San Francisco. “No one calls it San Fran” my GBF once warned me.

To provide some context, let me explain that my sustained appetite for travelling is primarily motivated by the idea of seeing how everyone else lives*. And for me, I could  feel the vibrancy of San Francisco pulsing through the city from the moment we arrived.


*There is also the superficial thing about mentally ticking off as many countries and cities as possible, but in my defence, its because I want to to have as much breadth of appreciation as possible over the way 6.97bn people wake up to live, honest. (thank you, Wikipedia)


I’d never been any place in the US which held as much colour, boldness and character as San Francisco, Disneyland aside. Zigzag streets and steep hills, tourist traps at Fisherman’s Wharf and looming skyscrapers in the financial district, coffee shop boutiques and edgey Castro bars. To use an art analogy, in comparing San Francisco to Los Angeles, I’d relate the former to Picasso, and the latter perhaps to a Tracy Emin-esque piece of pretentious faux modernistic crap. OK, thats harsh – but really, LA has no soul, and San Francisco is full of it.

Anyway, stepping away from excessive gushing for a moment, our itinerary in San Francisco was relatively relaxed – get to know city, drink at a couple of pretentious bars, stop by Alcatraz, obtain the necessary tourist photo of the Golden Gate bridge. Sorted.




A couple of pretentious bars


Well, it had to be done. The bars of choice were the rooftop bar at the Standard Hotel and the Redwood Rooms.


The Standard’s Rooftop bar is marketed as a rather poncey affair, and I’m told this is where A-Listers used to frequent, until it got old and they migrated like a flock of wildebeest to where the next party was at. In order to exaggerate the poncey, the hotel also play a neat little trick where they:


Make you go through the hotel entrance, walk  through to the back of the hotel, open door and be outside of the hotel, be approached by mysterious well dressed bouncer, get your name marked on his clipboard, move onto mysterious well dressed bouncer’s similarly well dressed friend, have him strap a wristband onto you, go back into the hotel, and get directed into a dark little lift destined for the rooftop. I mean, really, whatever happened to ink-stamping your hand and getting shoved on through..


Now I had heard the words “chic” and “chilled” used in online reviews, and although it is a very nice bar with a very random swimming pool installed in the middle, I felt as if many people there were willing it to be “chic” and “chilled” by sheer individual efforts alone, especially if I judged effort by the size of people’s ridiculously feathered hats.

The Standard Rooftop Bar

There was no menu at the bar, and when asked for my order, I told the disappointingly average-looking staff to surprise me, and he didn’t disappoint. The drink costs $20, and subsisted of what must have been a shedful of vodka tossed in with a little syrupy fruit juice. Hmm, well it certainly got my head buzzing.


So we also hit the Redwood Rooms nearby. This was much more of a swanky affair,  and you can always tell how much swank a place is aiming for a) How much wood is present and b)  how dimly they light the room.  Suffice to say, it was full of dark wood, and had a nice luxurious relaxed feel to it, despite previous reviews nothing the bar as prime Cougar-Man hunting territory.


We deduced early on that LBDs (Little Black Dresses) were standard issue uniform for the waitresses, and bending over conveniently in order to expose cleavage/obtain bigger tips was a golden rule in their establishment. Oh well. Regardless, they had obviously put a lot of thought into their huge cocktail menu, so we lounged quite comfortably for a couple of hours, chatting and naturally digressing (as one does when sat on comfortable sofas with lots of alcohol) to vague, philosophical conversations about our lives.  These conversations of course never end satisfactorily, so in the end we decided we were not that rich, but we were definitely old and tired, so yomped on back to our hotel.

Redwood Rooms, Not my picture. My picture would have been MUCH darker.

Alcatraz

Reminds you of Shutter Island a bit doesn’t it?

I had to admit, I wasn’t particularly enthused at first about the thought of spending most of my day inside a derelict prison, but I have to say I enjoyed myself thoroughly. the entire audio tour was extremely well done, with tales and recollections from former prison inmates, and there was full justification in it having won several awards.


