San Francisco’s streets are windy, the weather is chilly but its eclectic
allure is inviting, its urbanscape unique and its scenic temptations many. It is probably the US city most familiar to India on account of the Silicon Valley, the southern part of the San Francisco Bay area. Though the early 2000s saw the birth cry and crash of the dot.com spectacle, the region is still a nodal point for key technology innovation, high-tech and venture capitalists.
Two recent visits to San Francisco revealed a city of piers, eclectic cuisine, holistic lifestyles, fog, museums, park, serpentine streets and varied neighbourhoods. Our hotel Park 55 Wyndham situated at Powell and Fifth close to Union Square afforded us easy access to most sites via foot, BART and cable cars. I think to grasp SF do it the local way. Leave your car aside and opt for local transport and wear your walking shoes. Browse through neighbourhoods, Nob Hill, Pacific heights, Union Square, China town, Fisherman’s wharf, Lombard as you would books in a bookshop-leisurely, stopping to savour and stir your senses.
The cable cars are integral to the city’s character tackling steep and falling crooked streets. Just riding through the streets without alighting is a pretty momentous experience in itself; the chug up and down various neighbourhoods spotting boutiques, cafes, and bay sightings with their tremors of sails and rocking boats is riveting. We were lucky both times with our fog-minus views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Its spacious lift of red arcs overlooking the bay popularised ad nauseum in post cards is nevertheless thrilling. A sense of space overlapped us created by the expanse of blue sky and water.
A port, SF’s piers have been transformed commercially housing upscale restaurants like The Greens and gourmet eateries; dining by the rocking waters had a strange lulling experience and SF chefs seem to vie to outdo each other working local produce and flavours into culinary creations. The Slanted Door, a Vietnamese restaurant, offers superb cuisine pushing the limits of region and taste. Even Dosa, the hugely popular South Indian restaurant, (including Goanese cuisine) offers some playful experiments within its contemporary ethnic wall. A typical green salad was enhanced with mango and muddy monsoon, a non-alcoholic cocktail somehow nostalgically conjured up monsoon skies and rain. Rasam is ‘fire broth’ and the menu encourages you to use your fingers! There also exist hundreds of local restaurants to cater to more sober wallets. We often halted hours of sight-seeing with brief respites at Little Delhi or Punjab for a quick papri chaat or samosa while viewing familiar Bollywood song dance sequences from a mounted monitor. Chai was on the house in Punjab offered with a welcoming smile from the young manager.
During the week our focus was the museums. Whether for yourself or the kids, SF is a haven of museums. You can easily spend a day each at The Exploratorium and Academy of Sciences and leave with an urge to return. We caught the Tutankhamen exhibit at the De Young museum a much touted and misleading show going by the ads. MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) houses 20th century and contemporary art highlighting a Calder to Warhol exhibit. A stark and searing short film by the Iranian woman artist Shirin Neshat sealed that visit with satisfaction.
Unforgettable was the exhibit at the Asian Museum. The third floor had the vibration of a temple more than a museum. Hindu deities of the trinity and scores of Buddha statues and art once revered in their original settings created a sacred ambience. We noticed a natural slowing down of our rhythm and I could not help but muse that more than 2500 years later here we were in the West paying homage to a man and his teachings who possessed two things, a begging bowl and — his soul; Would we erect temples to the financial tycoons of our age?
We did a leisurely round of the Ferry building on a Sunday morning sampling local cheeses, wines and chocolates followed by brunch at one of the cafes. We then strolled across the street to a local artisan market. Browsing through photographs, multi-hued tie and dye t-shirts, innovative jewellery of sea glass and pearl was a good end to a sunny morning. Eye catching was a stall of Tibetan art-mostly paintings of door and house fronts.
We then hopped on a shuttle to Fisherman’s wharf, one of the two venues to catch the July 4th fireworks later that night. If I had to suggest one sight to forego it would be Fisherman’s wharf, a clichéd noisy touristy walk down a stretch of pizza places, ice cream stores, a rain forest café, wax museum and candy stores. SF has much more authentic experiences to offer and opting for a visit to Chinatown in a short trip would be more yielding of culture and novelty. It was one of the highlights for my young daughter who could not have her fill of this bustling ethnic neighbourhood of Chinese signage, banners, cooking smells and acupuncture clinics; jade figurines, lucky charms and pearl necklaces; silk floral brocade robes, bags, purses and fans; open groceries with bagged lychees and cherries, meats and herbs.
Upon enquiring the location of a Starbucks, I was pointed to a tea house on Grant street — Vital Tea Leaf — that proved to be a most interesting alternative. Tea houses have existed in China for centuries and I partook of this ancient custom modernised by the verbally dexterous owner who claimed his store was being filmed by the History channel. We sat around the counter while he deftly brewed various teas, talking rapidly, interspersing his monologue with observations of contemporary life. His knowledgeable monologue of tea facts — brewing time, healing effects, potency, steeping — was a smooth sail along with servings of samples in miniature cups. Half an hour later I left the store plied with bags of tea assured my constitution would improve greatly.
Haight Ashbury, the epicentre of flower power, hippies and counter culture in the 60s, seemed a bit tame that morning in spite of the occasional risqué boutique and is still the target destination for gays and liberals for the yearly Gay parade.
The trip ended with a journey to Sausalito an artsy suburb outside the city and Muir Woods to see the towering redwoods. The splendid 17-mile drive to Monterey and Carmel was a balm after the hectic urban experience. As we wound our way through forested areas, golf courses and stops at key points such as the lone cypress tree, the water on one side was gray green and exerted a calming and meditative note to end a stimulating trip.
— usha.akella@gmail.com