Vignettes Of San Francisco
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Almira Bailey >> Vignettes Of San Francisco
Vignettes of San Francisco
As Pilgrims go to Rome
In the same way that the poets have loved Rome and made their
pilgrimages there - as good Moslems travel toward Mecca, so there are
some of us who have come to San Francisco. Then when we arrive and find
it all that we have dreamed, our love for it becomes its highest
tribute. And I don't know why it is sacrilege to mention Rome and San
Francisco in the same breath. As for me I greatly prefer San Francisco,
although I have never been to Rome.
I love San Francisco for its youth. Other cities have become set and
hard and have succumbed to the cruel symmetry of the machine age, but
not San Francisco. It is still youth untamed. They may try, but they
cannot manicure it, nor groom it, nor dress it up in a stiff white
collar, nor fetter it by not allowing a body to stretch out on the grass
in Union Square or prohibiting street-fakers and light wines served in
coffee pots and doing away with wild dashing jitneys.
Then there is something about San Francisco's being away out here from
everyone else, a city all alone. New York is five hours from Boston;
Philadelphia is close between New York and Washington; Baltimore is a
trolley ride away; Chicago is only overnight from all the other cities,
while Atlanta is only two sleeping car nights from her sister cities.
But San Francisco, out here as far as it can reach with one foot in the
great Pacific, nearly a week from New York and a month away from China,
some people wouldn't like it, but something vagabondish in me rejoices
to have run away from them all. Especially at night when the fog comes
in on the city and shuts out even Oakland, and fog horns out of the
Golden Gate call mournfully, and boats in the bay go calling their
lookout calls, I get this feeling of far-offness from the rest of the
world that is very gratifying.
And I love the sound of San Francisco, the sound of its singing - some
cities roar and others hum, but San Francisco sings. And I love the look
of it and the feel of it. I love to stand, on its hills in the mornings
when the bride-veil fog is going out to sea and the smoke and steam and
fog and sunshine make one grand symphonic morning song. And I love to
stand on high hills on clear days when all her cubist houses stand bold
in the sunlight and the cities across the bay are so close to the touch.
And I love its color, flowers and girls and splashes of the Oriental.
And I love its Bohemia which is not affected, but real. I love it
because it is young and live and spontaneous and humorous and
beauty-loving and unashamed of anything that is life. Oh, I don't know.
If I were in New York and it should begin to suffocate me I would run
and run across the continent and never stop once until I landed on the
top of Telegraph Hill.
At the Ferry
The shrill of newsboys, the bass of older venders, the call of taxis,
trolleys that proceed all day in ordered sequence, the wide swing of
traffic on the Embarcadero, a tang of salt in the air, the atmosphere of
flowers for sale, hoarse call of ferries in the bay like politicians who
have spoken too much in the, open air and lost their voices, the
beautifully ordered hurry and bustle and expectancy of people on their
way somewhere, and over it all the mentor of the police.
"Help pass the time pleasantly," so does the electric piano coax away
our nickels. To those who know music it is a horrible sound, but to the
rest of us its tunes are rather gay. On the wall a defunct comedy
flashes. Hypnotized, but never amused, we gaze at it as we wait for the
great doors to swing back. A woman is thrown from an auto by her
husband, and in her fall displays a pair of husky, ruffled underwear.
Time was when that would have raised a howl of joy, but no longer. She
hardly touches the ground when we find ourselves gazing at an orchard of
California figs, zip, the woman picks herself up, gazes comically at the
audience for a laugh and receiving none, hops with phenomenal agility up
astride of the hood of the auto, piff, a yard of Santa Rosa hens, ping,
the husband throws his wife up to the roof of a skyscraper, the
commuters gaze solemnly, biff, a scene from Santa Clara, clang, the
gates are opened.
On the Sausalito side, a jammed together happy vacation crowd,
grotesquely varied and elaborately gotten-up hikers, bags and suitcases
to fall all over everywhere, professorish looking men off, "taking a
book along," people laden with all the cheap magazines in the market,
smartly dressed people on their way to country homes in Marin and
Sonoma, a well modulated, nicely groomed crowd - bing, the doors slide
back and everybody rushes off for a holiday.
