Premature evacuation, part seventeen.
DAY SIXTY-SEVEN
Friday, November 2nd
When we woke up, we had a fucking ticket waiting for us. We had seen the sign on the other side of the street before parking for the night, forbidding parking on the first and third whatever day during some three-hour period of time in the morning for some superfluous street-sweeping, and I guess we naively assumed it was the same for both sides. Since street signs were intentionally cryptic and arbitrary, we were parked there on the first Friday of the month--a mistake worth $76 to the piece of shit that was San Francisco. We both resolved to just never pay it.
We started what we hoped would be another jam-packed adventurous day by stopping at the first of two sets of big slides in the city: the Winfield Street Slides. At 40 feet long and over 40 years old, they were two metal slides right next to each other, allowing Alyssa and I to hold hands as we slid down them. No children were around thanks to school hours, so we had the spot to ourselves. The view of the city from up there was fantastic, too. In 1979, the mayor at the time went down them alongside the district supervisor in a sliding competition.
From there, we went into a residential neighborhood and a little ways down a grimy alleyway. We almost missed the tiny sign sticking out from the wall behind an apartment building with a human eye and the name Peephole Cinema arching around it. Next to it was a small hole and a plaque listing the titles and creators behind the current block of short, silent, animated films. We each took turns peeking inside for a minute or two, myself seeing a stop-motion animation using drawings on top of the pages of a book being flipped through. Started by animator Laurie O'Brien in 2013, the peepholes ran 24/7, and there were even locations in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.
We got to our second set of slides of the day at the Seward Street Mini-Park. When we got there, a very jolly dad or uncle was having fun going down them with two small children who were by all accounts being big baby brats about it. A bike cop pulled up to sit on a bench and eat lunch. We noticed the sign declaring, "No adults unless accompanied by a child." This park had been opened in 1973 after a decade-long battle between the community and the city over how to utilize what was originally another vacant lot about to be dominated by corporate real estate interests. In 1966, they even went as far as staging a sit-in that obstructed a bulldozer threatening so-called "development". They won, and as a result had this tiny park, surrounded by native plants and these concrete slides. After everyone disappeared, we ran right up and went down. Midway was an especially steep drop that made me think I'd go flying forward off the path of the slide. It was genuinely scary, so maybe those kids weren't just being little assholes.
Brushing myself off, I pulled my phone out of my pocket to take another picture. It was suddenly off? My phone being a piece of shit, I wasn't immediately alarmed: spontaneously shutting off regardless of battery life was one of many common fuck-ups it put me through on a daily basis, and my battery was in a perpetual state of empty. I started trying to force-start it, but it still wouldn't come on. That was a little alarming, but I still wasn't shocked. When we got back in the car, I plugged it in and tried to force-start it again. To my relief, on came the bright Apple logo start screen. Then it shut off. Then it came back on. Then it turned back off. And from there, that was all it would do: show me the Apple logo screen as if it were about to turn back on, and then just return to black. I immediately started freaking out, instantly convincing myself this was finally the end of my phone. I had been waiting for it for a while, after all. I'd had the phone for almost three years, and at the time I bought it it was already several years behind what model most of my peers had in terms of iPhones. But nothing had happened to it. It was in my pocket for one minute, and then it came out broken. I never dropped it or anything. We tried to plug it into a laptop. Neither end even recognized it being connected. Alyssa's laptop, which was a Mac, fed it battery power enough to start shutting on and off again, but her iTunes never registered that it was an iPhone. We started frantically Googling these symptoms and found little to nothing. Then I noticed the screen turn blood red for a second before returning to black. I knew this was the end, and my brain instantly fell down a rabbit hole I was all too familiar with:
'What will I do if this, what was supposed to be my only and final phone, is really dead, and why the fuck do I have to be poor while so many people I know have new phones their parents bought them and whose plans they leach off of?'
Most shitty things that happened to me sent me into a manic tailspin, where the full force of poverty and capitalism hit me harder than usual.
We had no other choice but to go to the nearest Apple store, a place I'd done everything in my ability to avoid ever going inside of over the years. Finding parking took a while, and we circled the center of the city several times before finding somewhere we could be for a while. We had to walk 15 or so minutes to get to the store. I was panicking and welling up with irrational anger at the whole situation. I knew we were about to spend several hours inside of an Apple store, and that it would ultimately end with me being told my phone was done for and that my only option was to buy a new one. We got in line, were eventually told to take a seat until my name was called, and were given an estimated wait of at least 90 minutes, meaning at some point Alyssa would have to return to the car to move it in time since parking wasn't allowed on that side after 5. The place creeped me out, honestly. Sterile and lit fluorescent, it felt like a hospital for robots. I sat and read to try and get away from my thoughts about what was going on. Alyssa sat next to me and drew, unsure of what to say other than offering to pay half of whatever it ended up costing. It was so sweet of her, and I really appreciated the offer, but I refused to let her do that. Most of my peers would never understand just how devastating these financial bumps in the road were, and the domino effect caused by every unexpected emergency cost. Alyssa certainly didn't.
I think we wound up being there for around four hours. When I got to finally speak with someone, he told me upfront that his initial suspicion was an internal hardware issue that couldn't be fixed. I was right. I could buy a new 5S there for $269--over a hundred dollars more than I paid for the used one that just broke! I asked what could have led to the hardware just spontaneously failing like that, and he told me it could just happen, albeit rarely. As usual, something shitty was happening to me without provocation that wasn't happening to most people. At least, that was the way these moments always felt. I told him I needed time to sit and process the situation and the cost if I wanted to leave with a working phone. I had no idea what to do. Thankfully, Alyssa, whose judgment and thinking were less clouded by anxiety and poverty-induced trauma, found a more affordable phone at a Best Buy, which still cost something like $150. So we went there.
The refurbished phone they actually had was locked to a Simple Mobile phone plan, so I'd have to switch to a new plan to use it. It seemed like one obstacle after another, and the rabbit hole I had already been falling down inside of my head had at that point gotten to the level where I realized all of this bullshit was avoidable if it weren't for capitalism incentivizing concepts like planned obsolescence and necessitating poverty. Even at a hundred dollars cheaper than the one at the Apple store, I knew this small cost would lead to me running out of money well before the end of the month. Things most people referred to as "cheap" were prohibitively or life-alteringly expensive for me. My head was racing, but I gave in and bought the fucking phone, which was at least a 50GB 5E model up from my previous one with more than double the memory. I couldn't help but dwell on the fact that I was dropping what was for me a large chunk of money on a piece of technology that was years behind what everyone else had. I wasn't sure what to do about the Simple Mobile lock on it, but I needed to make sure I had a phone before all of my options closed for the day. If nothing else, it was crucial to our travels.
We found a Starbucks and I tried to figure out how to make it all work. At first, I had to figure out how to deal with the obstacle of signing into my iCloud account on the new phone. I had two-factor authentication settings on for everything, so when I tried to sign in on the new phone, I got a notification that a code would be sent to my other device--but my old phone obviously wouldn't come on, leaving me with no way to retrieve it, and it wouldn't give me any other options but phone call or text. I took the SIM card out of the old phone and put it in the new one just to see what would happen and, oddly enough, in what was my only stroke of luck that day, I was able to get texts to my number on it, and from there get the code. I was able to just start using the new phone just like it were my old one, though my photos weren't returning just yet. As far as I could tell, it wasn't supposed to work that way, but it had. I still planned on switching over to Simple Mobile, though. I'd been paying $40 a month for four gigs of data that had somehow started running out in only a week for the past three months; with them, I could get unlimited data for $50. I'd have to wait until December to figure that shit out, though.
