San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Amid gloom of rainy season, S.F. still shines
Winter crept in on little gray feet the other day. Fog and rain and gloomy skies, the start of the rainy season. It felt a little unfair, because it’s not even officially winter yet. The solstice happens at 7:27 p.m. Dec. 21, officially the shortest day of the year. You could have fooled me. The sun goes down at 4:51 in early December, so, like many meteorologists, I believe the first day of December is the start of winter.
So, here we are. The hills are about to turn wintry green and the city is about to turn seasonal gray. For Californians like me, it’s always a surprise how the pretty last days of fall turn so quickly into something else.
The California winter is nothing like the dreaded eastern and midwestern version — we’re not in Kansas anymore — but winter here can be deadly. Last year, for example, we almost drowned in rain. A few winters before that, it rained so much the Oroville dam almost collapsed and thousands of people downstream had to be evacuated.
But after a few weeks the sun came out, the spring flowers bloomed and everybody forgot about it. This is California, and we live in the moment.
This is our moment and our season, so I thought I’d take a couple of walks around the city.
I walked through the
Mission, a hint of Noe Valley, down Market Street, along Divisadero, up Powell, through a rainy Union Square, into Chinatown, out to the Marina and back to my home on the hill.
I even took a ride on the bay and a long walk on the Sausalito waterfront.
There’s always a surprise around here. Not all the surprises are good, as you can imagine, but some are worth the time.
The first surprise was on Monday. The day was damp but the sun was out, so I was surprised when I boarded the Golden Gate Ferry to run an errand in Marin. A tule fog had crept in from the Central Valley during the night. It was one of those winter fogs, low-lying, much thicker and clammier than its cousin, the summer fog which comes from the ocean.
When the ferry pulled away from the dock, the famous view of San Francisco from the bay vanished. The city was gone. It was a fog out of one of those old mystery stories, a Jack London fog, a Sherlock Holmes fog. The ferry captain had radar and all kinds of electronics, of course. But the skipper posted a human lookout on the bow just in case.
Sausalito was quiet as a mouse, but there are still small, out-of-the-way sights there, especially on a bayside trail that runs north from downtown and parallels Bridgeway, the main street. There are a couple of little sloughs, true small-town backwaters.
December is the season for long holiday lunches, old friends back together to toast the good days. I went to a couple of those myself. One was at the Old Clam House, on Bayshore Boulevard, where they serve warm clam juice with every meal, just the thing for a clammy day.
Another was at John’s Grill on Ellis Street, where us soft-boiled newspaper guys would spend a workday lunch hour and pretend to be hard-boiled. Four of us went there on a rainy midweek day for a holiday lunch and told war stories. Some of them were even true.
We met at noon. Even I was surprised at how empty downtown San Francisco was. But John’s was doing a brisk business, the fish was fresh and the company was good.
Some of the cable cars lined up on Powell Street were decorated with tinsel and wreaths and holiday lights. There was no line to get aboard and hardly any passengers. I stopped to take a picture. “Are you coming, sir?” the conductor asked. “No,” I said, “Next time.” I had forgotten how much I enjoyed a rainy day cable car ride, rattling up Nob Hill with a cable car almost to myself. I couldn’t do it that day; I had an appointment. Next time.
I headed up Powell Street to duck into the St. Francis Hotel to see the gingerbread castle in the lobby. A row of taxicabs outside, a Salvation Army bell ringer. Hanukkah candles in Union Square, a Christmas tree with a red star on the top. In the center of the square one of the city’s most famous monuments with a statue of Alma Spreckels as the goddess of victory at the top, a symbol of another time.
The city looked emptier than in Decembers
past, but San Francisco still has some of that aura people fondly remember. It’s still San Francisco. It has good bones.
I had a late errand on the northern waterfront toward the end of the week and got a ride home. Turning on Jefferson Street toward Fisherman’s Wharf there was the biggest surprise of the day — a big Ferris wheel, glittering against the night sky. It’s 150 feet tall, it’s called Skystar, and it used to be in Golden Gate Park.
They moved it to the waterfront last month and I’d forgotten all about it. The view from the Skystar is pretty special: the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the dark bay ringed by city lights, a single light atop Angel Island, like a beacon. A Ferris Wheel has no particular value. It doesn’t represent anything. It’s just a moving circle of light that people can ride and for a moment feel as if they are in the sky. You get to go around twice, three times if you are lucky. And at the end of the ride you step down, back into real life. Perfect for a winter’s night.
There’s always a surprise around here. Not all the surprises are good, as you can imagine, but some are
worth the time.