San Francisco! One of those places, like Paris or Texas, where I’ve always got a happy grin cemented onto my face. It might be just airport code SFO, but I’m still bouncing along pushing a luggage trolley, leading a party of five off to the hire care precinct, smiling at random travellers and humming songs about golden gates, cable cars and sunny California.

We took the lift up a level and boarded one of those automated trains a couple of stops to the rental depot. “You can drive,” I told my son as we sprawled our baggage over the front of the carriage.

The van was booked through Netflights, home of amazing car rental deals in English pounds. Dollar Rentals had the best rate and here we were lining up to collect the keys. We pretended it was just Twinkles and I doing the driving, avoiding the $25 daily fee for younger drivers DD and DS. The Aussie dollar had hit parity with the greenback, but five weeks of twenty five bucks wasn’t to be contemplated.

I passed, with heavy sighs, a long line of Mustangs on the way to our silver Chrysler Town and Country. One day, I’ll drive Route 66 in a convertible, but that day wasn’t this one. We had five people and a stack of luggage and I was aiming for comfort over speed and style this time around.

We filled her up, I sat in the commander’s chair, contemplated the array of buttons and dials ahead of me, punched a few for luck, fired the ignition and rolled grandly down the ramp into America.

Not my first time at the helm of a Yank cruiser, so I had a certain amount of confidence. And a certain amount of worry that I’d forget and go the wrong way at an intersection. I didn’t, but I kept drifting right within my lane, a common failing amongst we Aussies, as we automatically found our comfort zone on the right side of the left lane. Sort of having a dollar each way.

The job of the co-driver in the front passenger seat was to nudge the driver back into position, screaming now and then if a streetlamp or bridge railing came too close.

The plan was to fill in the time before we could check in at our Fort Mason youth hostel with a drive over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito for lunch, a drive around the Marin headlands to catch some of those postcard views of the bridge, bay and city, and then see how we felt. Maybe jetlag would see us hitting our bunkbeds early, maybe we’d be out of phase and partying until three AM.

I hadn’t felt like hiring a GPS for five weeks, so had bought a Tom Tom at home that came with a free international map download. I’d picked the North American map, and despite a little hassle with websites and software installs, had gotten it loaded up. They could make these things simpler.

It worked once it got a good look at the sky, and I set Sausalito as the destination and off we went. I’d expected to be directed straight up through downtown and over the bridge, but it sent us further west and we dived under Golden Gate Park and through chunks of suburbia. I think I might have made a wrong turn somewhere while it was searching searching searching for satellites.

Not to worry. We were just hanging out of the windows, having a ball, pointing out road signs and black and whites* and all the things you see in the movies. “Oooh!” Futurecat squeaked in delight, “California poppies!”

Soon enough, the towers of the bridge were rising up. I pulled off into the visitors centre, where I knew there was a parking area, a shop, and some fantastic views. Been this way before, you see.

Darling Daughter has somehow inherited the whimsy gene. The mention of flowers reminded her that here we were in San Francisco, and like the song I’d been singing to myself, we’d better get some flowers in our hair. And photographs taken. Here are Twinkles and DD, appropriately beflowered. There were also some shots taken of your humble narrator, but as this is my blog and my story, they will not be seen here.

We will, however, feast our eyes on FutureCat, a Newzealander who received her screen name from Americans puzzled as to how it was always a day ahead where she was and could she send them the lotto numbers, please?

We were all smiling. It was just fantastic to be there after all the planning and dreaming and have the day go so swimmingly.

I ducked into the visitors centre for some change to feed the meter during the picture frenzy. I had some US notes, but nothing in the way of shrapnel. I spotted an area with National Parks Service stamps and passports for sale and I was mildly interested, but I didn’t buy one. I’ve been kicking myself ever since – I missed out on dozens of stamps until I finally bought a book in Maryland. Have to go back to collect the whole set, I guess!