I was exhausted from the emotional and mental strain of the day. I felt bad Alyssa had to be dragged along on it, listening to me have a mental breakdown over things that sounded like "first world problems" and dealing with what was a wasted day. For dinner, we ate at VeganBurg, the first exclusively vegan burger joint in the world, and allegedly Paul McCartney's favorite place to eat for Meatless Mondays. They made all their patties in-house out of mushrooms and soy protein, and I was honestly blown away by how good everything was. I got the Smoky BBQ burger, a side of seaweed fries, a side of barbecue franks with ranch, and a vanilla soft serve cone with sprinkles, all in hopes of making me feel a little better; a little treat for not throwing myself into traffic. We returned to the neighborhood we'd camped at the night before. It seemed like our only safe bet, and at least we knew we wouldn't wake up to another ticket.
I was so fucking sick of money.
First slide of the day, and a great view.
Peephole Cinema. This month's theme was "Supersymmetry".
The second slide of the day, before my phone died and I had a mental breakdown.
VeganBurg!
DAY SIXTY-EIGHT
Saturday, November 3rd
We woke up blocked into our spot by a row of cars taking up one entire half of the street for a funeral at the church we were outside of. Then it was onto yet another curiosity shop. When we parked, we walked by a pile of stuff being tossed out of a condo with the sign 'free' on it. Alyssa got a new travel pack and we both grabbed a huge, grey comforter to make our already cozy car bed ten times cozier.
Paxton Gate was opened in 1992, and featured one of the most eclectic assortments of scientific curiosities we'd seen thus far, albeit disproportionately focused on non-human animal bodies. There was an emphasis on taxidermy, including placards discussing the history of taxidermy, and even scheduled classes on it at the shop. There were also dry and wet specimens, skulls and bones, small diaphonized animals, framed and pinned insects, minerals and quarts, a great library of odd books, fossils, and a back room of carnivorous plants, succulents, and bonsai. As a museum I gave no money to, it was fascinating, as I was very into the more morbid aspects of life and reality; as a business profiting primarily off of the corpses of animals, I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable. I couldn't deny being very disturbed by the long wall of preserved decapitated animal heads, including one of a giraffe. They claimed their animals were "ethically sourced", meaning many of them died of natural causes, but their statement on their website still left me uneasy. Down the street was their children's store, Curiosities For Kids, which was obviously a lot more innocent and less gruesome. There were adorable embroidered dissected animals and body organs, but other than that pretty tame children's toys, games, and genuinely educational tools disguised as fun.
We breezed through the crowds of tourists on the sidewalk past all of the bullshit shops they were impulse-buying from in a manic state of recreational consumerism. We passed by a bar where a small boy was lying on the sidewalk outside the entrance, resting his head on one of the two dogs with him. Regardless of the reason for this, it shifted very quickly from cute to sad. Then we found an alleyway of murals. The Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) had been keeping the alleyway in the Mission District of San Francisco covered in politically- and socially-charged artwork since 1992. Over 700 murals had been created since its inception. Some of the pieces were just beautiful; others were just captivatingly odd. But the real gems along this outdoor urban contemporary art museum were the ones with a statement. Bursting with political aggression, they spoke out against racism, killer cops, landlords, deportations, and nationalism.
During the day, we conquered the two "crookedest" streets in the city: Vermont Avenue and Lombard Street. While the former was actually the most crooked street in the world (and in the state), it was the latter that got all the mistaken fame and tourist visits. Both were designed to make it safer for cars to descend the extremely steep gradients of the city roads. Vermont Avenue was steeper than Lombard Street, but had fewer turns and was a concrete-paved, no-frills drive down. Meanwhile, Lombard Street was paved in brick and lined in a garden, intentionally bedazzled by a property owner there in the 1920s in an attempt to combine aesthetics with safety. While not at all convenient or quick, it was lot more comfortable than jetting up three sets of increasingly steepening hills where you felt more like you were going up a rollercoaster.
Isotope was a nice comic shop with an eclectic selection, from the superhero mainstays to the independent graphic novels I preferred. They also had a museum of toilet seats they had been collecting since 2002, each drawn on and autographed by local and international comic book artists and writers. According to owner James Sime, who very enthusiastically shared the story behind it all and even gave us a lengthy series of tips for where to go, eat, and drink in the neighborhood, it all began when comic artist Brian Wood got drunk and vandalized their bathroom. According to him, he saved the toilet seat because it was actually pretty good. Next thing he knew, another artist wanted their art on a seat, so he bought five. It just kept going from there, eventually amounting to hundreds of seat portraits that the space couldn't even carry all of, leading to gradual rotations. He said in order to get your art in their toilet seat museum, he had to like your stuff and you had to come into his shop. Daniel Clowes allegedly wanted a toilet seat, but had never, and still hadn't, visited the shop in person--so now toilet seat for him. Per Mr. Sime's advice, we went around to the alley block behind the store where several small independent shops were up and running. Alyssa got a coffee that was apparently world-renowned. We also stopped at a suggested chocolate shop, but they hadn't heard it was 2018 yet and therefore had nothing vegan, not even in the dark chocolate department.
"Cupid's Span" was a giant, 60-foot bow and arrow being plunged into the Earth, created by a sentimental married artist couple in 2002. It sat between the bay and the Embarcadero, where people were walking along or just resting in the grass. It was one of the few peaceful public places we'd gotten to experience in San Francisco, though it of course still stank of weed and piss. A trio of bros were having fun trying to run all the way up one of the arms of the bow, and they all got up there, though one eventually fell off the side. Alyssa and I tried it and almost got to the top, but our shoes kept slipping. Once the tread of our shoes, or lack thereof as it were in my case, gave out, we'd have to sit down and accept sliding, though the angle of the arm made it so you kept moving toward the edge on your way down. As we walked away, we watched as two young girls went up it as if gravity weren't even a concept.
On our way to the next stop, we noticed we were passing by Cafe Zoetrope again, so we figured we'd stop in to see if the Short Story Dispenser was refilled with paper. Thankfully, it was, so we each got ourselves a one-minute long story. Mine was a verbose, mundane description of eating toast. I guess you get what you pay for? Tucked tightly into a Chinatown alleyway was Golden Gate Fortune Cookies, where you could walk on in and watch workers make fresh fortune cookies in real-time, starting from their flat chip shape to being stuffed with a fortune and folded after coming off the hot conveyor belt of the motorized griddle. You could visit for free, though they did ask you pay 50 cents if you took pictures. They had many bags of novelty fortune cookies, including a bag of ones with spicy, R-rated fortunes. The place smelled really nice, but it still kinda felt like a sweatshop to me. We stopped at The Condor club to see a plaque commemorating the location of the first topless, and later bottomless, club in the world--an obvious triumph in American history. A shitty blues rock band played loudly from inside as we knelt down to read this thing no one else around us even noticed. I couldn't tell if naked ladies still worked on the inside of the establishment, nor could I decide if advancements in the commodification of body parts was ever at all a good thing.
For dinner that day, we got quick sandwiches from Vegan Picnic, a tiny sandwich shop and small convenience store opened by a single mom after her kids went vegan and got her to join them. I got a hot breakfast burrito stuffed with scrambled egg, chorizo, melted cheese, hash browns, and pico de gallo, and their "Slawpy Crab" sandwich filled with crab cakes, coleslaw, and their special sauce. Both were fucking awesome.
While routinely browsing Google Maps for somewhere to loiter after the sun started disappearing and anywhere that wasn't a bar closed their doors, Alyssa noticed an allegedly 24-hour Starbucks--the dream for sober, broke vagabonds like ourselves. Coincidentally, it turned out to be the Starbucks near our camping spot we'd been using to get ready for the day the past two mornings. In the bathroom, Alyssa found a brand new jar of tiny dinosaur figurines. We each took our favorites before she brought it to the baristas at the front. Probably the most unusual, and innocent, of things ever found in their frequented bathrooms. That night, we decided to sleep in the spacious parking lot in the back. Even though it was the back of a larger strip of businesses, which was usually a bad sign and indicator that there would likely be security of some sort, it appeared really quiet and unmonitored.
