Serendipity at work and how we wandered over to the dark side of San Francisco – Day 4, part 2

This post describes the second part of our fourth day of our 160 days long trip to the US & Canada. First part of the day is here. In case you missed it, our trip posts start here. We’re back home now – an re-living the trip by blogging about it in retrospect.

A couple of weeks prior to our departure, I received an email with an interesting business proposal. I replied saying that while it sounded promising, I was leaving for San Francisco in a couple of weeks time, embarking on a six months long road trip, so it was probably a bad time for starting a new business venture.

“Well,” came the surprising reply, “our offices are actually located in the heart of San Francisco, so why don’t you guys come and see us there?”

I couldn’t find any good reason not to. Visiting the offices of a vibrant Internet company sounded promising, actually. At the very least, it will be interesting to see, in the sheer touristic sense. Besides, they were located right on Market street, where I had intended to visit anyway, and right across from a McDonald’s branch I had earmarked for the kids’ lunch break for that day. It seemed too serendipitous to pass up, so I accepted the invitation.

And so, having walked all the way from Lombard street to Chinatown, down to the Wells Fargo museum and up the hills to the Cable Car Museum and then riding down on the Powell street historic cable car, we were finally back on Market street and making our way towards that specific McDonald’s branch. This was when I phoned my contact, Nick, and told him we were finally there. He was kind enough to come down, along with his colleague to pick us up from that rather crowded and uninviting spot.

I can only imagine what the two young men were thinking when they caught first glimpse of their prospective business associate… It was around noon, and as if our intense morning activities weren’t enough, jet lag was hitting both me and IsraeliDad. Hard. I think “dishevelled” would be he word best describing us at that point, as we dragged along with two kids in-tow, hanging on to their crumpled bags of Happy Meals. To their credit, our hosts seemed unabashed and were gracious and kind, throughout the meeting, which turned out to be surprisingly fruitful.

After we were done, we went out to lunch with Nick, heading east towards the very end of Market Street, crossing the Justin Herman Plaza to the imposing Ferry Plaza building. We shared food and conversation at the small eatery on the northern wing of the building called Gott’s Roadside. It was a lovely day, and we enjoyed the views of the Bay Bridge, which the kids re-named as the Silver Gate Bridge. After saying our goodbyes, Nick went back to his day of work, and we returned to the grueling task of sightseeing.

Ferry Plaza Building from Market Street

We went inside to explore the Ferry Plaza building. This large building used to be one of the busiest hubs of commerce in the world some eighty years ago or so, with practically all incoming and outgoing shipping going through it. In later years, the two big bridges, Golden Gate and Bay Bridge took away most of that traffic, and Ferry Plaza’s days of glory were over. What’s more, in the 1950s a double decked road – the Embarcadero Freeway -  cut off the building from the rest of the city; interior decay joined forces with bad urban planning to make the majestic construction a nearly abandoned relic.

Ironically, it was an earthquake that saved the day. The 1989 earthquake caused irreparable damage to the freeway, which was removed in 1991. At last, the Ferry Plaza building, was reunited with the rest of the city and pedestrians were welcome once again to cross over from Market Street to the waterfront. Looking at the huge renovated building, with its proud and loud clock tower, it’s hard to believe just how close San Francisco came to losing one of its historic landmarks.

In 2003, the renovated interiors were re-opened to the public, and they are now home to San Francisco’s farmer’s market. I have to say, while there were rustic decor elements galore, the atmosphere was very upscale, with a strong emphasis on organic foods and prices to match. It’s not a very big market either, so ten minutes later we left and crossed back over to the Justin Herman Plaza, across the street.

The Justin Herman Plaza is a large open space in the heart of San Francisco, featuring an array of stands selling overpriced California-themed souvenirs and gifts, among a nicely landscaped mix of paved patches, grass and raised beds of flowers. The plaza was full of people enjoying the warm afternoon sun. Business men and women from Market Street were having a late lunch; tourists were leafing through their guides; youngsters were basking in the sunshine listening to their iPods; and quite a few homeless people were doing the same, i.e. basking, but with no iPods that I could see.

IsraeliDad and myself were more than ready to join the crowds in that pleasant pastime, but then the kids spotted the Valiancourt Fountain and all hopes of a peaceful break were gone.

