Seattle And Back Again: An Asian's Tale by Tom L. (Day Two)
Day Two - Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
Tom becomes a part of the horde of tourists exploring San Francisco, enjoying the local cuisine, art, and culture, and would have gotten rained on if not for the umbrella that he thought to bring on the trip.
We will begin this chapter the same way I woke up the second day: to a view of city hall in the late morning. Neither Eddie nor I are morning people, so for us to have woken up at 10am is an amazing feat in and of itself. We all like to joke that certain inane things our friends "accomplish" are deserving of medals, awards, and accolades, but this is an authentic achievement, I assure you.
Anyway, Tuesday was our first full day in a city. There were a couple of these planned throughout the trip, and this being the first really tested my day planning abilities. Because our hotel was so close to the center of San Francisco, all of the things we wanted to see were within reasonable walking distances. They were, in this order, Morty's Delicatessan, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Chinatown, and Empress of China. Of course, we did do some exploration here and there, but that was the general area we stuck to.
We left the hotel at about 11am and headed off to grab some breakfast. Morty's Delicatessan was this hole in the wall sandwich shop that I found through yelp.com. I had their egg and sausage breakfast sandwich which was fairly good and in good portions. I was barely able to finish it, but then I'm not used to eating too much in the morning. From there we made our way to the main part of Market Street, where pretty much everybody was. The crowd was quite sizeable and the sidewalks at least two or three times the width of those in Southern California. There was a lot of traffic, which reaffirmed our decision not to drive in downtown San Francisco. I would come back to take a few pictures later on in the night.
As we approached the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, there was a swarm of people. Apparently, it's not a secret that this museum was free the first Tuesday of every month. The sidewalk here was regulation-sized, so you can imagine what a madhouse it was, with two lines starting from the entrance that wrapped around either side of the building, on top of the regular foot traffic going through the street.
At this point I was about ready to say screw this, but then I had Eddie wait in line while I forged ahead to check things out. As I wandered from the end of one line to the other, I spied the usual museum gift shop, along with a museum cafe. Looking through the windows of the cafe, I could see that the cafe was connected to the lobby of the museum.
This is where it gets shady, folks. Some of you will no doubt have moral reservations about celebrating my exploits. I figured I could get into the museum via the cafe, thus bypassing the throngs of humans (is that redundant?). So I did. Once in the lobby, mental Tom said to physical Tom, "Well, it can't be this easy". Sure enough, there were two museum dudes standing on the staircase up to the exhibits, and they were checking people for tickets as they ascended. I looked around for where people were getting said tickets and I spied another museum worker, parked where the door was, asking people "Do you have a ticket? Can't get in without a ticket" while handing them one if they didn't have it. So I went up to her, with the best confused Oriental tourist look I could muster, and was handed the free permission slip to enter without any question. Of course, I did wait until she was overwhelmed with people. So with museum ticket in hand, I called Eddie through the magic of cellular phones and instructed him to enter the museum and procure a boleta the same way I did. Thus, mission accomplished and leaving the waiting herds outside, we ventured up into the world of modern art, through the eyes of San Franciscan curators.
A lot of art, in my eyes, isn't really art. If I can take a toilet seat and mount it on the wall and call it art, it's not. If I can put up three solid white panels and shine a black light at it at an angle (?!), it's not art. If I spend 1,000 hours handcrafting butterflies and various shapes out of paper and stringing it together into a huge tapestry, then ok, it might be art. If it requires me to have actual artistic skill, then it is art. The old crotchety dude on CBS's 60 Minutes has it right, I think. You have to pay your dues as an artist, like Picasso before his cubist days, before you can do art (cubist Picasso, obviously).
But regardless of my misgivings about modern art (because it is true that art usually isn't realized as such until much later in history), the SFMOMA was still very interesting. I was suprised to see that the Apple G4 Cube is considered a modern piece of art, along with the OLPC. The architecture of the museum itself was cool, too. Our stay at the museum was fairly brief, though I did find their exhibit of Chinese art done during the Cultural Revolution to be quite interesting. There is a sad undercurrent of cynicism beneath the facade of hope in most, if not all, of the works on display. Yes, I've read a poem; try not to faint.
Venturing across the street from the SFMOMA I ended up at this fairly sizeable park/quad where a lot of the tourists and locals alike were gathered. Business types, yokels with backpacks and cameras like us, and people walking their pets lounged around this area, with a view of artifical water constructs and a small part of the San Francisco skyline.