Finally we piled back into the van and I found my way out of the carpark onto the bridge. I probably went a few turns too far, and at one point we had gone under the approach ramp and were heading off to Seal Rocks. But I was dead scared of making some fatal error. You know those “Wrong Way” signs they put up? Well, they put them up for people like me.

Here we are on the Bridge. The image is tilted because everyone apart from me was hanging out of the right side of the van to take in the view. That little yellow thingamajig is a Ballycumber, the emblem of the BookCrossing.com community to which Futurecat and I belong. I’ll explain later, but it’s a lot of fun.

We whipped past the freewheeling cyclists on the way down to Sausalito, parked the van and went exploring. Palmtrees, sunshine, smiling faces, restaurants, souvenir shops and always the Bay in the background. The kids ducked into a toy shop and didn’t come out again until they had played with everything. I contemplated buying a bumper sticker.

A firetruck drove past, the back crowded with tourists and a couple of cheerful guides pointing things out. Just one of those quirky San Francisco sights. Apparently the guides sing and dance and just have a wonderful time showing the place off. I love this town!

A little further along the way was the fish and chip shop I’d found in 2010. This time I plumped for a table inside and we ordered up various meals – the first decent tucker we’d had in all of a 48 hour Friday, I guess. In what became a father-son bonding ritual, I asked for a couple of local beers, which of course were Anchor Steam. We clinked our glasses and posed for the camera. Fish and chips, a beer and the Golden Gate. Here is paradise!

I saved the bottle and soaked the label off later, to stick in my travel journal. Perhaps I’m a little nutty, but I have fat journals for most of my trips, full of tickets and maps and receipts and beer bottle lables and bumper stickers. One day, when I’ve spent a fortune on a lifetime of memories and have developed Alzheimer’s, I’ll be able to go back and do it all again.

In another of my nutty rituals, I pulled into a Starbucks, where I bought a super-ginormous coffee mug, the souvenir San Francisco edition. Towards the end of the trip, the van was fairly rattling and clinking along on groaning springs, and I had to subsidise the US Post Office to a breathtaking degree.

There were galleries and boutiques, restaurants and real estate agents. I could think of worse places to live. This guy was singing on the dock of the bay, just piling up the tips, selling homespun CDs and putting a bit of cool into the sunny day. We lingered, listening.

And then we bade farewell to fair Sausalito, heading off for the Pacific coast and the Marin headlands.

The Tom-Tom wasn’t much use here. It didn’t show hills, and what looked like a good direct route would often turn into something you’d be worried about hiking along, but we had a grand time amongst the green hills, old military installations, dusty lookouts and groves of trees. It was all ridiculously scenic.

We all know about Amelie and the kidnapped travelling garden gnome who gets photographed in various exotic locations? Well, meet Wolverine. DD’s boss has this plastic Wolverine figurine she keeps in her office, supervising affairs from a bookshelf. Wolverine got kidnapped, and we were forever finding new places to pose Wolverine and his razor claw hands along the way.

That was fine, and DD’s boss was doubtless charmed to receive emailed photographs of her plastic friend teetering on safety railings above iconic landmarks for the next few weeks, but what added a whole jar of spice to the adventure was the fact that the original internal rubber linkages allowing Wolverine to move his limbs or bend and turn his head had long since perished, and every now and then an arm or head or torso would fall off as he was being positioned for the photo.

We tried to keep him together with Blu-Tac, but that wasn’t as secure as it might have been, and a fair proportion of the trip was spent retrieving bits of Wolverine from the landscape.

Like this one. Just over the safety rail is a drop that plummets down to rocks on the shoreline via gullies and near vertical slopes. Wolverine’s arm plopped off onto the wrong side of the barrier and teetered, like a movie car, on the edge of the drop. DD scrambled over the fence to get the body bit back, Twinkles hanging onto her rainbow belt in case she slipped. I didn’t really need this level of excitement, but we got the limb back. And DD.

