Covering SF: Saturday April 11th: In Jail

I’ll be honest, I’ve really lost interest in continuing to write this blog, especially the San Francisco recap. It is unbearably boring and I hate getting halfway through and quitting, so I’ll try to wrap this up. I’d like to think I can make it more interesting but…

Waking Up

Saturday morning, I didn’t need to get up until 5:30am, so I knew I wouldn’t have to set up my alarm. I went to Mel’s Drive-In, and once again, the service was extremely good. Everyone seemed happy and the food was very good.

On the Cable Car

I went to the spot where the cable car begins its route and the car was parked a half block ahead of the stop. I didn’t know whether that’s where we got on, so I went up and asked the two workers how and where do I board. The one guy pointed toward the other worker, who said that I needed to go wait behind the rope. I asked when it would leave the stop and they said they didn’t know but probably in five to ten minutes. I’d expected the cable car people to be friendly and during my time out there, they really weren’t.

About five minutes later, it moved in reverse toward me and a couple other waiting passengers. I got on and at some point, one of the workers yelled something and I thought he was telling us to get off, so I got off. I don’t know what he actually yelled but I realized that while some passengers got off, most stayed on and the car continued its route.

I was heading toward the part of Lombard Street that’s known as ‘The World’s Crookedest Street.’ I thought about walking but my knee was really hurting and while I’d read that San Francisco was hilly, it was nothing like I’d pictured. The degree of the hills were much, much steeper than I’d imagined. It was really something else.

The walk would be nearly a mile from where I was to Lombard Street, so I instead walked to the nearest cable car stop, and caught the next one that came by. Walking up hill wasn’t too bad on my knee (though it still hurt), nothing was as bad as walking downhill.

While on the car, a worker asked to see my pass, and then asked the passengers next to me to show them their pass. While both passengers and the worker were Asian, they were having trouble understanding each other. Turns out they didn’t have passes and had to buy one from the worker. I wound up having to ‘translate’ between the two.

The Crookedest Street

I hopped off at Lombard Street. The street was so steep that several switchbacks were put in place to make it safer for cars, which makes it a very crooked street. When I was little, I remember seeing a picture of the street in the Guinness Book of World Records and I really wanted to take the same picture I’d seen.

I wasn’t able to get that picture for several reasons. First, the flowers weren’t in bloom and second, I couldn’t get the angle right. The pictures I took were a bit of a disappointment. Off to the right of all the crookedness was a pedestrian walkway straight downhill and I was in a great deal of pain walking down that stretch. I’d taken the pain pills but I was still hurting a lot.

Getting to Alcatraz

I had a bit of trouble finding the bus stop to take me to the Fisherman’s Wharf. By the time I’d gotten there, I’d missed the bus. It wasn’t the biggest deal in the world since another bus was about 20 minutes away but my next event was Alcatraz and I needed to be at the gate by 8:30am to make sure I was able to board at 9am so I could get back in time to get to AT&T Park by 12:30pm for the ballpark tour.

I arrived just before the Alcatraz tour closed off allowing passengers for the 9am tour. If I’d been just a little bit later, I would’ve had to wait for 9:30, which doesn’t sound like a huge difference but this was only time in the entire time I was in San Francisco where I had reservations for back-to-back events.

I sat out on the deck on the ferry to Alcatraz and took pictures of the island, the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. The best pictures though were of the downtown skyline. I had really wanted to get good shots of the buildings, which is why I tried to go to Twin Peaks and why I went to Buena Vista Park but the best pictures were from the boat to Alcatraz.

It was extremely sunny and while it wasn’t hot, I was concerned about getting a sunburn. I probably should’ve put on sunscreen but I don’t like doing that, so I didn’t.

In Alcatraz

Alcatraz is extremely hilly and I was concerned about the amount of walking I’d have to do. They offered a tram to get you to the top but it was designed for handicapped people and I felt funny about asking to be given a lift so I walked.

I sent a text message to my mom, brother and girlfriend saying that I was in jail. I thought that was funny since I was in Alcatraz. My girlfriend sent back two texts: “What??” followed shortly by “You better be messing with me”

Alcatraz itself was fairly dingy and not all that fascinating on the inside. I liked the story about how Native Americans claimed it as theirs as it was declared surplus property by the government but seeing individual cells and empty mess halls isn’t that interesting.

