Grand Illusions

It's always kind of thrilling for me when I see a movie that is set in a familiar place; somehow having been in the exact same spot as the characters are makes everything more vivid. Likewise, it's cool to visit a place that I recognize from film or TV. My hometown of Washington, DC is always in a lot of shows, and lately I've seen a few things shot in Atlanta, where my sister lives.

When we were in San Francisco, our plan to visit Lombard Street was actually foiled by a movie production. It turned out to be San Andreas, a disaster film starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, something I probably never would have gone to see, but I might now. On the plane on the way home, I read something about the new Planet of the Apes movie, and it reminded me that not only is it set in San Francisco, but there's a large part of the story that takes place in Muir's Woods, which we also visited.

As a rule, Heidi will not go to see any movie where animals are in danger or distress, so we hadn't seen either of the films in this reboot of the classic series. (As an aside, she doesn't have any trouble with seeing the likes of Charlton Heston mistreated.) Heidi stayed in California for a conference, though, and so one of the things I decided to do on my own this week is to catch up with Caesar and his crew.

I watched Rise of Planet of the Apes this morning, and wow! That was the jackpot for a setting junkie like me. Isn't that the boardwalk at Muir's Woods? Look there's a Bay City Trolley! And I could barely even follow the action of the climactic battle, because it took place right on the section of the Golden Gate Bridge that I had walked on just three short days ago.

Movies can be deceptive, though; it's their nature. A quick search on the internet revealed that most of the movie was actually filmed in Vancouver, and that big scene at the end? Green screens on a sound stage. So, I'm a little deflated, but... I'm definitely in for Dawn of Planet of the Apes! Did you see those previews? They are all over Market Street, and this time? The redwoods are real.

Dear Brutus

Of the "geo" studies, I guess I find geography the more accessible. Once, when I was in college, I caught a ride from upstate New York down to Washington with a couple of geology majors. Oy! You should have heard those guys all the way down I-81 through Pennsylvania where the road has been blasted out of the Appalachian Mountains. It was like they were speaking a different language; they were all Shawgunk this, and orogeny that. I still have no idea what they were saying.

Even so, when I was flying across the country this week, certain geographical features made me curious about the geological forces that formed them. The plains are so flat; the Badlands so sculpted; some rivers are super bendy; some mountains look sheer and stony, but others look folded and crinkly. What makes them that way? If only geologists spoke my language, or I theirs.

I understand how the mountains of Maine were carved by glaciers, but San Francisco and Marin County are hills and mountains that seem to rise directly out of the sea, a phenomena that couldn't be more different than the wide beaches and wetlands we have here on the east coast. After spending a couple of days in northern California, it occurred to me to look it up, and I found that I actually do know how they were formed.

Sometime between 24 and 34 million years ago two tectonic plates collided and pushed those mountains right up. That plate boundary is still there today; we know it as the San Andreas Fault.

Perhaps there's hope for me, yet.

In the Desert

I've written before about what an inveterate window-looker I am on airplanes. Just this week, I've had the chance to spend over 11 hours with my nose smashed up against the double-paned plexiglass as I flew cross country not once, but twice.

On shorter flights, it's relatively easy to figure out where you might be, but that's not always the case once you get over a couple of hours. Throw in some cloud cover and you've got nothing more than educated guess about what that landscape below might be. When I was a kid, the pilot was always very informative, often pointing out landmarks below as we flew past them. I saw the Grand Canyon from the air long before I ever peeked over its rim in person, and I knew it was the Grand Canyon, because the pilot told me, dammit.

In later years, I was fascinated by those flat screens in economy class that traced our route across the Atlantic, but that was in back in the day when everyone had to watch the same movie when you flew, and then only if you rented the headset. These days, many planes have wifi, and with internet access you can track your flight on your phone. That was not the case with either of the 737s that I flew on this time. It was all up to me to reckon our location.

In general, I think I did a pretty good job, using the huge, obvious things to guide me. We didn't fly over the Grand Canyon, but I could see the Rockies and the Great Salt Lake. On the way out there, I also saw something really strange in the Nevada desert.

It was like this giant circle made of concentric rings with an opening in the middle that had some kind of tower or structure in the center. It was so odd that I took a few pictures of it with my phone so that I could identify it later.

Today I was planning to listen to some podcasts I as we flew. I had Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, some Slate Gabfests, and This American Life, and about an hour and a half in, I decided to catch up on the Writer's Almanac for today. Just as Garrison Keillor said, It was on this day in 1847 that the Mormon leader Brigham Young led his people into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, I looked out my window, and there it was, the Great Salt Lake!

I gasped as Keillor continued, He was leading a group of Mormons from Illinois to find a new settlement in the West where they might not be bothered. Brigham Young had gotten sick during the journey and was being carried prostrate in a wagon. But when they reached the edge of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, the wagon stopped as it came to a natural lookout point. According to legend, Brigham Young was able to describe the scene below without looking. Then he sat up and looked out at the valley and said, "This is the right place. Drive on."

To be honest, from my point of view, the place did not look that welcoming, but it was really cool to be able to make that judgment in person.

Following that amazing coincidence, I turned to the latest issue of Saveur Magazine that I had also downloaded before my trip. I was swiping through, reading with interest a tale of Swedish midsummer celebration and the story of a woman who lives on an island in the Penobscot Bay during the summer, when the next image I saw was...

concentric circles in the desert!

It was an article about the Burning Man Festival.

According to their website: Once a year, tens of thousands of participants gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance. They depart one week later, having left no trace whatsoever. 

Question? Answered!

A Thousand Stories

There's not a lot of air conditioning here in San Francisco, probably because the climate just doesn't call for it. Still, we were a little surprised to find our hotel room equipped with a ceiling fan and big, double hung windows that open wide. On the ninth and top floor of our circa 1910 building, our room looks east over a painted iron fire escape and a gorgeous city scape. During the day, the bay peeks out from between buildings, but at night the view is even better in some ways.