The ferry ride to Alcatraz itself was really cool – you could get great panoramic views of the San Francisco skyline, especially when you didn’t have people’s fat heads in the way.

I just think of movie scenes involving soap. The tour has you tottering from room to room, peering into cells and learning about all the attempted jail breaks, prison life, and infamous residents of “‘Traz.”  Although it sounds corny and so very American, the sound effects on the audio tour of warden footsteps, truncheons, prisoner banter and gunfire are all effective and  evocative of a place none of us ever hope to experience for ourselves.

Cool its like Shawshank! (Awesome movie) The jail breaks were the most interesting stories to hear about.  Alcatraz prided itself on never having a successful jail escape (that was confirmed), despite dozens of notable attempts.  However one particular story I learnt about had the sort of intricate plot detail that Wentworth Miller would never be able to get his pretty little head around. In 1962, a complex attempt involving metal spoons, false walls, soap, human hair and papier mache dummies was made by three men who sailed out from the island on an inflatable raft constructed from several stolen raincoats. (This sh-t is  Shawshank-worthy, kids!  You should let them escape for ingenuity alone, and stand applauding them on the way out.)   Like the ones you used to make in play school. The official FBI report has it that all prisoners drowned in the bay, but there have been some unofficial sightings of these men throughout the years, and lets face it the FBI didn’t want to look like mugs so of course they’d rather put it down to drowning.  I was personally thrilled to hear of such a story, apart from the whole-oh-sh-t-we’ve-just-let-a-bunch-of-criminals-loose-on-San-Francisco connotation.

Work at an investment bank: not so different from Alcatraz

As well as the tour itself, the National Park Service had done an excellent job of maintaining the island. The wonderfully crafted gardens and parkland, prompted my memories of Alcatraz not just to be as an infamous landmark, but a surprisingly beautiful landscape.

The authorities had obviously worked tirelessly to preserve the natural habitats of The ‘Rock’, and it really makes a stark comparison upon exiting the cold, sterile jail cells to be surrounded by a multitude of colourfully exotic plants, flowers and wildlife. (Although don’t ask me about names –  you could spray paint a daffodil and I’d believe it was a rare species) .


Golden Gate Bridge


There isn’t all that much to say about the Golden Gate Bridge, apart from it is the icon of the Bay and therefore several photos need to be taken (in the majority of those that contain me, I will look fat, and therefore several more photos are needed).  So here they are:

There. Happy?


Other than the above, we did a lot of trundling along the streets, including taking a ridiculously pricey lunch at the Slanted Door at Pier 39, ogling the models at Abercrombie (verdict: not up to New York standards), gleefully, and then 55 mins later not so gleefully, queuing up and riding the delightful old school cable car, glaring behind our shoulders in the Castro district, lamenting our pitiful affluence compared to the high rollers of Presidio, and of course, giggling immaturely whilst we passed by Nob Hill.


All this time, this warm fuzzy feeling inside me was growing, in that that I had not only found a place where I knew I would want to visit again, but I a place I felt I could live in. Its like hopping your way around the Monopoly board, buying up a spot and whacking a hotel on top of it because its now yours and you will always have that smug feeling in your possession.


Lastly, its definitely a noteworthy mention that Darren Criss was staying in my hotel.  Yes, my fellow gleeks, Blaine was crooning his way throughout a US tour with an acapella group but much to my disappointment he was only doing his gig the night we had to leave, otherwise I’d totally be in the front row gaping into his purrdy eyes..


So, I try to sum up my fondness for San Francisco, and despite all the stupid, unnecessary words I use, I think the best word I can come up with is ‘awesome’, which I guess at the end of the day, is pretty appropriate.


So that was California, May 2011. It was brilliant,I got a great tan, AND I managed to fit in a stonking good trip to the Great Mall of the Bay outlet centre. I figured it wasn’t really worth blogging about that, you’d just get jealous anyway.


 Also,  you might have noticed that I persevered with the ‘abridged’ tag. About 2 posts in, I decided it was just ironic.