Commuters and tourists, most of the time I'd rather be a tourist. They
are easily distinguished in the crowd, an accent from Louisiana, a woman
who has just returned from the Orient, a man with continental manners,
they are easily distinguished. and the predatory red-capped porters know
them well. We are wistfully sorry to be going only to Oakland, we long
to go out on the Main Line, the out-leading, mile-wandering, venturesome
Main Line. Reluctantly we turn to where duty and necessity calls us
ignominiously to the electric suburban.
The first sight of San Francisco. "Ah, this is San Francisco!" The
shrill of newsboys, the bass of older venders, the flash of electric
signs. Do you prefer "Camels", "Chesterfields" or "Fatimas"? the call of
taxis, invitations to hotel buses, the wide sweep of traffic on the
Embarcadero - "So this is San Francisco."
The Union-Street Car
It is surprising how many people patronize the shabby little thing. But
then it waits right where those who leave the ferry may see it first as
though it were the most important car in town, and I have a fancy the
big cars humor it a bit and give it first place. Besides, it goes
anywhere in the city, Chinatown, the Hall of Justice, the Chamber of
Commerce, the Barbary Coast, St. Francis Church - sinners, saints and
merchants may travel its way - Portsmouth Square, Telegraph Hill, Little
Italy, Russian Hill, Automobile Row, Fillmore street, the Presidio and I
expect with a little coaxing it would switch about and run over to the
Mission. It has actually been known on stormy nights to take its
constituents up the side streets to their very doors.
It is a surprising little boat which looks like nothing more than a bug
crawling up the backs of the hills with its antenna of khaki-wound legs
sticking out fore and aft. Those who have traveled in Ireland tell us
that it is much like the jaunting cars, and it is not unlike the
Toomerville Trolley.
One night I set out to find the little thing to take me home. I was in a
strange part of the city and when my friends told me to get on and get
off and get on again I did as I was told. With blind faith I told the
conductors to put me off and they did. I continued in this way until
long after midnight when I found myself at a lonely corner with no one
in sight. I waited and waited and was getting nervous when I spied a
blue uniform. I looked sharply to see if he were a motorman, a fireman
or an officer from the Presidio. I am careful about these matters since
last summer when I was coming North on the President, and asked a naval
officer for some ice water. I rushed up to him and told him, which was
true, that it was the first time I had ever seen a policeman when I
wanted one. This led him into a defense of the San Francisco police,
which I told him was quite unnecessary with me for I thought them the
finest policemen in the world, probably because they are so Irish.
"Irish," said he with a twinkle, "I'm not Irish."
We chatted awhile until the Union street car came along, and then that
policeman who said he wasn't Irish leaned over and whispered
confidentially, "If you miss this car, there'll be another." I suppose
they get lonesome.
You see how I am wandering away from my subject. That is because I
followed the Union street car. It switches from subject to subject just
like that. It begins with the wonderful retail markets of San Francisco,
and then changes abruptly to all sorts of sociological problems, then
before we know it gives us a beautiful marine view, and then drops us
down where the proletariat lives, then up to the homes of the rich and
mighty, and ends in the military.
Everyone should sight-see by the little Union street car.
The Latin Meets the Oriental
In that spot where Chinatown merges into the Latin quarter there must
be, I think, a Director of Delightful Situations who holds dominion
there. For instance, can you imagine anything more subtle than a group
of large fat women haranguing, in Italian-American, a poor thin Chinaman
over some bargains in vegetables?
In a place which marks the line of cleavage between the two quarters is
a picture store containing in its window religious pictures, enlarged
family photographs of Filipinos, and, of course, views of the Point
Lobos cypress. There is something very appealing about that window.
Pictures of Jesus, no matter how lurid they are, never fall short of
dignity. And it seems not at all incongruous that He should be there in
the midst of all those strange human contacts.
There are not only contacts between the Latin and the Oriental, but
anything unusual may come to light in that particular neighborhood. A
buff cochin rooster was wandering about the street the other day.
Stepping high and picking up choice tidbits and showing off before his
harem of hens who peeked at him from their boxes, he strutted about
exactly as though he had been in his own Petaluma barnyard.
One day I saw an enormous negro running through the streets with a piece
of new, green felt bound around his stomach. Now why should a huge negro
run through the street with a piece of new green felt around his
stomach? No one knows. And another time a small Chinese maiden bumped
into me because she was so absorbed in that great American institution,
the funny sheet.
