Tales of San Francisco

As I admired the sunset from the hill above Golden Gate bridge, the city of San Francisco glittered far away in the dying light. This is one of the great cities that everybody recognize without even visiting it.

Sunset above the Golden Gate bridge.

The allure of California has been beckoning to people all over the world since the 1960s, when artists such as Scott McKenzie and Mamas & Papas performed hymns about the sunny state.

Going down Pine street.

For me, the gravitational pull of San Francisco itself probably started with movies such as Big Trouble in Little China and Bullit, where the city acts as a vibrant backdrop to the action. The steep slopes and the beautiful Golden Gate bridge are quite eye-catching on cinema, which makes the surroundings appear in a lot of productions.

It’s hard to lose the movie context of a place where so many locations have been seen on the white screen. I have walked through the smelly alleys of Chinatown (luckily without meeting Lo Pan), shaken the bars of Al Capone’s cell on Alcatraz (without getting locked in by marines), driven across Golden Gate bridge (without being attacked by a vampire in the backseat).

Breakfast for champions at Mel’s Drive-in, another place steeped in movie history.

Few places are so full of cultural history as the area around Columbus Ave. I had a look at the City Lights bookshop at 261 Columbus Ave, which has been a hub for Beat literature for half a decade.

City Lights bookshop.

A block north is the Caffe Trieste, another classic institution where Francis Ford Coppola once wrote the script to The Godfather. Right across the street from Columbus Ave is the pub where Michael Douglas had a pint in Basic Instinct (1992).

All that you don’t really need is to be found at Amoeba Records.

Finally arrived at the crossroad of Haight-Ashbury, the birthplace of the hippie culture in 1967. After checking out the greasy record stores in the area, we spent our last dimes in the cavernous Amoeba Records. With the backseat full of CDs, we drove north towards the impossibly tall redwood trees in Muir Woods.

“Early November north of San Francisco
Driving fast to find you
I feel familiar winds that usher in each evening heavy on the mountains
Rest clouds left there since morning
You always said
“There’s just no other place”
A sign nailed to a redwood signifies arrival “welcome to the Lost Coast”
My mind begins to wonder
It was here we lost each other
Shifting to a low gear
As I start on down the mountain
I know now
Those were the times of my life”
— Grey Eye Glances, The Lost Coast (1998)