The Valliancourt Fountain

The Valliancourt Fountain is an interesting piece of water sculpture that lets you, or more precisely your kids, climb up on it and walk through it, surrounded by fast and loud streams and waterfalls. The design is a bit harsh, made of elongated square columns, broken and then connected in a variety of angles. It has been described “as a thing deposited by a concrete dog with square intestines.” Hmmnm, since the thing is also continuously flowing, I preferred to stay away from that particular image. As it turns out, this is actually a political piece of art, dedicated to freeing Quebec, of all places, and happens to be quite controversial, both politically and artistically. I can’t say much about either aspect, only that our boys consider it to be one of the highlights of their visit to San Francisco.

Along Mission Street, SF

We finally unstuck them from the fountain and moved back down Market Street. Our destination was the Zeum, San Francisco’s Children’s museum. I think we must have covered over six miles on foot that day by that point, so admittedly, this part of our journey wasn’t easy. I know I was tired, but still, four days into our trip, we were eager to absorb more sights and sounds, and were enjoying the San Francisco atmosphere and the small gardens sprawled along Mission street on our way.

Right before the Zeum, we passed by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and crossed over to the Yerba Buena gardens. These gardens, stretching across two city blocks and connected by a bridge, proved to be a green gem. Sculptures, water features and gardening were the perfect landscape for our kids’ imaginary games. With a burst of renewed energy, Ron and Dan took to playing among the fountains as if they had just stepped outside the hotel room after a long night’s sleep.

SF Museum of Modern Art

When we finally strolled further into the gardens, crossing the bridge, we discovered an even more attractive spot: a spacious playground with a variety of structures to climb on, slide off of, and generally get active while your parents can sit in the shade nearby. By the time the kids’ play needs had been saturated, it was clear we were not going to make it into the Zeum, so we settled for a couple of rounds on the restored 1905 Merry-Go-Round next to it and then started heading back to the hotel.

Having walked who knows how many miles up to that point, we were all very tired, and decided to get a taxi back home. Easier said than done. While trying to hail a cab, we kept slowly progressing in the direction of Lombard street where our hotel was. I don’t recall the exact line of thought which lead us there, but in a fairly dazed state of mind, I let IsraeliDad lead us in the shortest route back to the hotel. Crossing Market Street again, we kept heading west, when in an alarmingly sudden manner, we were in an entirely different San Francisco.

I couldn’t even put my finger on it at first, but somehow the atmosphere had changed. There were fewer people on the street, and the ones that were there were mostly black and looked forlorn and desperate, with hoodies pulled over their heads. Passing by a heavily fenced and seemingly abandoned police station, I noticed the sign with a familiar name: Tenderloin. This was the one neighborhood Travel Guides warn about in San Francisco.

Here, Wikipedia describes it better than I can, so here’s what they have to say about Tenderloin -

“The Tenderloin is a high-crime neighborhood, particularly violent street crime such as robbery and aggravated assault. ….  Dealing and use of illicit drugs occurs on the streets. Property crimes are common, especially theft from parked vehicles. Violent acts occur more often here and are generally related to drugs. The area has been the scene of escalating drug violence in 2007, including brazen daylight shootings, as local gangs from San Francisco, and others from around the Bay Area battle for turf.”

And that was the area through which we were walking with the kids, getting quite a share of interested looks from passers by, or so it felt. At some point, a street beggar, an old woman in a wheelchair, called us over.

“Do you know where you are?” she asked sympathetically.
“Ummm, yes, I think so, we have a GPS”, IsraeliDad replied.
“Well, I don’t think you’re supposed to be here, you’d better get along and head out of this neighborhood.”

Let me tell you, we were walking pretty fast after that. IsraeliDad insisted that this could not have been really dangerous – after all we were in the heart of San Francisco. Perhaps. In the end, we were never mugged or attacked. We got to see a side of San Francisco, and maybe of America, not often visible to visitors, too. I wouldn’t repeat it though, definitely not with children. Was simply too scary.
Once out of Tenderloin, we did manage to halt a taxi and were soon enough in the comfort, and safety(!), of our hotel room.

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