On one of those side streets, in there somewhere, one of those streets
untoured by tourists, I saw some Chinese boys, dressed in American "Boss
of the Road" unionalls, playing baseball and calling the call of Babe
Ruth in sing-song Chinese. Then near them was an empty lot and what do
you suppose it was filled with? Scotch thistles, and edged with wild
corn flowers. Even Nature enters into the fun.
There is a story of an Italian who went through the streets somewhere on
Leavenworth, calling, "Nica fresha flowers," and from the opposite side
of the street a Chinaman with flowers would call, "Samee over here." All
went well until the Chinaman began to outsell the other, when the
Italian remonstrated. "Yella for yourself, see," he said, to which the
Chinaman answered, "Go to hellee," and went on as before.
This story was told to me by very reliable eye witnesses. The buff
cochin rooster and the huge negro and all the others I saw myself. And
many other strange things which I have not room to write, I saw in that
spot where Chinatown merges into the Latin quarter.
The Pepper and Salt Man
He was a man, I should say about sixty years old, a most uninteresting
age, and a homely, weather-beaten fellow too, when you stopped to look
at him. His suit was pepper-and-salt, and he was just like his suit.
Good as gold, I have no doubt, a roomer of whom his landlady could say:
"He comes and he goes and is never a speck of trouble."
Still, he might have been as good as Saint Anthony but no one would ever
have noticed him except for what happened. What happened wasn't so much
either but it was enough to illumine that dun, common-place man so that
everyone in the side-seating trolley was suddenly aware of his presence.
What happened was ten months old and was a girl.
A regular girl, one hundred per cent feminine. One could tell just by
the way she wore her clothes, by her daintiness, by the tilt of her
bonnet and by the way smiled out from under it. I can't describe a baby
girl any more than I describe a sunset or moonlight or any of the
wonders of God - I can only say that she was everything that a baby girl
should have been.
When she entered with her mother we all edged and crowded over but the
pepper-and-salt man won. Down she sat close beside him. Then you should
have seen that man, the foolish, old fellow. He turned toward her; he
beamed; he mentally devoured her; he never took his eyes off her long
enough to wink.
When she seemed about to turn her restlessly bobbing head toward him,
his hands moved and the strong muscles of his face worked in excitement.
Then, when she smiled his way and for an instant there was a flash of
tiny, milk teeth, that man, the old silly, made the most dreadful facial
contortion, something between a wink, a smile, a booh and a grimace.
Then when she turned from him he sat there eating her up. I saw him look
reverently at her exquisite hands and at the awkward little legs
sticking out straight ahead. When her mother arranged her ruffles he
watched every move - absorbed. Then he would wait eager, hoping and
praying for her to smile his way again. . .
Why, I was waiting for her smile too and so was every one of the staid
and grown-up people in the car. I don't know when we would ever have
come out from the spell of that ten-months-old baby girl if just then
the conductor had not called out reproachfully - "Central Avenue -
Central Avenue." Then the pepper-and-salt man jumped and looked
nervously out and rushed for the door. I, myself, had to walk back two
blocks and when I turned at my corner he was still going back to his
street.
The Bay on Sunday Morning
Perhaps to go to Fort Mason on a sunny Sunday morning, that beautiful
relaxed moment of the whole week, and there to sit with others who have
no autos to go gallivanting in, and to sit idly gazing off at the bay.
That's not bad. To read a little and doze a bit, but mostly to gaze out
to sea and dream.
A big foreign steamer in port, perhaps a Scandinavian boat, inert,
enormous, helpless, while the little tugs chatter, around it and finally
get hold of it, and tug it slowly around with its nose pointing out to
sea. Lumber schooners come in slowly and rhythmically, long and low and
clean. The Vallejo boat, looking like a rocking horse, goes importantly
chugging off toward Mare Island. It's hard to read a book with so going
on out there.
Sunday morning, blessed play time, there is a fellow in a green canoe,
and the muscles of his body play into the movement of the waves until he
and his green canoe and the white capped waves are all one motif of the
whole symphony. Men play around the yacht club like a lot of school
boys, and now - "Shoot," they push a long slim racer into the water.
Dainty white yachts go dipping to the waves and seem like lovely young
girls in among the sturdier boats.
Now the fishermen come in from their night's work, making music all in
an orderly procession, and every boat of them a brilliant blue inside.
I'd like to catch a Maine fisherman allowing color in his boat, like a
"dago" or a "wop."
