 This is my "Rich, I've just had an Absolutely Brilliant Idea" face. The first thing that struck me when I arrived back in Spain this week was how much less invisible I feel here. People pay attention to each other. It’s one of the things that makes Seville — a city of 700,000 souls — seem like a village. For instance, there was the time I discovered a pickpocket had slipped his hand into my purse. OK, I know that’s not the kind of attention anybody wants. But as I wrenched my bag out of his grasp, a nearby stranger instantly began berating the thief in a furious barrage of Spanish that had him fleeing at top speed. I got the impression she would have liked to chase him down and clobber him with her own purse, and I appreciated the sentiment. Of course, sometimes you can be too visible. Like the time I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and grabbed Rich’s arm for support. Which would have been fine except that as I lurched forward my foot came down directly on top of one of his, and we both pitched forward onto the ground in a tangle of arms, legs, and embarrassment. Everyone in the vicinity shouted and rushed about until it was clear the only thing injured was our dignity.  A New Yorker cartoon shows how Americans might handle the situation. Madeline L’Engle once asked, “Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?” To which I reply: Often. I’ve spent two decades floundering through the pratfalls and misunderstandings that come with living in another culture for six months every year. “How long are you going to keep this up?” everyone used to ask me. “When are you coming home for good?” But nowadays they are peppering me with practical questions about residency visas, Spanish medical insurance, and the difficulty of learning a second language. Everyone I know seems to be considering — or at least fantasizing about — a move abroad.  Planning — and dreaming — can be half the fun. I’m always happy to share what I’ve learned. The lessons are valuable, even if you’re one of the (apparently rare) Americans not contemplating a move to Europe. For a start, living overseas teaches you why and how to make new social connections. And that’s an area where most of us seriously need to up our game. In 2023 US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote, “I embarked on a cross-country listening tour, where I heard stories from my fellow Americans that surprised me. People began to tell me they felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant.” Even pre-Covid, he says, half of all Americans reported feeling lonely. And that’s worrying. “Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling — it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death.” Yikes!  Dr. Murthy, surrounded by family during his swearing-in as US Surgeon General, is determined to help fight the loneliness epidemic. Most of us no longer live in our original home towns, hanging out with chums we met in kindergarten and generations of extended family. In our increasingly isolated society, how do we reach out to new friends — or amigos, as they are known here? Can we find ways to come together, boosting our daily fun while pushing back against the loneliness epidemic? I was mulling this over during lunch today, and inspiration struck as I was spearing my first forkful of carilladas (pig cheeks). "Rich, I've just had an Absolutely Brilliant Idea. This can be the focus of my blog this fall and winter. I can explore how members of the expat community find creative ways to jump-start their social lives. I'll call it 'The Amigos Project.' I can start by sharing the tips I always give newcomers." What tips? Find a book club (mine’s part of the American Women’s Club of Seville). Join an international social club such as InterNations. Dine with a local chef in their home via EatWith. Sign up for a language class, even if you have absolutely no aptitude for it.  Mladen and Lidija, our EatWith hosts in Zagreb, Croatia, are now long-standing friends. What have you got to lose but your loneliness? For those moving abroad, choose a destination known for its congeniality. Below are the results of InterNations' 2024 Expat Insider Survey which evaluates quality of life by studying leisure, mobility, health care, safety, and climate. Spain has held the number one spot for two years in a row. Not bragging, just saying.  Four years ago I wrote: The decision to move abroad often comes as a sudden, blinding, rapturous epiphany, when you realize you actually can — you should! — you will! — boldly change the course of your life forever. I’ll never forget Rich sitting me down at a sidewalk café in Seville and earnestly trying to persuade me that we should live here “for a year” while I kept attempting to break into his monolog long enough to gasp “Hell, yes!” But, as the Buddhists are fond of saying, “After the ecstasy, the laundry.” When the first giddy thrill wears off, the mundane details need to be addressed. And when I say “mundane details,” I actually mean the staggering mountain of large and small tasks required for any major move, plus the added legal complications of foreign residency.  Future expats all have a folder like this, bursting at the seams with legal, medical, and financial documents. To get you started, here are stories I’ve written about the three biggest “mundane details” you’ll need to tackle early on. How To Get a Residency Visa Without Losing Your Mind. A residency visa will let you live year-round in the country of your choice. Getting one can take 200 hours of paperwork; you may want to hire help. What I've Learned About Finding Medical Care Abroad. The US ranks 23rd in quality of health care, so you may be pleasantly surprised by the options (and prices) you find overseas. I'm a Foreigner Here Myself. Learning a new language doesn’t get any easier with age, but it’s a great way to make friends and learn about local customs and attitudes. At the very least you’ll do better ordering beer at the bar.  Soon you, too, could be saying, "Dos cervezas, por favor." “Travel,” wrote author Andrew Solomon, “is a set of corrective lenses that helps focus the planet’s blurred reality.” We get even greater clarity when we settle down abroad for an extended period of time. Just as going away to college gives us fresh perspective on our family dynamics, leaving the US to immerse ourselves in a foreign culture illuminates our understanding of our nation and our world. We make friends with a whole new range of people. And while we're getting to know them, we discover exciting, totally unexpected aspects of ourselves and how we fit into the global family. Stay tuned! In the coming months I'll be visiting different parts of Spain, talking to expats and locals to learn about ways they have managed to engage more fully with the culture around them. Got questions? Let me know in the comments below.  DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? If you ever miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guide books Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  True friends come in all shapes and sizes, as I learned from Charlotte's Web. “The horrible thing,” Rich said, after finishing Charlotte’s Web, “is that I’m never going to be able to kill a spider again.” When I'd learned Rich had somehow managed to get through childhood without meeting the talking spider who saved an innocent pig, I gave him my copy, pulling it out of the huge pile of banned books in our living room. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Charlotte’s Web was banned? Why? Seriously, why? It seems some Kansas folks were offended by the book’s talking animals, insisting they’re “unnatural and blasphemous, as humans are the highest level of God’s creation.” Really? Have the seen the human folly in the headlines lately? Give me pigs and spiders any day.  To me, restricting kids’ access to books is like depriving them of oxygen or the right to eat chocolate on Halloween. How is anyone supposed to navigate childhood without lessons from Harry Potter or Goosebumps? Who can make sense of the adult world without To Kill a Mockingbird, the Diary of Anne Frank, and The Great Gatsby (all removed from many high schools; see the banned lists here)? “I am a parent myself,” wrote Khaled Hosseini, author of the much-banned novel The Kite Runner. “I understand the parental impulse to safeguard our children from harm. But banning books like The Kite Runner doesn’t ‘protect’ students at all. It betrays them. It robs them of the chance that we as parents and instructors owe them, the chance to broaden their human community, to let them walk the world in another’s shoes for a while, to foster empathy for others, to be challenged by the experience and perhaps take a small step toward becoming fuller, richer versions of themselves.”  