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Saturday 22 November 2008

Pacific Heights

Alasdair Palmer visits San Francisco

The Palace of the Legion of Honor is located in Lincoln Park, which looks down on the Golden Gate Bridge. From Lincoln Park it is not far to the Presidio, part of which has now been taken over by George Lucas and his various film companies ‘dedicated to producing digital effects for films and computer games’. There is at least one great restaurant in Lucasfilm’s complex: the weirdly named Pres a Vi. But then there are great restaurants everywhere in San Francisco. They take their food seriously here, and the variety and quality of restaurants is extremely high. The precipitous fall in the dollar means most of them are extraordinarily good value at the moment. Greens, a vegetarian restaurant which has a glorious view of the Golden Gate Bridge, is one example of very many. (Greens is located in Fort Mason. You have to book, but it’s well worth it.)

Fort Mason is next to San Francisco’s marina, whose hundreds of posh yachts are a vivid reminder of how many rich people live here. Alcatraz, the island that used to house the most notorious prison in America, and possibly the world, sits in the channel opposite. Next to the marina are two of San Francisco’s most interesting buildings: the Palace of Fine Arts and the Exploratorium. The Palace of Fine Arts is an enormous, Roman-inspired monument with titanic sculptures and intricate reliefs. Built for the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition, it has somehow survived wind, rain, earthquakes and the desire of developers to pull it down and replace it with offices or apartments. Walking round it is a strangely inspiring experience. The Exploratorium is a science museum full of exhibits you can watch, listen to and touch. The imagination and technical skill that has gone into their design makes the Exploratorium a very engaging place to spend several hours on a rainy day. And if you have children with you, it has the very great advantage that they all seem to love it.

Mark Twain said that when the world ended, he wanted to be in Cincinnati, because ‘Cincinnati is always ten years behind the times’. You don’t want to be in San Francisco when the end is nigh, because San Francisco is always several years ahead of the times. Many of the movements that have come to characterise

contemporary culture — feminism, gay rights, e-commerce and, more generally, let-it-all-hang-out, do-what-you-feel-good-about hedonism — began in San Francisco. A tolerant and generous attitude to pleasure is one of the city’s characteristics, and it is why San Francisco is a place in which it is hard to feel depressed. Hanging out in cafés is one of the best things to do here: it may be an aimless activity, but somehow, in this city, it instils the hope that, well, one way or another, things will work out. And that’s because, in San Francisco, they usually do.

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