The Clue to San Francisco

Travelogue: Clues to the Streets of San Francisco

"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco" - Mark Twain.

San Francisco, CA, stands out for me as one of a handful of America's truly distinct cities. I always wondered what combination of factors could produce both both the hippie counter culture and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Thanks to some native guides, Nancy Gilbert and her family, I got some clues.

The most important thing to understand about San Francisco is the climate, or, as the locals say, the microclimates. On leaving the house, they say it is best to take a sweater. Within the city temperatures may change from sunny warm to cold grey without warning.  It can also vary by as much as 20 degrees if you move ten miles away from the Pacific Ocean or the Bay.  The fog may clear as you climb its mountains or even ride a cable car. But it is the City's year-round microclimate consistency that creates its unique character. It is seldom below 40 or above 80 degrees any time of year. Mark Twain is supposed to have said "the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco". He might have said the warmest winter as well, but it is all exaggeration to make a point. I will make my point later.

Haydee and I were there primarily for a business trip with PIANC, an international navigation group. We, along with many of our European visitors, were taken aback to see so many homeless people on the streets. At first I tried to assure them that this was not typical of America, that we didn't have this "problem" in Pittsburgh.

Of course some people were taking advantage of the situation. We saw a man walk away from his wheel chair with his tin can. On a previous trip we were even approached by "aggressive" panhandlers in a deserted area and felt lucky to get away. But this time we saw something different.

We had to make a stop at the local Social Security office. Around the room we saw a lot of people dealing with addictive, abusive, physical- and psycho-limitation issues. We held the hand of a lady starting to shake because it was taking too long for her to see her advisor.  We listened to the man behind us berate the counselor in window #3 as "an illiterate, a high school drop-out" apparently unhappy with whatever counselor #3 said. This was a part of America that I did not want to see and used to want to just sweep under the table.

Then, it struck me how many of these street people were my age, leaving me to wonder if they were victims of some post-Vietnam traumatic injury or of some drug epidemic of my generation. Or were they people released from mental institutions because we closed them all down or released from prisons because of overcrowding. it occurred to me that there really wasn't any place better for them to go.

We arrived the week after the Gay Pride parade and the rainbow flags were still flying. On the bus tour that Haydee took, someone asked why it was San Francisco that became the center of so much Gay Pride. The Guide answered that with the 1849 gold rush, when so many men seeking their fortune arrived greatly outnumbering women, they long ago developed a tolerance to same sex activities. I had never thought of it in that context.

The sun came out a few days later, when Nancy and our son Sean arrived. She drove us around town and up the mountain. Nancy is from San Francisco and we had never before had the opportunity to meet her family. This started to become fun. We had already walked the Golden Gate Bridge and ate breakfast at Dottie's True Blue Cafe, one of Nancy's favorites, where the eggs are still orange and they can tell you the farm they came from. Now we were ready for more.

In addition to seeing where Nancy grew up and went to school (which was really interesting), we did a lot of tourist things too. We walked from Chinatown to the harbor. We took the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf and had the best Irish coffee ever at the Buena Vista Cafe. We went up the mountaintop to see the marvelous view and I was nearly knocked over by the powerful wind. We visited the Jesuit Mission and saw how the Spanish/Mexican/Indian cultures were strong in California in 1776, just as their eastern future-compatriots were signing the Declaration of Independence.

When we drove through Haight Ashbury, I asked why this particular location became the center of both the free speech movement and the hippie counterculture of the late 60s and early 70s, before each movement turned into a caricature of itself.  Nancy's answer combined the idea of low cost of housing in that particular area at the time and the climate. Social rebels and misfits of all causes could arrive without a plan and live outdoors until they could find friends or move into inexpensive housing. Something like the tradition of the 49ers whose only plan was to arrive with the shirt on there backs and strike it rich. She called it a "tolerant" community.

I found myself thinking differently about some of those homeless people I saw. Some people thrive, I guess according to their standards, on living on their own by their wits with only the smallest acknowledgement to traditional society.  All of a sudden I could see the climate as a common thread tying together the 49ers, the homeless, the free-speechers, the nerds, hippies and entrepreneurs, each combining self-reliance, innovation and social re-invention. This was also America, and I had closed my eyes to it before.

The highlight of the trip was yet to come. It was lunch with Nancy's family. Although Nancy has long been part of our family, we never had the opportunity to meet anyone else in hers. We were greeted by Nancy's sister Cathy who anyone would recognize immediately as a sister, and Cathy's husband Robert and daughters Sierra and Claire. Claire, the older one, just graduated from High School. They both were very gracious at dinner while the rest of us explored olden times. Nancy's aunt Barbara, cousins George and Annette, Annette's husband Jodi and a friend of the family Jackie, sometimes called Nancy's adopted aunt because she had been so close to Nancy's mother and remained closely connected to the family, were all there for lunch. It was a real welcoming party. We found so much to talk about. In a couple of hours we felt we knew them forever.

We topped it off with Cathy and George and what I thought was a singularly bad idea, sipping wine on a very cold San Francisco beach blanket. Apparently, judging by all the others on the beach, this is something of a local tradition. I am happy to report how wrong I was as the wine and conversation quickly compensated for any lack of temperature.

We now have lots of new friends in San Francisco and hope some day to host them in Pittsburgh.

Beautiful Vitoria, the Clean

Beautiful Vitoria, the Clean.