I was horrified to discover that in the past three years, 6528 books have been targeted for censorship in the US, according to National Library Association records. Challenges started in public schools and spread to public libraries. Statewide bans have begun. There’s talk of national book bans in 2025. What can we do to protect our freedom to read? That's the subject of discussions taking place this week all over America in libraries, bookstores, and coffee houses, because this is national Banned Books Week. Ask your local librarians and booksellers what they've got planned. I’ve organized events in all the bookstores in San Rafael, the city nearest me, and I'll be participating in the three shown below. If you’re in the SF Bay Area, drop in and say hello; I love meeting readers and catching up with old friends! Find me at these San Rafael events: Thursday 9/26 Rebound Bookstore | Banned Book Reading 6:00 – 7:30 PM | 1611 Fourth Street Saturday 9/28 Friends Books | Banned Book Lottery 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM | 1016 C Street Saturday 9/28 Copperfield's Books | Banned Books Community Read-Aloud 2:00 - 3:00 PM | 1200 Fourth Street  Part of my outrage over book banning comes from hanging around City Lights and other activist bookstores I visited as part of my Cheap and Cheerful San Francisco project this summer. Rich and I made 20 trips into the city to investigate reports that it's become a dystopian hellscape mired in a “doom loop” of poverty, drugs, and hopelessness. Don’t believe a word of it. I’ve been talking to San Franciscans, checking out the mood, eating in modest cafes, bistros, and diners, and asking everyone about the doom loop — a subject that always inspires hearty guffaws. “Doom loop? Hell no. This is a great place to live,” I was told over and over. Then they’d point me toward another fabulous eatery, more great bookstores, parks I shouldn't pass up... News flash! The media has been telling a lot of whoppers about San Francisco. “A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.” Versions of this saying are attributed to everyone from Churchill to Mark Twain to Chinese philosophers, and proof of its accuracy can be found in the doom loop narrative. Much of the sneering is politically motivated; the Left Coast is a popular target. And after decades of writing about how cool San Francisco is, many jaded journalists cannot resist the chance to jump on the bandwagon and get snarky at the city’s expense. But the truth is out there, my friends, and fact-checking with reliable sources reveals a very different picture. Crime rates in San Francisco are dropping, reports the SFPD. Year-to-date, larceny theft — including car and retail robbery — is down 40%. Homicides are 39% lower. There are 17% fewer burglaries. People and property are safer.  Welcome Ambassadors like Kevin are standing by to help visitors find their way — and feel safer in the city. Money is pouring into San Francisco. “In 2023, AI-related startups in the San Francisco Bay Area received an estimated $27.4 billion in investments — 52.6% of the global total — from seed, venture and private equity investors,” Forbes reports. San Francisco has the highest number of AI job postings in the nation, gearing up for what Price Waterhouse Cooper predicts will soon be a $15.7 trillion industry. Of course, we have major problems; what metropolis doesn’t? But struggling to get a disaster-prone city under some semblance of control has always been our default status.  OK, to be fair, this hasn't actually happened yet in real life. But if it's going to happen anywhere, it's likely to be here in SF. Coping with challenges hones our strength and creativity. As Orson Welles said in The Third Man: “In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” San Francisco isn’t a cuckoo clock kind of town. During its turbulent history, it’s given the world Levi’s, TV, 911 dispatch, no-fault divorce, Beatniks, The Summer of Love, gay marriage, fortune cookies, Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, Instagram, Yelp, Eggo waffles, martinis, iPhones, and driverless taxis, to name but a few.  Where would the world's coolest people be without the martini? Above all, San Francisco is tremendous fun. Whether you’re as outrageous as Janis Joplin, just want a quiet place to read the books you love, or have a hankering for dive bars and dim sum, this city has it all. Where to start? Here are our suggestions. Best Food Foghorn Taproom The Grove Marcella’s Lasagneria Delicious Dim Sum Best Bars Tempest Bar & Box Kitchen Vesuvio Café Twin Peaks Tavern Best Bookstores City Lights Fabulosa Best Tour Tenderloin Tour Best Museum Beat Museum Best Transportation Waymo driverless taxis I was touched by the kindness we received wherever we went (except the Tonga Room, of course, and the area patrolled by the Waymo Vigilante). And I am deeply impressed with the way the city continues to champion personal freedom. You can be yourself here. And that is a gift beyond price. “San Francisco is a mad city, inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people,” remarked author Rudyard Kipling. “San Francisco has only one drawback – ’tis hard to leave.” But leave it I must. Next week Rich and I head back to Seville and our Spanish life. It’s not easy saying goodbye (cue Tony Bennett’s I Left My Heart in San Francisco), but we are moving on to fresh loony adventures in Europe. Stay tuned for updates!  Rich and Tony Bennett thank San Francisco for the memories. ON THE ROAD AGAIN NEXT WEEK I will have to skip next week's post to accommodate my travel schedule, but after that I'll have all new stuff to write about. This is the last post in my series OUT TO LUNCH IN CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO Thanks for joining us on the journey! BROWSE PREVIOUS POSTS HERE DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? If you ever miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. WANT MORE? You can find my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Cara gave us a cheerful welcome at Tempest Bar and Box Kitchen. You have to love a city that commemorates the removal of a hated eyesore with poetic words celebrating our collective joy. Walking out of the San Francisco Ferry Building this week, I discovered a sidewalk plaque commemorating the destruction — begun by the 1989 earthquake, finished by the mayor — of the hideous 1958 Embarcadero “freeway to nowhere.” “The freeway that brooded over the Embarcadero with all the grace of a double decked prison wall is finally gone,” SF Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte wrote gleefully. “In its place is a sweep of air, fog, October sunlight, piers, ships, and the silver Bay Bridge, which is 55 years old and still looks modern.” I was snapping a photo of the plaque when I noticed a man nearby grabbing a yellow traffic cone and making off with it. Wait a moment, I knew this guy — it was the bike-riding Waymo Vigilante who had attacked our Waymo driverless taxi in June, calling me “a disgrace to the human race” for riding in it. What was he up to now? He strode across the plaza to a Waymo standing at the curb and placed the cone on its nose, angled like a unicorn’s horn. Unsure how to cope with this surprising development, the vehicle radioed headquarters and hunkered down to await further instructions. The Waymo Vigilante took a few victory laps around the plaza, admiring his handiwork, clearly thrilled that he’d won a battle in the war between humans and robots.  The Waymo Vigilante admires his handiwork. It was a short-lived victory. In minutes, a worker arrived and removed the cone. The Waymo drove on, the Vigilante pedaled away glowing with self-righteousness, and the streetcar Rich and I had been waiting for came and whisked us off to the day’s activities: an afternoon in the city’s dive bars. If you’re not familiar with the term, a “dive bar” is a well-worn, unpretentious local place that can be anything from a comfy, no-frills neighborhood pub to a seriously squalid gin joint. The name was born in the Prohibition era, when you had to dive down steps to cellars selling bootleg hooch. Today’s dive bars offer cheap drinks, funky décor, colorful characters, and often an easygoing camaraderie that creates a pleasant sense of community among random strangers. I get a kick out of dive bars and have spent years dilligently researching them all over the world on behalf of my readers. (You're welcome.) Very, very few have edible food, but I’d heard of one notable exception in San Francisco: Tempest Bar and Box Kitchen.  The Tempest Bar on a Friday afternoon In the 1960s it was the writers’ hangout Page One “just a short stumble away” from the city’s main newsrooms. Through the years and various owners, the bar has quenched the thirst of reporters, printers, delivery drivers, bike messengers, and “general weirdos.” After the current owners took over Tempest in 2010, a regular customer who was also a notable chef proposed adding modestly priced gourmet eats. Box Kitchen was soon dishing out such unlikely fare as mac and cheese egg rolls ($10) and potato skins with pork belly and quail eggs ($15). Along with our short Modelo draft beers ($4), Rich and I ordered corn and clam chowder ($8) and elote riblets ($8), which turned out to be Mexican street corn slathered with miso butter, chives, and a Japanese spice-and-seaweed blend called togarashi. Not your average bar snacks!  Rich, creamy chowder and slightly spicy Mexican street corn at Tempest A woman at a nearby table jumped up to hug a burly guy with his hair in turquoise cornrows, and they did a little impromptu dance. I called out something encouraging, and we exchanged grins. Soon I was over admiring her friend’s baby, which led to the kind of meandering, friendly chat that’s a hallmark of dive bar culture. The food was spectacular and almost surreal, being served in the kind of place where ordinarily you’d be lucky to get a bag of peanuts. Sipping my chowder and studying the specials, I vowed never to try The Mind Eraser (vodka, Kahlua, and soda water, $11)(unless I already have and don't remember it). I wondered idly if the Italian digestif, Fernet ($8), was anything like its Spanish counterpart, orujo. “Let’s find out,” said Rich. The first sip seared the inside of my mouth like liquid fire. If I’d been capable of vocalizing, I’d have howled. “It grows on you,” gasped Rich. Incredibly, it did, and we finished every drop.  