Day 25 - 23/09/2022 - San Francisco, A Love Letter

One of my (and everyone's) favourite literary tropes of all time is "enemies to lovers." The most masterful example of it is (yes, I'm going to bring Austen into this) Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy fall in love with each other when, it's fair to say, they weren't too keen on each other at the beginning. One of the reasons this trope works so wonderfully in Pride and Prejudice is that Elizabeth and Darcy learn to accept (and eventually love) each other for who they are, not for who they would wish each other to be, and in the process realise that what they believed they needed in a significant other (Elizabeth, amongst other things, extroversion, and Darcy, high social status and money) are not actually what they need, and that what they need the other one has in abundance.

San Francisco and I have had a similar journey. As I arrive back at the Presidio today after a surprisingly transition from train to underground to bus, I realise that if San Francisco has changed in my eyes it's nothing to do with it but with me. Having arrived at it three and a half years ago with images from Mrs. Doubtfire deeply ingrained in my brain, I couldn't help but feel disappointed at today's San Francisco, with its very clear signs of a homelessness crisis and ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor. What I realised today is that my mistake was to hold San Francisco up against an idealised standard I had never seen and never will, instead of accepting it and enjoying it for what it is. It was again a stunning sunny day, neither too hot nor too cold, and as I looked out into the Golden Gate, freshly arrived back at the Presidio, I really wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else, given the chance.

I had come back because I wasn't happy with the fact that I hadn't seen The Jungle Book exhibit. These exhibits are temporary, and while, believe me, I'm already wondering how soon is too soon for me to impose myself on my friends again, I would regret it if I missed it. So to the Diane Disney Miller Exhibition Hall I went, on a separate building but with the path helpfully indicated with round Jungle Book stickers (with my terrible sense of direction, I wish every path to everywhere could be indicated like this). The exhibition was composed of the two floors of the gallery and, taking my sweet time as always, I saw it in an hour. The Jungle Book is significant, I realised during the exhibition, because it was started but not finished before Walt Disney's death. With Disney's death, the Studios halted production, with management even seriously considering shutting down the Animation Department altogether (!!!) to rely on income generated just through releases of older films. Fortunately, the animators were eventually able to continue production on the movie, which, as it turned out, was so successful that it pretty much single-handedly guaranteed the continuation of the Animation Department. It wasn't just successful in the US but all over the world, particularly in Germany, where it is still the most-attended film in German theatrical history.

San Francisco didn't want me to leave our last day together for this trip, however, without really hammering home how wrong I had been to think of it as anything other than friendly and welcoming. First there was John, who works at the museum shop, who, upon hearing that I was an academic who had written about Disney villains in one of her latest articles, and who wanted to write about Disney a lot more in future, brought me two books with entire sections on Disney villains. The main one is The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, written by animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, a book that I now absolutely have to get, but which was so heavy that I really didn't think I would be able to carry it through the steep streets of San Francisco, even with all the weightlifting. I monopolised John's time for long enough to recognise in him a fellow Disney geek who was incredibly knowledgeable about everything to do with Disney and just the absolute perfect person to be representing the museum and welcoming people into it. When I told him I was from Liverpool, he jokingly went: "Isn't that where that little band comes from...the cockroaches, or something?" "Yes," we said almost in unison, "that little local band, maybe they'll make it one day."

I had a very relaxing lunch overlooking the Golden Gate and, accidentally showing up to catch the bus from the Presidio at the right time, I set myself a goal for the day: I can't leave San Francisco without doing the ultimate quintessential San Francisco thing - ride on the side of a cable cart. On the bus, I started talking to another gentleman who kindly told me where I would have to go to get the cable cart. He had travelled around Europe and had been treated so kindly by everyone he met that he would like to pay back the favour, he said.

There was just one little problem: the cable cars were down. The person who informed me of this then explained to me that one route was broken down but a second one was still working, gave me a map and showed me where I needed to go for that one. Now, I of course knew San Francisco is a very hilly city, but it's one thing to know this and another thing to have to literally hike up a steep hill only to get to the bottom of an even steeper hill that then leads you to the bottom of even even steepier hill that, yes, you also have to hike up. This led me to Chinatown, though, where I stopped complaining the minute I got some bits of BTS merchandise and fortune cookies from the little hole on the wall that is the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company, where the fortune cookie was first invented. Having been to the latter before, I knew what it was like, so I could enjoy it for the funny little hole on the wall that it was instead of being disappointed that it wasn't how I had pictured it. I should have got the fortune cookies with the "Adult X-Rated" messages, though, I do regret that.

I got to the stop for the cable car only to find it broken down. The very nice driver, however, invited me to sit inside it with him as I waited for the bus that was coming to pick people up and take them to the working cable cars. We chatted for a few minutes and he told me he lived in Chinatown. "That must be fun!" I said. "A little loud," he said, "too many people making noise at night." I told him that, living in the city centre of Liverpool, I understood. He still loved living in San Francisco, though. Having heard that I was from Liverpool, he told me he had been there two years ago for a cruise that had started in Amsterdam. "Ah, the Netherlands, that's where I want to move to!" And it was a little bit like a movie how, right before I got on the bus, he shouted at me from across the street: "I'll see you in Liverpool or Amsterdam, I would love to go back to both!"

There was just one little problem: the bus didn't drop you off so much as by the stop for the cable cars as relatively close to it. "It's four blocks away," the bus driver said, which must mean something to people in the US (what, I'm still not sure). With some rough guidelines for where to go, I made my way through the streets until I successfully but pretty accidentally spotted a group of people waiting by a cable car that was on the way out. There, I met Alex, from Nashville, who smartly escaped academia but not before she wrote a thesis on Eliza Haywood, making her a fellow "eighteenthcenturist." She was with her family and some friends from the local area who were showing them around San Francisco. They had let that cable car go because some of them wanted to ride on the side and there were only sitting places left available. "I also want to ride on the side," I said, "I want to do something that would make my parents really worry."

Another cable car arrived, which seemed to be the end of my fears that the day was going to end soon and I would be leaving California without having ridden a cable car, like I wanted to. But figuring out what to do next was still difficult. I told the driver I wanted to ride on the side and he told me to wait as he looked around. "Go to that side," he said curtly, pointing at the opposite side of the car. I handed him a $10 bill (it costs $8 for one trip) and he shouted louder: "Go to that side." It turns out they don't take payment until you're already inside. "Already getting into trouble!" one of Alex's friends jokingly shouted at me from the other side of the car. "All the way from England just to get into trouble!" I shouted back.

Alex was kind enough to offer to take my picture, and I'm really happy to have photographic evidence of one of the most fun things I've ever done. Riding the side of a cable car as it's going downhill on a street steeper than any I had ever seen, as I passed by gorgeous Victorian house after gorgeous Victorian house, I was so happy I could burst. This was the absolute perfect ending to my perfect day in San Francisco. As I talked to all these people visiting San Francisco, I realised that the city isn't its reputation or its crime rate, but a place that people come to visit every year from all over the country and all over the world, and that there are many good reasons for this. I had been prejudiced against San Francisco before because it hadn't fit my nineties-nostalgia-filled image of it. I had made the silly mistake of dismissing something for what it wasn't instead of appreciating it for what it was. To sort of quote Mr. Darcy: And such I might have still been had it not been for you, dearest, loveliest San Francisco.

My lunch spot

The Jungle Book exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum

Inside a cable car

Chinatown

San Francisco looking gorgeous