I left my harp in Sam Crabs Disco

This is my memory of a joke about San Francisco and Tony Bennett. In the city of crabs you can have them boiled fried or baked together with clam chowder in a hollowed out gigantic bread roll.

I attended a wedding between a French Champagne salesman and an Iranian World Bank worker and took in the sights of San Francisco as well.

   
Coming from a hot Indonesian climate and a people centered community into the chilly society of hardheaded capitalism was indeed a reality check

Arriving at twilight in a long northerly arc from Asia, snow capped mountains appeared in the distance, then the sun dried soil came into view, coming down to the coastline that defines the USA gave us reference points from the air.
The city seems to sprawl over bays with the land connected by many bridges.


Once on the ground there was an endless wait at immigration while our documents were checked, fingers and thumbs on both hand scanned and our faces photographed. Then surprisingly straight through customs with out even a glance of our belongings.
I have never seen so many people in wheel chairs queuing at immigration!


I podered the popularity of wheelchairs. Is because of the anticipated long queues or a tactic to get a seat with good leg room?

As they say in the states we checked in to the King George hotel on the corner of Mason and Geary. A cute 8 story old fashioned homely place. After a sip of wine I was fast asleep


. Some time in the night I was awoken by police car sirens and flashing lights. It was nothing to do with us just the normal Saturday night drunks and drug addicts.



Next morning when it was just light I went exploring. I remember being advised not to walk one way but I could not remember which way. So I set off in the clear morning air across the street past he corner Diner and along Geary street. I had only gone one block when I noticed a police car pull up with another close behind, The female Hispanic police officer gave orders to someone behind me to stop. A derelict with a dog. The four cops spread out and asked me to move out of the way. This poor wretch and his dog were interrogated while on the next corner there were two police cars blocking the road and a policeman was interrogating a guy sitting in the gutter with his wheel chair near by. I have no idea what was going on. The scene was like looking in to the future of the lives of some of the delinquent students I have taught.


Walking on there were a few blacks sleeping on the pavement and a few crazies wanting to sell me some broken down electronic gear. There was a blond women of 40 + drinking some amber fluid from a water bottle while she was chatting to a large African American guy. A couple of hookers passed. Well, I presumed they were hookers as they had on very short dresses on this somewhat fresh Sunday morning.


I managed to get back to the hotel after several polite beggars hustling me for money. My Indonesian rupiah would not have done much for them so I did not respond.

The city straddles a hill with a monument to Christopher Columbus on the top.

. The hippy suburb of Haight, pronounced 8 evolved in the sixties as the hippy movement seemed to migrate to San Francisco with flowers in their hair and LSD in their system. Today it is still vibrant although the fashions have changed somewhat. The people look a little immature and “Punkish” as they are trying to emulate the protestors of the sixties who were protesting about the war in Vietnam and the excesses of Capitalism. Now these pimple faced, comfortable middle class kids have nothing to rebel against except their parents and looking at the way they dress I guess that they have been successful .

Then there is Castro, the Gay suburb. Specialty shops with names like "rock hard" and "hand job" stand out in a well manicured street of cute houses and neatly trimmed hedges. What was thought of a radical in the sixties in now common place. There are shops full of glass bongs and the weed to go with them You can even buy mouth spray that enables you to speak like a gay person! I thought about buying some for Alan Jones.

But he would never use it in public.

“Sitting on the dock of the bay” watching the world go by was written Lou Reed Reed .

One of the most popular songs written about San Francisco. I am sure you knew that. But did you know he received electroconvulsive therapy in his teen years to "cure" homosexual behavior?

In an interview, Reed said of the experience:


“They put the thing down your throat so you don't swallow your tongue, and they put electrodes on your head. That's what was recommended in Rockland County to discourage homosexual feelings. The effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable. You can't read a book because you get to page 17 and have to go right back to page one again.” They should have tried that on Alan !

. The sun bleached landscape of white concrete is chilled by a stiff westerly breeze as tourists scurry from one tacky bayside stall to another down at “ Fisherman’s Warf” . Looking back up the hill Pete Seger’s song comes to mind “Little boxes on the hill side little boxes in the bay all made of ticky tacky all look just the same”

Being earthquake prone there are few high buildings and an absence of tall trees


One cannot help to be impressed with the cable cars.


The cable car, an ingenious carriage of the 18th century attaches itself or grips an underground cable that pulls it up the steep hills and down the other side to the bay.