Fernet, a digestif that packs a punch Our next destination was the legendary Vesuvio Café, where the Beat Generation gathered before City Lights opened across the alley. Eccentric artist Henri Lenoir launched it in 1948, filling it with art and drenching it with atmosphere. “Stepping inside feels like walking into the bowels of a pirate ship adorned with decades of history and loving kitsch,” wrote SFGate editor Andrew Chamings. “The bohemians filled this place with surrealism, a sense of humor, whimsy and lightness, and I love them for it.” He declared it “the best bar in America.” Young Jack Kerouac found it so seductive he blew off a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet world-famous author Henry Miller, who’d written to say he liked the younger writer’s work and could they meet up? En route to their rendezvous in Big Sur 150 miles south along the coast, Jack dropped into Vesuvio Café … and never made it out of San Francisco. When I got to Vesuvio I found the atmosphere convivial and noisy. My nearest neighbor at the bar was a man with a paperback book and a shot of scotch at his elbow. “Get much reading done in here?” I asked. “Sometimes,” he said. “If I really want to concentrate, I go upstairs to my favorite table on the balcony.” Ice broken and his cred as a local established, we were soon exchanging names (his was Josh) and tidbits about our personal and professional lives. When I mentioned the dive bar pub crawl, he insisted I walk across the street to check out Specs’. “Specs’ is the best dive bar in the city,” Josh said. “Specs’ is not a dive bar,” said Shafagh. And he should know; he’s the bartender there. Properly known as Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Café, and eccentric even by San Francisco standards, this former speakeasy and historic lesbian bar was transformed into a left-wing, blue-collar union bar by Vesuvio-waiter-turned-construction-worker Richard “Specs” Simmons. The inside isn’t as downscale as your typical dive bar, but the dim lighting, quirky décor, and atmosphere of casual chumminess fit the profile. Rich and I were soon chatting away with everyone. Shafagh showed me postcards sent by customers journeying in distant lands and gave me a copy of the card the bar uses to support women fending off unwanted advances.  Could have used this when I was younger! I don’t know what time Rich and I stumbled outside into the afternoon sunlight and began weaving our way toward the Ferry Terminal. Along the way we continued the debate about whether Specs’ was a dive bar. “It all comes down to price,” I said. “How much did we pay for those drinks?” I’d seen Rich hand over a credit card and wave away a receipt. There was a long pause. “I have absolutely no idea.” “I rest my case,” I said. And then we were boarding the ferry, where we slept all the way home.  Words to live by... WHERE ARE THESE CLASSIC SF DIVE BARS? South of Market Tempest Bar and Box Kitchen, 431 Natoma Street North Beach Vesuvio Café, 255 Columbus Avenue Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Café, 12 William Saroyan Place And There Are Countless More Google "dive bars in SF" and have fun exploring the city's oddball drinking establishments. I'M ON THE ROAD - NO POSTS FOR TWO WEEKS We're going to a wedding plus lots of side trips to visit family and friends. I'll post again as soon as I'm back. This post is part of my ongoing series OUT TO LUNCH IN CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO My goal is to discover some of San Francisco's most colorful neighborhoods so I can check out what's really going on in this zany town. Are we in a doom loop? Already on the rebound? Still fabulous? And where should we eat afterwards? These and other questions will be explored in upcoming posts. BROWSE PREVIOUS POSTS HERE DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? If you ever miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. WANT MORE? You can find my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  “Only one word can sum up this experience,” said Anthony Bourdain on his first visit to San Francisco's Tonga Room. “Cowabunga!” Did you do anything loony during the pandemic lockdown? Of course you did, but don’t worry, I’m not asking you to reveal details. (Unless you really want to — in which case, I’m all ears.) Europeans under strict lockdown, allowed outside only to fetch groceries and walk pets, took to strolling around with their cats, birds, even goldfish. Not all at the same time, but still. My sister-in-law and her sister entertained themselves carving famous faces into potatoes. And one evening in 2020, I took Rich “out” for drinks by recreating San Francisco’s famous Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar in our Seville apartment. The Tonga Room is one of the city’s goofier watering holes, hidden in the lower depths of the luxurious Fairmont Hotel on top of posh Nob Hill. It started out as a 75-foot indoor swimming pool where celebrity guests could show off 1929’s newfangled form-fitting swimsuits. In 1945, when the tiki bar craze was in high gear, the Fairmont hired MGM’s leading set designer to transform the pool into a lagoon surrounded by thatched huts where celebrity guests could drink rum from ceramic coconut mugs. Every fifteen minutes a “hurricane” swept the room with dramatic booms of thunder and heavy “rain” falling into the lagoon.  Musicians play in a thatch-roofed barge floating in the lagoon. Rich took me there on one of our earliest dates, and I hope you won’t think I’m totally shallow and tasteless for saying I loved it; it was the most hilarious and romantic bit of kitsch I’d ever seen. In 2020, I did my best to recreate the ambiance in our apartment. Sadly my shower nozzle didn’t reach far enough to recreate the downpour; upon reflection that was probably fortunate for our security deposit and our neighbors. It's been forty years since we visited the actual Tonga Room, and this week, we decided to go back. They don’t open until 5:00 pm, so we took a later ferry, lingered over lunch, and visited a few other landmarks along the way.  The Old Ship Saloon sits at Pacific and Battery streets, once the city's shoreline. Our first port of call was the Old Ship Saloon, once an actual ship called the Arkansas that ran aground during a storm off Bird Island — now Alcatraz — in 1849. She was towed to the city, and while passengers and crew rushed off to pan for gold, a savvy entrepreneur turned her into a saloon. The Arkansas served as a seaman’s bar, boarding house, and bordello before sinking and becoming part of the landfill that expanded San Francisco’s shoreline. The Old Ship Saloon stands proudly over her remains, providing a warm welcome and first-rate food. My quesadilla ($16) was a marvelously creamy mix of Jack cheese and lime-accented guacamole inside a crispy-seared tortilla.  The quesadillas at the Old Ship Saloon are irresistible. Next we visited the Cable Car Museum, an extraordinarily LOUD space where you get to watch (AND HEAR) the winding wheels pulling the steel cables to haul the cars uphill. Our ears were still ringing as we climbed Nob Hill and stepped into the vast silence of Grace Cathedral. Founded in 1849, Grace Church attracted miners who often dropped little envelopes of gold dust into the collection basket. That building burned down in 1906, paving the way for an upgrade that wasn’t completed until 1965. The Episcopalian diocese took its time creating an oddball blend of European tradition and San Franciscan what's-happening-now. Grace is built of modern concrete in French Gothic style patterned on Notre Dame de Paris. The front doors are reproductions cast from the original Ghiberti doors on the Florence Baptistry. The stained glass windows portray 1100 figures from Adam to Einstein (with his famous formula). The floor of the nave, copied from the medieval labyrinth in the cathedral in Chartres, France, is used for everything from candlelight meditation to yoga classes. The formal signing of the UN Charter happened at the Veteran’s War Memorial a mile away, but much of the heavy negotiating took place in meeting rooms at the Fairmont Hotel, just a block from the cathedral. While the hotel is clearly proud of its supporting role in re-defining world order, its most cherished bragging rights come from being the place where, in 1961, Tony Bennet first sang his iconic I Left My Heart in San Francisco. Shortly after his 90th birthday in 2016, Tony returned to the Fairmont to watch the city put up a statue of him and rename that block of Mason Street “Tony Bennet Avenue.” Two crooners with a lotta heart After paying his respects to Tony, Rich said, “Hey, it’s nearly five. Come on. The entrance to the Tonga Room is around the side.” We turned onto California Street and trotted downhill.  We found the sign, but not the bar; there was nothing but an unassuming side door into a gymnasium. I said, “You don’t think they’ve turn the lagoon back into a swimming pool?” We trudged all around the outside of the enormous hotel complex, but aside from the old sign, there was no indication the Tonga Room — or the big awning we remembered — had ever existed.  This awning had apparently vanished, taking the Tonga room with it. Returning to the lobby, we were given elaborate instructions that led us through a maze of hotel corridors to the gym. Just past that we found the Tonga Room entrance, where people were being separated into the haves — as in “I have a reservation and can walk right in” — and the have nots — which would be us. “You need a reservation just to have a drink here?” I asked incredulously. I realize customs change over four decades, but hey… I went to find the bouncer. “We just want a quick drink,” I explained. “You see, we came here —" He didn’t even look at me as he snapped, “You can go in IF you stand at the bar. You can ONLY order drinks. NO food.” Yikes! In we went. The Tonga Room’s thatched huts and phony hurricanes were as kitsch as ever. The bartender, who had clearly gone to the same charm school as the bouncer, pushed a plastic price list in our direction without looking up. “Yeah?”  Last time we were there, drinks at the Tonga Room looked like this. Rich ordered a Mai Tai and the bartender reached for a plain glass. I’d heard that just this year they’d stopped using ceramic mugs shaped like coconuts and tiki gods, but I spotted a few on an upper shelf. “Any chance we could get it in one of those?” He looked at me as if I’d asked him to strip naked and perform a fan dance on the bar. “No.”  Nowadays, this is what a Mai Tai ($23.90) at the Tonga Room looks like. “I have to tell you,” Rich said as he took the first sip, standing awkwardly near the bar, “I prefer the Tonga Room you made at home during the pandemic.”  