Paxton Gate!
Paxton Gate, Jr.
Some of our favorite pieces from the Clarion Alley Mural Project.
Crookedest street #1.
View from the driver seat as you stare up at the horizon line of a typical but seemingly impossible steep street, unsure of what lies at the top.
Isotope Comics and their collection of autographed toilet seats. I caught a Bryan Lee O'Malley one, which was neat.
Cupid's Span.
Finally got to use the Short Story Dispenser at Cafe Zoetrope!
Seeing fortune cookies being made!
A historical location for the objectification of human bodies!
Crookedest street #2.
Another terrifyingly steep grade street.
Vegan Picnic!
Alyssa!
Tiny dino! Maybe the best thing I've ever gotten from a bathroom.
New comforter for our bed!
DAY SIXTY-NINE
Sunday, November 4th
Back inside the Starbucks, it was as if there were no rules whatsoever. By the time we got up and went inside to use their bathrooms, an old man who was there the night before was right where we left him. We both thought we'd found our safe space in San Francisco.
We drove back over to the Embarcadero near the Bay and the piers that ran along them. Shortly after the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake hit San Francisco in October of 1989, sea lions had started hanging out at the K dock at Pier 39. Within a few months, they owned the place. With several hundred sea lions eventually plopping their bodies up onto the docks, the marina sought advice from The Marine Mammal Center, who told them to just leave them alone and let them hang. And that was that: sea lions now dominated the dock, and had as many as 1,700 pals there at a time. The collective sound of their barks echoed throughout the boardwalk. Coincidentally, they basked in the sunlight right next door to an aquarium where their fellow sea lions and other sea creatures were imprisoned. People gathered around and watched like a crowd at a baseball game while these goofy animals loafed around and sometimes yelled at each other if arguing over a spot on the dock. It was probably the only free and ethical attraction on that strip.
We traced the coast some more. Sitting on the shore of the San Francisco Bay, just beyond a shitty yacht club was the Wave Organ, a sculpture made up of concrete, the salvaged stone pieces from a demolished cemetery, and 25 PVC pipe tubes that was installed in 1986 by the Exploratorium museum. The web of tubing allowed for the waves of the bay to "play" it like an instrument, resulting in entire octaves of almost synth-bass sounds in between gurgles of water. Unfortunately, we got to it when the tide was as low as it could get.
We started driving toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Directly underneath the Presidio Parkway, and almost completely hidden among construction rubble and machinery, there was a pet cemetery filled with hundreds of animal companions lost by military families once stationed on the Presidio base there. Started no later than the '50s, the pet cemetery had very little documentation regarding its origins, though some suspected it began as a graveyard for either Wold War II guard dogs or cavalry horses from even earlier on. While no longer taking in new interments, it had amassed hundreds of animal companions during its time, including birds, fish, rats, bunnies, and reptiles, in addition to dogs and cats. While technically off-limits when we got there, it wasn't at all hard to squeeze through the gate door on the chain link fence. The cemetery had clearly long-since fallen into disrepair, and no one was sure who had even been maintaining it years before. My foot sank into the dry dirt several times. The once white picket fence was chipped and colorless. The markers varied between wooden planks and actual stones, many of which were then illegible. It was all still very touching.
We of course saw the Golden Gate Bridge, granted without driving over it since it was an $8 toll each way. It was definitely an astonishing engineering feat. Made of steel, it was just under two miles in length and 746 feet tall. Thousands of people, perhaps even more considering the ones no one ever knew about or found, had killed themselves by jumping off of it. It took about four seconds to fall the 245 feet before one's body would hit the water below at 75 miles per hour. It had a 98% fatality rate. Hundreds of people had to be talked down from it over the years, and it was one of the most popular spots for suicide in the world. Nearby at Crissy Field, there was an 82-foot-long blue whale sculpture made out of discarded plastics from bottles, lids, and bags. It was absolutely beautiful, but was also meant to bring awareness to the fact that 300,000 pounds--the weight of an average blue whale--of plastic wound up in the ocean every nine minutes. It was surrounded by a vast field of grass being used by hundreds of people at once.
Now, I was by no means a Star Wars "fan"; I loved the original trilogy growing up, and of course adored Yoda. So I figured we might as well go see the Yoda fountain. At the time we stopped to see it, I had no idea we were actually outside the Letterman Digital Arts Center and Lucasfilm lobbies. I nabbed $2.50 in change from it while there. The Presidio, where we had been roaming around, was a sudden forest with roads winding through tall trees hanging overhead. While there, we pulled over to get a good view of an Andy Goldsworthy piece called "Wood Line", which was a wavy path lined in branches and logs, parallel to another trail called Lovers Lane. It was an unexpected sanctuary from the smelly hustle and bustle of the rest of the city. We made the obligatory San Fran tourist stop at the Full House house, which was apparently undergoing renovations. It had already been looking different from how it did on TV. Several passive-aggressive signs were posted along the fence outside of it by grouchy neighbors. It was hard to feel too bad for them, as I could see the grand piano set up against the large front window of the condo next door. Lastly, we stopped at the Mrs. Doubtfire house, which was huge and in a neighborhood of equally large houses. Its steps became the location of a huge vigil and memorial the day Robin Williams killed himself.
We had a huge and delicious dinner at a hole-in-the-wall vegetarian place in the heart of Chinatown called Lucky Creation that didn't have a website or social media, but had been serving the neighborhood vegetarian food for over 25 years. Everything was super cheap, but more than that was some of the best Chinese food we'd had the entire trip. We tried a little bit of everything before getting our entrees: a combo plate of sweet and sour, curry, and gravy wheat gluten; a big sushi roll of sticky rice, carrot, and peanuts; three big, steamed pork buns; their spring rolls; and lots of complimentary green tea. My entree was their vegan goose, which was made out of fried tofu skin and jicama, and came with a black bean sauce and bok choy. Afterwards, we watched as two women left behind an entire table spread of food that had hardly been touched. We asked the nice woman waiting on us if we could have it and she gleefully began packing it up in boxes for us. So we left with some chicken-fried rice, lemon-fried chicken, and a plate of mushrooms, veggies, and tofu skin. I was genuinely offended by how much food these people were going to let go to waste.
We got to loiter the evening away at the Starbucks and then conveniently walk right out back to get into bed afterwards. The old man was still right where we last saw him, and I started going over the physical requirements for him to have actually been sitting there the entire time, at that point going on at least two days. We had seen him fall asleep while sitting up, a little slouched with earbuds in, but hadn't even seen him get up to go to the bathroom. A large gang of cops came in that night just as they did the night before, probably all enjoying free handouts from minimum-wage workers too scared to say no. We were in the car while they hung out in a dark corner and gossiped.
Cowboy riding a fish. Why?
Another view of Alcatraz!
The sea lions at Pier 39!
The Wave Organ on the Pacific Ocean!
The hidden, abandoned pet cemetery underneath the Presidio Parkway.
The Golden Gate Bridge, Crissy Field, and the plastic whale.
Yoda!
The Presidio Parkway and the "Wood Line".
The Full House and Mrs. Doubtfire houses!
A total smorgasbord at Lucky Creation!
