Can't Get No Favoriter

Last week, instead of snowboarding, my son and I went to San Francisco. It’s not such a bad place we live, if we can choose mid-morning between going snowboarding at Donner Summit or walking around everyone's favorite city. Less than two hours’ travel either way.

My recent travels to big cities – Taipei, Shanghai, Chicago – have reminded me what a small big city San Francisco really is. It’s bounded on three sides by water and simply will not grow any more. You can make a nice day of it walking from one end to the other. It has an intimacy about it the other cities lack. Or seem to – San Francisco’s intimacy for me may be a perception bred of familiarity, for I grew up in sight of the place. From the rooftop of my childhood garage I could see its towers gleaming, and on some days straight through the Golden Gate to the Farallons, gray and dim at the horizon.

But the intimacy is real in some parts at least. We had lunch in North Beach, seated at a sidewalk table at Panta Rei under the warm gaze of Sal’s little hill. The table next to us was full of young women speaking Italian, and as the waiter held his station by the front door numerous passersby stopped to chat with him in Italian as well. People walked by or waited for the bus, and one or two commented on how good our food looked. My son – who’s growing up in a small rural suburb and feels distinctly cosmopolitanly challenged – came to the conclusion, Crocodile Dundee-like, that cities, where people have to live close together, are friendly places. In San Francisco, I’m not sure I’ve ever had an experience to really counter that assertion.

He especially dug the area because he traveled to Italy last June and came home with very high standards for his pasta and gelato. In that one block on Corso Christoforo Colombo, his standards were met.

In a break from standard practice, I left my camera at home. This meant of course that I saw scenes and images worth photographing at every turn. One in particular stands out: A view down Hyde, perhaps, or Leavenworth, of The Rock, gleaming in the low winter sun, a bright jewel of cream and green in contrast to the shadowy buildings along the line of sight. Indeed much of the City had a fresh look to it, the light quality being something other than I was used to thanks to the time of year. The main reason I wrote this was because someone else noticed it too, and wrote about it better than I could: Cool sunlight of winter transmutes city's views.