My version of the Tonga Room, Seville, April, 2020 I remembered how much fun we’d had in our version of the Tonga Room, listening to The Lion Sleeps Tonight and laughing as we recalled all the goofiest bars we knew — a remarkably long and varied list, as you can imagine — and watching the sun slowly set over the rooftops of Seville. “I have to agree,” I said. “And you want to know something else? It’s going to be at least another forty years before I come back here again.”  The Old Ship Saloon is at Pacific and Battery, several blocks from the waterfront. The others places I visited are all on Nob Hill — a steep climb, so wear good walking shoes or consider an Uber or Waymo driverless taxi! This post is part of my ongoing series OUT TO LUNCH IN CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO My goal is to discover some of San Francisco's most colorful neighborhoods so I can check out what's really going on in this zany town. Are we in a doom loop? Already on the rebound? Still fabulous? And where should we eat afterwards? These and other questions will be explored in upcoming posts. BROWSE PREVIOUS POSTS HERE DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] ALREADY SUBSCRIBED? If you ever miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. WANT MORE? You can find my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  "The Comedian." Price $150,000. You get an official certificate but have to provide your own replacement bananas. Remember the $150,000 banana duct-taped to the wall? Roguish Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan caused a sensation showing it at a swanky Miami art exhibition in 2019. Performance artist David Datuna caused another sensation by pulling the banana off the wall and eating it. Everyone else had an uproarious time coming up with memes and spoofs. Titled The Comedian (in case you didn’t get that it was a joke), the duct-taped banana didn’t delight everyone. New York magazine’s Pulitzer-winning art critic Jerry Saltz scoffed, “Joke art, shock-your-Nana-art, art about art about art: That’s all been DOA [dead on arrival] for a decade or more — of course idiot artists, collectors, dealers and critics don’t see that to even take it seriously is to put the gun to your own head.” Yikes, don’t sugar coat it, Jerry; tell us how you really feel. And then there's Gabe Langholtz’s 2023 work “The Big Book of Jerry.” Standing in front of the painting last Thursday in San Francisco, I had to wonder if Jerry had seen it, and if so, whether he was apoplectic that his book How to Be an Artist was sharing table space with a duct-taped banana. Could he appreciate the jest? Would he agree that art has to be challenging — even when it’s challenging his own attitudes toward art? But that’s the fun of modern art. You don’t always have to understand it, let alone agree with it; often works are meant to leave you scratching your head. It makes me think of what theoretical physicist John Wheeler once said about his own field: “If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it.” Same goes for contemporary art. Willing to risk finding ourselves dazed and confused by today’s rising stars, this week Rich and I went to check out the art scene in San Francisco’s quirky Dogpatch neighborhood. If you’ve never heard of Dogpatch, you’re not alone. Once a strictly industrial district on the city’s eastern edge, it’s said to be named for the packs of dogs that used to roam the area stealing scraps from slaughterhouses. The moniker may also refer to the comic strip Li’l Abner, set in the backwater town of Dogpatch "nestled in a bleak valley, between two cheap and uninteresting hills somewhere." There’s nothing bleak or uninteresting about San Francisco’s Dogpatch, where slightly gritty trades (plumbers, awning-makers, a boxing gym) share warehouse space with up-and-coming artists. But before facing the world of modern art, Rich and I felt the need to fortify ourselves with strong coffee. Dogpatch is known for great eateries, and we wandered into one of the oldest around: the Hard Knox Café, which has been serving “Southern homestyle cooking” for 25 years. In a moment of complete cultural cluelessness, I tried to order espresso. “We only serve coffee,” said the young Peruvian behind the counter; she managed to sound kindly rather than snarky. So we ordered plain, old-fashioned coffee and a couple of corn muffins — which were absolutely fabulous and I told her so. She and I chatted a while, as you do during the lull between the breakfast rush and the onset of lunch hour. And when we were ready to go, Rich and I discovered that not only had she not charged us for the muffins, she was gifting us four more to see us through our morning’s adventures. Now that’s Southern-style hospitality!  "Hey, she didn't charge us for the muffins!" No one else gave us free food, but I found all the denizens of Dogpatch surprisingly friendly. Everyone we met — the bouncer at the entrance to the marijuana dispensary, gallery staffers, a restauranteur, the saloonkeeper — all seemed ready to pass the time of day for as long as we cared to linger. Midday in midweek, Dogpatch is pleasantly free of big-city bustle. Muffins in hand, Rich and I made our way to the heart of the neighborhood’s art scene: the Minnesota Street Project, three giant warehouses that are now home to fifteen galleries. We wandered around enjoying the creativity, puzzling over the more obscure efforts, shaking our heads over some, falling in love with others. Next we headed over to Marcella’s Lasagneria, which is rumored to have the city’s best lasagna. I chatted with other customers, all of whom lived in the neighborhood and came in often for their favorites. The portions looked hearty, especially after a muffin-filled morning, so Rich and I split an order of the Bianca: white lasagna with caramelized onions, artichoke hearts, and house-cured pancetta (thin slivers of pork belly). The onions and pancetta provided just the right accent to offset the intense creaminess. Best lasagna in the city? I can’t swear to it until I do lots more research — something I’m selflessly prepared to undertake for the sake of my readers. But so far Marcella’s definitely has my vote. Our last port of call was the neighborhood’s oldest bar, Dogpatch Saloon, which has been serving thirsty locals since 1912. They claim they stopped selling alcohol there during Prohibition; it might even be true. I was glad to see they still welcome canine as well as human customers, but I confess I was deeply disturbed by a small sign below the beer taps and the condiments.  “Frisco?” I asked the bartender. “Really?” When I was growing up, it was universally understood that only out-of-towners used the F-word; to locals it was the City. “Is that term —” (I couldn’t bear to repeat it) “considered OK now?” “No,” said the bartender. “But we put up the sign because the Hells Angels have their San Francisco headquarters just around the corner. We want them to feel welcome here.” Very sensible. No good ever came of disrespecting biker clubs, especially on their home turf.  If they want to call it "Frisco" I'm certainly not going to voice any objections. You? Sipping my cold brew, watching dogs and humans drift cheerfully in and out of the saloon, I thought over all the wild and crazy stuff I’d seen that day and wondered what the duct-taped banana artist Cattelan was up to now. For one thing, I'll bet he's keeping a close eye on the upcoming trial of the men who (allegedly) stole one of his most famous works, the solid gold, fully functional toilet titled America.  America. Solid gold, with standard plumbing. Price: $6 million. Current whereabouts: unknown. Created in 2016, this work of “satirical participatory art” pokes fun at gilded excess; it was linked in the publicity materials to a certain presidential candidate of that year (and this one). America was installed in a cubicle at the Guggenheim Museum in New York for visitors to use, and more than 100,000 people stood in line to do so.  Visitors waited in long lines at the Guggenheim for an interactive experience with the work known as "America." Then in 2019, just weeks after it was sent to the UK and exhibited in the Blenheim Palace water closet formerly used by Winston Churchill, America disappeared. Four men were arrested for the crime last November; their trial starts in February. So far they haven't revealed America's whereabouts. As you can imagine, Cattelan is in his glory. "I always liked heist movies,” he said, “and finally I'm in one of them." No doubt he’s already cooking up ideas for a piece to commemorate the experience — something even more outrageous than a solid gold toilet or duct-taped banana. I know, right? The mind reels. And that’s contemporary art for you. Done right, it’s never dull. SUBSCRIBERS If you miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. This post is part of my ongoing series OUT TO LUNCH IN CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO My goal is to discover some of San Francisco's most colorful neighborhoods so I can check out what's really going on in this zany town. Are we in a doom loop? Already on the rebound? Still fabulous? And where should we eat afterwards? These and other questions will be explored in upcoming posts. BROWSE PREVIOUS POSTS HERE DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  The longest short cut in the world I never learn. Really, I ought to have my head examined. “We should go out to Angel Island,” Rich has been saying all summer. “Take a picnic.” I was tempted. I’d never been there before, and Rich had fond memories of a visit 50 years earlier; cue the montage of soaring trees and spectacular views of the San Francisco Bay. On the other hand, the island is prone to cold and fog in summer, and every time we considered going, the weather report was so hideous we abandoned the plan for fear of hypothermia. Until this week. “It’s going to be sunny all day Thursday,” Rich reported excitedly. And before I knew it, he’d booked the ferry tickets.  