Six Days in San Francisco - July 23rd - 30th

I was expecting a lot from San Francisco, having been immersed in its pop culture ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper. At any moment I was expecting to see John Stamos, Bob Saget and the whole Full House gang (except for Joey who, in my universe, died from cancer shortly after the show went off the air) walking around Golden Gate Park holding hands with a miniskirted Margaret Cho and Harold Perrineau dressed in a sequinned frock and suspenders.

Imagine. They'd be the Tranners!

Instead picture this scene: It's 11 a.m and I'm arguing with a chick with blue dreadlocks over the fact that she won't let me check into my hostel, despite my bringing the pity party and relaying my story of the nightmare bus trip from Portland. I've just had a 'white knuckle, knee buckle' cab trip because people in the Bay City don't drive, they drag (*boom tish*), and the taxi drivers are the worst.

Sam's Tips for Surviving San Francisco #1 - Don't take taxis. Just don't. Walk from the airport if you need to, your chances of survival are greater and, with all those godforsaken hills, you'll be a few kgs lighter in a matter of days.

Needless to say, I lose the argument with Gonzo but she budges a millimetre and allows me to check my bags into storage. I decide to blow off the city for a day because I'm feeling completely shagged and even after I wash my face and attempt to shake off the bus-lag I still resemble the Creature From The Grease Lagoon. There's a huge screen TV in the lobby and free internets which means I'm set for the day, but the one thing I'm lacking in is food and I'm starving after wisely avoiding the 3 a.m Taco Bell pit stop. That warrants a wander to the nearest place with edibles. Unfortunately, the view from my cab was a building-tinged blur so I have no idea where I am or what I'm surrounded by. I discover just how unfortunate am I the second I step outside.

A woman in a raggy turban is muttering to herself and swatting away an unseen person. There's a man sitting huddled in a doorway. Another guy is surveying the street, eyes wide and bloodshot, as though he hasn't slept in weeks. There are unidentified suspicious substances all over the footpath. The street is devoid of well-dressed, sane individuals so in my present state I fit right in. My hostel is smack bang in the middle of the...quaint neighbourhood of San Fran known as the Tenderloin. Oh. Shit.

Welcome, my friends, to San Francisco.

Sam's Tips for Surviving The Bay City #2 - Whatever you do, if you're on the cheap accomodation-wise...DON'T, I REPEAT, DO NOT stay at the HI City Center. Stick with the HI Fisherman's Wharf which may be in the middle of Tackyland, USA (Fisherman's Wharf is like Darling Harbour except drenched in visual pollution, full of candy stores & bad tourist attractions and completely charmless) but at least you don't have to mess up your hair and put on a crazy face in order to avoid stalkers & drive-by shootings. YES IT IS THAT BAD.

I do have one good thing to say about the San Franciscan HI hostels and it is that they offer great walking tours of the city. I went on the trip to the Museum of Modern Art (great for Warhol but the rest of the collection was quite wanky) and got to meet a few people but the guy from the hostel we had as our tour guide creeped me out.

So, back to my finding eats. After some average pancakes at the nearest place I could find that looked relatively safe and drug hustler free, I scooted back to the hostel as quickly as possible to glare at Gonzo and settle down to a nice afternoon watching...the Sci Fi channel. What is it with hostellers and sci-fi shows? Is it because some of the people who frequent hostels resemble creature people usually found only on Star Trek? Or is it just a general rule that the most social of living arrangements end up attracting the most antisocial of inhabitants (eg: prison, hostels, comic conventions)? As I enter, there's a guy sitting on one of the couches who, without warning, hacks up a great glob of phlegm and spits it into his cup. I make it my business to slide along my couch to be as far away from him as possible. Come now, my fellow tera'ngans*, let's try and show a little decency, there's a lady present...

Two things happen which save me from my first day in The Hades Hostel. 1. Hugh Jackman's left bicep appears on screen. 2. Hugh Jackman's right bicep appears on screen. Yeah. X-Men 2 comes on and this is how I meet Meika. She comes into the TV room and since she is normal and hasn't run screaming from the room at the sight of unwashed Sam we do the awkward 'Who is going to say something first' dance, she wins, and we chat.