DAY SEVENTY
Monday, November 5th
We woke up to an early Sunday rush and a packed parking lot around us. Some guy who looked like a college student with a single-strap backpack on him and Bluetooth bud in his ear was seemingly taking it upon himself to give needless guidance to cars pulling in and out. We went inside to get ready for the day. When we came out, we had a bright orange envelope on our front windshield. Inside was a citation for $65. We were baffled. We looked around us, clearly confused, and the guy directing traffic rushed over. He had given it to us. He was apparently at work. He looked at us with vacant eyes and robotically told us that we had been there too long. According to the ticket, he had clocked us in at 10AM and gave us the ticket at 12:30, meaning he ticketed us for being there a half hour longer, and obviously waited for us to go inside to do it. At first, I naively tried to talk to him as a human being, and explained to him that we had no idea there was a time limit for parking in a lot behind a line of businesses--after all, that would have to mean they literally dictated how long someone was allowed to take inside a cafe or grocery store. The only signs we saw were along a tall wall with the name of what we assumed was the apartment complex above it. We'd even avoided parking in those spaces because of it. Apparently, despite the slogan saying something about "community" beneath it, it was actually the name of the "property" we were on.
He showed no mercy whatsoever and just kept coldly repeating, "Read the signs next time," and to, "Follow the rules," and most frustratingly, "This is San Francisco."
I got angrier with each second and began arguing it. Of course, he wouldn't budge, and just kept repeating himself like a machine with automated responses. I told him I believed they were intentionally confusing, and making money off of unaware non-locals like ourselves, and that it was disgusting. When I asked him why they didn't put the signs at the entrance to the parking lot, he short-fused and wasn't at all sure what to say. He just stared blankly with a grin. I told him he was a robot who was prioritizing property owners he was disposable to over other human beings, and that what he did was unfair and going to financially hurt two people far from home.
All he had to say was, "This is San Francisco," and, "This is what's fair."
I talked some shit to his unflinching face before he scooted off, leaving us with, "Don’t have too much fun!"
To which I responded, "We're going to. You're at work. You'll be in this parking lot all day while we have fun!"
We went to another small shop of body parts and morbid curiosities called Loved to Death, on a block of young homeless guys with dreads and dogs and hippie vintage shops. The coolest things it had were already for sale at Paxton Gate, and signs forbidding photos were plastered everywhere, instantly leaving a bad taste in my mouth. The fetal skeletons and skulls weren't even real bone, and they had fancy Victorian-esque dishes with swear words and drug references on them, which came off to me as the sort of pandering typically reserved for a Spencer's Gifts and their teenage customer base. The place was mostly corny, so we left pretty quickly.
We spent most of the day walking through the three miles and 1,017 acres of the Golden Gate Park. It was big and beautiful and full of surprises. We walked by a block of skateboarders and past the tiny Alvord Lake, entering through the gates underneath the Alvord Lake Bridge, the first concrete bridge ever built in America. Built by Ernest L. Ransome in 1889, it had survived even earthquakes, demonstrating the unique engineering benefits of the reinforced concrete method--a style Ransome so passionately felt was "blatantly disregarded" by San Francisco that he left the city altogether. Inside looked and felt like a cave, mostly due to the calthemite stalactites formed along its walls. We figured we'd just keep heading forward, stopping at a few landmarks I'd written down. There were lots of wooded areas and marshes. We found giant leaves that felt rough like skateboard grip tape and had spiny stems. We walked by kids playing across from homeless potheads sitting on benches next to the shopping carts that apparently carried their every possession. With areas literally called "Hippie Hill", it was no safer a place from the smell of weed than anywhere else in the city. An estimated 40-200 homeless people lived in the park.
Almost hidden in the shade of trees, set far back in the grass by the sidewalk, there was a statue of the legendary superintendent of the park, John McLaren, who famously hated statues. In fact, in addition to insisting there be no "Keep Off the Grass" signs, he also fought every attempt to introduce a statue to the park. Whenever he failed to stop one being erected, he would retaliate by having trees and bushes planted around it. He received the life-size statue of himself on his 65th birthday, in what absolutely had to be a joke. He hid it, only for it to be uncovered and set up in the park after his death. The de Young Museum was closed, so we had to miss out on their sculpture garden and the Three Gems. We saw the Spreckels Temple of Music, where I had slept years ago. We found a hotdog stand that sold a $6 vegan Tofurky sausage with spicy onion sauce, and Faygo root beer. We couldn't afford to enter the Japanese Tea Garden. We tracked down the well-hidden fairy door of the park. Much like the Lake Merritt gnomes, this fairy door experienced the wrath of city government's disdain for independent and creative interactions with the urban landscape, when it was removed for "damaging" the tree. Again, the people spoke out, and a compromise was made leading to its relocation at a fallen eucalyptus log. Inside, there weren't the best of gifts, but there was a little book visitors signed.
We noticed the eerily bright green water of Rainbow Falls pouring down from the Prayerbook Cross, and followed the steady stream it drained into until it joined with Lloyd Lake. There, across the water on the other end, was an isolated portico to... nothing. Called a "Portal of the Past", it was actually a memorial to a former Nob Hill mansion--one of many in the rich neighborhood once dubbed the "hill of palaces", but only one of the 25,000 other buildings around the city decimated by a massive earthquake in 1906. A famous photograph taken of the wreckage and rubble shortly after the damage had been done caught a portal somehow still standing, after which this 2008 memorial was now based. Little would most passersby know that this quirky but innocuous structure memorialized a devastating week of nonstop fires that wiped out 80% of the city and killed over 3,000 residents.
Thanks to the arbitrary daylight savings time change, and being three hours behind the east coast, the sun had been setting between 5 and 6, so we were going to be out of sunlight pretty soon. Instead of walking another mile or two, we turned around and returned to the car so we could drive to our final park stop: the Bison Paddock, where a herd of bison were kept and taken care of. When we found their enclosure, it was pretty anticlimactic. We saw a bison or two chewing hay from inside, but that was it. It felt like another zoo exhibit. The meadow they typically grazed on might have been under renovations.
We rushed from there to one of the many elevated neighborhoods. The 163-step 16th Avenue stairway was one of many incredibly long and steep urban staircases in the city, but this one had been bedazzled with a vibrant and intricate mosaic by the combined efforts of two local artists and many neighborhood volunteers. It took two years to finish and depicted the rise from sea level all the way up to the sun in the sky. It was also surrounded by a garden of succulents and flowers. A sign at the bottom displayed a CCTV screenshot of a woman who had recently stolen plants from it. In the other direction was a stunning view of the city. We didn't bother walking to the top of the steps; we only had so much sunlight left, and people kept showing up and clogging the walkway with their corny photo shoots. We had a better spot we wanted to watch the day end from, anyway.
Just in time to marvel at the sun setting from what was probably the best view of San Francisco, we drove up to Twin Peaks, a pair of peaks offering an unmatched panoramic view of the city from an elevation of 922 feet. They were originally called "Breasts of the Maiden" by early Spanish settlers, since they looked like a pair of tits. A short but steep set of wooden steps brought us to the top, where two young girls were taking sexy photos of each other. It was windy and cold up there, but the view was worth it.
For dinner, we went to a vegetarian deli and sandwich shop called Love N Haight that quit serving meat about seven years earlier. When I asked the woman working who had been there for 20 years why they stopped serving meat, she said she didn't eat it and therefore didn't want to prepare it anymore. We each got ourselves two sandwiches and shared a bag of barbecue chips. I got the pork ham and the smoked duck. Both came with lettuce, tomato, and onion, mayo, and dijon; I got the pork ham on flat sourdough and the smoked duck on a Dutch crunch roll. These sandwiches fucking ruled. Having no other option, we returned to the residential block we'd spent most of our nights at. San Francisco was possibly the most difficult place to find a place to camp for the night out of anywhere else we had been to.
Loved to Death, the stuffiest and corniest of the oddities shops.
Lotsa stuff to find at the Golden Gate Park.
The 16th Avenue steps.