Angel Island ferryboat But Thursday had its own ideas about the weather and chose to dawn gray and chilly, with gusty winds that didn’t dispel the fog, just sent it slithering down collars and up shirtsleeves. I huddled in my light jacket, glad it was such a short ferry ride across Raccoon Strait, named for the British 26-gun warship, HMS Raccoon, which was damaged at sea and limped into San Francisco Bay for repairs in 1814. No doubt His Majesty’s sailors felt right at home in our pea-soupers. The man at the information desk sold us a map for a dollar and told us the island’s major historic site — the US Immigration Station — was a mile up the coast. “Don’t worry, there’s a shortcut.” He waved vaguely toward the northeast. “Just follow the signs.”  We found the trailhead and started up. And up. And up. Haphazardly placed wooden risers, eroded dirt steps, erratic or missing handrails — these were conditions I often encounter in other countries, inspiring me to remark, “You’d never get away with anything this unsafe in the US!” And yet, here we were in a State Park on our way to a National Historic Landmark. How standards have fallen. I froze during the first part of the endless upwards slog; then the sun came out, and I sweltered. Emerging at last onto the paved Perimeter Road, I stood gasping for breath. And then I was gasping in astonishment as a shuttle drove by, filled with holiday makers taking their ease, waving cheerily as they breezed past. “There’s a shuttle? Why didn’t anyone tell me about a shuttle?”  The shuttle that I missed completely Slogging upward, we met a young couple trudging downward. “Did you see that shuttle?” I asked. The woman rolled her eyes. “Yeah. They refused to let us on. Apparently you have to sign up for a tour. In advance.” We heaved “had-I-but-known” sighs and soldiered on past one another. Eventually Rich and I spotted our destination and began the steep decent to the Immigration Station.  Immigration Station entrance, with modern concrete additions From 1910 to 1940, nearly a million people passed through its doors, each one hoping to build a new life here. And if you’re thinking “Oh, just like Ellis Island,” think again. Although many stories of hardship emerged from Ellis Island, apparently that immigration portal was “Welcome to Disneyland” compared to Angel Island. The difference? Here they processed mostly Chinese arrivals. The late 19th century was rough there, thanks to droughts, floods, and two opium wars fought against the British, who objected to the loss of revenues when the Chinese government cracked down on the drug trade. Thousands of Chinese farmers and laborers were destitute, and having heard about California from relatives and friends who came over to work in the Gold Rush and build the Transcontinental Railway, they decided to join them.  Chinese immigrants detained at the Immigration Center in 1923. Photo: US National Archives Unfortunately, America's post-Civil War economy was in a downturn. Looking for someone to blame, public opinion and laws began to demonize Chinese-Americans for “taking jobs” and “draining public resources.” Everyone blithely ignored the fact that in those days, most Chinese immigrants were healthy adult males who provided cheap labor that enabled American businesses to prosper, and who required little or nothing from government schools, hospitals, or other public services. It didn’t matter. By 1883, a series of laws led to the Chinese Exclusion Act designed to screen out “undesirable” workers; only wealthy professionals were allowed in. Officials would go out to arriving ships and fast track the first and second class passengers, including most Europeans and a few prosperous Asians. Everyone else was herded into crowded barracks for weeks or months of interrogation and delays at Angel Island’s Immigration Center. Standing in those barracks, I tried to imagine what it must have been like: families separated, new mothers caring for babies in cramped quarters, men never permitted outside except in a tiny exercise yard. Hope was always in short supply. Heartache was carved into the wooden walls in the form of poetry.  Of course, there were many health and safety complaints — all ignored, until the Administration Building burned to the ground in 1940. Then the whole shebang was moved to San Francisco. And just three years later, to please China, our new ally in the Pacific, we finally repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act. I’d like to report that attitudes towards immigrants have become much more enlightened since then. Sadly, many Americans still demonize new arrivals — ignoring all evidence that immigrants actually help this country. You don't have to become rich or famous to help the US economy. “How immigrant workers in US have helped boost job growth and stave off a recession,” reads a recent AP headline. “More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has helped drive economic growth and create still-more job openings... Though U.S. inflation remains elevated, it has plummeted from its levels of two years ago.” And you’ll be happy to hear “There is no migrant crime surge,” says The New York Times. “In reality, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S. Immigrants have had lower incarceration rates — a measure for crime — than native-born Americans for at least 150 years, a recent study concluded.” The influx of immigrants in New York, Chicago, and Denver coincides with lower murder rates. Texas borderlands have less violent crime than the rest of the state or the nation. The statistics went on and on, but frankly, my eyes soon glazed over. After wandering around the Immigration Station a while, Rich and I suddenly realized we’d have to hotfoot it down to the port if we were going to have time to eat our picnic lunch before the ferry home.  "Goodness, Rich, it wouldn't be a picnic without ants." When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite Charles Addams cartoons. From the New Yorker, 1949 “I think we’ll be on time, so long as we take the shortcut,” Rich said. I groaned. As I stumbled down the raggedy steps, I thought about my own ancestors, who had the good fortune to slip into this country before the government established official immigration procedures in 1891. Who knows if my folks could have passed the stringent tests given today’s new arrivals? And I remembered Rich’s grandmother, who braved a terrible ocean voyage in steerage from Ireland to Ellis Island, vowing she’d never to set foot on a ship again (and she never did). Let’s face it, 97.1% of US residents are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Nobody has exclusive rights here. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”  Angel Island can be reached by ferries from Tiburon and San Francisco. They don't run often, so be sure to check the return times carefully. And remember: book in advance if you want to ride in the shuttle! SUBSCRIBERS If you miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. This post is part of my ongoing series OUT TO LUNCH IN CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO My goal is to discover some of San Francisco's most colorful neighborhoods so I can check out what's really going on in this zany town. Are we in a doom loop? Already on the rebound? Still fabulous? And where should we eat afterwards? These and other questions will be explored in upcoming posts. BROWSE PREVIOUS POSTS HERE DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Running across this wonderful meme yesterday, I paused to think about the women in my family. My great-grandmother Mary Langley crossed the continent by covered wagon, arriving on the West Coast around 1889. Her daughter Ramona would spend her youth as a silent film star and her later years as my outrageous grandmother. My mom led civil rights marches. They were among the countless lionhearted women who have given the devil a run for his money throughout California’s history. Take, for instance, “the Founding Mother of San Francisco,” Juana Briones de Miranda (1802 – 1889). A lesser woman might have considered birthing eleven children and adopting a twelfth to be occupation enough for anyone. But Juana was also running a medical and midwifery practice, a cattle ranch, and a thriving grocery business while developing real estate in what would become the city’s North Beach neighborhood and the suburb Palo Alto.  Juana Briones de Miranda, the Founding Mother of San Francisco When she dumped her deadbeat, abusive, alcoholic husband, Juana faced an uphill battle to keep her properties. In 1844, a woman on her own, especially one of mixed African-American, Native American, and Spanish descent — who couldn’t read or write — wasn’t considered capable of handling her own affairs. She gave those naysayers their comeuppance. With the help of a trusty lawyer friend, she remained a powerful influence in the city and matriarch of her family until her death at 87. Incredibly, I’d never heard of Juana until I started researching San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora for a visit this week. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that all eight billion humans living today share common ancestors from East Africa. According to paleoanthropologists (who know a lot more about this stuff than I do), fossil remains clearly indicate that Homo Sapiens first emerged there around 300,000 years ago and after hanging around for 100,000 years, began to spread out across the globe.  