Nob Hill

‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles’ Jack Kerouac 

On the road . . . Again

So after having quite enough of being squidged into an aeroplane seat made for a six year old, trapped with germ laddened strangers like veal, fed injection moulded ‘meals’ at three billion thousand feet up in a tin box on top of gallons of liquid paraffin (well, fuel) I decided to opt for a road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Megabus was calling, at less than £20 for an 8 hour trip (including being able to book a top deck front row seat) no extra charge for my case and scheduled lunch stops it was, as the Americans would put it, a ‘no-brainer’.

 

 

 

And I Looooooovvvvveeed it! The real American freeway (or highway or thisway thatway) a rolling epic landscape right before my squashed-fly-windscreen-eyes. No one next to me, in fact no one else in front row seats at all, the seasoned student travellers behind me were all asleep as I marvelled over the sinister looking motels, and huge cattle farms. The drive was so smooth we arrived one hour fifteen minutes early. (!?!) It did mean however that I was running ahead of my expected E.T.A for my air bnb, but after a quick text and response saying ‘sure we’re here come over’, I headed for the East Bay.

Now I don’t know how they planned it, or could even reinact it if they tried but the wild maelstrom of sitcom activity that greeted me on arrival will probably stay with me forever. First of all try to imagine this, you have been dropped off by a taxi on a street you don’t know in a city you’ve never been to before. You check the address you’ve been given and walk up the front steps. The door is slightly open, (like it is in horror movies or cop shows) you gently knock. You can hear voices but there is no answer. You revert to awkward-Englishness and try again, then again, then you worry you might not be at the right place at all but have stumbled on Bates Motel. Too scared to enter and find a blodddied corpse on the rug you cautiously try the door knocker, nothing, so you push the door gently and in your best Margo Ledbetter call out ‘I say hello?!’ Still no one answers, but you have unleashed the dogs! As two crazed little fur balls appear barking like maniacs. Then to your  surprise Steve Martin (albeit a more handsome, slightly John Cleese version) comes to the door and in the style of a Californian Basil Fawlty shakes your hand manically and gestures you inside. ‘Jane, Jane, come in come in, take a seat!’

The sight which greets you is a mix of every American sit com you’ve ever seen. The house is pure laid back artistic Californian living with random collections of art, pottery, vinyl and stacks of books almost purposefully strewn across the place like set dressing. Looking through the open plan rooms you can see an eccentrically built wooden shanty town in the backyard. There is much activity, possibly even hoovering going on somewhere, a bearded barefoot man wearing a baseball hat and clutching a large bag of linen is wandering past, a busy small beautiful grinning lady emerges, you start to introduce yourself, ‘Oh hi Diane, I’m …’ ‘oh no I’m Rosie’ is the beaming reply as she dashes off stage right.’Yes yes!’ (Steve Martin starts to introduce wildly) ‘oh yes this is Rosie and friend Patrick, sit down Jane, please take a seat, take a seat, TAKE A SEAT!’ Friend Patrick disappears stage left whilst the dogs continue to bark round your ankles. Then marvellously a slightly disheveled Meryl Streep appears from the vast kitchen at the back. ‘Oh hello Diane?’ You try again. This time you’re right as she greets you wiping back the stray golden locks of hair across her forehead ‘Oh Hi! Jane! Come in, take a seat, take a seat, TAKE A SEAT! Glass of wine?!’

After a few drinks, an ‘oh don’t worry if you hear a loud bang Jane, the bbq sometimes BOOM!!! . . . . explodes,’an explanation that the shed arrangement was built by their inventor son and also houses his professional metal workshop, a short lecture by friend Patrick on the continued pervasive power of the Crown and British Empire, and Rosie’s amazing cauliflower cheesey mash you realise you are totally and completely . . . at home. By the end of the evening I had explained my own silly pilgrimage (which was greeted with much laughter and enthusiasm) been given an A4 page of coffee shops, book shops and thrift stores to visit and found out Rosie’s surname was Mullarkey, which summed up the night perfectly; it was indeed a right Mullarkey.