Approximately four hours later I'm in Jazz at Pearl's with Meika and her equally lovely sister listening to some big band numbers after a meal of average Italian with far too much cheese, some cheap beer and amateur palm reading. This is a hell of a lot better than the original night I had in mind. What amazes me on this first night in San Francisco and continues to amaze me all throughout this trip is the variety of people I've managed to come across and even, dare I say, appreciate as members of the human race. There were and are a lot of people who inspire the opposite emotion, but let's not discuss them just yet. Over the course of the next six days I meet Emma, a chick from New Zealand via the States with the most confused accent I've ever heard, two more Kiwi girls who are my roommates for a brief period of time, one who snores like the running engine of a Mack Truck and doesn't look much better, but they're both out for a good party and they're good people so I like them and then there was the most exciting meeting of all.

Picture this next scene: I've been trekking up and down the fucking San Franciscan hills all day and I'm in need of a break. I'm wandering around The Cannery near the Waterfront area, snacking on two huge scoops of Norman's delicious Gelato. That's when the most beautiful music begins and I realise that it's two buskers, a man and a woman of the usual opera build performing 'O Sole Mio', the one opera piece that I'm familiar with. I'm intrigued, so I grab a pew. Unfortunately the performance ends, the small crowd disperses and it's just me and the opera duo. That's when the woman pulls out a copy of Harry Potter 7, smiles at me and we get talking. Her name is Litz Plummer, but some may know her as the Opera Lady of San Francisco and you can listen to her here. Myspace does not do the great lady justice. The gentleman's name is Robert Close, he's performed as Piangi in the Broadway production of Phantom and he is hilarious.

Robert: (this was after extensive conversation) You know what I like about you? The fact that you're from Australia, which is famous for all the sun and beaches and yet...*lifts trouser leg* you're about as pale as I am.

(For the record, I managed to tan slightly after a week or two in the Nevadan/New Mexican/Texan sun but then I moved to the West Coast of Canada for the winter and any hope I had of retaining my slightly less translucent colouring was shot to shit).

Those three viginettes basically sum up San Francisco. It's not so much a city as it is a collection of neighbourhoods smashed together - some are naughty, some are nice. If you've got no idea what you're meant to be doing when you get there, then my advice would be don't move, siddown kid and listen to me.

Sam's Tips For Surviving San Francisco #3 - Places To See & Places To Avoid Like The Plague

Consult this map and be wowed by my MS Paint skills. You may notice that there's a clear path you can take to get around San Francisco whilst still avoiding the sketchy areas.

You can't travel to San Francisco and not visit Haight/Ashbury as it is easily the greatest neighbourhood of them all, although I'm sorry to say you will be disappointed if you're wanting to recreate the '69 Summer of Love. Unfortunately, some of the hippies survived to see the 80's. As the haze of pot smoke began to fade, they discovered the joys of creating outfits made from the trashed remainder of their marijuana plants before selling them to hapless tourists at a mark-up rate of 800%. Fucking business hippies man, is there any greater contradiction? They and their love children invaded the area, ditched the 60's spirit, kept the rainbow decor and now it's an expensive shopping district full of decent vintage outlets and stores hawking pot/acid paraphenalia (even though all the users moved to British Columbia some decades ago. You want to see real hippies? Go to Saltspring Island, not San Francisco).

So I had a look around the Castro because we all know of my relentless fag-haggotry and again, I was disappointed. Yes, the area is gayer than a cluster of antique dealers at a Margaret Cho show, but so is Darlinghurst and that suburb is twice the size of the tiny Castro. I did enjoy the sight of the local public school and it's definitely worth a look if you can avoid going near the neighbouring Mission area, you're gay and you fancy going clubbing.