Known as the "Out of Africa" theory, this is the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) aka all of us. “When did you first realize you are African?” a sign asked all visitors when the museum opened in 2005. Today, says the website, the museum "celebrates Black cultures, ignites challenging conversations, and inspires learning through the global lens of the African Diaspora." Imagine my surprise when I arrived on Thursday to discover it’s been turned into a fine arts museum. “Wait, what?” I said to the person at the front desk. “Why?” Shrug. “Is there still information here about the diaspora?” “Of course. It’s everywhere throughout the museum.” Really? Because Rich and I hiked every inch of the three exhibition floors, eyeballing all the art and reading every text, seeking any hint of information about the most significant migration in human history. And we found nada, zip, zilch. I had been hoping the museum would tell me more about the African-Americans who helped build this city. But Juana was never mentioned, nor was Mary Ellen Pleasant, the first self-made millionaire of African-American heritage, often called “the Mother of Human Rights in California.” Like so many San Franciscans, Mary Ellen has an obscure past. She may have been the daughter of a voodoo priestess and a Hawaiian merchant on the East Coast. As a young woman she amassed a fortune in real estate and finance, spending much of it to free slaves and fight for civil rights. During the Gold Rush, she moved to San Francisco to establish the Underground Railroad there and remained, rescuing fleeing slaves and women in need. For many years she worked as a cook and housekeeper, overhearing the city’s movers and shakers, picking up insider tips that helped with her make even shrewder investments.  Mary Ellen Pleasant, first self-made millionaire of African-American heritage and the Mother of Human Rights in California Among her many legal battles, Mary Ellen fought to change the laws that prohibited Blacks from riding in San Francisco’s streetcars. Her success paved the way for 15-year-old Maya Angelou to became the city’s first African-American female streetcar conductor in 1943. “The thought of sailing up and down the hills of San Francisco in a dark-blue uniform, with a money changer at my belt, caught my fancy,” she wrote in her famous memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. At first, transit officials wouldn’t even let her fill out an application, but Maya went back every day for two weeks, and they finally relented. On the paperwork, she lied about her age, made up a “fable” about driving for a white woman in Arkansas, and got the job. “I clanged and cleared my way down Market Street,” she wrote, “with its honky-tonk homes for homeless sailors, past the quiet retreat of Golden Gate Park and along closed undwelled-in-looking dwellings of the Sunset District.”  Poet and author Maya Angelou in 1981. Photo: Oakland Tribune Maya’s checkered career included stints as an actress, singer, dancer, composer, playwright, and theatrical producer. She was a tireless civil rights activist who worked with Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, and Malcom X. But she is mostly remembered for her brilliant poetry and fearless memoirs. Her daily writing ritual began with checking into a hotel and lying on the bed with a legal pad, a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards, Roget’s Thesaurus, and the Bible. “I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my face.” This is the kind of stuff I’d hoped to learn at the Museum of the African Diaspora, but hey, I guess that’s why God, in her infinite wisdom, gave us Google: so we could dig out the facts for ourselves. The museum was part of then-mayor Willie Brown’s 1999 project to redevelop a blighted “skid row” into the park and cultural center now known as Yerba Buena Gardens. Emerging from the museum, Rich and I lingered on the park's sunlit lawn, listening to glorious tunes from legendary saxophonist Charles Unger.  A rapt audience listens to Charles Unger play the saxophone. Afterwards we headed across the street to lunch at The Grove. "We make honest, thoughtfully crafted comfort food,” says their website. “We’re independently owned, warm, woodsy, eclectic, outdoor, with a zillion details and oozing with soul.” Incredibly, this turned out to be an understatement. Co-owner Anna Zankel wanted to create “San Francisco’s living room,” and the atmosphere is delightfully homey. The breakfast burrito was some of the best food I’ve found in the city. This week, at the Tenderloin block party "Love Fest SF," former-mayor Willie Brown officially declared the death of the “doom loop,” the narrative that San Francisco is on a dystopian spiral into hell. Amen to that! As I looked around the Grove at the laughing, chatting, munching crowd, I thought of all the people who love this city not despite its oddball character but because of it. Yes, we are not like the others, and that’s fine with us.  Former SF Mayor Willie Brown (right) declares the "doom loop" narrative officially dead on August 3, 2024. Photo: Benjamin Fanjoy SF Chronicle. This is a gutsy, vibrant city and I'm not afraid to say so. In fact, I cherish the belief that when my feet hit the floor this morning, somewhere the devil of doom-loop misinformation was shouting, “Oh crap, she’s up! And working on another post about cheap and cheerful San Francisco. Dammit!”  Yerba Buena Gardens in downtown San Francisco is a pleasant half hour stroll from the Ferry Building. SUBSCRIBERS If you miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. This post is part of my ongoing series OUT TO LUNCH IN CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO My goal is to discover some of San Francisco's most colorful neighborhoods so I can check out what's really going on in this zany town. Are we in a doom loop? Already on the rebound? Still fabulous? And where should we eat afterwards? These and other questions will be explored in upcoming posts. BROWSE PREVIOUS POSTS HERE DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. 
The day is an open road stretching out before you. Roll down the windows, Step into your life, as if it were a fast car. —From Barbara Crooker’s Promise Along with strong black coffee, a bracing poem is one of my favorite ways to start the day. By the time I reach the breakfast table, carrying my steaming mug of Italian Roast and a bit of poetry, I’ve already glanced at the morning headlines and am holding on to my sanity (if at all) by my fingernails. 
My breakfast table today
I sometimes find myself clinging all day to a single line as if it were a rope thrown from a passing ship. “Still I rise,” I mutter, blessing Maya Angelou for this mantra when events seem hell bent on bringing me to my knees. “Still I rise.” I also cling to the wisdom of Karen Shepherd’s poem written in the voice of her dog, Birch. Are you gonna eat that? Are you gonna eat that? Are you gonna eat that? I’ll eat that. A blessed reminder of the way our best friends live in the moment and keep a firm grasp on life’s true priorities. I can’t imagine getting through a single day without the company of the written word to comfort, inform, and inspire me. How do the 57.4 million Americans who can’t read survive? Many don’t, and studies show the turning point comes in fourth grade. Any kid who doesn’t learn to read by the end of that school year has a two out of three chance of ending up in jail or on welfare. One of our local authors is trying to give children better odds. You may remember Dave Eggers for his modestly titled, Pulitzer-finalist bestseller, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. His technothriller The Circle is a movie on Netflix and the subject of the new documentary To Be Destroyed, which discusses why his book was banned in Rapid City, South Dakota and designated "to be destroyed." 
Dave Eggers
But to thousands of kids, Eggers is the guy who started 826 Valencia, a nonprofit that provides free tutoring services to help youngsters develop the skills and vision to express themselves through creative writing. It's also a pirate store. If you're planning to sail the Seven Seas, here's where you can stock up on such swashbuckling accoutrements as spyglasses, eyepatches, peg legs, Jolly Rogers, and of course, bottles of giant squid repellant, leech-based gangrene cures, and Scurvy Begone. The building’s zoning required a commercial venture, and Eggers figured, rightly, that selling pirate paraphernalia would attract youngsters (of all ages). Opened in 2002, the store took its name from the address — 826 Valencia — in San Francisco’s Mission District. Upstairs Egger installed his publishing company, McSweeny’s, and volunteers from his staff started teaching youngsters about writing as an act of courage and imagination. The kids’ best work was published, sometimes with forwards by public figures such as Gavin Newsom (then San Francisco’s mayor, now California’s governor) and Robin Williams. “We have to go check it out,” I told Rich. “You had me at pirate store.” We took the ferry to the city and hopped one of the vintage trollies, which let us off at the north end of Valencia — which, as we soon learned, is the dodgy end. Picking our way past shuttered storefronts and the occasional sidewalk sleeper, we stopped for coffee at Carlin’s café and laundromat. The staff was welcoming, my croissant was buttery perfection, and our espresso was as zingy as the bright ceramic cups it came in. 
Midmorning coffee at Carlin's
“And as if that wasn’t enough,” Rich said, “I get to look through this glass wall here and watch some guy folding his clean underwear!” After this refreshing pause, we strolled south to the more vibrant section of Valencia Street, with its oddball shops and the famous murals of Clarion Alley. When we reached the Pirate Supply Store, Rich ambled about happily investigating its treasures while I worked my way to the back so I could peer into the kids’ now-empty workspace. “We have 38 kids in the summer program,” explained a young associate named Brynn. “With our school outreach programs, we’re serving a thousand kids in the city.” The organization has opened chapters in eight other US cities and established 826 National and 826 Digital, touching the lives of 710,000 American students and countless more in nine other countries. Well, shiver me timbers, mateys — that’s a lot of budding writers! Fair winds to them all. 
At the heart of 826 Valencia, this space is for kids to hone their writing skills.