Sunset from the Twin Peaks.
Love N Haight!
Friday, November 2nd
When we woke up, we had a fucking ticket waiting for us. We had seen the sign on the other side of the street before parking for the night, forbidding parking on the first and third whatever day during some three-hour period of time in the morning for some superfluous street-sweeping, and I guess we naively assumed it was the same for both sides. Since street signs were intentionally cryptic and arbitrary, we were parked there on the first Friday of the month--a mistake worth $76 to the piece of shit that was San Francisco. We both resolved to just never pay it.
We started what we hoped would be another jam-packed adventurous day by stopping at the first of two sets of big slides in the city: the Winfield Street Slides. At 40 feet long and over 40 years old, they were two metal slides right next to each other, allowing Alyssa and I to hold hands as we slid down them. No children were around thanks to school hours, so we had the spot to ourselves. The view of the city from up there was fantastic, too. In 1979, the mayor at the time went down them alongside the district supervisor in a sliding competition.
From there, we went into a residential neighborhood and a little ways down a grimy alleyway. We almost missed the tiny sign sticking out from the wall behind an apartment building with a human eye and the name Peephole Cinema arching around it. Next to it was a small hole and a plaque listing the titles and creators behind the current block of short, silent, animated films. We each took turns peeking inside for a minute or two, myself seeing a stop-motion animation using drawings on top of the pages of a book being flipped through. Started by animator Laurie O'Brien in 2013, the peepholes ran 24/7, and there were even locations in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.
We got to our second set of slides of the day at the Seward Street Mini-Park. When we got there, a very jolly dad or uncle was having fun going down them with two small children who were by all accounts being big baby brats about it. A bike cop pulled up to sit on a bench and eat lunch. We noticed the sign declaring, "No adults unless accompanied by a child." This park had been opened in 1973 after a decade-long battle between the community and the city over how to utilize what was originally another vacant lot about to be dominated by corporate real estate interests. In 1966, they even went as far as staging a sit-in that obstructed a bulldozer threatening so-called "development". They won, and as a result had this tiny park, surrounded by native plants and these concrete slides. After everyone disappeared, we ran right up and went down. Midway was an especially steep drop that made me think I'd go flying forward off the path of the slide. It was genuinely scary, so maybe those kids weren't just being little assholes.
Brushing myself off, I pulled my phone out of my pocket to take another picture. It was suddenly off? My phone being a piece of shit, I wasn't immediately alarmed: spontaneously shutting off regardless of battery life was one of many common fuck-ups it put me through on a daily basis, and my battery was in a perpetual state of empty. I started trying to force-start it, but it still wouldn't come on. That was a little alarming, but I still wasn't shocked. When we got back in the car, I plugged it in and tried to force-start it again. To my relief, on came the bright Apple logo start screen. Then it shut off. Then it came back on. Then it turned back off. And from there, that was all it would do: show me the Apple logo screen as if it were about to turn back on, and then just return to black. I immediately started freaking out, instantly convincing myself this was finally the end of my phone. I had been waiting for it for a while, after all. I'd had the phone for almost three years, and at the time I bought it it was already several years behind what model most of my peers had in terms of iPhones. But nothing had happened to it. It was in my pocket for one minute, and then it came out broken. I never dropped it or anything. We tried to plug it into a laptop. Neither end even recognized it being connected. Alyssa's laptop, which was a Mac, fed it battery power enough to start shutting on and off again, but her iTunes never registered that it was an iPhone. We started frantically Googling these symptoms and found little to nothing. Then I noticed the screen turn blood red for a second before returning to black. I knew this was the end, and my brain instantly fell down a rabbit hole I was all too familiar with:
'What will I do if this, what was supposed to be my only and final phone, is really dead, and why the fuck do I have to be poor while so many people I know have new phones their parents bought them and whose plans they leach off of?'
Most shitty things that happened to me sent me into a manic tailspin, where the full force of poverty and capitalism hit me harder than usual.
We had no other choice but to go to the nearest Apple store, a place I'd done everything in my ability to avoid ever going inside of over the years. Finding parking took a while, and we circled the center of the city several times before finding somewhere we could be for a while. We had to walk 15 or so minutes to get to the store. I was panicking and welling up with irrational anger at the whole situation. I knew we were about to spend several hours inside of an Apple store, and that it would ultimately end with me being told my phone was done for and that my only option was to buy a new one. We got in line, were eventually told to take a seat until my name was called, and were given an estimated wait of at least 90 minutes, meaning at some point Alyssa would have to return to the car to move it in time since parking wasn't allowed on that side after 5. The place creeped me out, honestly. Sterile and lit fluorescent, it felt like a hospital for robots. I sat and read to try and get away from my thoughts about what was going on. Alyssa sat next to me and drew, unsure of what to say other than offering to pay half of whatever it ended up costing. It was so sweet of her, and I really appreciated the offer, but I refused to let her do that. Most of my peers would never understand just how devastating these financial bumps in the road were, and the domino effect caused by every unexpected emergency cost. Alyssa certainly didn't.
I think we wound up being there for around four hours. When I got to finally speak with someone, he told me upfront that his initial suspicion was an internal hardware issue that couldn't be fixed. I was right. I could buy a new 5S there for $269--over a hundred dollars more than I paid for the used one that just broke! I asked what could have led to the hardware just spontaneously failing like that, and he told me it could just happen, albeit rarely. As usual, something shitty was happening to me without provocation that wasn't happening to most people. At least, that was the way these moments always felt. I told him I needed time to sit and process the situation and the cost if I wanted to leave with a working phone. I had no idea what to do. Thankfully, Alyssa, whose judgment and thinking were less clouded by anxiety and poverty-induced trauma, found a more affordable phone at a Best Buy, which still cost something like $150. So we went there.
The refurbished phone they actually had was locked to a Simple Mobile phone plan, so I'd have to switch to a new plan to use it. It seemed like one obstacle after another, and the rabbit hole I had already been falling down inside of my head had at that point gotten to the level where I realized all of this bullshit was avoidable if it weren't for capitalism incentivizing concepts like planned obsolescence and necessitating poverty. Even at a hundred dollars cheaper than the one at the Apple store, I knew this small cost would lead to me running out of money well before the end of the month. Things most people referred to as "cheap" were prohibitively or life-alteringly expensive for me. My head was racing, but I gave in and bought the fucking phone, which was at least a 50GB 5E model up from my previous one with more than double the memory. I couldn't help but dwell on the fact that I was dropping what was for me a large chunk of money on a piece of technology that was years behind what everyone else had. I wasn't sure what to do about the Simple Mobile lock on it, but I needed to make sure I had a phone before all of my options closed for the day. If nothing else, it was crucial to our travels.
We found a Starbucks and I tried to figure out how to make it all work. At first, I had to figure out how to deal with the obstacle of signing into my iCloud account on the new phone. I had two-factor authentication settings on for everything, so when I tried to sign in on the new phone, I got a notification that a code would be sent to my other device--but my old phone obviously wouldn't come on, leaving me with no way to retrieve it, and it wouldn't give me any other options but phone call or text. I took the SIM card out of the old phone and put it in the new one just to see what would happen and, oddly enough, in what was my only stroke of luck that day, I was able to get texts to my number on it, and from there get the code. I was able to just start using the new phone just like it were my old one, though my photos weren't returning just yet. As far as I could tell, it wasn't supposed to work that way, but it had. I still planned on switching over to Simple Mobile, though. I'd been paying $40 a month for four gigs of data that had somehow started running out in only a week for the past three months; with them, I could get unlimited data for $50. I'd have to wait until December to figure that shit out, though.