 

Haydee and I spent a couple of weeks in Vitoria in May. I wanted to update you from my last visit email of eight years ago, then called “Prosperity comes to Espirito Santo”. This one is "Beautiful Vitoria, the Clean". 

 

Vitoria was always in a beautiful setting, but this time I was struck by how beautiful Vitoria has become as a result of people. It is really clean, at least in comparison to Pittsburgh. The streets are well kept and the little parks are full of flowers. Both Praia do Canto, Camburi and Praia da Costa are now all well developed with very pleasing beachfronts, although there is little ocean at the first anymore there (replaced by the beautiful and interesting "Praca de Namorados") but there are new beaches as well. They have bigger beach fronts, bike trails and kiosques. But it doesn’t stop there. The newest buildings, quite modern eight years ago, are more architecturally pleasingly and esthetically designed now. The old city seems well maintained. On weekends the old city streets are full of people at bars and restaurants, like so many European cities, but it is no longer the center of commerce, government or population.

 

The sense of personal security we felt as Volunteers isn’t there anymore, but then neither is the military dictatorship that provided it. The biggest threat I saw is the one drivers pose to motor-bikers, the motor-bikers apparently have come to believe that the little striped line between lanes is designated especially for them. So motorists changing lanes can be dangerous. Beyond that, one just needs to be more cautious than we were in our care-freer days. 

 

No one smokes in public and few still smoke. There is zero tolerance for drinking and driving. Police have regular roadblock blitzes. Even the smallest amount of alcohol results in a fine and loss of license. People really obey this. Most opine that it was necessary, even though it cuts into their social life.

 

I am surprised when I ask about Brazil’s chances of winning the world cup. They say something like “Brazil has a very good team but only one of four or five very good teams with a good chance”. They don’t think of themselves as sure winners or sure losers. They say kids don’t go wild in the streets yelling gooooooooooooool anymore when Brazil scores. Some shrug their shoulders and say that Brazil has a good team but it doesn’t matter because someone has already decided who is going to win. Maybe Brazil, maybe someone else, but it will be determined before the players take the field. They feel the deception of the 1998 loss to France, which many think was fixed because Cafu was benched at the last minute, or after the loss in 2006 which they might opine was necessary to buy the votes to have the 2014 Cup in Brazil. People just don’t feel that the best team will necessarily be the winner.  No one I have met expects it to be anything less than a tourist nightmare with insufficient transportation facilities and some new airports and stadiums not near completion or army-demonstrator clashes. Some even hope they will not win because it really will distract people from the outrage of the demonstrations that were held last year.

 

If you followed those demonstrations, among the biggest I have ever seen anywhere in the world, it looked like they were going to force real changes. The Terceiro Ponte bridge, and anywhere nearby, was jammed with about a million people protesting. Everyone says they were there at first. Then the anarchist groups started doing damage, burning the bridge toll booths, breaking windows and scratching cars. Regular people stopped demonstrating. People say the anachists did the government a favor. Some believe the government sponsored the anarchists to do the favor. President Dilma promised to make improvements. Maybe she did, but not too many people are happy. In Espirito Santo the Governor suddenly discovered that the private company operating the bridge toll boths had actually recovered all of their costs years ago and no one ever noticed so they were fired the company and the bridge is now free. The company will take the case to court and it will be interesting to see what happens, but of course that will be after the next election.

 

While I did not get all the way to the north this year, I read that both Sao Mateus and Linhares are planning to build port facilities. A new law authorizes private ports. They are among the 14 new ports planned for Espirito Santo, most of them to serve the offshore oil exploration. Vila Velha and Vitoria are competing for a new port along with Presidente Kennedy and cities in the North of Rio for a deepwater facility. I counted 15 ships at anchor off of Vitoria. Interior cities like Barra de Sao Francisco and Ecoporanga are said to be thriving due to the marble and granite developments there. I did get to Colatina. There is now a good road all of the way there and a bypass around if you want to go further north. Colatina and Baixu Guando had a terrible Christmas Eve floods, but Colatina still looked like I remember, which was not all that great.

 

People in general appear wealthier. Brazil benefited as a major supplier to China before China started to slow down. The emergence to two income families also had a big impact. Young female graduates seem to be doing better than males. But they both reflect an entrepreneurial spirit different from our generation of friends did at that age. But recent graduates, since 2011 are having more problems finding jobs. 

People that bought “casas populares” forty years ago and kept them up and improved them the way Brazilians do, now, with streets and sewers added, have them for sale at $500,000. I worry about a housing bubble, but they do not seem to have the ability to get second mortgages so those who have been in their house a long time should be ok. You also see a lot more older people out walking about than we ever did.

 

If this is all too rich for Peace Corps tastes, we stayed mostly at Punta da Fruta, about 15 miles south of Vila Velha, where they are still waiting for pavement and sewers and where cars with loud speakers still occaisionally disturb the otherwise the quiet sound of birds singing all morning. Haydee comes from a very big family. She had packed up gifts for 51 relatives and we personally met every one of them. People who were potential nephews in law are now all parents of a third and fourth generation of relatives.  They fed us constantly.

 

We also got to walk on the beach and relax which is what I really wanted. If this is practice for retirement, which will take place at the end of June, I think I will like it. My asthma was very mild.     

Dogs, which I remember living largely outside, have come indoors and are now objects of great affection. Without allergies, I was able to play with dogs for the first time since I was 15. I liked that too.

 

For everything else going on, the sickness, deaths, tears and tragedies, Brazilians are still the loveable people we remember, and they still want you to eat too much.

 

Jaime McCarville