A block further on, we encountered the scrappy, old-school Dog Eared Books, lone survivor of the nine bookstores that once graced Valencia Street. Modernization? Don’t make them laugh. Sales receipts and inventories are still written by hand in an atmosphere of creaky wooden floors and the heady scent of vintage paper. 
In Dog Eared Books, Rich pulls out his phone to check the address of our next stop, Fabulosa Books.
“You can find the answers on the Internet in a split second,” long-time Dog Eared customer Bryan Foster once told journalists. “But unless you read books, you don’t know what the questions are.” Finding the right questions and answers is never easy, and it’s particularly tough in parts of the US where access to "inappropriate" books is restricted. That’s why the Castro’s famous LGBTQ+ bookstore, Fabulosa, launched the grassroots, donation-funded Books not Bans project, shipping free books to areas where gender-themed works are taboo. In a similar spirit, the national Banned Book Club provides free digital versions of a wide range of banned subjects. What makes a book “inappropriate”? In 61% of cases, it’s sex. I used to think teenage boys were the most sex-obsessed creatures on earth, but it’s clear they’ve been surpassed by conservative school board members. These officials have denounced thousands of books — To Kill a Mockingbird, Like Water for Chocolate, and Peter Pan, for instance — over alleged “sexual content.” 
Peter Pan is known worldwide as a free-spirited, mischievous young boy and an icon of innocence. Now some claim he's luring kids into thoughts of violence and sexual deviance. Could this be a case of "the eye of the beholder"?
And it could get worse soon. You may have heard of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 — a blueprint for overhauling the government along more conservative lines. Page five of the 922-page document defines as “pornography” any book contributing to the "sexualization of children” (see list above!). They want “porn” like Peter Pan outlawed nationwide so that educators, booksellers, and librarians selling or lending these books would face criminal prosecution as sex offenders. That’s seriously nuts. While we're growing up, books are supposed to help us learn about sex, and love, and how relationships work. Stories teach us about fairness and honor, betrayal and heartbreak, compassion and cruelty. Novels show us that monsters are real, and that they can be beaten — but sometimes aren’t. Books help us rehearse for real life. They let us catch glimpses a larger world, cope with loss, and begin to dream of the kind of person we want to be. Saying books shouldn’t teach us about the realities of life is as ridiculous as telling a dog it’s unseemly to stick his head out the car window. Everyone has the right to experience, if only metaphorically, the glorious rush of wind in our face as we drink in the full, tumultuous wildness of the world, grinning from ear to ear. And that’s why I read poetry every morning: to revel for a moment in the rapture of being alive. 
A walk down Valencia Street will lead you to all these places, plus incredible eateries and more oddball shops. Fabulosa Books is a mile east in the Castro; we had lunch out there, enjoying the Frango Acebolado (Chicken with Onions, $20) in the Brazilian Café del Casa.
NO POST NEXT WEEK I'm away at a family reunion in the mountains with no wifi. SUBSCRIBERS If you miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. This post is part of my ongoing series OUT TO LUNCH IN CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO My goal is to discover some of San Francisco's most colorful neighborhoods so I can check out what's really going on in this zany town. Are we in a doom loop? Already on the rebound? Still fabulous? And where should we eat afterwards? These and other questions will be explored in upcoming posts. BROWSE PREVIOUS POSTS HERE DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  A good ending begins with chocolate cake. I don’t know if you’ve firmed up your plans for entering the afterlife, but until recently I favored the viewpoint popularized by that old reprobate Woody Allen: “I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Now I’ve learned this is an old-fashioned attitude that has failed to keep pace with modern trends. Baby Boomers are giving up the ghost at a rate of 2.6 million year, and a hot new industry is helping us exit with dignity, grace, and that 1960s I-gotta-be-me spirit. “I want to die at sunset. I want to watch the sky change and turn orange and pink and purple,” says Alua Arthur in her TED Talk. “I want to hear the wind fluttering through the trees, and smell very faintly nag champa amber incense … I want to die with my socks on my feet, because I get cold. And if I die with a bra on, I’m coming to haunt everybody.” Yikes! I’m obviously way behind the curve, because it never occurred to me to think about what undergarments I’d like to wear as I cross the Rainbow Bridge, nor have I considered optimal lighting or fragrances. Luckily it’s not too late to get my final act together, says Arthur, America’s most famous death doula.  Death doula Alua Arthur, founder of Going with Grace What’s a death doula, you ask? You may have heard of birth doulas, who provide physical, emotional, and informational support to women during childbirth. A death doula does much the same thing for those getting ready to depart this world. Because despite what Woodie says, you will be there when it happens. And chances are you’ll find yourself considerably easier in mind, body, and soul if you do a little prep work to get ready for your swan song. It sounds sensible, but I have to admit, when people I knew organized a death doula talk, I wasn’t madly keen. “Do we have to go?” I asked Rich. “Sounds a little depressing.” With typical husbandly sensitivity, he told me not to be a wimp; we might learn something useful. And we did. For a start, I learned that many attendees felt a similar eye-rolling reluctance, and yet within ten minutes we were all jumping in to talk about our own mortality. We discussed getting our affairs in order, assessing medical interventions, and maintaining the kind of autonomy that makes life worth living. To keep the conversation rolling, our death doula, Rebecca Jones, produced a death deck of cards with thought-provoking questions.  And she introduced us to the idea of death cafés, where strangers meet to eat cake, drink tea, and discuss death in a safe, confidential, supportive environment.  To find a Death Café near you see the link at the end of this post. “We could organize a death café,” Rebecca said. “But there’s a national organization that owns the name. We would have to call it something else.” “From a marketing standpoint, a change of wording might not be bad,” I commented. “We could call it a ‘death group,’” she mused aloud. “Actually, the word ‘café’ wasn’t the one I thought might be off-putting,” I said. I’m not the only one who feels reluctant to use the d-word. “In my family, we don't really talk about death,” says health journalist Sara Kliff. “Because I am as terrified of having serious end-of-life conversations as the next person… ‘Death’ is the word that confuses the conversation, that makes people too afraid, and too angry, and too frantic to keep talking.” Rich likes to think of death as a journey, the ultimate luggage-free trip for which you don’t even need a toothbrush. Similarly, the poet Mary Oliver invites us to approach the transition with bright-eyed anticipation: “I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?”  Mary Oliver (1935 - 2019) in 2012. Photo: Mariana Cook “So how do we cultivate that kind of curiosity?” I asked Rich. As usual, our solution was to organize a fact-finding day trip to San Francisco — in this case, to explore attitudes toward eternal rest. We began in the cemetery tucked behind the city's oldest building, the original 1781 adobe chapel known as Mission Dolores. Officially it’s named after St. Francis of Assisi, but everyone uses the old name taken from the nearby Arroyo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (Our Lady of Sorrows Creek). In the lovely, creepy cemetery, among the old roses, tilting tombstones, and meandering stone paths, there stands a somber image of the man who built the first missions: Father Junipero Serra. When I was a kid he was hailed as the hero who “civilized” California. Nowadays his work is viewed as cultural imperialism, converting (not always voluntarily) thousands of native Californians to Catholicism, European ways, and a lifetime of labor. Although many Miwok and Ohlone converts were said to be buried there, Rich and I couldn’t find any marked graves, just a statue inscribed “In prayerful memory of our faithful Indians” and a reproduction of an Ohlone hut. We did locate the final resting places of California’s first Mexican governor, wealthy landowners, and Irish and English fortune hunters. One of these was Yankee Sullivan, a champion boxer turned "shoulder striker," hired to prevent people from voting for candidates other than his employer. He was arrested by the infamous, self-appointed Vigilance Committee and died in jail of suicide or possibly murder. His tombstone says, “Thou shalt bring forth my soul out of tribulation and in thy mercy thou shalt destroy mine enemies." I didn’t get the impression Mr. Sullivan is resting all that easily. Stepping out of the cemetery into the largely Hispanic Mission District, I found a far more convivial attitude toward the afterlife. According to Mexican tradition, you never really die until your name is spoken for the last time. So people make a point of telling stories — often funny, outrageous ones — about the departed. Officially this happens November 1 and 2, Los Dias de los Muertos (the Days of the Dead), but memories are kept fresh year-round. I love this tradition and am doing my best to give my family and friends plenty to talk about after I’m gone. Eventually