What those two places have in common is the continuous energy
they provide. There is always something going on and when you are
there,
anything is possible.
The other reason I like
That is what makes the city so appealing. It is different.
It’s not people walking as one, moving from the train to Starbucks to
the office
to McDonald’s for lunch to the train to take them back to homes that
all look
the same.
Something I don’t see very often when I am walking around
For two hours, I took the bus around
More often than not, people smiled and said hello. That is
something you don’t see in
The Southland has such a reputation of being a friendly
place, but I have never seen it. Where I live in
When I lived in the suburbs, I didn’t get that. My neighbors
would occasionally say hello, or nod, but many were to busy to make the
effort.
These are people I saw most everyday and I couldn’t get any friendly
recognition. In two hours as a stranger, I felt more warmth.
I wondered why that was. Are suburbs by the nature of their
construction, adversarial? Fences divide neighbors, front porches don’t
exist,
and cars are usually parked in the garage, so contact with others is
limited.
Walking the dog, getting the mail or watering the front yard
only provide momentary glimpses of those around you. In big cities,
like
Does that mean we as people are generally pleasant? I would
like to think so. I believe people want to smile, want to say hello and
when
given the opportunity will gladly take it.
Now how I am going to explain the guy in the chicken suit in
Haight Asbury, I don’t know.
I was sitting in a café, drinking hot chocolate and
people
watching when I was rewarded with a kid in his 20s with long blonde
dreadlocks,
buying some lunch with his girlfriend wearing a headless chicken suit.
It wasn’t a work uniform, it was his apparel of choice and he
didn’t seem bothered by it. Neither did anyone else in the café.
It seemed like
I was the only one who noticed and then it was I who became self
conscious. If
he didn’t mind wearing the outfit, why should I stare at it
judgmentally.
My last stop of the day was Fisherman’s Wharf. Getting a
little bread bowl with clam chowder and watching the boats pass through
as
Alcatraz Island is in the background is a great way to spend an
afternoon.
Tourists make up most of the population there and you can
always tell who is from out of town. They have shorts on and then have
freshly
bought
Those who haven’t been here or have never read the Mark Twain
quote, don’t understand while it is 85 degrees five miles away, it is
60
degrees and windy for their vacation.
That usually makes the smiles go away. This minor
inconvenience seems to become catastrophic to some. One family I saw
was openly
bickering with each other. The father was yelling at the kids to stay
close,
the mom was yelling at her husband not to yell at the kids and the kids
were all
complaining they wanted to go back to the hotel and swim in the pool.
It seemed like such a waste of energy. Maybe it was only
temporary, but it appeared to be a familiar routine and that would be a
waste.
I finished my soup, picked apart the bread and fed it to the waiting
seagulls.
When they were done, I walked back to a bus that would take me to a
part of the
city where the tourists were few.