In the streets of San Francisco…

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We arrived at almost midnight because the couple we’re staying with – Wes and Brandi – were both working late. They live in the Sunset area of San Francisco with their little dog Maus, who’s the liveliest little thing you’ve ever seen. She bounded about with her toys throughout our stay here, looking for anyone who would play with her.

Our first day’s decisions were based on the fact that we had the car until the 17th, so we thought we’d drive out to east California to see a ghost town called Hornitos. It consisted of two streets – High Street and Bear Valley Road – that ran parallel but bowed in the middle to make way for some ruins, a playground and some public toilets. Along the other sides of the streets were houses that people still lived in interspersed with abandoned old buildings that were crumbling to the ground. The first house looked perfectly normal from one side, but on the other its roof had collapsed to the floor like icing from a cake. Others stood proud in their overgrown lots, but nothing remained behind their vacant windows.

If you can’t read it, click it…

 

Hornitos was a lot further than we’d expected so that took up most of the day, but we still managed to fit in a cinema trip on the way back. We watched Taken because our only other options were teen movies about boys trying to lose their virginity. Liam Neeson was really good – by far the only likeable character – but it was weird seeing him in such a macho role.

Sunday brought yet more movie watching… We stayed in Wes and Brandi’s living room, which is really dark when the lights aren’t on as it doesn’t have any windows (they live in the basement part of the house) so it’s really easy to sleep and sleep and sleep. So we woke up late and tried to do all the things we’d planned to do anyway. We went to Walmart to return the tent we’d bought and get our $20 back. Then we went to drop the hire car off but the place was closed, so we drove to the Mission district to see Balmy Alley, which is covered in murals representing human rights, gentrification, Hurricane Katrina, etc. On the way there a woman gave us a teapot because she’d had a garage sale but it was over and she was going to throw it out, so we gave that to Wes and Brandi. We then tried to see Haight Street, but it was too late and everything was closed, so we went back and watched Choke and Slumdog Millionaire which were ok and excellent, respectively.

 

Click to read – there’s a line from The Second Coming by Yeats

Click to read…

On Monday we had to get the car back before 7:30am, so we had a super early start to a full day of walking. We walked all the way up to, but not up, Coit Tower, because it didn’t open until 10am, so we walked to Jack Jerouac Alley, followed by Grace Church, which has a stain glass window devoted to Albert Einstein. Then we walked to Haight Street (again) to look at records and books. By 4pm we were so tired that we had to head back to the house and rest our aching bones.

 
 

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