Bean there, gawped at that
San Francisco is home to the world’s hugest burritos and highest freak quotient
‘S EX or pizza?” Normally a difficult question, as I like both; but in this case the answer was a clear, though polite, “not a chance” (even if I wasn’t completely sure which I was being asked to provide).
Dreadlocked, dirty and with a decaying smile, the inquirer — seemingly beamed in from the dying days of the love generation — would have stood a better chance had he propositioned any one of the charming San Francisco cable cars inching their way up the famed West Coast metropolis’s crooked streets.
One had to respect his gall and ingenuity, but in a city that’s served as the seat of American counterculture since the CIA, in the hope of creating the ultimate soldier, selected author Ken Kesey to test LSD, the outrageous statement seemed relatively docile.
Unperturbed, I sliced through the snatches of marijuana smoke that seemed to be part of the air there and continued on with my first San Fran stroll. I headed in the direction of the Castro, the storied stronghold of the gay-rights movement, eager to find some insight into the struggles that begot my own personal freedoms. Soon enough, I crossed into the famed neighbourhood, but apart from an elderly queen coaxing forward his Great Dane, Woody (you can’t make this stuff up), there was little movement along the colourful side streets.
A few more blocks south and the rainbow flags gave way to the taquerias (taco shops) of the Mission District, the city’s oldest area and a community with strong Latino roots and stronger margaritas.
I ducked into a dimly lit dive called El Rio to rendezvous with a friend, who’d spent a fair bit of time in the Cape. But before we’d even had enough time to discuss which pizza flavour would have justly gone with which sexual favour, a group of scantily clad, curvaceous women with 1950s-style pin-up hairdos and race-car-red lipstick entered the bar.
Needless to say, up cropped a burlesque show. One by one, the performers pranced on stage serving up their own unique slice of sexual satire. Though far from mirroring the beanpolethin women on the covers of glossy mags, each dancer seemed prouder and more flamboyant than the one before, and it came as no surprise that they’d saved the best for last.
Ms Georgia Peach was a big woman with an even larger sense of humour. To the tune of Peaches by the Presidents of the United States of America, she slowly and seductively made her way to centre stage. She shook, she shimmied — and she pulled out a tin of canned peaches from her bosom. Off came the top (of the peaches), out came a spoon and, within seconds, both the preserved fruit and her darling dress were gone. As she undulated from top to toe, the crowd went wild.
“That’s one thing about this city,” my friend smirked as we spilled out onto the street in search of post-show dinner, “San Francisco has a massive freak quotient.”
We entered one of the thousand Mexican-food meccas that line Mission Street, only to stumble upon a Dungeon and Dragons night in full swing. Men — who’d seemingly lost their libido as soon as they’d learnt to spell the word — were hunched over plastic tables and chairs, fully immersed in their role-playing fantasy world. Suddenly it seemed like “the bizarre” could be conquered on foot.
We ate our brick of a burrito in awe. More a murder weapon than a single meal, the wrap was easily the weight of a small cat.
As we made our way back uptown, neatly stepping over a man in an expensive-looking suit and tie, his shoes by his side, singing James Brown at the top of his lungs while lying across the sidewalk, I asked my friend if anyone in the Bay Area had ever been done in by beans and sour cream.
My friend replied, “Only those without the stomach for it.”