Entertainment, Japantown & the western reaches

On Friday night we went to our first gig in San Francisco to see Badly Drawn Boy, a British artist, at the Great American Music Hall, just around the corner from where I volunteer at Shanti. It was a lovely venue – built in 1907 just after the great quake, and still boasting its original columns and plenty of ornate stucco. It was a fairly small and intimate location to play for what is actually quite a big name in the UK. Apart from the music, it was quite a social event too, as we got talking to a few people and, by a bizarre coincidence, met a British chap whom I’d come across in a lift a few weeks previously!

It’s been a slightly disappointing weekend weather-wise, but we’ve still managed to make the most of it. On Saturday, we wandered over to Japantown. The route there took us through Chinatown, up and over Nob Hill (the posh bit), past the Grace Cathedral (modelled on Notre Dame in Paris, but rather incongruously made of concrete) through the less salubrious streets of the northern Tenderloin and finally to the malls and restaurants of Japantown itself. It does not have as much to offer as Chinatown, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to the casual visitor, but we spent an enjoyable couple of hours there. Its only real aesthetic attraction is the peace pagoda, built in the form of a mushroom cloud. We had a cheap sushi and sashimi dinner there before heading downtown in the bus. We arrived just in time to get cinema tickets to see “Zodiac”, a film set in San Francisco in the late sixties and seventies, telling the (true) story of a string of unsolved serial killings in the Bay area and starring my favourite actor, the lovely Jake Gyllenhaal. It was quite an eerie experience, watching it and thinking that, unlikely as it is, the killer could still be at large! Anyway, it was a good thriller, but you’ll have to wait until the middle of May for it to be released in the UK.

Yesterday, we went for our jog in the morning – have to keep in training now that we’ve signed up for the 12km “Bay to Breakers” run! In the afternoon, we decided to take a walk on the western side of the city along the ocean front, in spite of the rather ominous-looking fog. This was actually very rewarding: we started out by the ruins of the Sutro baths, which used to be filled by sea-water and were a major attraction in Victorian times. We then headed north past the still just visible mast of “the Ohioan”, which came aground in the 1930’s, and is just one of the many shipwrecks along the coast. We then continued up along the surprisingly wild coastline, through what almost seemed like a garden of wild flowers, emerging in the super-wealthy Seacliff residential area. We had to walk through this for a while, past ridiculously opulent residences, some in the form of French châteaux, with perfectly manicured lawns and idyllic gardens. We finally came out on Baker Beach, which runs up to the start of the Golden Gate Bridge, of which we could only make out the strut bases: the rest of it, even the road, was shrouded in fog! On our return journey we were fortunate to see some dolphins very close to the shore.

Today, my “work authorization card” arrived – about a month earlier than expected. I guess that means I’ll have to find a job now!