I wandered around the outside of Alcatraz looking at the birds and the Bridge until I was stopped by a worker tending to the plants. She asked me if I was a “S-P-I-E,” attempting to spell out the word spy. I didn’t know what she was talking about and she pointed to my bag and asked what was written on there. It was a bag that I’d been given that had the word tour written on it. She looked disappointed and said, “Nevermind.”

No More Pictures

While taking pictures of birds, I ran out of room on my memory card. See, when I was in Colorado, I was shooting some of my pictures on medium quality and others in high quality but when I got back and loaded the pictures on the computer, I’d forgotten which ones were which. In an effort to eliminate that, I decided to shoot all of them in the highest quality: Large, Superfine. (Though for some reason, all my first pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge were taken in medium)

Because each picture took up more room, I had less pictures I could take, which is why I brought a cable to convert my pictures to my mp3 player for storage. I thought about doing the conversion that morning but thought I could get through the day okay. I was wrong.

I started deleting some of the pictures that were clearly duplicates and started shooting on medium quality. Doing this picture dump to clear up memory gave me a chance to rest my knee but then I realized that there was about to be a departure ferry back to the city. This would allow me to leave 30 minutes earlier than I’d planned, giving me time to possibly go back to the hotel and dump the remaining pictures onto my mp3 player. It also would give me a chance to go to the bathroom, since I hate using public restrooms.

Escape from Alcatraz

The problem was that I didn’t have much time before the ferry left and I’d have to hurry. With my knee hurting like it was, I debated whether I should even try. What if I hurt it worse? And still didn’t make it in time?

I decided it was better to hurry because the alternative meant taking more shots in medium, so I took off moving as quick as I could (which still wasn’t all that quick).

The guy who was letting people onto the ramp that led to the boat hollered toward me asking if I was wanting to get on the boat. I replied that I did and he told me I could slow down that he’d let me on. I was the last person onto the boat and it left just after I boarded. My knee was absolutely raging. Instead of hanging out on the deck, I spent the ride back inside, continuing to delete pictures and just trying to rest. I’d walked around two miles so far that day.

To the Hotel

I caught the ‘Historic F Streetcar’ to go back to the hotel. I’m not sure what’s so historic about it. Every time I boarded that streetcar, it always said it was bought in the 90s. Not all the historic.

In front of the Federal Reserve, there were several protestors walking in a circle carrying signs. Mostly they appeared to be homeless people who were given coffee by the organizers. One had a sign that read ‘Tim Geitner, You’re a funny guy, now get out.’ Another had a sign, “Socialism is the only cure for War, Poverty and Racism.”

You know, I’m not sure Socialism is the horrible evil some portray it as but it certainly isn’t the cure for war, poverty or racism. There are enough Socialist governments to be able to verify that.

I got back to the hotel and I searched through my bag and while I found two of the wires needed to convert pictures to my mp3 player, I was lacking the third piece, which meant I’d hurried down Alcatraz for nothing and I was going to have to shoot most of the rest of my pictures in medium. If I’d known that was going to happen, I would’ve short more in medium earlier and maybe only shot the Bridge shots in the highest quality or something.

I still had some time before I needed to leave for the ballpark tour, so I iced my knee to try to help with the swelling a little. Thankfully, it wasn’t quite as ugly as it was the day before but it was still pretty bad.

AT&T Park Tour

I took the bus to the ballpark and hung around waiting for the tour to start. I asked one of the workers where the tour started and she said she didn’t know. I asked another worker and they said, “It’s over there somewhere,” as they pointed toward one section of the Giants Team Store.

I was able to figure out where the tour began and we were led into the dining area for the ‘special’ ticket holders. I’ve actually gone to a game twice with ‘special’ tickets but I still feel a certain level of derision toward those ‘special’ ticket holders. They get to have ‘special’ food and get to have the ‘special’ seats with ‘special’ parking and they get ‘special’ service. And it seems like every ballpark tour starts with showing us common people what the ‘special’ people enjoy.

The one consolation is that ‘special’ tickets (at least the two stadiums I went to with them and no tour has indicated otherwise) don’t allow holders access to frozen lemonade. So at least we common people have that to hold over those bastards.

Back to the tour…

AT&T Park, despite the frequent name changes (previously PacBell and SBC Park) in its short history, is actually a wonderful ballpark. The food was good, the sight lines were good and the transit to the park was great. The tour was awful. It’s the single worst tour I’ve ever been on for a stadium.