 

Flower land my favourite local coffee haunt, (like a mini Petersham Nurseries)

Steve Martin is in fact Chris, and Meryl Streep – Diane, my air BnB hosts. Chris has ‘nonsense joke’ Tourette syndrome and can tell stories from the 1960s/70s that would make Hunter S Thompson proud and Lou Reed blush. Diane’s culinary skills, like my own, include opening packets of tortilla chips in one hand whilst holding a glass of wine in the other then inviting her friend round to cook (but her real super power is that she is a primary school teacher!) They are utterly fabulous. Apart from finding Nob Hill, Diane said I should wander round the local University town of Berkeley. And so I did.

 

The University of California, Berkeley 

The University of California, Berkeley is a public research university founded in 1868, although not a member of the ‘Ivy League’ Berkeley is considered one of the finest universities in the United States. In the 1960’s it gained notoriety for student activism with the Free Speech Movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. After ‘People’s park’ protests in 1969 which led to conflict with the National Guard, the then Governor of California Ronald Reagan called the Berkeley campus ‘..a haven for communist sympathisers, protesters, and sex deviants’ oooooo! How exciting! I wondered what I might find there today?

Welllll what I did find was not quite that, but equally as enetertaining. Remember the scene in legally blonde where Elle Woods arrives at Harvard or in Pitch Perfect when the female protagonist joins the singing club? Well Berkeley, in all its studenty-American-kitschy-wonder had been kind enough to indulge me with its own enrolment fair just outside the Sather Gate. I could join the Jewish student centre, the debating society, Taiwanese association, the political review, I could save the world in various ways including contributing to the ‘succulent fundraiser’ for Cambodia, become part of the lesbian wheel chair basketball team and the Venezuelan cupcake juggling troupe. I could ‘De-stress with dogs’ (?!) and was invited to various performances from 16th century poetry to open mic:

 

However, by far the most pitch perfect of the lot were these boys, I’m afraid I was so excited I didn’t catch their group name but something Californian Uni choristers, Berkeley baritones, UCA sings, Go Bears! I was too awkwardly embarrassed to stand any closer but you can probably zoom in yourself. So a long way from civil unrest (although perhaps just as polarising) however dear reader, I give you the University of California Berkeley student of 2018:

 

San Francisco

If, like me, you grew up watching ‘The streets of San Francisco’ (with the young Michael Douglas and that man with the cauliflower nose) and were transfixed with Steve Mqueen roaring down the hill in Bullitt then you will understand the tingles of excitement I had arriving in down town San Fran. (If you haven’t seen that film, watch it now, it’s a great thriller, has an epic mustang car chase and coolest soundtrack) (watch it) (just saying).

Of course the most iconic site is probably the Golden Gate Bridge so after wandering around Fisherman’s wharf and imagining I was Rick Stein trying all the fabulous sea food and waxing lyrical about authentic taste of California (in reality I was just idiot grinning again and mumbling like a bag lady) I took a cruise around the bay.

 

 

Mmmmm. . .what should I have for lunch?

 

Maybe torture a sour dough teddy bear too. . .

The Golden Gate Bridge and a little slideshow of the Bay . . .

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Of course the bridge is not the only iconic landmark in the bay, I had thought about visiting Alcatraz but there is something a little strange about a tourist attraction that was built on so much misery and crime so I decided a sail around it was enough. (What I really mean is I had no money left!)

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. . .The Rock

The United States Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island was a maximum high security federal prison which operated from 1934 to 1963. Apart from the prison building itself, the location of Alcatraz in the cold waters and strong currents of San Francisco Bay meant the authorities believed it to be escape-proof. The notorious gaol housed some of America’s most ruthless criminals including AlCapone, George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly, Robert Franklin Stroud (the birdmanof Alcatraz) and the sinisterly named Alvin ‘creepy’ Karpis. Of course there were escape attempts, in all 36 men had tried. Of these, 23 were caught, six were shot and killed and two drowned. The remaining five went missing which included Clint Eastwood of course, who got away  in the 1979 movie ‘Escape from Alcatraz’.

 

The eerie Alcatraz

Nob Hill

Of course my raison d’etre was not fashioning a life raft out of raincoats and escaping a federal penitentiary to direct and appear in two Oscar winning feature films. Oh no! I was here to bag the last nob of the tour, the historic Nob Hill. And this time there was no disappointment, it was nob-tastic.

