I left my heart

Bay and latte, from
the Ferry Building

I was in San Francisco for a few hours yesterday -- no, my visit had been planned long before the recent fires.  My reason for my brief visit is too embarrassing to explain in detail  -- let's just say that the care and feeding of my Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan was involved.

So what did I do in my few hours?  It's not as though I never visit San Francisco, but usually when I'm there I'm meeting people, visiting homes, eating meals, re-visiting "sights" -- even occasionally going sailing.  All with other people, mainly relatives.  But, being alone yesterday with no one expecting my arrival, I did what I do best -- I wandered alone and indulged in nostalgia.

When I was 29, with a brand-new M.S. degree in hand and with some thoughts of teaching in a junior college (I thank God now that I was unsuccessful in my job search), I lived for about four months in "The City" during that period in limbo.  Yesterday, I decided to hoof it around town and re-visit places I recalled from that odd period of my life.

After several days apartment-searching, while living in a YMCA located in the Tenderloin, I finally ended up renting a small studio apartment in a large apartment complex.  At that time -- and now -- it was called "The Imperial," located on Sutter Street between Gough and Octavia.  It had been built during World War II as officers' housing for -- I believe -- the Navy.  The rent was about $200 per month -- which seemed quite steep at the time -- but then, as now, after all, I was living in San Francisco! 

Every morning I caught a trolley bus heading east on Sutter -- carefully depositing my 15 cent fare -- and rode to the end of the line at Market, where I transferred to a bus that took me down to somewhere in the general area of today's AT&T Park.  It was an industrial area, and I worked at a short-term job running chemical analyses for a testing laboratory.  The job was tedious, but life in San Francisco was interesting.

St. Benedict's

So after leaving BART at Powell yesterday, I walked up Sutter to find my old home.  It was still there, still looking the same -- although as I looked in the front window I'd guess that it now looks more elegant than I had recalled.  The parking lot next door is now another apartment house.  I walked two blocks up Octavia, and found, although one block away from where I expected it, St. Benedict's Church, the church I attended each Sunday, at an age and in a time and place when church attendance was somewhat unusual. 

Several more blocks uphill led me to Lafayette Park, where I'd sometimes come on a weekend to lie in the sun and read.  The park seems more developed than I recall it -- tennis courts, a large off-leash dog area -- but the same great views of the Golden Gate, and the same grassy patch where I once stretched out on the lawn.

Golden Gate from
Lafayette Park

I then walked eastward on Bush, trying to locate the fictional Nob Hill mansion "Thunderbolt House" that I had read about as a child (and discussed here in a post in September 2016).  I knew it was on Bush, but didn't remember the cross street (according to the book, it was at Bush and Mason).  At any rate, the entire stretch of Bush along the southern slope of Nob Hill -- including Thunderbolt House -- was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, and Bush itself today is pleasant and low-key, but not particularly interesting architecturally.

I ended up at the Ferry Building, which looks better every time I see it.  The elevated Embarcadero Freeway, which shut off the Ferry Building and the waterfront from the rest of the city, was heavily damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and was torn down in 1991.  It's an ill wind that blows no good, I guess, which may be news to folks today in Sonoma and Napa..  Seattle will be doing something similar -- but more voluntarily -- with the Alaska Way Viaduct along its own waterfront -- as soon as the tunnel replacing it is completed.

Embarcadero

When the Embarcadero was first torn down, the area seemed a bit vacant, but has since been planted in palm trees, and the area is alive with streetcar lines.  And tourists. 

If I had had time to visit all the highlights of my short residency in San Francisco, I would have walked up Market -- torn to pieces at the time, while BART was being constructed -- from the Ferry Building to the Civic Center.  And there I would have re-visited the public library -- one of my former favorite haunts.  But my time already was drawing to a close.  I walked up Market as far as Powell, jumped aboard BART, and returned to the Oakland airport.

San Francisco was an edgier place when I lived there, although probably less edgy than in the noir-ish, pre-war years described in the detective novels of author Dashiell Hammett.  When a city has gentrified to the point where property is virtually impossible for the average guy to rent, let alone buy, it's bound to change. 

Gentrification has both its good and bad aspects, both socially and from the point of urban planning.  It's a subject beyond the scope of my brief visit and this brief essay.  I'll just say that it's a very attractive city today, and a place well worth an extended visit.  For a tourist, at least, today's San Francisco combines the best aspects of New York and Boston, and avoids some of the weaknesses of both.  Which, from me, is a high compliment.