But, OMG, the view! This was like living in a postcard. Simply stunning. I’ll come back one day with a bigger camera.

Before we left Marin, I took a picture of the New Zealand flag I’d hoisted onto the van’s aerial and secured with a ball of chewing gum. I wanted to make FutureCat comfortable about being a lone New Zealander in a van full of Aussies. Besides, I figured people would think it was the Australian flag anyway. See how there’s a little nick in one corner? Over the next three weeks the threads gradually unravelled and by the time we got to Washington DC, we were British. Barely.

And then we entered Fisherman’s Wharf into the GPS and followed the voice back over the bridge. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve stayed at the Fort Mason youth hostel, but it was a welcome sight on the grounds of the old military base as we parked the van, pulled out our bags and checked in. There was a young lady on the desk and she handed us forms to fill in as she gently extracted money off my credit card.

“You know,” I said, “It’s really comforting to us Aussies that youse have got all these gum trees here.”

“Double You Tea Eff?”

“You know! Gum trees!” I pointed out the window at a nearby grove.

“Oh, those are Eu-cal-ypt-us trees!”

I rolled my eyes. “Geez, how pretentious can you get!”

“Pretentious? Moi?”

–Skyring

* Black and whites = cop cars. Just like in The Blues Brothers and Dukes of Hazzard except they weren’t leaping about so much.

I love flying out of Sydney. I get to use the awesome Qantas First lounge. Even if it’s only a cup of coffee, sitting away up there with the huge windows, the smiling staff, and the art on the froth of my latte sets me off on the right foot. I glide down the hall and float onto the plane.

Not this time. I’ve dropped down to Gold, so it’s just the normal lounge, and although I’m allowed a guest, I’m travelling with three companions, so two would have to wait outside. Which means that we are not going into any lounge.

DD will feel this most keenly. Twice I’ve taken her into the First lounge, and she snuggles up like a cat in the comfort and love that Qantas gives to elite flyers.

We both eye the sign saying “Lounges” and sigh dramatically.

There are other pleasures. Duty-Free shopping is something I usually gloss over. The savings in Australia just aren’t there, except for alcohol. And then there’s the hassle of actually carrying the stuff aboard and making sure it stays secure under your seat or in the overhead locker. And I’m not that much of a drinker, anyway. I’ll glance at the electronics, but generally stuff will be cheaper where I’m going to, although I will sometimes buy something just for the pleasure of fiddling with it during the flight.

But the kids went wild in the Duty-Free precinct. They saw the prices for grog, the girls experimented with the free testers for perfume, they just browsed and browsed. DS had a happy smile when he picked up a jumbo bottle of Jim Beam at a very agreeable price. I think he had plans to make the flight a very enjoyable one indeed!

We had lunch in the food court. Overpriced rubbish, mostly, and consumed with other travellers jostling past. I sighed again.

The usual delays as we waited to board the plane. Security checks, a long walk to the western end of the terminal – I made my usual joke to some random travellers, “Geez, I didn’t think we’d have to walk to San Francisco!”, and they dutifully smiled.

And then we were patting the hull of the jumbo, smiling at the cabin crew, arranging ourselves in our seats. The flight to San Francisco doesn’t have a First service, so Business passengers get the First seatbeds (and Business service), Premium Economy get the Business seats, and a lucky few Economy passengers get the Premium Economy seats (and Economy service). Somehow I’d managed to retain enough eliteness to score four of the Premium Economy seats on our discounted Economy tickets, so that was a big plus. I even felt chipper enough to give up my allocated window seat to my son, accepting an aisle in the centre section. He hadn’t flown over the Pacific previously, whereas I’ve lost count.

Pushback, taxi, and takeoff. I love these bits, and I’m usually hanging out of the window to experience the unusual situation of the comforting solid land tilt and dwindle and disappear, leaving us in a realm of air and clouds which we are quite unevolved for. It’s a kind of magic, and my spirits always lift along with the Boeing.