One of the neighbourhoods I had no preconceptions about is the Nihon Machi district. It's the more sterile, less tacky Chinatown and on the map, it's situated somewhere in the Western Addition area. Eat here, as there are a few decent hole-in-the-wall Japanese places and you're guaranteed to be served a meal that isn't covered in cheese for a change. Your other option for food is Haight/Ashbury where I would suggest the Ethiopian restaurant in the middle of the main strip for a similarly cheese-free and cheap meal. After you're done, go check out the Asian grocery with the Great Wall of Pocky. Yes. You now know where I made a significant portion of my spending money disappear...

The worst part of San Francisco, Tenderloin aside, has to be the South of Market area, which is full of sketchy run-down buildings and the only thing more run-down than the buildings are the people. I walked around this area (thankfully not for very long) and I found myself questioning how San Francisco manages to be regularly ranked as one of America's most liveable cities, (especially seeing as I'm inclined to agree with most of the of other selections on Places Rated, except Portland should be #1 with Pittsburgh as #2).

Another suggestion I'd make to visitors heading to California is...don't (you have no idea how badly I want to make a shirt that says "Fuck California...I'd rather be in Oregon") but if you must head to the Bay area, take a day out and roadtrip. Your options are to head to the Napa valley and/or Sausalito which I didn't get around to visiting but if I had the opportunity again I'd go there or alternatively, you can head down south to San Jose, if only for the sunshine, relative warmth and the opportunity to sing "Do You Know The Way To San Jose?" on the Greyhound. I checked out the Winchester Mystery House (which isn't exactly mysterious so much as it is gigantic and full of unnecessary rooms and doors that lead to nowhere), and wandered aimlessly around the strip malls. My one recommendation for San Jose goes to Lisa's Tea Treasures mostly because I found the funkiest pair of teapot earrings there (sadly I didn't get to sample the tea).

After six days, too many hills and not enough scoops of Norman's finest ice cream later I left my a shoe in my locker at the HI, packed my gear and prepared, with a heavy heart to start my journey eastwards to Las Vegas (the one place I wasn't looking forward to visiting) and beyond.

A Musical Guide To San Francisco:

Honeymoon - Phoenix: I didn't have many romantic moments in San Francisco but driving over the Bay Bridge at night, listening to this song felt like one of those perfect instances of universal timing where everything just fit. I suggest you try it.

O Sole Mio - for obvious reasons.

Do You Know The Way To San Jose - Dionne Warwick: Again, obvious but very funny if you're me and you're quietly humming to yourself on a crowded public coach.

Any of Margaret Cho's comedy albums are great for commentary while you're walking around, the best of the bunch being Notorious C.H.O.



* that would be the Klingon word for human. You have no idea of the shame I felt when I googled the words 'Klingon Dictionary'.

A Note From The Road: Portland to San Francisco

I loved the ride from Seattle to Portland. It was short, it was smooth, the people were few and spaced out and we left Seattle and arrived in Portland on schedule. There was no muss and very minimal amounts of fuss. I thought, "How good is this?! Buying a Greyhound Discovery Pass was the greatest idea I've ever had." First impressions last. They're also, more often than not, completely and totally wrong and you don't have to be a character in a Bollywood film to realise this. I figured out just how incorrect my first impression of Greyhound the minute I witnessed the queue going to San Francisco on the 6:15 coach. They were packing the bus to the rafters. I realised that this ride was going to be considerably more confined than my previous journey but I retained a sense of cautious optimism after all, what's the worst that could happen...right?

Why on earth are people stupid enough to be optimists? Being optimistic and telling onesself Hey things aren't that bad/They could be worse/Let's look on the bright side is basically dangling the proverbial carrot in front of the fates and begging them to show you just how far they can stick it in. Don't be optimistic, kids. A semester of first year Philosophy will teach to listen to the greats: Hobbes, Voltaire and well, me. We'll tell you that if expect the worst, then you'll leave enough room to be pleasantly surprised. The only people who wax lyrical about the joys of optimism are tools like Rousseau...an idiot, communist and I hear he tortures puppies on the weekends he doesn't spend jacking off to his own doctrine regarding the state of nature. If the symptoms of optimism persist, fine...be that way, but at least try and suppress these instincts if you ever plan on travelling with Greyhound.

