San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Feel blue about S.F.? Twist your kaleidoscope
Whenever the realities of modern San Francisco start to bother me, I pick up one of the books about the city written by Samuel Dickson, who wrote about an older, much different San Francisco.
I particularly liked one called “San Francisco Kaleidoscope,” named for a child’s toy, a tube with mirrors inside, and cut glass in different colors. When you twist it, the patterns and colors shift in an endless variety — “just like life in San Francisco,” Dickson wrote long ago.
For a couple of days last week, I took my kaleidoscope and walked up Market Street, twisting it as I went to see the different colors and patterns. Even these days, all roads lead to Market Street: It’s the dividing line of the city, the main street. It’s in the news, too. Cars have been banned on much of Market.
So I began at the Ferry Building where the city meets the bay. I first went there with my grandfather when he was a very old man and I was a very young boy.
I remember standing there, looking up Market Street. The street led straight as an arrow to Twin Peaks; it was edged by big buildings, like a canyon. It was jammed with traffic, dominated by four streetcar tracks. The street roared and clanked. “A big city, boy,” my grandfather said.
I stood there again on a bright winter Wednesday, looking up Market. It is quieter now, only two streetcar tracks, electric buses, and no private cars. But it still has crowds, a sidewalk flower stand, a cable car at California Street, the modern, grimlooking Federal Reserve Bank, big buildings. For all they have done to it, it still looks like a big city.
The patterns and colors change as you move west, up Market, past the Palace Hotel, past Lotta’s wonderful fountain, a goldcolored monument to another city.
At Fifth, Powell and Market, there’s another shift. It was said that if you stood there long enough you would meet everyone you know. But that was then. Now, the intersection has different colors and shapes. Jagged ones.
The cable cars are still turned around there as they have been forever. Most days there are long lines of tourists, waiting for a famous cable car ride, and baffled at what they see: preachers, beggars, hustlers, street musicians, cops, ordinary people brushing past, hurrying to get somewhere else. A friend who sold flowers there said the address was 5150 Powell — 5150 is police code for a crazy person. I walked west, past Mason Street, which had a small tent encampment, past Sixth, the street of broken dreams.
The Heart of the City Farmers’ Market operates at U.N. Plaza on Market three days a week, and here the city is at its kaleidoscopic best.
The market has cheese from Petaluma, farm produce from Yuba City, tamales from El Salvador, the Ultimate Souvlaki from Greece, flowers and dried peaches, corn on the cob and bok choy for sale. Other things, too. The corner of Seventh and Market, just across from U.N. Plaza, is famous for its fencing operations. It’s the place to get quick cash for stolen goods.
Everything diverse and interesting and disturbing in a big city are to be found in this one small part of the city. The edge of the Tenderloin, the edge of Civic Center. The heart of the city.
The city must have had big plans to honor the United Nations — a grand plaza, a fountain — now under repair, hidden behind a fence. Looking west toward City Hall, there is a statue of Simón Bolívar, atop a rearing horse, a seagull perched on his head.
We forget that the U.N. was founded in San Francisco, only a few blocks away, and great pronouncements are engraved in the pavement in capital letters: WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS and bits of grand words: RESOLVED, HUMAN RIGHTS, PEACE, PRINCIPLES. Most of them are covered up by vendors’ stalls. The farmers’ market disappears at sunset Wednesday and reappears on Sunday morning like a mirage.
Out of the corner of your eye on any day you can see other things. Just across Market, a quick exchange of money. Drug deal.
Another twist of the kaleidoscope two blocks west, and now the crowds are much younger, walking much faster, heading for MidMarket: the world headquarters of Twitter, housed in the Art Deco Merchandise Mart building. No yelling people here, no desperate street life. This is a serious pattern. This is where tech people change the world. I walked back down the street to Equator Coffee, 986 Market. I skipped the high end stuff ($22 for a cup of Costa Rican natural) and settled for a $5 drink. I sat outside in the sun and watched the city roll by, on foot, on bikes, on scooters, on streetcars of many colors. Old Mr. Dickson was right. San Francisco is a kaleidoscope.