USA road trip days 29 & 30: San Francisco, California

We take the car round the corner and feel almost cruel as a very brusque man takes delivery of it without examination or comment. Goodbye little car, you served us well. 4,480 miles on the clock for our trip. Eat it. 

Attempt to catch tram to Fisherman’s Wharf but they are packed so we walk instead. Archetypal San Francisco streets of swooping, pastel-coloured houses.



The wharf is the biggest tourist magnet in the city but it’s good fun and the street entertainers innovative. Including this guy hiding in a very convincing trash can:

Gives you quite a shock.

We see Alcatraz again, biding its time for our visit, and we fritter half an hour in the penny arcade, where we get this pic done in a photo booth.


 

 
Looking out to Alcatraz:



Wander back through North Beach, vaguely on the lookout for a Cafe Trieste, where the rough guide says Coppola (legend has it) wrote the Godfather screenplay. I was sceptical of this claim until I Googled it and found this picture of him with the owner, writing it at the cafe. Thanks to www.npr.org/ templates/ story/story.php? storyId= 4801959. Amazing!

Talking of Coppola, I discover that his brilliant The Conversation was set in Union Square, where went on our first evening here, so the film locations are piling up.

Me, brainstorming ideas for The Godfather Part IV in Cafe Trieste. "An android has infiltrated the Corleone family - but who is it?"

Pass through Chinatown on the way back:

Overheard of the day: "Apparently everyone has sold out of Geiger counters because of the radiation – young man, North Beach" (Why do they all need their own? – ed).

 

Day 30

I nip round to David’s Delicatessen and bring cinnamon danishes and coffee. Castro, the uber gay area, is best seen at Sunday lunchtime, says our guide book, so we set off on foot, via a whole new area of Bumsville – complete with man weeing a few feet away from us – that goes on forever.

We reach The Mission, an area that used to be the first home for immigrants when they arrived back in the day. It fails to impress us, or we fail to find the heart of it, but we have better luck when we move on to Castro, despite all the loud male shrieking and booming, and the ridiculousness of all the dog ownership.

Fabulous coconut chicken and saffron rice for lunch, then a stop at a peace rally in the park on the way back. 

Music from old time lefties Sue and the Vets, good tunes, cut short by the arrival of the related peace march, with protesters (bring home the troops) entering the park.
Sue and the Vets.

Tram back to hotel.

Out for CHINESE food in the evening. Streets practically deserted. Wake up, San Francisco!

Comments

[Monty]

Er, thanks for your efforts.

[Francis Ford Harrison]

Bizarre but true: the very day before I read this post involving the writing of 'The Godfather Part IV', I thought to myself, 'I wonder whether Coppola ever considers writing a Godfather Part IV'!! True but bizarre.