we made our way to the restaurant San Jalisco, named for the Mexican state that gave the world mariachi music, tequila, and Saint Toribio Romo, a martyred priest famous for miraculous assistance to immigrants seeking to cross the US-Mexico border. The restaurant was jammed with laughing people and grinning skeletons. We ordered a seafood cocktail called Levanta Muertos (Raise the Dead), which I expected to be blow-the-top-of-your-skull-off spicy but found surprisingly mild. “That’s never going to reanimate a corpse,” I said. Rich happily slurped up more shrimp. “True, but it’s giving me a new lease on life.” As I sat sipping beer among the eyepopping images of our common mortality, I realized that far from being gloomy, they were comforting reminders of the joy that comes from doing our best to live each day to the fullest. “When it’s over,” said Mary Oliver, “I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms… I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”  INTRIGUED? Find a Death Café Near You Learn More About Death Doulas Watch Alua Arthur's TED Talk Discover the Death Deck Game Enjoy Mary Oliver's poem When Death Comes SUBSCRIBERS If you miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. This post is part of my ongoing series OUT TO LUNCH IN CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO My goal is to discover some of San Francisco's most colorful neighborhoods so I can check out what's really going on in this zany town. Are we in a doom loop? Already on the rebound? Still fabulous? And where should we eat afterwards? These and other questions will be explored in upcoming posts. BROWSE PREVIOUS POSTS HERE DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Old-school wisdom, preserved for modern times. “One day if I do go to heaven,” wrote columnist Herb Caen, “I'll look around and say, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.’” I don’t know if he’d be pleased or outraged by the headline, “Much-Maligned San Francisco Ranked 7th Best City in the World.” Clearly Mr. Caen would vote for his city to be proclaimed top banana; the rest of us are just relieved to get an honest assessment that doesn’t suggest it’s already in the dumpster. “Despite San Francisco’s meticulously documented challenges, job opportunities and infrastructure buildout pave the way as the world continues to rush in like it always has,” says Resonance Consultancy’s 2024 World’s Best Cities Report. “High salaries that draw global workers,” make it the “number one place for start-up innovation.”  I’m convinced much of San Francisco’s bad press is due to readers being fed up with 175 years of journalists gushing about the city’s charm, creativity, and get-rich-quick opportunities. With all due respect to Mr. Caen, claiming that San Francisco surpasses Paradise itself may be a slight exaggeration. But there’s no denying that ever since the Gold Rush of 1849, the city has offered new arrivals the chance to build a better life. And among the earliest and most successful of those newcomers were the Italians. Of course, technically they weren’t Italians at the time. Unifying the kingdoms and city states of the Italian peninsula was still under discussion — by which I mean there was a power grab of Biblical proportions, with wars, insurrections, and revolutions wreaking havoc across the land, destroying property, crops, and economies, to say nothing of human life. Thousands of sensible families chose to leave the chaos behind and seek their fortune in the New World.  “They were lured to California by the Gold Rush,” wrote historian Michael LeMay, “but instead of mining, most became wine growers, vegetable farmers, and merchants, giving rise to the Italian American folklore that ‘the miners mined the mines, but the Italians mined the miners.’” Many opened businesses in San Francisco’s North Beach district, soon dubbed “Little Italy,” and got to work introducing their new neighbors to the joys of espresso, biscotti, pizza, and chianti. Soon the city’s Italian-Americans were making headlines: baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, chocolatier Domingo Ghirardelli, mayor Joseph Alioto, singer and entrepreneur Antonietta Alessandro, poet and City Lights proprietor Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joe Finocchio whose Prohibition speakeasy featured drag shows that put some extra roaring into the 1920s … there are so many to be proud of. These are the immigrant stories I was raised on: tales of everyone’s ancestors who arrived, often with nothing, to become part of the free nation George Washington called “the last great experiment for promoting human happiness.” Every Fourth of July, as we celebrate that experiment, I wonder what Washington and Jefferson would think of us now. In the mid twentieth century, North Beach became home base to the Beat Generation — or, as San Franciscans dubbed them, “beatniks,” a mashup of “beat” and the ending of “sputnik.” (For younger readers, sputnik was the first artificial satellite to circle earth, launched in 1957 by the Soviets, igniting the Cold War’s Space Race.). If you’re thinking the beatniks and the Italians made strange bedfellows, think again. Along with recipes for ossobuco and gelato, some arrived carrying passionate beliefs about the dangers of materialism, the value of the individual, and the sanctity of intellectual freedom. The Beats didn’t invade Little Italy, they grew up in its coffee houses, late-night bars, and home-style eateries like Mama’s on Washington Square.  Beat poets and artists in North Beach Rich was never a beatnik, but he does claim to be a quarter Italian on the Costello side of the family; perhaps that’s is why, in his youth, he spent so many Saturday mornings in North Beach eating at Mama’s. “Best breakfast in town,” he told me. “Let’s see what they offer for lunch.” But first, we had a few stops to make. If I’ve learned anything from living in Spain, it’s that it takes good, strong coffee to properly launch any excursion, and the area around Washington Square, the big, grassy park in North Beach, offered plenty of choices. We wandered into Mara’s, an old school bakery with two tiny tables, a dozen kinds of biscotti, and espresso powerful enough to make your eyes pop. The proprietor and a few old friends were taking their ease at the back table, chatting in Italian. After serving us, he returned to his conversation, and Rich and I settled at the other table, feeling as if we’d been magically transported to the old country.  Biscotti and espresso at Mara's Nearby, across Washington Square, stood Saints Peter and Paul Church, located, rather ominously, at 666 Filbert Street. (For atheist readers, 666 is “the number of the beast” in the Bible’s Book of Revelation. Scholars differ on its exact significance but agree it’s got such dreadful karma that they invented a special term for fearing this number: hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.(Don't ask me to pronounce it.) Undaunted, when we'd drained our last drops of espresso, Rich and I walked over to check out the church. Movie buffs might recognize it from the sniper scene in Dirty Harry and from San Andreas, where it was pulverized by an earthquake and tidal wave. Which is ironic, as the original 1884 building actually was destroyed in the earthquake of 1906. After it was rebuilt in 1924, it survived five separate bombing attacks by anti-Catholic anarchists. That’s some wonky karma! After strolling about the neighborhood a while, we eventually fetched up at Mama’s, which was bright, cheerful, and packed with people of every age, race, and background, all talking at once. I stood at the counter to place my order with a tall, robust man who turned out to be the original owners’ grandson. “I used to come here fifty years ago,” Rich told him. Our host grinned. “Welcome back!” he said warmly, a publican with enough experience — and kindheartedness — to make it sound authentic. As we sat down, I asked Rich, “Is it as good as you remembered?” “Hasn’t changed a bit,” he said happily. I was delighted to hear it, as revisiting old haunts can be tricky, infused as they are with unreliable memories. “San Francisco isn’t what it used to be, and it never was,” said Herb Caen. “But when there’s a good bar across the street, almost any street, and a decent restaurant around almost any corner, we are not yet a lost civilization.” In 1997, San Francisco marked Mr. Caen’s passing with a spectacular fireworks display over Aquatic Park that ended with a pyrotechnic image of the manual typewriter he called his “Loyal Royal.” And everyone imagined him standing at the Pearly Gates, looking around, saying, “It ain’t bad, but …”  In April 1996, Mr. Caen, 80, won a special Pulitzer Prize for his columns, which were a "continuous love letter to San Francisco." We still miss him.  As alert readers may have noticed, North Beach isn't actually a beach. It was once, but now, thanks to landfill projects, it's completely landlocked. WHY I WON'T BE POSTING NEXT WEEK I'm taking time off to celebrate the Fourth of July in the traditional California manner: refurbishing our go bags and restocking our Apocalypse Chow Food Locker. Wildfire season is upon us, and we're currently on a Red Flag Alert for possible evacuation. Wish me luck! SUBSCRIBERS If you miss a post announcement, please check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. This post is part of my ongoing series OUT TO LUNCH IN CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO My goal is to discover some of San Francisco's most colorful neighborhoods so I can check out what's really going on in this zany town. Are we in a doom loop? Already on the rebound? Still fabulous? And where should we eat afterwards? These and other questions will be explored in upcoming posts. BROWSE PREVIOUS POSTS HERE DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. |
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Karen McCann
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