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 those great cities that everybody recognize without even visiting it.

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.

Sunset above the Golden Gate bridge.

For me, the gravitational pull of San Francisco itself probably started with old movies, 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.

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

For me it’s hard to shake the movie context of a city where so many locations have been seen on the white screen. I have walked through the smelly alleys of Chinatown (luckily without running into Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China), shaken the bars of Al Capone’s cell on Alcatraz (without getting locked in by the marines from The Rock), driven across Golden Gate bridge (without being attacked by a vampire in the backseat, as in Interview with the Vampire) and walked past City Hall without starting a fire (as in A View to a Kill).

At a motel, the day before the start of Iraq-USA war 2003.

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. It’s still owned by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the top floor is dedicated to Beat authors. A nearby street is named Jack Kerouac Alley in honor of the most prominent author connected to the movement.

City Lights bookshop.

A block north is the Caffe Trieste, another classic institution where Francis Ford Coppola once wrote the script to The Godfather, and his production office was located further down the street at Columbus Tower.

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.

“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”
— Grey Eye Glances, The Lost Coast (1998)

With the car backseat full of CDs, we drove north towards the impossibly tall redwood trees in Muir Woods.