From here, we traveled our way up to Chinatown, stopping at random sites like this low-traffic back alley. That moniker is misleading, as this was behind one of the major hotels near Market Street, and the chair setups were outdoor seating of a hotel restaurant. It also happened to be close to another museum, devoted to Jewish artifacts. We didn't patronize this particular establishment, because it was no doubt not free, so instead I took a moment to sit down and look regal.
Eventually we made our way to the outskirts of Chinatown to a park where a bunch of old Chinese people were gathered. I observed from the recommended safe distance when dealing with the Chinese man and took a picture to dissect later.
Chinatown was also a hotspot for tourists. I had half expected to see well-dressed Asian men standing outside of their clothing stores, gesturing to you in a welcoming yet urgent way, as if your life depended on you purchasing one of their "cheap suit". Instead, there were just as many non-Asians as Asians roaming the streets. Like Solvang, the architecture is meant to invoke the feeling of stepping into the streets of historic China, but because of San Francisco's Chinese history, I have no doubt some, if not most, of it is authentic.
You can see from these pictures that Chinatown is on a hill, so I must confess here that much of our exploration is determined by whether or not we would be walking up streets with steep grades.
There was one doorway that was eeriely reminiscent of something out of the Hellboy movies; see if you agree with me.
Of course, San Francisco isn't SF without the next mass transit vehicle. They just stop in the middle of intersection, allowing indecisive foreigners to hop on and off as they liked while the rest of us pedestrians wait for the light to change.
At this point it was still much too early for us to eat dinner at the Empress of China as according to plan, so we headed back to the hotel to relax. We made use of our two TVs, which we would miss in subsequent hotel rooms, to watch our own programs. Eddie made use of the ridiculously big couch with its ridiculously large pillows to take an epic nap, while I surfed the airwaves lounging in my own bed.
Eventually the Armenian woke up and we left for the restaurant. By this time the sun was setting. You don't go to Empress of China because you get great value for the food you pay for. On its own, the food was not bad, but for the price (about $15 per plate on its own, $30+ for their party specials) you better be getting a view and an experience. Fortunately, the restaurant is on the sixth floor of an building unobstructed by other, taller, buildings, and in the late afternoon you get a great panorama of the bay and the rest of SF. The decor is old school Chinese restaurant, the kind you see in old martial arts flicks from the Far East, but with much more detail and trimmings, mostly done in dark wood. The staff speak Cantonese and are quite speedy and cognizant of the fact that you need something. I'd have a problem with going there if I had lived there, but seeing as how I was on vacation, a little splurging never really hurt anyone.
Nighttime photography is a little difficult without a tripod or a steady hand. I had neither, so some shots from this trip turned out less than desirable, but here are some better-than-the-others shots.
I had saw this earlier in the day, but it took a second passing in order for me take this picture of a Chinatown business. You can probably figure this one out; all I have to say is that I find that racist!
Strolling down Market Street back towards the hotel while full, I came across some nice lighting of a Bloomingdale's. Business must be slow, apparently, because replacing lightbulbs must be fairly high on their upkeep list, right?
The city hall again... again. Funny thing about my fascination with this building is that I never walked the two blocks from where this picture was taken to see it up close and personal. On the other hand, this prompted me to, about nine days after this was taken, to go up to the city hall in Pasadena and see that place, finally, with my own eyes and my feet planted firmly in the middle of its courtyard.
It also was starting to rain by the time we got here; for once the weather forecast was right. Here I am, being either afraid, confused, or constipated. I have yet to decide, and am currently taking speculations.
Oh, did I forget to tell you that our hotel was across the street from the Orpheum? That night some play/musical was going on; I don't remember the name, just that it held no interest for me. Irrelevant. I was captivated by all the pretty lights, which explains this photograph being here.
And with our stomaches full of hot and sour soup, fried wontons in sweet and sour sauce, Mongolian beef, sweet and sour pork, jasmine tea, fortune cookies, and BK Lounge, we slept.
Tom definitely knew there was a lot more to SF than meets the eye in the short time he was able to spend there, and would definitely like the opportunity to explore it in the future with a local guide. Luckily, this city is only about six hours away from where he lives (by car), so he considers this experience an appetizer. In the next chapter of Seattle And Back Again, Tom travels further up the California coast, where he encounters more ocean, trees, and cliffs. He also has a fast food incident, and he returns with photographic proof.
