Repeating a successful experiment, I flew out of San Bernardino International Airport again last week. The airport seems to be catching on, with a busier terminal and a mostly full flight instead of the empty rows on my flights last November.
But it’s still low-stress. I parked, got through security and up to my gate in under 30 minutes. Made me wish I’d stopped for a real breakfast first. If you’re flying out of Berdoo International, you will have time to spare.
My destination: San Francisco.
People love to hate SF. Maybe in reaction, I’ve grown increasingly fond of it. Like New Orleans, SF’s atmosphere is so unique that it’s almost a foreign city on U.S. shores. By air from San Bernardino, it’s a mere 55 minutes — and a world — away.
You may recall my goal of seeing a game at all 30 Major League ballparks. Compared to distant cities that I may visit only once in my life, SF was so easy that I was in no hurry to cross Oracle Park off my list. But now felt like time.
Oracle is a great waterfront park, the Giants have an organist and the between-innings stuff was fun, like fans caught on video in the stands mimicking playing bongo drums.
After winning 10 in a row, the Giants were shut out by the Padres, 10-0. If you hate the Giants, there would have been a lot to like.
This was ballpark No. 15 for me. Halfway to my goal! But stay tuned for a column on an Ontario couple who’ve been to all 30. You won’t believe it.
Following my usual practice on vacation, I got around on public transit. As a solo traveler, it’s a lot cheaper than renting a car and paying usurious rates to park it. Buses, subways, walking, they can get you almost anywhere.
Also, I try to get to know a city in my own way rather than do touristy things. So I went to bookstores, which tend to be in interesting neighborhoods. And I sought out delicious meals: Detroit pizza, meat-and-three soul food, Chinese dumplings, French pastries, plus a burger and garlic fries at my favorite local chain, Super Duper Burger.
At Amoeba Music, as the clerk rang up my CDs by the Carter Family, Bud Powell, Bing Crosby, Robert Johnson and Tampa Red, none of which were recorded more recently than 70 years ago, I explained, “I try to stay on the cutting edge.” He said he could see that.
I met up with my writer pal David Ewers. With the ocean crashing nearby, we commiserated about bad perceptions of SF. Tech money had distorted everything, Ewers opined, and led leaders to imagine that every single neighborhood could be gentrified. Then the bubble burst.
We agreed that SF is still a fantastic place, one that can now remake itself on a humbler scale and more in keeping with its old values. As optimists, we’re rooting for the city to succeed where cynics are rooting for it to fail — which is kind of sad, isn’t it?
It’s got its problems, obviously. My hotel was by Union Square, where the fancy mall is fading fast — the owner, Westfield, is walking away from it — and the Nordstrom Rack across the street is also closing. And yet an IKEA is preparing to open and a Target is hanging in there.
Homeless people and junkies were prevalent in the neighborhood. I have never seen so much open drug use as I did along a few blocks of Market Street.
One afternoon a man lay sprawled at the street-level entrance to a BART station, having nodded off with his pants down around his knees — but underwear in place, thankfully. I don’t want to speculate on how he ended up in this pose. Presumably drugs were involved, and that’s a human tragedy, not an attack point.
A sunny stroll through Yerba Buena Gardens on my walk to the ballpark seemed to encapsulate the city.
Two guys were sharing a pipe, a disturbing sight in a public place. But a little farther along the path, a man was crouched down, camera up, smile across his face, photographing a bird perched just feet away. I stepped lightly to avoid disturbing either. Next were two adults on a park bench, digging into ice cream cones like kids.
Here were the contradictions of SF, misery and simple joys, all within a few yards.
Despite a lot of SF haters’ rhetoric, by the way, I never saw any human waste despite miles of walking. But as I type this on Monday afternoon in downtown Riverside, I saw that very thing in the stairwell of a parking structure earlier.
More evidence, perhaps, that Riverside is becoming a big city. Possible tourism slogan: “Riverside is the place to go.”
Speaking of treading carefully, my most ambitious outing in SF was conducted on foot.
I did the first walk from Adah Bakalinsky‘s “Stairway Walks in San Francisco” guide: Yerba Buena Cove, Telegraph Hill and Chinatown.
By the end, I’d seen the city’s narrowest building (130 Bush St.), a single block with four homes from the 1860s (Union Street), a plaque for a bank where future Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman had been on the board of directors and an Art Deco apartment building that was used in Bogart and Bacall’s “Dark Passage.”
Also, I’d detoured to visit City Lights, the famous bookstore, and to dine at the Tadich Grill, the 1849 restaurant and watering hole.
The highlights, though, were the stairs.
First came the Vallejo Stairs, two stairways bisected by gardens with lush plantings. Dragonflies flitted by. When had I last seen a dragonfly? And here were dozens of them.
Not much farther along were the Filbert Street Steps, an immense public stairway on the east side of Telegraph Hill.
The center plantings here are even more glorious. The garden was begun circa 1950 by a woman named Grace Marchant and continued by neighbors after her death in 1982. Modest houses line both sides, some dating to the 19th century, and are accessible only by the stairs.
Fellow tourists passed me on the wooden stairs up or down and gaped at the gardens. Were we really in a major city? If you think this is some sort of dystopian hellscape, you are doing San Francisco all wrong.
David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, which are all right. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.