Dinner was served as we raced towards twilight. “Portuguese Style Beef and Chorizo Hot Pot with Pilaf Rice”, according to the menu. It was okay, but nowadays I’m inclined to see economy food as an inconvenience, cluttering up my tray table and setting uncomfortably in my stomach. I selected a red wine to go with my meal, but it was sour and unsatisfactory to the last drop. The best part of the meal was the glass of Mr and Mrs T’s Bloody Mary mix. Spiced tomato juice makes me happy.

And then the long night. On a thirteen hour flight over the Pacific, you’re going to get a big chunk of darkness however you cut it. I watched a movie, but unusually for Qantas, the selection of viewing wasn’t as broad and as satisfactory as I like, and after a while I cranked the seat back and slept. Premium Economy gives me enough room to find sleep, instead of fitful catnaps. I got up a few times to use the facilities and wander through the rear cabin – the rare joy of an aisle seat.

Dawn and breakfast arrived, and my excitement level soared again. I opted for the hot breakfast, my nose twitching at every savoury waft from the galley before my tray was plopped down in front of me. OJ, Melon salad, scrambled eggs with bacon, sausage and mushrooms, and a new attraction of “Mango and Vanilla Pain De Me”, which was enjoyable, despite the disturbing name.

Washed down with hot coffee.

I caught glimpses out the distant window as we came in over the Golden Gate and turned to land with the rising sun at our backs. I love San Francisco, and even if it’s just an airport, with bleak expanses of concrete and long immigration halls, there’s always a smile on my face.

Immigration was painless – we actually got out ahead of most passengers – and before too long we were rumbling a trolley or two into the arrivals hall, where we were to meet FutureCat, flying in on Air New Zealand from Auckland. We had an hour before her flight landed, so we found a coffee shop and I shouted drinks and snacks for the group. My daughter needs her caffeine in the morning, and what with the jump in body clocks, the need was very keenly felt at this time.

There was another customer at the coffee kiosk. A blind man with a seeing-eye dog was waiting patiently, sipping his drink while his dog contentedly licked itself. The very picture of happiness all round.

I nudged my son, pointing at the dog. “You know, I’ve always wished I could do that.”

“Well, Dad,” he replied. “Now’s your chance. It’s not as if the owner’s going to see what you’re doing, eh?”

It’s not the first time I’ve driven on the other side of the road. The first time was in Caen, in Normandy, in 2006, in a little grey Opel. A manual car, and I hadn’t driven a manual transmission for about thirty years.

I not only had a new car to learn, but a new country, a new town, a new side of the road and a new method of changing gears. Which I did frequently, usually when I was puzzling out how to negotiate an intersection full of locals whipping through it, while a queue of their compatriots built up behind me, keen for some whipping. I swore and sweated a lot, and when an opening arrived, planted my foot on the gas and stalled out.

So driving in America after a few more European and US roadtrips was no hassle. I put on a spritz of antiperspirant and got loaded up on coffee.

What was a hassle was getting the phones to work.

Far too often, I’ve set my phone to international roaming and come home to a phone bill that approximates my grocery spending for a year. A bit of email, a few peeks at BookCrossing.com, an emergency use of Google Maps. And the odd phone call.

A friend of mine who works in telecommunications suggested buying throwaway phones that could be easily reloaded. Just buy ‘em from a supermarket.

So this time, when I wandered down to the Marina Safeway for my fix of the best supermarket in the universe, I scooped up five cellphones. Futurecat suggested the sort with lots of buttons on the front, hoping to be able to use it back home in New Zealand. They were like twenty dollars each, and I got five twenty dollar credit refills for them, so it was a bit of a hit in the hip pocket, but I figured that we’d be able to communicate with each other and call the locals.

I had this dread of one or two of us getting separated and all the trouble and delay it would cause before we were all linked up again. Having a phone each would fix this, and I wouldn’t worry too much. Peace of mind is worth a lot.

