Note: Click any photo to enlarge it.
I spent the weekend in San Francisco and its surrounding areas, taking nearly 150 photos along the way. Today I'd like to use these photos to give you a visual tour of the city that never sleeps (with women).
That's the first gay joke of the tour. There will be many. For instance, did you know San Francisco is so gay-friendly that even the bedsheets in my hotel room were flaming?
Most cheap hotels have plain white linens. The one I stayed at apparently preferred to buy their sheets at RuPaul's garage sale. And for that, I thank them. I'm a straight man, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate bedsheets that make me laugh when I wake up in the middle of the night to pee. But let's start the tour.
San Francisco
It's hard not to love a city that invented drag queens, Rice-a-Roni, and panhandling. However, if there's three things that describe the city best, it's probably the Golden Gate Bridge . . .
. . . exciting nightlife . . .
. . . and blatant drug and alcohol abuse.
But let's not forget moral integrity based upon the traditional ideals of Christianity. Nowhere on earth will you find more faithful Christians and God-loving Republicans than in the incredibly conservative streets of San Francisco. You certainly wouldn't find something like, say, an entire bookstore dedicated to socialism.
In all honesty, San Francisco is a beautiful city with a legendary arts scene. It's one of the only cities I've visited where every building seems to be a marvel of interesting architecture. The only downside is my car is a stick shift with bald tires and no parking brake, so the hills in the city were a bit . . . frightening. Whenever another car was behind me on the steep hills, I had to do a huge burnout to keep from rolling back and hitting them. Then everyone thought I was some douchebag in a Ford Escort attempting to look cool.
Haight-Ashbury
How ironic that the biggest symbol of American freedom and progressiveness - the famous hippie neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury - is now just a tourist trap. Tom Wolfe would be weeping if he weren't rolling around naked in a big pile of money. Other than the totally stoned guy I found working at the neighborhood Ben & Jerry's, everyone in Haight-Ashbury seemed to be middle-aged tourists wearing dress shorts and vacation shirts.
But venture away from the famous intersection (where some of the buildings are even painted up stereotypically for the tourists, like in the first photo below), and you'll find the real beatniks and unglamorous buildings (below right) that likely filled the neighborhood during the 1960s revolution.
Walk a few blocks north to the panhandle, a very long and thin park with basketball courts and a makeshift skateboard park, and you'll find the real neighborhood residents hanging out and drinking beer.
They're not bad at skateboarding, either. Yes, that's Santa Claus they're jumping over. He got pummeled a few times, but the filthy bastard had it coming.
Berkeley
There's not much to say about America's most liberal college. It's just a typical campus: large and mostly uneventful. I expected to see students marching for eight social causes at once, PETA pouring fake blood on passersby, and Greenpeace raping an elderly person just because they can. Unfortunately, the place wasn't worth a photo.
Oakland
Sweet Jesus, if there was a competition for how fast a person could roll up their car window, whoever was from Oakland would win. Most of the city seems pretty decent, like the theater near Lake Merritt . . .
. . . but take a wrong turn into East Oakland and it's pretty terrifying. Not the area itself, but the people in the area. From what I've been told, that was the part of the city hit hardest when crack got popular in the late-80s. It shows.
The Mexican restaurant I ate at in a nicer part of town was pretty cool, though. It had two toilets in the single-person men's room. One for big people and one for little kids. Why did I take a picture of this? Because it's exactly the kind of ridiculous thing you'd expect from this column. Enjoy.
My favorite part of Oakland was driving in the "tube" to Alameda. A tube is a subway tunnel for cars. So basically it's just a regular tunnel, but longer. It's a supertunnel. If the road were a penis, the tube would be a urethra that looks really cool when photographed at high speeds.
Overall impression:
I like the San Francisco area. The tolls are annoying, and the hills are scary even when you're driving an automatic, but it's a fun place. Below are a few more photos I was unable to fit into the main column.
- Museum of Modern Art parking garage, top level