I was exhausted from the emotional and mental strain of the day. I felt bad Alyssa had to be dragged along on it, listening to me have a mental breakdown over things that sounded like "first world problems" and dealing with what was a wasted day. For dinner, we ate at VeganBurg, the first exclusively vegan burger joint in the world, and allegedly Paul McCartney's favorite place to eat for Meatless Mondays. They made all their patties in-house out of mushrooms and soy protein, and I was honestly blown away by how good everything was. I got the Smoky BBQ burger, a side of seaweed fries, a side of barbecue franks with ranch, and a vanilla soft serve cone with sprinkles, all in hopes of making me feel a little better; a little treat for not throwing myself into traffic. We returned to the neighborhood we'd camped at the night before. It seemed like our only safe bet, and at least we knew we wouldn't wake up to another ticket.
I was so fucking sick of money.
First slide of the day, and a great view.
Peephole Cinema. This month's theme was "Supersymmetry".
The second slide of the day, before my phone died and I had a mental breakdown.
VeganBurg!
DAY SIXTY-EIGHT
Saturday, November 3rd
We woke up blocked into our spot by a row of cars taking up one entire half of the street for a funeral at the church we were outside of. Then it was onto yet another curiosity shop. When we parked, we walked by a pile of stuff being tossed out of a condo with the sign 'free' on it. Alyssa got a new travel pack and we both grabbed a huge, grey comforter to make our already cozy car bed ten times cozier.
Paxton Gate was opened in 1992, and featured one of the most eclectic assortments of scientific curiosities we'd seen thus far, albeit disproportionately focused on non-human animal bodies. There was an emphasis on taxidermy, including placards discussing the history of taxidermy, and even scheduled classes on it at the shop. There were also dry and wet specimens, skulls and bones, small diaphonized animals, framed and pinned insects, minerals and quarts, a great library of odd books, fossils, and a back room of carnivorous plants, succulents, and bonsai. As a museum I gave no money to, it was fascinating, as I was very into the more morbid aspects of life and reality; as a business profiting primarily off of the corpses of animals, I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable. I couldn't deny being very disturbed by the long wall of preserved decapitated animal heads, including one of a giraffe. They claimed their animals were "ethically sourced", meaning many of them died of natural causes, but their statement on their website still left me uneasy. Down the street was their children's store, Curiosities For Kids, which was obviously a lot more innocent and less gruesome. There were adorable embroidered dissected animals and body organs, but other than that pretty tame children's toys, games, and genuinely educational tools disguised as fun.
We breezed through the crowds of tourists on the sidewalk past all of the bullshit shops they were impulse-buying from in a manic state of recreational consumerism. We passed by a bar where a small boy was lying on the sidewalk outside the entrance, resting his head on one of the two dogs with him. Regardless of the reason for this, it shifted very quickly from cute to sad. Then we found an alleyway of murals. The Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) had been keeping the alleyway in the Mission District of San Francisco covered in politically- and socially-charged artwork since 1992. Over 700 murals had been created since its inception. Some of the pieces were just beautiful; others were just captivatingly odd. But the real gems along this outdoor urban contemporary art museum were the ones with a statement. Bursting with political aggression, they spoke out against racism, killer cops, landlords, deportations, and nationalism.
During the day, we conquered the two "crookedest" streets in the city: Vermont Avenue and Lombard Street. While the former was actually the most crooked street in the world (and in the state), it was the latter that got all the mistaken fame and tourist visits. Both were designed to make it safer for cars to descend the extremely steep gradients of the city roads. Vermont Avenue was steeper than Lombard Street, but had fewer turns and was a concrete-paved, no-frills drive down. Meanwhile, Lombard Street was paved in brick and lined in a garden, intentionally bedazzled by a property owner there in the 1920s in an attempt to combine aesthetics with safety. While not at all convenient or quick, it was lot more comfortable than jetting up three sets of increasingly steepening hills where you felt more like you were going up a rollercoaster.
Isotope was a nice comic shop with an eclectic selection, from the superhero mainstays to the independent graphic novels I preferred. They also had a museum of toilet seats they had been collecting since 2002, each drawn on and autographed by local and international comic book artists and writers. According to owner James Sime, who very enthusiastically shared the story behind it all and even gave us a lengthy series of tips for where to go, eat, and drink in the neighborhood, it all began when comic artist Brian Wood got drunk and vandalized their bathroom. According to him, he saved the toilet seat because it was actually pretty good. Next thing he knew, another artist wanted their art on a seat, so he bought five. It just kept going from there, eventually amounting to hundreds of seat portraits that the space couldn't even carry all of, leading to gradual rotations. He said in order to get your art in their toilet seat museum, he had to like your stuff and you had to come into his shop. Daniel Clowes allegedly wanted a toilet seat, but had never, and still hadn't, visited the shop in person--so now toilet seat for him. Per Mr. Sime's advice, we went around to the alley block behind the store where several small independent shops were up and running. Alyssa got a coffee that was apparently world-renowned. We also stopped at a suggested chocolate shop, but they hadn't heard it was 2018 yet and therefore had nothing vegan, not even in the dark chocolate department.
"Cupid's Span" was a giant, 60-foot bow and arrow being plunged into the Earth, created by a sentimental married artist couple in 2002. It sat between the bay and the Embarcadero, where people were walking along or just resting in the grass. It was one of the few peaceful public places we'd gotten to experience in San Francisco, though it of course still stank of weed and piss. A trio of bros were having fun trying to run all the way up one of the arms of the bow, and they all got up there, though one eventually fell off the side. Alyssa and I tried it and almost got to the top, but our shoes kept slipping. Once the tread of our shoes, or lack thereof as it were in my case, gave out, we'd have to sit down and accept sliding, though the angle of the arm made it so you kept moving toward the edge on your way down. As we walked away, we watched as two young girls went up it as if gravity weren't even a concept.
On our way to the next stop, we noticed we were passing by Cafe Zoetrope again, so we figured we'd stop in to see if the Short Story Dispenser was refilled with paper. Thankfully, it was, so we each got ourselves a one-minute long story. Mine was a verbose, mundane description of eating toast. I guess you get what you pay for? Tucked tightly into a Chinatown alleyway was Golden Gate Fortune Cookies, where you could walk on in and watch workers make fresh fortune cookies in real-time, starting from their flat chip shape to being stuffed with a fortune and folded after coming off the hot conveyor belt of the motorized griddle. You could visit for free, though they did ask you pay 50 cents if you took pictures. They had many bags of novelty fortune cookies, including a bag of ones with spicy, R-rated fortunes. The place smelled really nice, but it still kinda felt like a sweatshop to me. We stopped at The Condor club to see a plaque commemorating the location of the first topless, and later bottomless, club in the world--an obvious triumph in American history. A shitty blues rock band played loudly from inside as we knelt down to read this thing no one else around us even noticed. I couldn't tell if naked ladies still worked on the inside of the establishment, nor could I decide if advancements in the commodification of body parts was ever at all a good thing.
For dinner that day, we got quick sandwiches from Vegan Picnic, a tiny sandwich shop and small convenience store opened by a single mom after her kids went vegan and got her to join them. I got a hot breakfast burrito stuffed with scrambled egg, chorizo, melted cheese, hash browns, and pico de gallo, and their "Slawpy Crab" sandwich filled with crab cakes, coleslaw, and their special sauce. Both were fucking awesome.
While routinely browsing Google Maps for somewhere to loiter after the sun started disappearing and anywhere that wasn't a bar closed their doors, Alyssa noticed an allegedly 24-hour Starbucks--the dream for sober, broke vagabonds like ourselves. Coincidentally, it turned out to be the Starbucks near our camping spot we'd been using to get ready for the day the past two mornings. In the bathroom, Alyssa found a brand new jar of tiny dinosaur figurines. We each took our favorites before she brought it to the baristas at the front. Probably the most unusual, and innocent, of things ever found in their frequented bathrooms. That night, we decided to sleep in the spacious parking lot in the back. Even though it was the back of a larger strip of businesses, which was usually a bad sign and indicator that there would likely be security of some sort, it appeared really quiet and unmonitored.
