tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Extra Fresh

On the California-Street Car

Western Yarns

Mr. Mazzini and Dante

On the Nob of Nob Hill

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