A Week in San Francisco

As part of job, I was in San Francisco for a week, taking some training.  You and I both know I don’t talk about the job in here, but I will talk about the City By The Bay, San Francisco.

San Francisco is uncommonly beautiful, being built all over a bunch of hills, on the side of the Bay and the Pacific.  San Francisco has a long tradition of being a port city, shipping in and shipping out just about everything at one time or another.  The city is quite green, being a temperate climate, unlike Los Angeles which is a desert with silicone implants. 

The people? Uniformly friendly and approachable.  Sort of a small-town mentality with a big city environment.  You can ask any passerby on the street for the correct time and not be told to do an anatomical impossibility.  Of course, being a beautiful city, housing costs are astronomical, so you get socio-economic stratification.  There are fabulously rich folks and dirt poor folks, with nothing in between.  The middle class can’t afford to live in San Francisco, so they have all moved to the soulless ‘burbs, each within ten minutes drive of a Borders, Bed, Bath and Beyond, the GAP and Wal-Mart big box mall-hell. 

Downtown is clean and orderly, while still retaining some of the city-ness and characters you find in a large city.  The tourist areas are uniformly spotless and safe, after all, people come from all over the planet to San Francisco and the good citizens want to put out their best china and linens. 

I was in San Francisco with a co-worker, who hadn’t been there for several years, so we took some time in the evenings to do a bit of tourism.  First off, the cable cars are just as you see them in the Rice A-Roni TV commercials.  They clank and rumble, climbing the hill up Market street.  Chinatown is a riot of people, languages, smells and colors that stun the eyes, ears and nose.  Yes, there are quaint apartments that seem to defy gravity, clinging to the side of hills.

Fisherman’s Wharf is at once a working wharf and a theme park of a wharf, having been Sanitized For Your Protection as a tourist.  You can get New England Clam Chowder in a bread bowl from one of dozens of street kitchens, the come-on being that you’re at a wharf, ergo the clams are fresh.  There are several hideous tourist traps hawking t-shirts and "authentic" Alcatraz Swim Team jackets along with gum, cameras, batteries and fridge magnets.

We did manage to find a good restaurant and take in the seafood, which was excellent, as well as a sunset behind the Golden Gate Bridge that took your breath away.  Some days, I’m certain, God does that just to show off. 

Coming back to Market street, we asked a passenger on the street car what stop we should use to get to our hotel and received concise directions.  After getting off the transit, my colleague remarked that one of the women on the streetcar was a fine specimen of womanhood, specifically the one we asked directions of.  I pointed out to him that she also had an Adam’s apple and knees that looked my mine, as well as just that bit too much makeup to cover a five o’clock shadow.  There was a minor mental earthquake.   

Thursday night however, it was a different story.  I was in my pajamas (the pink, flesh colored ones) watching the History Channel, minding my own business at 8:40 PM.  The bed started to move.  A lot.  Imagine a big, heavy truck rolling by your house, shaking everything.  For three seconds I was confused, as I was on the eighth floor.  Then it struck me.  I am in California.  This is an earthquake. 

I didn’t hear sirens, or breaking glass and a second later, the bed stopped moving.  So far, no issues.  I had survived my first earthquake.  A moment later, my cell phone rang.  It was my colleague wondering what the hell had just happened.  I changed channels to a local station and lo, a 4.1 magnitude earthquake.  No damage.  Nothing more than a few rattled dishes.

Thursday evening we spent some time looking for souvenirs for my colleague to take home to his partner.  We even took a few moments to watch the sea lions basking on the jetties and barking at passers-by.  Sea lions look exactly like you have seen them in documentary films.  Big, flabby and cute, they have a bark like a very big hound dog and loll around staring at the humans with the cameras.  I’m never sure who is on display, as I suspect there is a sign in sea lion-ese underwater somewhere in the bay that says, "Come and see the idiot bi-pedals, but don’t feed them herring and don’t throw things at them.  Thank you." 

By the time things wrapped up on the Friday, I had four hours to myself.  My colleague had to catch a flight, so I was on my own.  My first stop was the USS Pampanito.  The Pampanito is a WWII US diesel submarine, of the Balao class.  The Pampanito is a restored, real, fleet submarine that has been slightly modified so you can walk the length of the interior.  The Pampanito is actually in the water, so it rolls and yaws with the sea, unlike other subs that are dryland monuments to rust held together with paint.

Entering aft you find that more than 20 minutes on a sub will give you the heebie jeebies if you are at all claustrophobic.  Hard steel pieces jut out at angles that are certified by the shipyard to leave bloody gashes in your forehead and scalp if you don’t pay attention.

The Pampanito has been lovingly restored to as close to 1945 as you can get.  They did leave out the asbestos and the toxic lead paint, but you can never get rid of the smell of diesels, sweat, hot vacuum tubes, Lucky Strikes, dust, grease and oil. 

Everything is tiny.  The head is miniscule.  The racks, even for the senior officers are not much bigger than an airline seat folded out flat.  The galley is a miracle of space and efficiency.  Every cubby hole, niche and surface available has some kind of machinery built in to service the needs of a big steel tube that sinks and surfaces at will. 

One of the museum docents aboard served on a sister to the Pampanito and, as it was a slow day, showed me some of the engine room where he served on the Bowfin.  Four big Morse Diesel engines take up all the room.  Underway, according to the docent, you can only communicate by hand signals, as the noise obliterates all potential for speech. 

Under the engines is a whole other space, of batteries, electrical cabling, pipes, oil sumps, bunker tanks and ballast tanks.  Overhead are the levers, valves and switchgear needed to run the boat.  You would burn yourself on something in the engine space at least once a day, and usually bark a shin four or five times a week.  It was considered the informal tattoo of the engine room. 

The control room, dive room and fighting spaces have all been restored.  Some of the floor decking is open grate, so you can see down into the lower levels of the boat, where even more 1943 technology lives.  Occasionally you feel the boat heel in the water, adding a sudden reality shot to the floating museum and memorial to those who are still on patrol. 

Next door on the wharf is another WWII relic, the Jerimiah O’Brien Liberty Ship.  One of only two working Liberty ships left from the more than 2,700 that were built in WWII, the Jerimiah O’Brien is still seaworthy and has the Coast Guard license to prove it.  Most of the ship is open to tour and perhaps the most remarkable part is the monstrous 3-cylinder steam engine that pushed the loaded Liberty ships to a stunning 11 knots.

Hull #230 was welded together in 56 days in Portland, Maine and hit the water on June 19,1943 being called SS Jerimiah O’Brien.  To cheer everyone up, it was painted grey.  Eleven of her stops were just off the shores of Normandy, bringing troops, guns, bullets and beans to the D-Day beaches.

Notice the prefix on the name, by the way.  SS, meaning steam ship.  Not USS, as in United States Ship, or HMCS, for Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship, both designations meaning a flag ship, or one owned and operated by the military.  All the Liberty ships were operated by private companies and all the hands were Merchant Marine sailors.  They weren’t military personnel:  They were citizens.

After an afternoon of floating history and too much walking up, down and around, I needed something to eat.  Pier 1, near the hotel has a number of small food emporiums and I was tired of hotel food and portions.  A nice, crispy french bread, some local cheese and slices of organic Parma ham made it into various bags.  A small container of gelato was obtained and I strolled back to the hotel.  One quick call to room service for butter and cutlery and I was set for a comfortable dinner.

Now that is the way to travel.  Lots of work, some history, a bit of beauty, some interesting people and very good food.  Welcome to San Francisco.