Taking the phones through the checkout along with the root beer and candy turned out to be the wrong approach. It worked, but only after the manager had been summoned, and the line of angry customers behind us had built up to an alarming, grumbling, fidgeting degree.

It’s still the best supermarket ever. Armistead Maupin rated it highly in his Tales of the City series, and I’ve loved it ever since. I joined the loyalty club then and there.

And then. Oh boy! Back at the hostel I sat down to activate the phones and load them up. Talk about a fiddly procedure, especially when doing it for the first time! I dragged out my laptop and got onto the network’s website and created an account and gradually got everything hooked up. But there was a lot of navigating through menus via tiny buttons and entering codes on tiny buttons, and squinting at the screen through rapidly-aging eyes.

It was a struggle and it took some time, and our precious evening was wasting away. In hindsight, I should just have given the stack of boxes to K-J-H, who is good with technology, and told him that I’d buy him dinner if he could get these things going.

Anyway, the phones worked, more or less. Sparkles discovered that if you get a friend in Australia to phone you so you aren’t paying for the call, Net-10 charges you for receiving an international call and your credit is drained anyway.

And my phone decided it wasn’t going to play ball after a few days. For two weeks I waited for it to come good, and then I tried switching it off and on again – or maybe the battery drained out, I can’t remember. Anyway, that worked.

But for the time being, we had working phones, and we used them to good effect the next day, when we split up to explore San Francisco. Had a fantastic day and night, and the next morning we left early to get on the freeway south.

A friend had suggested that we drop in at San Jose on the way through, and this turned out not to be possible, so I rang her at the last moment to let her know that the GPS had sent us another way, and maybe we’d catch her on the way back in a month’s time, and possibly the cake she’d baked could be wrapped up and frozen?

“Or eaten by the dog,” she huffily replied. She asked which roads we were taking, and I told her the name of the highway. Or rather the number. American highways are all numbered, apart from Missouri, where they have letters. Very confusing, and it’s all too easy to take the wrong ramp if you mix (say) the speed limit with the highway number. We were driving along Route 65 a lot of the time.

“Be careful there,” she warned. “The radio says there’s some nut driving the wrong way.”

“Hell,” I replied, “There’s hundreds of them!”

Crossposted from Hogjowls.com

The song

There are dozens of good songs about San Francisco. Haunting, evocative, meaningful golden hits. But there’s not a one of them comes close to this one. Coupled with the beautiful dancing and the iconic backdrops of the video, this Australian’s heart near breaks. I want to be back in San Francisco.

The loveliness of Paris
Seems somehow sadly gay
The glory that was Rome
Is of another day
I’ve been terribly alone
And forgotten in Manhattan
I’m going home to my city by the bay.

I left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me.
To be where little cable cars
Climb halfway to the stars!
The morning fog may chill the air
I don’t care!

My love waits there in San Francisco
Above the blue and windy sea
When I come home to you, San Francisco,
Your golden sun will shine for me!

It’s not just Tony Bennet who left his heart here. Mine as well, somewhere between Fishermans’ Wharf and Fort Mason.

The rule of three

It was my first round the world trip. Fort Worth was my conference destination, but I wanted to combine it with a visit to London, where I would visit every location on the British Monopoly board. Trafalgar Square, Old Kent Road, Marylebone Street Station…

“You need to make a third stop on this ticket,” my travel agent said, indicating a line on the brochure, “Minimum number of stopovers: three.”

Quick. What other place after London and Fort Worth could I see on a round the world ticket? It was like a free holiday waved under my nose. Where did I want to go?

Well, everywhere. Flight Centre offices have a big map of the world on the wall. Actually, it is the wall. So many mouth-watering destinations!