Tom becomes a part of the horde of tourists exploring San Francisco, enjoying the local cuisine, art, and culture, and would have gotten rained on if not for the umbrella that he thought to bring on the trip.
We will begin this chapter the same way I woke up the second day: to a view of city hall in the late morning. Neither Eddie nor I are morning people, so for us to have woken up at 10am is an amazing feat in and of itself. We all like to joke that certain inane things our friends "accomplish" are deserving of medals, awards, and accolades, but this is an authentic achievement, I assure you.
Anyway, Tuesday was our first full day in a city. There were a couple of these planned throughout the trip, and this being the first really tested my day planning abilities. Because our hotel was so close to the center of San Francisco, all of the things we wanted to see were within reasonable walking distances. They were, in this order, Morty's Delicatessan, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Chinatown, and Empress of China. Of course, we did do some exploration here and there, but that was the general area we stuck to.
We left the hotel at about 11am and headed off to grab some breakfast. Morty's Delicatessan was this hole in the wall sandwich shop that I found through yelp.com. I had their egg and sausage breakfast sandwich which was fairly good and in good portions. I was barely able to finish it, but then I'm not used to eating too much in the morning. From there we made our way to the main part of Market Street, where pretty much everybody was. The crowd was quite sizeable and the sidewalks at least two or three times the width of those in Southern California. There was a lot of traffic, which reaffirmed our decision not to drive in downtown San Francisco. I would come back to take a few pictures later on in the night.
As we approached the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, there was a swarm of people. Apparently, it's not a secret that this museum was free the first Tuesday of every month. The sidewalk here was regulation-sized, so you can imagine what a madhouse it was, with two lines starting from the entrance that wrapped around either side of the building, on top of the regular foot traffic going through the street.
At this point I was about ready to say screw this, but then I had Eddie wait in line while I forged ahead to check things out. As I wandered from the end of one line to the other, I spied the usual museum gift shop, along with a museum cafe. Looking through the windows of the cafe, I could see that the cafe was connected to the lobby of the museum.
This is where it gets shady, folks. Some of you will no doubt have moral reservations about celebrating my exploits. I figured I could get into the museum via the cafe, thus bypassing the throngs of humans (is that redundant?). So I did. Once in the lobby, mental Tom said to physical Tom, "Well, it can't be this easy". Sure enough, there were two museum dudes standing on the staircase up to the exhibits, and they were checking people for tickets as they ascended. I looked around for where people were getting said tickets and I spied another museum worker, parked where the door was, asking people "Do you have a ticket? Can't get in without a ticket" while handing them one if they didn't have it. So I went up to her, with the best confused Oriental tourist look I could muster, and was handed the free permission slip to enter without any question. Of course, I did wait until she was overwhelmed with people. So with museum ticket in hand, I called Eddie through the magic of cellular phones and instructed him to enter the museum and procure a boleta the same way I did. Thus, mission accomplished and leaving the waiting herds outside, we ventured up into the world of modern art, through the eyes of San Franciscan curators.
A lot of art, in my eyes, isn't really art. If I can take a toilet seat and mount it on the wall and call it art, it's not. If I can put up three solid white panels and shine a black light at it at an angle (?!), it's not art. If I spend 1,000 hours handcrafting butterflies and various shapes out of paper and stringing it together into a huge tapestry, then ok, it might be art. If it requires me to have actual artistic skill, then it is art. The old crotchety dude on CBS's 60 Minutes has it right, I think. You have to pay your dues as an artist, like Picasso before his cubist days, before you can do art (cubist Picasso, obviously).
But regardless of my misgivings about modern art (because it is true that art usually isn't realized as such until much later in history), the SFMOMA was still very interesting. I was suprised to see that the Apple G4 Cube is considered a modern piece of art, along with the OLPC. The architecture of the museum itself was cool, too. Our stay at the museum was fairly brief, though I did find their exhibit of Chinese art done during the Cultural Revolution to be quite interesting. There is a sad undercurrent of cynicism beneath the facade of hope in most, if not all, of the works on display. Yes, I've read a poem; try not to faint.
Venturing across the street from the SFMOMA I ended up at this fairly sizeable park/quad where a lot of the tourists and locals alike were gathered. Business types, yokels with backpacks and cameras like us, and people walking their pets lounged around this area, with a view of artifical water constructs and a small part of the San Francisco skyline.