Paxton Gate!
Paxton Gate, Jr.
Some of our favorite pieces from the Clarion Alley Mural Project.
Crookedest street #1.
View from the driver seat as you stare up at the horizon line of a typical but seemingly impossible steep street, unsure of what lies at the top.
Isotope Comics and their collection of autographed toilet seats. I caught a Bryan Lee O'Malley one, which was neat.
Cupid's Span.
Finally got to use the Short Story Dispenser at Cafe Zoetrope!
Seeing fortune cookies being made!
A historical location for the objectification of human bodies!
Crookedest street #2.
Another terrifyingly steep grade street.
Vegan Picnic!
Alyssa!
Tiny dino! Maybe the best thing I've ever gotten from a bathroom.
New comforter for our bed!
DAY SIXTY-NINE
Sunday, November 4th
Back inside the Starbucks, it was as if there were no rules whatsoever. By the time we got up and went inside to use their bathrooms, an old man who was there the night before was right where we left him. We both thought we'd found our safe space in San Francisco.
We drove back over to the Embarcadero near the Bay and the piers that ran along them. Shortly after the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake hit San Francisco in October of 1989, sea lions had started hanging out at the K dock at Pier 39. Within a few months, they owned the place. With several hundred sea lions eventually plopping their bodies up onto the docks, the marina sought advice from The Marine Mammal Center, who told them to just leave them alone and let them hang. And that was that: sea lions now dominated the dock, and had as many as 1,700 pals there at a time. The collective sound of their barks echoed throughout the boardwalk. Coincidentally, they basked in the sunlight right next door to an aquarium where their fellow sea lions and other sea creatures were imprisoned. People gathered around and watched like a crowd at a baseball game while these goofy animals loafed around and sometimes yelled at each other if arguing over a spot on the dock. It was probably the only free and ethical attraction on that strip.
We traced the coast some more. Sitting on the shore of the San Francisco Bay, just beyond a shitty yacht club was the Wave Organ, a sculpture made up of concrete, the salvaged stone pieces from a demolished cemetery, and 25 PVC pipe tubes that was installed in 1986 by the Exploratorium museum. The web of tubing allowed for the waves of the bay to "play" it like an instrument, resulting in entire octaves of almost synth-bass sounds in between gurgles of water. Unfortunately, we got to it when the tide was as low as it could get.
We started driving toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Directly underneath the Presidio Parkway, and almost completely hidden among construction rubble and machinery, there was a pet cemetery filled with hundreds of animal companions lost by military families once stationed on the Presidio base there. Started no later than the '50s, the pet cemetery had very little documentation regarding its origins, though some suspected it began as a graveyard for either Wold War II guard dogs or cavalry horses from even earlier on. While no longer taking in new interments, it had amassed hundreds of animal companions during its time, including birds, fish, rats, bunnies, and reptiles, in addition to dogs and cats. While technically off-limits when we got there, it wasn't at all hard to squeeze through the gate door on the chain link fence. The cemetery had clearly long-since fallen into disrepair, and no one was sure who had even been maintaining it years before. My foot sank into the dry dirt several times. The once white picket fence was chipped and colorless. The markers varied between wooden planks and actual stones, many of which were then illegible. It was all still very touching.
We of course saw the Golden Gate Bridge, granted without driving over it since it was an $8 toll each way. It was definitely an astonishing engineering feat. Made of steel, it was just under two miles in length and 746 feet tall. Thousands of people, perhaps even more considering the ones no one ever knew about or found, had killed themselves by jumping off of it. It took about four seconds to fall the 245 feet before one's body would hit the water below at 75 miles per hour. It had a 98% fatality rate. Hundreds of people had to be talked down from it over the years, and it was one of the most popular spots for suicide in the world. Nearby at Crissy Field, there was an 82-foot-long blue whale sculpture made out of discarded plastics from bottles, lids, and bags. It was absolutely beautiful, but was also meant to bring awareness to the fact that 300,000 pounds--the weight of an average blue whale--of plastic wound up in the ocean every nine minutes. It was surrounded by a vast field of grass being used by hundreds of people at once.
Now, I was by no means a Star Wars "fan"; I loved the original trilogy growing up, and of course adored Yoda. So I figured we might as well go see the Yoda fountain. At the time we stopped to see it, I had no idea we were actually outside the Letterman Digital Arts Center and Lucasfilm lobbies. I nabbed $2.50 in change from it while there. The Presidio, where we had been roaming around, was a sudden forest with roads winding through tall trees hanging overhead. While there, we pulled over to get a good view of an Andy Goldsworthy piece called "Wood Line", which was a wavy path lined in branches and logs, parallel to another trail called Lovers Lane. It was an unexpected sanctuary from the smelly hustle and bustle of the rest of the city. We made the obligatory San Fran tourist stop at the Full House house, which was apparently undergoing renovations. It had already been looking different from how it did on TV. Several passive-aggressive signs were posted along the fence outside of it by grouchy neighbors. It was hard to feel too bad for them, as I could see the grand piano set up against the large front window of the condo next door. Lastly, we stopped at the Mrs. Doubtfire house, which was huge and in a neighborhood of equally large houses. Its steps became the location of a huge vigil and memorial the day Robin Williams killed himself.
We had a huge and delicious dinner at a hole-in-the-wall vegetarian place in the heart of Chinatown called Lucky Creation that didn't have a website or social media, but had been serving the neighborhood vegetarian food for over 25 years. Everything was super cheap, but more than that was some of the best Chinese food we'd had the entire trip. We tried a little bit of everything before getting our entrees: a combo plate of sweet and sour, curry, and gravy wheat gluten; a big sushi roll of sticky rice, carrot, and peanuts; three big, steamed pork buns; their spring rolls; and lots of complimentary green tea. My entree was their vegan goose, which was made out of fried tofu skin and jicama, and came with a black bean sauce and bok choy. Afterwards, we watched as two women left behind an entire table spread of food that had hardly been touched. We asked the nice woman waiting on us if we could have it and she gleefully began packing it up in boxes for us. So we left with some chicken-fried rice, lemon-fried chicken, and a plate of mushrooms, veggies, and tofu skin. I was genuinely offended by how much food these people were going to let go to waste.
We got to loiter the evening away at the Starbucks and then conveniently walk right out back to get into bed afterwards. The old man was still right where we last saw him, and I started going over the physical requirements for him to have actually been sitting there the entire time, at that point going on at least two days. We had seen him fall asleep while sitting up, a little slouched with earbuds in, but hadn't even seen him get up to go to the bathroom. A large gang of cops came in that night just as they did the night before, probably all enjoying free handouts from minimum-wage workers too scared to say no. We were in the car while they hung out in a dark corner and gossiped.
Cowboy riding a fish. Why?
Another view of Alcatraz!
The sea lions at Pier 39!
The Wave Organ on the Pacific Ocean!
The hidden, abandoned pet cemetery underneath the Presidio Parkway.
The Golden Gate Bridge, Crissy Field, and the plastic whale.
Yoda!
The Presidio Parkway and the "Wood Line".
The Full House and Mrs. Doubtfire houses!
A total smorgasbord at Lucky Creation!