The tour guide knew little about baseball. She knew Willie Mays’ name and number but when asked whose numbers had been retired and were on display in one section of the ballpark, she knew Mays and that one of them was Juan Marichal. One of the people in the group pointed out Willie McCovey’s number. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a tour guide not know the names of the retired numbers.

When the tour started, she gave us a 5-10 minute bathroom break. And almost everybody actually went. That’s crazy to me, both that there was a break and that people went. Here’s the thing, it’s advertised as a 90 minute tour. Don’t most people go beforehand? Do they really expect a bathroom break will be offered?

Once everyone was out of the bathroom, she asked what we expected to see on the tour. The standard answers were shouted out: The field, the clubhouse, the dugout, the press box…hold on…She said that the press box wasn’t something we’d visit on this tour because there wasn’t enough time. Of course, maybe if we hadn’t just taken a 5-10 minute bathroom break, there would’ve been time…

After looking at the ‘special’ people’s dining area, we went into the room where player’s do their press conferences and we watched a 10-15 minute video about the stadium. I’ve never been on a stadium tour that’s done that. We then had to wait so people could have their picture taken in the press conference room. Almost 30 minutes into the tour and we hadn’t hardly seen anything.

We saw the visitor’s clubhouse, which was standard stuff and the field, where we were given the obligatory ‘keep off the grass’ line and the home dugout. Other than that, it was almost entirely general admission stuff. We walked around in the cheap seats and saw various views of the park, all of which I’d seen a couple days earlier. It was a complete ripoff.

Oh, and we saw the suites and got the standard sales speech on how to rent one, something every tour has.

In all, it was an extremely lousy tour, especially for how great the park is.

Stopping for Lunch

After the tour, I went to McDonald’s to eat lunch. The cost of the meals were a lot more expensive in San Francisco than they are in Atlanta. I think I might’ve mentioned that before but these blogs are so boring, I don’t really want to force myself to look through what I’ve already written and find out if I’m repeating myself.

While at McDonald’s, this father and son that had been on the tour came up to me and we started talking about baseball. They were from Cincinnati and they were nice at first until I asked them what other stadiums they’ve toured and they named some stadiums they saw games in and then acted like I was pestering them. They were weird.

Getting to Coit Tower

My next stop was Coit Tower. I was going to take the bus to the Filbert Steps, which was supposed to be a bit of a hike but worth it because how pretty the walk is. I had a little trouble finding the bus stop for the bus number I needed. I kept walking north toward Coit Tower so that I was at least moving in the right direction.

I walked almost a mile before getting to a bus stop that (I thought) was clearly marked for the bus I was waiting for. And then when I saw the bus, it passed by, and as it did, I could see the bus driver waving at me. I was infuriated. I walked a couple blocks north to another bus stop and caught the next bus that came by.

I later learned that I was standing at a dropoff spot for the bus, not a pick up spot and that’s why the bus didn’t stop. Still sucked.

While on the bus, the driver yelled, “Did you see that!” at the passengers. We looked out the window and some police had their guns drawn at this guy who had his hands up. Honestly, I was hoping for gun shots but nothing like that happened. The driver said that the city was on edge because of the recent killings of some officers in the Bay Area and that police are probably going to be quicker to draw guns and perhaps fire on criminals than they normally would be.

Up the Filbert Steps

I got off a stop earlier than I should have in retrospect. I was going to walk up the Filbert Steps, and looking back on it, I was simply insane. My knee was hurting so bad and walking up a few steps was difficult. Going up these steps amounts to about a quarter of a mile total and according to some sources on the Internet, include around 400 steps, though I didn’t bother to count them.

There were times when I thought about quitting on the way up but (a) I didn’t want to have to go back down and (b) I kept thinking I was almost to the top. The reason I thought this is because when you go up a set of steps, you then have to go right or left to the next set and so you can’t really see the ending. People say how beautiful those steps are with the gardening and the supposed parrots that live there but I say the steps hurt.

The steps are in between the homes of people so you’re just a few feet from someone’s window or door, which means even when you see a bench, it likely belongs to someone and I didn’t feel like I could sit at it and rest.

When I finally did get to the top, I saw a bus pulling up. The map with bus routes that I had didn’t show any bus going to the top of Telegraph Hill. I kicked myself for not having taken the bus, especially since there was a page in The Plan that showed that Coit Tower bus.