Last night after we turned the lights out, I sat for a while at the window. The thrum and muffle of the streets rose up and into the room on the cool night air. Occasionally a car horn or clear phrase voiced by an invisible person pierced the steady hum. Hundreds of windows lit the skyline, some shaded or too far away to be anything other than light, others with visible details: here a stove, there a lamp, a TV, an empty chair, a man brushing his teeth. 

I sat in the darkness, city above, city below, and then surrounded by the city and its sounds I slipped into bed and slept.

It's All Uphill from Here

We walked around six miles today exploring San Francisco. Armed with my trusty tour book and hotel map, I plotted a course that took us through Union Square, down Market Street to the  Ferry Terminal and Market, along the Embarcadero, and through Fisherman's Wharf to Ghiradelli Square. The only thing I wasn't completely sure of were the hills, but I figured if we stayed close to the waterfront we would be fine. My return route involved hopping a cable car to take us up and over Russian Hill with a quick stop at Lombard Street.

Turns out, I wasn't the only one trying to avoid hills and after a quick glance at the long line of people at the bottom of Hyde Street, we agreed to walk up, and possibly hop the cable car en route. Wow! What a climb! We were huffing our way up when behind us a bell rang cheerfully to alert anyone hoping to catch a ride that there were no seats on this car. With a sigh, we continued our ascent, catching up with the stopped cable car a couple of blocks further.

Yellow police tape blocked the street, and the only way to get to Lombard Street was to go down and back up. We paused to catch our breaths, hoping the situation would be resolved shortly. The folks on the cable car waited, too, and any car who tried to enter was waved away by the police. Finally it became evident that we would not be able to pass this way any time soon, and so with a grumble, we turned left and down a street so steep that cars were not allowed to parallel park; rather they pulled straight in to the curb.

Halfway down the block I spied a staircase with a street sign (!) leading in the direction we wanted to go, so we took it, and a at the top there was a short block that led us to the "crookedest street" in the world, and a young man who waved us away. It seems that they were shooting a movie, and they needed Lombard Street clear. From above we heard someone call action and smoke billowed. Below, a single figure crossed the street with his shopping cart. A few minutes later we were allowed to quickly descend, where we were met by a confused cop. "How did you all get through?" he wondered.

Our adventure was not over yet. Down we climbed to pick up another cable car line to take us back to our hotel. After waiting in a long curvy queue, we hopped on board and were snapping some pictures when the friendly conductor informed us that there was a problem with the cable in Chinatown, and we would have to switch to a shuttle bus there. Not us, though. No we hiked another four blocks up hill and waited for yet another cable car. When we climbed off a few minutes later, it was all downhill to our hotel.

Later, relaxing with my feet up, I did a little research about these famous hills. I discovered that an enterprising citizen has actually created an app that will show you how hilly the streets around you are, so you can plan accordingly. "Sometimes I like to take the hilliest route possible," he writes. With somewhat of a different frame of mind, I punched in the address of my hotel, and here's the image I got:

Since red means uphill, that explains a lot! Clearly MC Escher designed this city!

California Here We Are

Our flight touched down at 11:15 am local time, which provided more than enough time to be crammed into the tiniest airplane seat I have ever experienced, but the weather here in San Francisco, 68 and sunny, promised to make up for the inconvenience.

At our hotel, that attitude of friendly accommodation continued, and they allowed us to check in hours ahead of the regular time. After dropping off our bags, we were off, meeting up with a friend from school who is here for the same conference that Heidi will attend. We ate lunch at a local place and then used our handy hotel-provided map to find the Cable Car Museum, which was a steep little hike up and over Nob Hill.

Watching the ginormous gears that actually spin the cables that drag those famous cars around this town was fascinating, and on a whim, I bought a book at the gift shop called Historic Walks in San Francisco: 18 Trails Through the City's Past. With that in hand, we walked down Washington Street to Chinatown and picked up the tour at stop 11. Yikes! If our guide was even half accurate, we learned that the history of that neighborhood is tightly woven together by opium, prostitution, gambling, prostitution, government corruption, prostitution, gang riots over a prostitute, prostitution, slave markets where girls were sold into prostitution, prostitution, squalid places where sick and old prostitutes were dumped to die, and of course prostitution. Even Rube Goldberg owned a brothel! (Wouldn't you like to see that cartoon?)

After all that sordid history, we climbed four flights of stairs to visit the oldest Chinese temple in the US. Despite French doors flung open to a wide balcony overlooking Waverly Place, the air was thick with incense. Oranges were stacked on every flat surface and hundreds of slips of red paper hung from the lanterns covering the ceiling, each representing an offering and a prayer.

Back on the street, we made our way back along Grant Avenue to St. Mary's, and at the bottom of California Street we hopped a cable car and rode back up and over Nob Hill, and then walked on down Hyde Street to our hotel.

Here We Come

When I was a kid, our family had the good fortune to be able to fly for free since my dad worked for an airline. Back then, we had some good friends who moved to Huntington Beach, California, and we traveled from our home in New Jersey to visit them often. Even before they lived there, though, California was our vacation destination more than once. We visited Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, then flew north to see the central coast and the Redwoods. A few years later, we had other friends who lived in Monterey, which was also a fun trip.

As much as my brother, sister, and I traveled by airplane, it never really lost its excitement for us, and we never grew tired of visiting the Golden State. There was always some point in our journey where one of us would turn to the others and sing, softly at first, California here I come...

And then a chorus of three would continue:

right back where I started from.

Then a little louder,

Open up those Golden Gates--

now

the 

BIG 

finish,

California here we come!