out to be a problem in cold and foggy San Francisco, even though it was the height of summer. I’m reminded of a quote by Mark Twain. ‘Go to San Francisco? I would rather eat my own vomit’. Not his most eloquent moment, perhaps, but it’s meaning resonates through the ages.
Dave out.
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