Friday, January 23, 2004
San Francisco is a city of bums. A January afternoon is as warm and sunny as June in London. Every street with anything more than houses on it has a few bums, and maybe it is the sun that helps cultivate the peculiar smell. Some of them are gibbering, some of them are eccentic, all of them are caked in a layer of grime and all of them smell. Which isn't to say you feel any less sorry for them. Although the sheer numbers mean that random acts of charity don't seem much good. A couple of crazy women sit behind us on the MUNI, the electric bus, as it ambles down Market. They start to talk, but years of god knows what mean that their voices are cracked, slurred and to all intents and purposes unintelligible. Everyone will talk to you in this town: from the man walking his dog (who might inform you of the best places to meet other english folks) to the person sitting next to you at the bus stop. So on another bus, when a woman is in the middle of a long rant, it is impossible to tell if she is pouring her heart out to a complete stranger or her best friend, who is anyway the bus driver, about the shenanigans of her land lord. She repeats the same grievance six times in her sweeping monologue. The bus driver says 'right' a couple of times. The streets are covered in the kind of political graffiti that makes my socialist heart swell with good feeling towards the city. Today we went for a walk in Golden Gate Park. This is a lot prettier in the winter, when the still pretty infrequent rain has turned everything a brilliant green. It is full of tropical palms, and is as hilly as any other part of the city, so when you pass by on the bus it gives the illusion of a very well cultivated jungle. Most of the city is as well tended as a vicar's garden: the streets pumelled clean daily with high powered hoses and litter free. Where we are staying, in the Mission district is a bit different. More like London, you walk through a veritable carpet of litter and general nastiness. This is the main hispanic district of the city and every sign is in spanish as well as english. I had my hair cut by a transvestite with three day stubble to a soundtrack of late 80s madonna et at. We went on a meandering bus ride the other day in search of a famous comic store (didn't live up to expectations) and ended up at the grimy beach. Everything covered in a layer of unexplained black, with a line of litter strew at the tide mark. Uncharacteristic, though, for this city which is generally so beautiful. The hilliness means that you struggle up every hill to see expansive views of one valley or other of prettily painted houses, or modern corporate towers. The sun washes everything clean. Both me and Mike think we could happily live here.