 

The Nob Hill district with it’s Grace Cathedral

Nob Hill is a neighbourhood in SAN Francisco centred on the intersection of California street and Powell street and one of  the city’s 44 hills. Originally called California Hill (after the street) it was renamed in the 19th century after becoming an exclusive enclave for the rich and famous. It had a central position and great views so the likes of the Central Pacific Railroads bosses and Leland Stanford, (founder of Stanford University) built mansions there. So after a while it began to be referred to as ‘Nabob hill’ (nabob is an Anglo-Indian term for a conspicuously wealthy man) this was then eventually shortened to Nob (also disparaging British slang for nobility) and so Nob Hill was born.

The neighbourhood was destroyed in the earthquake of 1906 so only a few of the original mansion walls survive. The mansion owners rebuilt further west in Pacific Heights but the area was able to maintain its affluence with swanky hotels built on the ruins of the former mansions. Now it is a rather cool, hipster area, with organic food markets, coffee shops and expensive hotels. It is apparently now derisively referred to as ‘Snob Hill’ as its home to many of the cities upper class families. It would be fantastic to think that in a hundred years time it might even have morphed again and actually be called ‘Snob Hill’. However not snobby enough to be above its own coin operated laundry still. How retro!

 

Nob Hill Cafe turned out to be so above itself it was actually a restaurant that opened at 12:00 am. Nob Hill Place Market was basically a small Waitrose. The huge gothic Grace Cathedral is stunning, all in all I felt very at home! Wimbledon village and Richmond upon Thames eat your heart out! But the best thing about Nob Hill is how you can get there. The other iconic image of San Francisco, the tram! There is still a couple of vintage tram lines running and though they get clogged up with tourists in the afternoon if you want to get to and from Nob Hill early morning it will be you and an old lady from Chinatown. I even got to hail a tram on a street corner and hop on, it took all my self control to not just burst out singing ‘clang clang went the trolley, ding ding ding went the bell!’ But I wasn’t sure the conductor was ready for my very best Judy Garland, not before lunch anyhow.

 

Epilogue

My week in East Bay was waaaaay too short. Apart from throwing every cliched American situation comedy character they could at me, I was also treated with an all American Yard sale. Not of course Chris and Diane’s yard sale, that would be way too straight forward, no, they were lending their yard (or front lawn) to an old friend and neighbour of twenty years: Heather, who has recently moved away and for reasons I could not glean could not Yard sale at home. (Although looking at the quality of general tat she’d unearthed to sell I wasn’t sure wether it was just she’d be too embarrassed to openly display these in her shiny new neighbourhood?!) (of course fine to do so at Diane’s)!

 

The yard sale was maybe more ‘all Californian’ than ‘all American’ in this case, partly because marijuana was made legal in the state quite recently so now all the old hippies can be even more relaxed about the whole thing. This included Heather’s ‘new boyfriend’ (an anthropologist who lives out of his car) who openly smoked dope whilst trying to help sell stuff and challenged me, in all seriousness, on the validity of my suggestion that I might have seen a horny devil lizard (horny backed toad) in Australia. He was an expert. Very much an expert. I was confused as I assumed we were just having a polite conversation about horny toady lizards, (which I’ve met a few of, I can tell you, but by this point did not think he’d appreciate the joke). It was one of the finest awkward moments I’ve had, so I thank him for that, and of course am grateful for my new knowledge on the geographical habitats, breeding rights and legalities of shipment of the American horny little wotsit.

For my last evening in Albany my new sitcom pals had devised a sequel to my first night by arranging for Rosie and friend Patrick to join us again for dinner. To say the evening deteriorated into pant wetting hysterics is absolutely an understatement. I’m pretty sure at one point Rosie didn’t breathe in at all, as her Muttly laugh had just become one sustained ten minute wheeze. Most of the hilarity was due to Friend Patrick’s manner of conversation and story-telling, to say it is ponderous and deliberate is to suggest it has at least a sense of pace. When he covered his meal with a napkin to save it for later, leaned back, raised his hands in the air as if conducting an orchestra and for the fortieth time said ‘no, so here’s the deal.’ I thought it might be kinder just to have Diane put down.

I’m not sure I believe in coincidence so I am truly grateful I was brought to this place, at this time, to meet these wonderful people. People who yes, are mad. Mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be alive. Who never yawned or said a common place thing. But burned burned burned like fabulous yellow Roman candles!

(I did tell Chris to get that barbecue fixed)