A Streetcar Named Cincinnati
Or why the gentle people are not the only reason to love the streets of San Francisco
Had we hair long enough, we would have worn flowers in it: there are plenty enough in the streets and gardens of glute-busting San Francisco, and the California poppy, radiant orange, would have set my eyes off just right, don’t you think? Here are some of the things I have most loved about the streets of this lovely city:
First, yes, the ubiquitous flora. Each degree along each of the lines of the grid that makes up the city has a stately tree to mark it, and beneath each tree a lovingly-tended shrub or flower bed that nods along with the passing traffic. It makes for a cool and green setting of sun and shadow.
And the fauna: the dogs in particular. St Bernard of Clairvaux (who else?) may have said qui me amat, amat et canem meum (he who loves me, loves my dog too1), but it might as well have been St Francis of Assisi for all the hounds pounding the streets of his namesake city. They’re everywhere: ankle-snapping yappers getting tangled up in the municipal acacias; overgrown teddy bears who don’t realise they’re too big to be held like the babies they think they are. People take them out for all sorts of external activities and we saw plenty of spoilt sausages being wheeled along in pooch-prams: they were certainly the highlight of our oversized brunch around the base of a jolly old poplar tree.
Something else I love is that, in addition to the matter-of-fact signs pointing the way up the streets (and it does seem always to be up), the street names have been written – no doubt by the finger of some nineteenth century labourer – into the paving concrete. I’ve seen that nowhere else.
Nudity! Apparently it’s legal here: walking around the Castro district, we encountered a man (all of him) reclining on a public bench in the lovely golden sun; decorously he had put a towel down to sit on. Our friend Omid told us that, technically speaking, the city had tightened the law such that total nudity was now not lawful (although the change had made no real difference): in deference, however, another chap turned up in, let’s say, a party hat. No pictures of that of course, so here’s a photo of us in a bar with the naked people just off camera.
Lastly, who can fail to be charmed by the majesty of the “F-train” (no idea why they call it that: it’s not a train but a trolleybus/streetcar). Unlike major cities across America, San Francisco has retained its streetcar system. And for one of the routes – the F line – they have bought up old street cars from across the nation, restored them with their native liveries, and put them back into use, rattling atmospherically along San Fran’s less taxing gradients. Each car is named after its former home and there is information inside about the streetcar service from that city: we rode, for example, on Cincinnati, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Such an elegant mode of transport.
There is plenty not to like on the streets, of course: many people mentioned to us before coming that San Francisco had become “dangerous” and that crime was “out of control”. That was in no way our impression; they strike me as laboured right-wing talking points. There is obviously a serious homelessness problem in the city and – while plainly the UK and London, in particular, are not perfect – homeless people here seem in far worse shape than at home. The effect of the opioid crisis is that you see people in certain parts of the city (in front of the exorbitantly grand City Hall especially) either completely out of their minds, or completely out of their bodies: we saw people contorted into the most unlikely poses, frozen in their stupors, grim, shameful statues. Jet-lagged, we were up wandering around first thing: we encountered a young Park Ranger whose job appeared to be nudging the rough sleepers awake at first light, checking to see who had not survived the night.
It is a city that provides what they all “socialised medicine”. It is a city that made assisting addicts a priority (at least until the California governor, who has an eye on the White House, felt that that may not play well nationally). The effect of a system that actually tries to help people is, naturally, that more and more desperate people come there for help. A chap outside a Starbucks asked Nav and me to buy him a coffee and we did. He said he had arrived a few weeks earlier from Texas because he thought he might get some help in San Francisco.
This grotesque state of affairs is an indictment of someone somewhere, but I don’t think it is an indictment of San Francisco.
We love the streets of San Francisco.
Credit for this quote to the divine and inimitable Helen McVeigh, our Greek (and in this instance Latin) teacher.