Over all the swing and dip and rhythm of the sea gulls. How beautifully
they accent the movement of the symphony, like the baton of some great
leader - this great beautiful Sunday morning symphony.
Then there is Alcatraz. Oh, Alcatraz, why should they have placed a
prison there as a monument to men's failure to order their lives in
harmony with nature. Alcatraz, most beautiful island in the most
beautiful bay, you sound an ugly, sinister, most unhappy undertone in
the morning's symphony.
Still it is a symphony. A symphony of San Francisco Bay. Why shouldn't
the composers put it into music. We're sick of the song of the huntsman
by the brasses, the strings and the wood instruments. With Whitman we
exclaim: "Come, Muse, migrate from Aeonia," and come out here to the
West, and conserve the symphony of the bay which is already composed and
waiting.
And for the argument, the overture, the prelude, there could be a
sailing schooner with sails all set coming into the Golden Gate, in the
full brilliant sunlight, or mysteriously through a fog, or against a
sunset sky. It should be "full and by" like that beautiful painting by
Coulter in the stock exchange of the Merchants' Building.
Symphony of San Francisco Bay, boom of fog horns, calls and answers of
the ferries, chug of the fishermen's boats, twink of lights in the
harbor at night, rhythm of sea gulls, and the brooding fog to soften it
all. "Come, Muse, migrate from Aeonia."
Safe on the Sidewalk
Are there others, I wonder, who feel as I do about crossing the street?
There must be. Now I, when I cross, say Market street at Third, I run. I
take my life and my bundles in my hand and run, darting swift glances to
the left and to the right. It looks "hick." I know it looks "hick." And
I care. But I prefer to be alive and countrified than sophisticated in
an ambulance and so I run.
At corners, too. I think corners are worse. For there the machines may
turn around and chase me, which they often do. It's a horrible feeling.
There must be others who feel as I do about crossing the street, but
they never betray it. I watch to see and when they cross, they just
cross - that's all. Not with nonchalance exactly, but with ease and
assurance. Once I actually saw a man, a native son, I'm sure, roll a
cigarette as he crossed at a point where even the traffic cop looked
nervous.
No one ever gets killed or even injured. But always everybody is getting
almost killed and almost injured. They like it. It's a sort of sport.
I've noticed it more since the city's gone dry. The game is, if you are
walking, to see how close to a machine you can come and not hit it.
Street cars, machines and people all go straight ahead and they all come
out right. It's the only city where it's done with such abandon. They
never stop for anything except taxis - not even fire engines.
The secret of it is, I think, that no one ever hesitates. This is
understood by all San Franciscans - that, no one is ever going to
hesitate. That's why there are no accidents. It's the unexpected in
people that makes disasters and creates a demand for traffic cops.
I try to cross the street as others cross. I choose a chalk mark and,
pretending I am a native daughter, launch out. I get on fine - suddenly
a monster machine is on me. Or would be if I did not jump back. I
shouldn't have jumped back it seems. But how was I to know? In the jaws
of death you don't reason, you jump. In jumping back I hit another
machine and it stops. And that stops a street car. That stops something
else. And in a minute Market street, the famous Market street, is all
balled up because I jumped back. Drivers, red in the face, swear at me,
not because they are cross, but scared-more scared than I.
Next time I am more careful. I look to the traffic cop for attention
but, being a handsome man, he thinks I'm trying to flirt. Policemen
should be homely. So I wait until the street is entirely empty. I wait a
long time - it is empty - I run like a steer - and suddenly out of
nowhere a machine is yelling at me individually and I know no more
until, breathless and red, I reach the haven of the sidewalk.
Once I heard a horrible story of a man who lost control of his machine
and ran up on to the sidewalk.
Port O'Missing Men
They say that San Francisco is known all over as the Port o' Missing
Men. That it is a city where a man may lose himself if he chooses, and
that by the same token it is a good place to look for "my wandering boy
tonight." I can believe all this especially on Third street. Third
street should be called by some other name or it should have a nickname.
If it were in Seattle it would be known as "skid row." Third street
doesn't describe it at all.
When I see a lot of men like that, wanderers, family men out of work,
vagabonds, nobodies, somebodies, "rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief;
doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief," I always get to thinking how once each
one was a tiny baby in a thin white dress, and how before that each one
of them was born of a woman. If I could ever forget that, I could
perhaps sometimes call men "a lot of cattle." Come to think of it, it is
men who call other men "cattle." At any rate, I like to think that no
woman would ever see men as less than the sons of mothers.