The two flagship routes of Qantas Airways are the Kangaroo Hop from Sydney to London and the TransPacific Los Angeles to Sydney sector. I wanted to do both those legs. Any diversions would be inefficient, wasting time and adding distance. So somewhere in between London and Los Angeles, I had to pick a another city. I chose San Francisco almost at random, as being a minor diversion between Fort Worth and Los Angeles. I was quite certain I didn’t want to do time in LA. I’d seen LA from the air a month earlier, and it looked horrible.

Besides, I’d been listening to songs about San Francisco for years. People crooning on about bridges and cable cars and love and flowers and smiles. Songs about Los Angeles were hard-edged and desperate.

It was a quick decision, and one of the best choices of my life.

Arrival

It was a fantastic flight over mountains and deserts from Dallas Fort Worth. I was leaning way, way out of the window, taking in the incredible landscapes below. At one point we overflew Yosemite, the combination of green meadows and forest with the grey granite cliffs etched in my memory.

We descended over growing settlements, gliding in at last over the southern Bay, my seat on the port side of the MD-80 lacking any view of the city itself. A shuttle from the airport, talking with a fellow traveller from New Zealand, dropping off others at hotels in the central city and finally depositing me, the last aboard, at the Fort Mason youth hostel.

I checked in, gratefully stowed my luggage in a locker, and asked at the front desk for a place to have lunch and buy groceries. “There’s a Safeway not far off,” they said.” Just go outside and follow the path west.”

The Market

San Francisco has many markets. Neighbourhood festivals, the glorious Ferry Markt, the touristy mixed grill and candy store of Fishermans’ Wharf. But for me there is only one that counts. The best supermarket in the world: the Marina Safeway.

Marina Safeway

A dozen cardboard disks dangled from the ceiling of the Marina Safeway, coaxing the customers with a double-edged message: ‘Since we’re neighbors, let’s be friends.’

And friends were being made.

As Mary Ann watched, a blond man in a Stanford sweatshirt sauntered up to a brunette in a denim halter. ‘Uh… excuse me, but could you tell me whether it’s better to use Saffola oil or Wesson oil?’

The girl giggled. ‘For what?’

An early scene in Armistead Maupin’s classic Tales of the City, documenting (or possibly establishing) the reputation of the place as a pick-up joint where dates are made over dates, links forged over the sausages, mangoes admired in the fruit department and the meat section is a hot joint.

The legend raises no doubts here. It’s a remarkable place, the Marina Safeway, a place for dreams to come true, the happiest market of them all. Not too big and impersonal, but neither is it a hole in the wall place with limited stocks and choices. It’s precisely the right size for a supermarket.

Funky curved facade, and the most stunning setting outside. Dinky little San Francisco houses, the Marina Green stretching up the hill to Fort Mason, full of people walking dogs, throwing frisbees. Fort Mason’s historic wharves stretching out into the Bay, the Bay itself, and the great golden Bridge away off to the left, disappearing into the sunny hills of Marin.

Convertibles whip along Marina Boulevard outside, and there’s a continuous stream of cyclists heading off over the bridge to Sausalito and back by ferry. It’s a sunny outlook.

This was actually my first time inside a genuine American supermarket, as distinct from a drugstore. The fresh food section was worth a look – some odd names for familiar foods. Capsicums were called bell peppers here.

And the delicatessen section was selling lunches. You don’t get that in Australia. Packaged snacks, lunch meats, salads in tubs and cooked chickens is as close as it comes, but here were counter staff making sub sandwiches. A sandwich, bag of chips, and soft drink for a bargain price.

The meal

I chose a sandwich with some sort of turkey salad, a bag of chips – yeah, I know they are called crisps in America – and a big paper cup of root beer. I adore root beer.

Nowhere to eat it in the store, of course. There are limits. Outside I wandered, vowing to return to buy some of those exotic American candies for my children back home in Canberra, and cast about for a seat. A park bench. Somewhere with a view, preferably.

I looked in vain all the way up the Fort Mason hill and down again. Great views, but no seats, unless I wanted to perch on the stone wall.

