No Gargoyles Here...

Over the weekend, we packed into the car and drove eight hours to San Francisco.  Mark did the lion's share of the driving.  We found some likely looking and interesting stops about four hours away from Eugene:  Uh, Something-Platts, and the Hotel at Wolf Creek.  The Hotel is fairly old, Jack London stayed there (I think on the way to Alaska).  The drive down was fairly uneventful until we got to the Bay Bridge.

We stayed about a block away from the Transamerican Pyramid, on the cusp between the Financial District and Chinatown.  This was a reconnaissance trip to see what sorts of things that we might do on a later trip.  Also, The Child wanted have room service breakfast in a nice hotel, a dim sun meal anywhere in Chinatown, and dinner in the Hard Rock Cafe.  Somehow, visiting Ripley's Believe It Or Not at Fisherman's Wharf worked its way into the trip.

I brought my camera so I could take photographs of the architecture.  I didn't take into account the 1906 earthquake and fire.  And I didn't do any gargoyle research.  As a result, I didn't get many photos of gargoyles or grotesques; instead, there were many grand entrances.   We decided that the buildings in San Francisco resembled the buildings in Portland, Oregon, more than they did the ones in New York City (but then again, we pretty much stayed within the walkable area between the pyramid and Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill.

The folks we saw (over the weekend) dressed better than folks from Eugene, but not as well as folks in New York (and on reflection, not as well as folks in London).  The diversity was different... it felt very much dependent on the neighborhood we were hoofing through. 

We went to City Lights Bookstore ... and, it was fun, but it had been billed as "like Powell's Books," which isn't true.  Nothing is like Powell's City of Books.  City Lights was more like Tsunami Books in Eugene (only with a publishing house (and Allen Ginsberg) connected to it). 

Next time we visit, it would be fun to connect with various Bay Area friends (I'd lost track of how many folks I know have gravitated there).  I wouldn't mind going to a few more museums.  And it could be fun to go to the Pride Parade.