The Port o' Missing Men is like the Port of San Francisco, and these men
are like boats in from a foreign port, tramp steamers some of them, out
of nowhere, going nowhere, no baggage, no traditions, men who'll never
get lost because they are on their way to Nowhere.
Yet, the majority of these men are going to some place, but where I do
not know. What do they talk about in groups down there, tall, young
fellows and strong middle-aged men and reminiscent, old ones down in the
Port o' Missing Men? If they're out of work where do they sleep at
night, and what do they have to eat? And have they any women folks?
Not all kinds of men are down there, but many kinds. There are Mexicans,
Sinn Feiners, old American stock, and once in awhile a venturesome
Yankee. There are lumberjacks in from the North, and Chinamen in
shuffling slippers, and philosophers and Swedes, half-breeds and just
plain men. Some are Vagabonds who can't help their roving, and others
are very tired and would like to lie over in port for or a long spell.
There are Italians, and Portuguese, and many Greeks, and turbaned
Hindus, tall and skinny, always traveling in pairs like nuns. Sometimes
the Port is fairly crowded.
New England is a section of the country where men leave home, and I have
heard mothers sing with tears in their voices: "Oh, where is my
wandering boy tonight?" On Third street down at the Port o' Missing Men,
I have a fancy that I would like to write back to all those mothers that
here are their boys. But, after all, what good would that do, for who
can tell which is which?
Market St. Scintillations
Oh, the things our eyes discover as we walk along on Market street. Such
a medley - infinite, incongruous, comical, pathetic, motley and sublime.
Harding in a window with "pure buttermilk." He'll be in more difficult
situations before he is done, I'm thinking. An electric fan above him
that keeps the buttermilk "pure" and flies the American flag in crepe
paper.
"Crabs to take home." They are freshly cooked, very large and forty
cents apiece. I decide that some I shall really buy one and take it home
when I confronted with the fact that "All Hair Goods Must Be Sold." Why,
I wonder. Why must they be sold? And here are "Eggs any style," so close
to the hair goods that I immediately visualize them as marcelled "style"
and pompadoured.
"Shoes Drastically Reduced." It is the truth. The Oxfords I wear are
reduced by a drastic five dollars. Well, I couldn't go barefooted, I
comfort myself and hurry on.
A shooting gallery and a man standing there trying to make up his mind
to try it. A second's glimpse of him and all that he is is revealed. One
knows immediately that his favorite song is "My Bonnie Lies Over the
Ocean," and that his ideal man is Governor Allen and that he is on his
way to spend his "remaining days" with his sister Lottie in Los Angeles.
Who would eat "stewed tripe Spanish." Someone must or they wouldn't
advertise it on the outside of he restaurant. Well, it takes all sorts
of people to make a world. Probably the man who would order "stewed
tripe Spanish" wouldn't touch an alligator pear salad. To him alligator
pears taste exactly like lard. To the person who wouldn't eat "stewed
tripe Spanish" they are a delicacy.
A crowd around a window. On your tip-toes to see. It's that fascinating
Lilliputian with a beard and electric bowels who stands in drug store
windows and administers corn cure to his own toes with a smile.
The professional window shopper is a vagabond at heart - a loiterer by
nature. Here is one gazing in a photographer's window to discover
someone he knows. These two are not professionals though but a spring
couple looking in furniture windows for nest material. And sailors
wandering about, nothing but kiddies, lonesome looking and no doubt
wishing we were at War again and hospitable once more.
Here is a "Pershing Market" and a "Grant Market," beside it. There's a
lot of that in San Francisco. Is there an "Imperial Doughnut?" Up goes a
"Supreme Doughnut" next door. It's the spirit of "I'll go you one better
every time." It's the spirit of Market street.
Cafeterias
This is not to hurt the feelings of anyone, for some people are very
sensitive about cafeterias. They are cafeteria wise, they have a
cafeteria class consciousness. Such people are to be admired. They have
accurate minds which enable them to choose a well-balanced meal at
minimum cost. Lacking that sort of mind, I do not get on well in
cafeterias. As sure as I equip myself with a tray and silver in a napkin
and become one of the long procession, I lose all sense of proportion,
and come out at the end with two desserts, or a preponderance of
starches or with too much bread for my butter, and a surprising bill.