From here, we traveled our way up to Chinatown, stopping at random sites like this low-traffic back alley. That moniker is misleading, as this was behind one of the major hotels near Market Street, and the chair setups were outdoor seating of a hotel restaurant. It also happened to be close to another museum, devoted to Jewish artifacts. We didn't patronize this particular establishment, because it was no doubt not free, so instead I took a moment to sit down and look regal.
Eventually we made our way to the outskirts of Chinatown to a park where a bunch of old Chinese people were gathered. I observed from the recommended safe distance when dealing with the Chinese man and took a picture to dissect later.
Chinatown was also a hotspot for tourists. I had half expected to see well-dressed Asian men standing outside of their clothing stores, gesturing to you in a welcoming yet urgent way, as if your life depended on you purchasing one of their "cheap suit". Instead, there were just as many non-Asians as Asians roaming the streets. Like Solvang, the architecture is meant to invoke the feeling of stepping into the streets of historic China, but because of San Francisco's Chinese history, I have no doubt some, if not most, of it is authentic.
You can see from these pictures that Chinatown is on a hill, so I must confess here that much of our exploration is determined by whether or not we would be walking up streets with steep grades.
There was one doorway that was eeriely reminiscent of something out of the Hellboy movies; see if you agree with me.
Of course, San Francisco isn't SF without the next mass transit vehicle. They just stop in the middle of intersection, allowing indecisive foreigners to hop on and off as they liked while the rest of us pedestrians wait for the light to change.
At this point it was still much too early for us to eat dinner at the Empress of China as according to plan, so we headed back to the hotel to relax. We made use of our two TVs, which we would miss in subsequent hotel rooms, to watch our own programs. Eddie made use of the ridiculously big couch with its ridiculously large pillows to take an epic nap, while I surfed the airwaves lounging in my own bed.
Eventually the Armenian woke up and we left for the restaurant. By this time the sun was setting. You don't go to Empress of China because you get great value for the food you pay for. On its own, the food was not bad, but for the price (about $15 per plate on its own, $30+ for their party specials) you better be getting a view and an experience. Fortunately, the restaurant is on the sixth floor of an building unobstructed by other, taller, buildings, and in the late afternoon you get a great panorama of the bay and the rest of SF. The decor is old school Chinese restaurant, the kind you see in old martial arts flicks from the Far East, but with much more detail and trimmings, mostly done in dark wood. The staff speak Cantonese and are quite speedy and cognizant of the fact that you need something. I'd have a problem with going there if I had lived there, but seeing as how I was on vacation, a little splurging never really hurt anyone.
Nighttime photography is a little difficult without a tripod or a steady hand. I had neither, so some shots from this trip turned out less than desirable, but here are some better-than-the-others shots.
I had saw this earlier in the day, but it took a second passing in order for me take this picture of a Chinatown business. You can probably figure this one out; all I have to say is that I find that racist!
Strolling down Market Street back towards the hotel while full, I came across some nice lighting of a Bloomingdale's. Business must be slow, apparently, because replacing lightbulbs must be fairly high on their upkeep list, right?
The city hall again... again. Funny thing about my fascination with this building is that I never walked the two blocks from where this picture was taken to see it up close and personal. On the other hand, this prompted me to, about nine days after this was taken, to go up to the city hall in Pasadena and see that place, finally, with my own eyes and my feet planted firmly in the middle of its courtyard.
It also was starting to rain by the time we got here; for once the weather forecast was right. Here I am, being either afraid, confused, or constipated. I have yet to decide, and am currently taking speculations.
Oh, did I forget to tell you that our hotel was across the street from the Orpheum? That night some play/musical was going on; I don't remember the name, just that it held no interest for me. Irrelevant. I was captivated by all the pretty lights, which explains this photograph being here.
And with our stomaches full of hot and sour soup, fried wontons in sweet and sour sauce, Mongolian beef, sweet and sour pork, jasmine tea, fortune cookies, and BK Lounge, we slept.
Tom definitely knew there was a lot more to SF than meets the eye in the short time he was able to spend there, and would definitely like the opportunity to explore it in the future with a local guide. Luckily, this city is only about six hours away from where he lives (by car), so he considers this experience an appetizer. In the next chapter of Seattle And Back Again, Tom travels further up the California coast, where he encounters more ocean, trees, and cliffs. He also has a fast food incident, and he returns with photographic proof.