So, I realise five seconds after I sat down that I've made a huge mistake. I'm leaving the greatest city in these United States to get on a night flight bus that's filling up with your regular circus sideshow acts and the ringmaster is heading straight towards me. I could smell this guy before I saw him. It's a combination of stale beer, crusty sweat stains and cigarettes with a hint of the military. I was still in my stage of cautious optimism as there were a few seats left and I thought that maybe I'll be that lucky one who doesn't have to fight for elbow room for sixteen hours. However. As soon as I caught that scent, I knew that fate had once again taken up the orange rod and was aiming squarely for buttocks. I heard the slurred words "Anyone sitting here? You look like you'll be good for conversation" and had no choice but to take one last look around before uttering "Uh...er...ohbuggerit. No. I won't be chatting though, because this is a night bus and I intend on sleeping."

"We'll see about that." say the Fates.

Joining myself and the lead tenor in the 'Down With Personal Hygeine' acapella chorus on the bus to Sacramento were three girls around my age taking up the three seats behind me and a mother and daughter directly across the way. One of the girls looked as though she required the extra two seats for herself alone and well, she was fortunate enough to be able to take up two. Bitch. One would spend the next 9 hours talking aimless, vowel-elongating trash on her cell phone (re: 'Yeeeeeahhh....liiiike...I knooooow etc etc), causing me to fantasise about hijacking the bus and taking it on a trip to Facestab city. The other one would spend most of her time sleeping and if you think that would give her an exemption from a taste of my critical bile then you're wrong, because she snores and therefore I hate her. Not as much as I do the King of the Four Whiffs next to me, because he proceeds to pull from his bag of ancient relics one pre-(Gulf) war cassette deck and over the ear headphones which will allow him...and everyone else within a four seat radius...a chance to listen to his collection of 80's metal and hardcore hip-hop at full volume. It is so loud through his headphones that I can hear lyrics.
Thankfully, this is why phones now double as mp3 players. I look at mine only to discover that I'd forgotten to charge the battery last night. I have 18% of my battery power left and even when I become desperate and play Golden Skans for the 14th time that day, I can still hear a half-arsed riff spewing forth from the wax-laden inner ears of the Arizonian Asshole next to me.

This is why I hate the human race. I sit back and think of drag queens.

Too many godforsaken hours later, I can no longer feel my toes, it's the next day, we're somewhere just outside of Medford. I am not sleeping. I have not slept. Sgt. Blotto, despite my protestations, is still playing his music. That bitch behind me is still on her phone and the other two are bonding with my cellmate because they appreciate his taste in tuneage. I'm going to allow you to Madlib the emotion I was feeling at that moment, which you can feel free to insert [here]. Our one meal stop is at Taco Bell so I decide to pass and maybe get a glorious half hour's worth of snoozy goodness. Approximately 13 and a half winks later, we're back on the road again, the bus driver/my hero is warning The Cell Phone Trio to shut up before they're evicted from the Big Greyhound House and I'm using my last 5% of battery to play Golden Skans. Yes, again. I'm just at the point of reaching peace when the old lady in the front row heads to the back of the bus and promptly begins retching. This is why I don't eat at Taco Bell. Her contralto solo lasts for three rounds of five awkward minutes and suddenly, the Military Breath Monster and his collection of 'It Came From Planet Journey' cassettes doesn't seem so bad. It's right about now that my batteries decide to breathe their last. I sit back and think of sweet transvestites.

I wake up just in time for the sunrise, somewhere outside of Sacramento. We roll in at around six and finally the Fates decide to play it my way and I see that Captain Puce Heart and the Skankettes are queueing for the San Diego bus. I even manage to score a seat all to myself on the way to San Francisco and there may have been a few more half hours (although still not enough) of poorly-positioned napping because the Californian desert scene outside can only hold my interest for a short while. We roll across the Bay Bridge on time and all I can do is sit back and think about the Pearl I left behind.