In the end, that’s what I did. Just short of the great curving breakwater of Aquatic Park, I sat down on the seawall, not quite dangling my legs in the water, and I ate my lunch, gazing out with delight at Alcatraz afloat in the bay, the sun glancing off the water, the ferries churning their ways, the gulls swooping down for a hopeful glance at my meal, and the tourists passing by.

Not a memorable meal, foodwise. It was all good, but nothing I couldn’t have had at home, apart from the rootbeer, which was slurped with deep satisfaction until the ice rattled forlornly in the bottom of the cup.

But the setting! I was in a sunny Californian heaven with the chance of sealions, which were swimming nearby. San Francisco in all its glory was around me. Architectural oddities, a sandy beach, swimmers taking their chances with the sealions, a group of Segway riders on a tour, the Bay Bridge stretching away beyond the as yet unsampled delights of Fishermans’ Wharf.

Here I was, sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the ships roll in, at ease in the sun and salt air, chowing down on turkey and sauce in a soft bun and swigging the rootnectar of the gods. I liked California. This felt like a comfortable, friendly home.

A couple of Australian tourists paused to ask me for directions to the Golden Gate Bridge. They must have mistaken me for a local, but I pointed them up over Fort Mason and told them how far it was. “A fair hike around the bay, several kilometres, but it’s all flat once you get over the hill.”

“But I’ve only been here about half an hour, meself,” I confessed.

We chatted about Australia and possible mutual acquaintances back home. They spotted the name “Skyring” on my travel journal and went through their lists of members of the Skyring family living in Canberra. “It’s just a screen name,” I said, and went on to tell them about BookCrossing.com. I may even have given them a book – there’s usually one or two dozen somewhere within my easy reach!

The place

Tony Bennett's Heart in Union Square

The cable cars winching up those impossibly steep hills – I had to sweat up and down a couple to make an evening meeting of local BookCrossers – the friendliness, the Anchor Steam beer, the views, the bookshops, the ships, wharves, ferries and quirky bay-windowed houses. It was all marvellous. It was America: jubilant, joyous, free and relaxed.

And, as I walked through Union Square on the way back – this time via Muni bus – I saw a sight that sums up San Francisco for me. Tony Bennett’s heart, large enough for kids to climb on, painted with San Francisco icons, cheerful and happy. My own heart rests beside it.

–Skyring

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Bonus video – Otis Redding

Second book in the Tales of the City series. Armistead Maupin is hitting his stride with this one. He spins his little plots, teasing the reader along, sucking them in, until somehow, we’re edging ourselves along a catwalk high above a startled crowd and the horrific secret is revealed.

This book sparkles like the waters of the Bay or the beaches of Acapulco. Romance aboard the Love Boat, lovers and spouses reunited, deaths and disasters.

There’s a wheelchair and a whip encountered along the way. And every step of the path involves Armistead having fun with the reader.

He’s got a skilled touch with dialogue. We’re teasing the straight couple at breakfast. We’re as catty as can be with the A-Gays. We’re janing with the sexagenarians of the Pinus Club. And we’re hooting with laughter every time a chapter closes.

It must have been sheer torture for the readers of this serial novel, having to wait for a new day and a new edition of the Chronicle. Me, I can turn to the next page to see what happens next, but the original readership must have been lining up at midnight to satisfy themselves with the early edition.

I loved it. I loved the first book, I loved this one, I’m loving the third in the series, abandoned for a moment to write this review.

And I loved the inspiration. As the ridiculous plot unfolded, the solution to the mystery of my next novel sprang into my head. For four years, I’ve wondered what Ann was doing in Texas. Now I know. Now I know how Memphis and San Francisco tie into the tale. Dear reader, you’ll have to wait a while for my early edition. And read it one chapter at a time.

But you’ll hoot with laughter.

In the meantime, join me in consuming these delicious snippets of San Francisco’s behind the scenes under the covers up the shady lanes hidden tales of the city.