DAY SEVENTY
Monday, November 5th
We woke up to an early Sunday rush and a packed parking lot around us. Some guy who looked like a college student with a single-strap backpack on him and Bluetooth bud in his ear was seemingly taking it upon himself to give needless guidance to cars pulling in and out. We went inside to get ready for the day. When we came out, we had a bright orange envelope on our front windshield. Inside was a citation for $65. We were baffled. We looked around us, clearly confused, and the guy directing traffic rushed over. He had given it to us. He was apparently at work. He looked at us with vacant eyes and robotically told us that we had been there too long. According to the ticket, he had clocked us in at 10AM and gave us the ticket at 12:30, meaning he ticketed us for being there a half hour longer, and obviously waited for us to go inside to do it. At first, I naively tried to talk to him as a human being, and explained to him that we had no idea there was a time limit for parking in a lot behind a line of businesses--after all, that would have to mean they literally dictated how long someone was allowed to take inside a cafe or grocery store. The only signs we saw were along a tall wall with the name of what we assumed was the apartment complex above it. We'd even avoided parking in those spaces because of it. Apparently, despite the slogan saying something about "community" beneath it, it was actually the name of the "property" we were on.
He showed no mercy whatsoever and just kept coldly repeating, "Read the signs next time," and to, "Follow the rules," and most frustratingly, "This is San Francisco."
I got angrier with each second and began arguing it. Of course, he wouldn't budge, and just kept repeating himself like a machine with automated responses. I told him I believed they were intentionally confusing, and making money off of unaware non-locals like ourselves, and that it was disgusting. When I asked him why they didn't put the signs at the entrance to the parking lot, he short-fused and wasn't at all sure what to say. He just stared blankly with a grin. I told him he was a robot who was prioritizing property owners he was disposable to over other human beings, and that what he did was unfair and going to financially hurt two people far from home.
All he had to say was, "This is San Francisco," and, "This is what's fair."
I talked some shit to his unflinching face before he scooted off, leaving us with, "Don’t have too much fun!"
To which I responded, "We're going to. You're at work. You'll be in this parking lot all day while we have fun!"
We went to another small shop of body parts and morbid curiosities called Loved to Death, on a block of young homeless guys with dreads and dogs and hippie vintage shops. The coolest things it had were already for sale at Paxton Gate, and signs forbidding photos were plastered everywhere, instantly leaving a bad taste in my mouth. The fetal skeletons and skulls weren't even real bone, and they had fancy Victorian-esque dishes with swear words and drug references on them, which came off to me as the sort of pandering typically reserved for a Spencer's Gifts and their teenage customer base. The place was mostly corny, so we left pretty quickly.
We spent most of the day walking through the three miles and 1,017 acres of the Golden Gate Park. It was big and beautiful and full of surprises. We walked by a block of skateboarders and past the tiny Alvord Lake, entering through the gates underneath the Alvord Lake Bridge, the first concrete bridge ever built in America. Built by Ernest L. Ransome in 1889, it had survived even earthquakes, demonstrating the unique engineering benefits of the reinforced concrete method--a style Ransome so passionately felt was "blatantly disregarded" by San Francisco that he left the city altogether. Inside looked and felt like a cave, mostly due to the calthemite stalactites formed along its walls. We figured we'd just keep heading forward, stopping at a few landmarks I'd written down. There were lots of wooded areas and marshes. We found giant leaves that felt rough like skateboard grip tape and had spiny stems. We walked by kids playing across from homeless potheads sitting on benches next to the shopping carts that apparently carried their every possession. With areas literally called "Hippie Hill", it was no safer a place from the smell of weed than anywhere else in the city. An estimated 40-200 homeless people lived in the park.
Almost hidden in the shade of trees, set far back in the grass by the sidewalk, there was a statue of the legendary superintendent of the park, John McLaren, who famously hated statues. In fact, in addition to insisting there be no "Keep Off the Grass" signs, he also fought every attempt to introduce a statue to the park. Whenever he failed to stop one being erected, he would retaliate by having trees and bushes planted around it. He received the life-size statue of himself on his 65th birthday, in what absolutely had to be a joke. He hid it, only for it to be uncovered and set up in the park after his death. The de Young Museum was closed, so we had to miss out on their sculpture garden and the Three Gems. We saw the Spreckels Temple of Music, where I had slept years ago. We found a hotdog stand that sold a $6 vegan Tofurky sausage with spicy onion sauce, and Faygo root beer. We couldn't afford to enter the Japanese Tea Garden. We tracked down the well-hidden fairy door of the park. Much like the Lake Merritt gnomes, this fairy door experienced the wrath of city government's disdain for independent and creative interactions with the urban landscape, when it was removed for "damaging" the tree. Again, the people spoke out, and a compromise was made leading to its relocation at a fallen eucalyptus log. Inside, there weren't the best of gifts, but there was a little book visitors signed.
We noticed the eerily bright green water of Rainbow Falls pouring down from the Prayerbook Cross, and followed the steady stream it drained into until it joined with Lloyd Lake. There, across the water on the other end, was an isolated portico to... nothing. Called a "Portal of the Past", it was actually a memorial to a former Nob Hill mansion--one of many in the rich neighborhood once dubbed the "hill of palaces", but only one of the 25,000 other buildings around the city decimated by a massive earthquake in 1906. A famous photograph taken of the wreckage and rubble shortly after the damage had been done caught a portal somehow still standing, after which this 2008 memorial was now based. Little would most passersby know that this quirky but innocuous structure memorialized a devastating week of nonstop fires that wiped out 80% of the city and killed over 3,000 residents.
Thanks to the arbitrary daylight savings time change, and being three hours behind the east coast, the sun had been setting between 5 and 6, so we were going to be out of sunlight pretty soon. Instead of walking another mile or two, we turned around and returned to the car so we could drive to our final park stop: the Bison Paddock, where a herd of bison were kept and taken care of. When we found their enclosure, it was pretty anticlimactic. We saw a bison or two chewing hay from inside, but that was it. It felt like another zoo exhibit. The meadow they typically grazed on might have been under renovations.
We rushed from there to one of the many elevated neighborhoods. The 163-step 16th Avenue stairway was one of many incredibly long and steep urban staircases in the city, but this one had been bedazzled with a vibrant and intricate mosaic by the combined efforts of two local artists and many neighborhood volunteers. It took two years to finish and depicted the rise from sea level all the way up to the sun in the sky. It was also surrounded by a garden of succulents and flowers. A sign at the bottom displayed a CCTV screenshot of a woman who had recently stolen plants from it. In the other direction was a stunning view of the city. We didn't bother walking to the top of the steps; we only had so much sunlight left, and people kept showing up and clogging the walkway with their corny photo shoots. We had a better spot we wanted to watch the day end from, anyway.
Just in time to marvel at the sun setting from what was probably the best view of San Francisco, we drove up to Twin Peaks, a pair of peaks offering an unmatched panoramic view of the city from an elevation of 922 feet. They were originally called "Breasts of the Maiden" by early Spanish settlers, since they looked like a pair of tits. A short but steep set of wooden steps brought us to the top, where two young girls were taking sexy photos of each other. It was windy and cold up there, but the view was worth it.
For dinner, we went to a vegetarian deli and sandwich shop called Love N Haight that quit serving meat about seven years earlier. When I asked the woman working who had been there for 20 years why they stopped serving meat, she said she didn't eat it and therefore didn't want to prepare it anymore. We each got ourselves two sandwiches and shared a bag of barbecue chips. I got the pork ham and the smoked duck. Both came with lettuce, tomato, and onion, mayo, and dijon; I got the pork ham on flat sourdough and the smoked duck on a Dutch crunch roll. These sandwiches fucking ruled. Having no other option, we returned to the residential block we'd spent most of our nights at. San Francisco was possibly the most difficult place to find a place to camp for the night out of anywhere else we had been to.
Loved to Death, the stuffiest and corniest of the oddities shops.
Lotsa stuff to find at the Golden Gate Park.
The 16th Avenue steps.
Sunset from the Twin Peaks.
Love N Haight!