The operator of the cable car is called a grip man, quite a skilful job as only 30% of those who attend the training course pass. They have to grip and release the cable at certain points where several cables cross each other. Not being able to reverse when they come to the end of their destination they are pushed by hand on to a round table top set into the road and then the tabletop and the car are rotated 360 degrees and pushed back onto the track ready for the next load of passengers.
Walking the streets of San Francisco at 6 30 in the morning is cold, the homeless stand out of the wind shaking their cardboard cups. Carpet under felt seems to be the product of choice of these lost people who sleep out in the cold. They are mainly African Americans who have chosen to be homeless or have become homeless through drug addiction, unemployment, poor school grades or just inadequate coping mechanisms, in what appears to be a society of abundance.


Television is less than inspiring. The main story today is a closed freeway with power lines down across the road. This is a 15 minute story about nothing; containing a mountain of information about taking an alternative route “We don’t know as yet whether the power line are a live or not ,we will update you as soon as it becomes clear” The ads begin; lawyers prospecting for business about a drug that may cause health problems ,urging anyone who has taken the drug while pregnant to contact them to learn what their rights are”

Then the weather so detailed and so well explained that by the end of the report you have forgotten what the temperature is going to be today. So much advice about dressing ,”the secret is layers, so that you can peel back as the sun becomes warm;”
More ads about some silly belt that exercises your abdominal muscles or abs. This karate black belt gadget apparently works 600% better than doing sit ups. Talk about information overload?

I can understand why some Americans have psychological illnesses. Watching the TV ads makes you feel inadequate, you are either too fat, too skinny, too rich or too poor. There seems to be a product for every condition that you think you suffer from, and” it is so cheap, such a good investment that you can sleep well knowing that you have made the right purchase decision.”


May be I should buy that gay mouth spray ? Oh ,I am not sure…… does it come with an American accent ? Can you get it with a Jewish accent?? who would I give it too ?…. It is all too hard …. I am so confused. I had better go and ask my shrink!



This is a city of 800,000 people. not to mention the 6.5 million who live in the burbs around the expansive bay. San Francisco is the closest port to China.
The first Chinese arrived in the 1850’s to do what they do best ; look for gold.

The bridge named The Golden Gate completed in 1937 and painted(lucky) red not only has served as a beacon for latter day immigrants from China who are looking for a better life but is also used to transport cars, trucks and busses across the bay.
The most recent arrivals look for work as cleaners in hotels and live in a bustling Chinatown in the heart of the city. Looking up at the shabby apartment blocks, their underwear hangs unashamedly from the windows while they are scurrying about trying to make a dollar.


Americans have a wonderful way with words.


Superlatives dominate the sentences.


Starbucks, what a name! It is the embodiment of American cultural values; Flying the flag of capitalism and the American dream all in one word. The idea, that it is possible for everyone in America to be rich, successful and possibly famous comes unstuck when you walk the streets of San Francisco at dawn.
The scavengers are up and about. The pigeons forage on the pavements and are so fat that they can barely fly 20 meters in one stretch. The industrious Chinese, old men and women carry their plastic bags from one garbage bin to another and with rubber gloves and protective arm covers reach into the bowels of the bins retrieving bottles and cans and hobble with their loads to the street corner. The corner of Mason and Geary is the mini depot on the pavement for 20 large plastic garbage bags where a fellow countryman arrives in a mini truck to collect them.

The less industrious homeless, African American males pick over the


Garbage looking for cigarette butts and discarded Starbucks coffee cups that they can use when begging.


This morning I saw a police pickup truck cruising the streets. It was filled with supermarket trolleys, bits of clothing and assorted junk.

They too were scavenging for people sleeping on the pavement.


They spotted a figure wrapped in felt and plastic in the doorway of Maceys’ department store. The police truck quietly pulled up and the officers got out and photographed the sleeping bundle before waking it up.
They guy was Caucasian in his forties. Filthy. He got to his feet and gathered up his belongings and stuffed them in a bag while one policeman was writing out what looked like a parking infringement ticket.
The formality of getting the vagrant to sign the ticket seemed to me a pathetic attempt at good manners in what appeared to be a hopeless situation.
The police truck and the vagrant moved on and went their separate ways as a large council water truck came by spraying the street clean and removing the evidence of failure in the system.

Now the suits and the more prosperous people are on their way to work , each sipping their Starbucks coffee while trailing their office bags on wheels.

Trucks arrive supplying the stores with their daily goods while the early department store workers arrange their apparel for the day.
By 9.00am the commercial activity of the city is fully functioning. Buying and selling, eating breakfast at the hundreds of diners dotting

City. The pavements are clean the windows washed and the brass is shining and happiness prevails under the fluttering flags of the stars and stripes.

God save America !