My knee was killing me and it took me a lot longer to get up those steps than I thought it would. On the map, it looks like three blocks. I figured somewhere between 7 and 12 minutes. I didn’t time how long it took me but it was a lot longer than that. (Based on phone records, my estimate is about 35 minutes)

At Coit Tower

I read one report that I had discounted at the time, that advised allowing two hours to visit Coit Tower. I thought there was no way it could take that long. But if it did, I wouldn’t be getting to my next event until almost 6pm and by that time, the places would be closed and because I wanted to be back at the hotel by 7pm each day (10pm EDT), Coit Tower would be my last thing.

The line wasn’t going out the door. Because Coit Tower is circular, the line can wrap around the inside base. I figured that I’d have to wait 30 minutes or an hour at worst. The line was barely moving though. The elevator could only take about 11 people at a time. The elevator was slow. It seemed to take forever.

And when I finally got to the top, there was a substantial line of people waiting to go back down. That really hadn’t occurred to me, that there’d be a line to get down. In fact, of all the people up at the top, only a handful were looking around, the rest were waiting in line.

When you get off the elevator, you have to walk up these thin, narrow steps and each step was extremely painful with my knee hurting the way it was. All I could think of was getting back in line so I could get down. I took some pictures but my heart really wasn’t in it.

I quickly got back in line to go down. I’m not sure if I already wrote this but the iPhone was everywhere. In line, two of the four people in front of me had one. So I kept staring at it, coveting it. I wanted it so bad. On Monday, a person left their iPhone on the MUNI and another passenger picked it up and yelled out to the person who left it behind. You know why they didn’t steal it? Because virtually everyone in SF has an iPhone and so there’s no need to steal them.

(Actually, for everything negative I can say about San Francisco, they appear to be really good about returning things that someone lost. They’re just not very good with directions or knowing where exits and entrances are)

As for the pictures I got while up in the Tower, they were decent. I got a good one of the TransAmerican Building. The view wasn’t as disappointing as the St. Louis Arch, which had two directions you can look out of: east and west but I wound up spending nearly 3 hours (including travel time) on Coit Tower.

Additionally, I’d walked almost four and a half miles when I’d planned to walk less than three miles. According to plans, I was still set to walk just over a mile and a half.

To Stop or To Keep Going

After I finally got to the bottom, I waited for the bus to arrive and I ended up getting out at Little Italy. I needed to transfer to another bus but I was a little confused about where I was and I ended up walking in the wrong direction and had to double back.

By the time I caught another bus, it was too late to go to the cable car museum and Grace Cathedral (though I could’ve stopped by outside and looked at it). And because my knee was hurting as bad as it was, I really didn’t feel like walking through Chinatown. So I decided to just go back to the hotel.

This meant that I wouldn’t visit the Bank of Canton, Chinatown Gate, Pacific Heights, the Haas-Lilienthal House and Alta Vista Park. I was disappointed but I was just in too much pain to keep going.

What I really wanted to do was just lie down for a bit and maybe go to Mel’s Drive-in for strawberry shortcake or cherry pie. Of course I also really wanted some Gatorade. I truly wanted some Gatorade. Gatorade.

To the Hotel...And Gatorade

On the bus, I sat behind a couple that kept arguing and then would start making out, go back to arguing and then would continue making out. It was very bizarre.

Behind me, I heard one of the funniest random lines of the trip. A girl was talking to her friends and explained to them, “I’m a ho but I’m a good ho.”

When I got off the bus, I went to Walgreens for bottled water and two Gatorades and I got back to the hotel. And while I had every intention of going to Mel’s, I was too tired and just fell asleep. I’d walked almost five and a half miles during the day and 23 miles for the trip

I woke up a few hours later because next door there was this arguing couple that kept screaming at each other. It was extremely loud and I wondered whether they were making out in between the angry exchanges.

And that brings Saturday to a close…blessedly. I just have Sunday and Monday to get through and this awful blog slog will end. I also have a story about the first NASCAR race that I went to that I’d like to include in this but I don’t feel like writing any more right now.

Final Thoughts

A CNN Poll asked: Do you trust the US banking system? And who sponsored the poll? Bank of America

Manny busted for using female fertility drug. He said it was for personal medical issue. What? Was he trying to get pregnant? Have a bunch of little baby Mannys running around?