Coming to Gold Mountain

October 23-25

We’re out here looking for Tony Bennett’s heart. We got into town Sunday evening, and it’s Tuesday afternoon now,  but we still haven’t found it. 

We’ve been to Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, a brew pub, an Irish bar, and even a tea shop, but have seen no trace of any disembodied human organs.

We’re staying at a Holiday Inn on O’Farrell Street not far from Union Square. Not knowing much about San Francisco, I wanted to put us somewhere that is supposed to be full of things to see.

There are a lot of familiar retail store names here, sort of like Midtown Manhattan made a few stories shorter. 

There’s a huge Macy’s down the street.

There are bars everywhere, almost as many as in London. We asked the man at the desk about craft beer, and he pointed us to Bartlett Hall, directly across the street from the hotel. 

We had eaten omelets with potatoes at the airport before we left, so we weren’t in the mood for a big meal. Joanna had an appetizer of meat balls, and I had a plate of cheese and cold cuts.

The house IPA had a tropical name suggesting that it was flavored with some kind of fruit, so I shied away from that and opted for the pale ale. It was OK but hardly in the ranks of Sierra Nevada. 

The fragrance was good, and the hops made it very bitter. But there was very little malt flavor that gives a good IPA its balance. It was yellow blond rather than the tan of most pale ales.

It was, however, unfiltered. After all, if God wanted us to filter our beer, he wouldn’t have given us a liver.

The bar also had a red IPA. With a name like Heretic Evil Twin, it promised absolute bliss, but it turned out to be a little weak.

Red IPA is an American craft brew innovation, and there are some that are among the most beautiful ales in creation. The Evil Twin would rate a mild OK. Just not a lot of flavor in this one.

The hotel is six blocks from Chinatown and less than two miles from the piers and Fisherman’s Wharf.

We walked up there on Monday and wandered a bit. 

We decided to follow a route that would take us through the Chinatown Gate to and then up toward Fisherman’s Wharf.

Chinatown in any city is always fun, especially if you go there with someone who was raised in Hong Kong. Grant Street is crammed with restaurants, curio and souvenir shops, and food markets. 

There are several Chinese banks. I used the ATM at an HSBC branch. When it publishes stories about the bank’s misdeeds, the New York Times says it is based in London, but it’s actually Red Chinese. The initials of the name stand for Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank Corp.

A Bank of America branch is around the corner from the Gold Mountain Sagely Monastery.

At one intersection, we passed a lady holding a cardboard sign that warned of Communist spies who were posing as members of the Falun Gong. 

Joanna stopped at a produce market and bought something shaped almost like a pear. Whatever it was, it was selling fast. It had a strong, though not unpleasant, aroma. I kept smelling it even though it was wrapped in plastic in the pocket of my raincoat.

We stopped at a store called TenRen to sample tea.

We admired the browned birds hanging in the window of Yee’s restaurant. 

We were bent on seafood at the wharf, but made note of the place.

When Grant Street crosses Columbus Avenue, you come to Little Italy. 

We stopped in the Caffe Puccini for espresso and biscotti while I consulted the map. I was trying to find Powell Street, which would take us to the piers.

I could find it on the map, but not on foot. It always seemed to be one more block to go, but it was never there.

I went so far as to humiliate myself by opening the map on a public street. Powell remained elusive.

On a hunch, we made a short climb that seemed to have no horizon and reached the top of a hill. Below us, down a much steeper and longer incline, we saw what I learned later is Pier 39.

We descended into maritime Disneyland. There were shops inside restaurants, malls, people hawking tickets for ferry boat cruises to here, there, and everywhere. Someone was running a “gourmet hot dog” stand. 

Was this Fisherman’s Wharf? No. That’s down farther. So we headed that way, past the San Francisco Dungeon and Madame Tussaud’s. 

We never did find the fish market, if there is still one there, but we did pass a hangar-size building that contains a museum of coin-operated machines. 

We had lunch at a place called Alioto’s Waterside. All the restaurants serve clam chowder in a hollowed-out loaf of crusty bread. 

I had that with a house-brand blond ale that was almost identical to the Bartlett Hall pale. I’m not complaining, mind, because they were both crisp and bitter. 

Joanna had half a Dungeness crab and a small bowl of chowder.

By the time we were finished, we were stuffed.

We tried to find the Powell-Mason cable car, but walked too far and came to the Powell-Hyde line. The cable cars are not a serious part of the city’s transportation system. 

There were empty cars lined up, and one full of people just sitting there. A sign said there was a one-hour wait for a ride.

We decided to take a cab instead of a toy trolley.

Of course, we couldn’t find one, but Joanna noticed a sign at a bus stop that said the No. 30 bus would take us to Union Square. A No. 30 pulled up to the curb a few seconds later and we climbed on.

It took us along Columbus Avenue to Stockton Street, which runs parallel to Grant through Chinatown.

We were back in familiar territory.

We stopped for a rest at the hotel and then went next door to Johnny Foley’s Irish Pub, where a sign above the door wisely says “Time for a pint.”

Joanna had a vegetable stew, which for all I know could have been entirely vegan. Peas, onion, two kinds of potatoes, mushroom and whatnot in a vegetable stock.

We shared a bowl of it. It had to be one of the most savory all-vegetable dishes I have tasted. I think the mint made a world of difference.

We were sitting at the bar and were joined for a while by a man who was even more buzzed than I was. He was apparently restless with his life, and when we mentioned some of our travels, he said he would like to do that too. 

We told him, you just do it. There’s no mystery to it.

He kept hugging us both and telling us how much he loved us. Then he took his pint and wandered off.

We took a real trolley back to the piers on Tuesday to see about visiting the Chinese immigration museum on Angel Island. The Chinese were held there, sometimes for months on end, and interrogated by officials to make it hard for them to get into the States.

It was on the trolley ride up Market Street that we got the photo op of the day. Traffic was stopped for a parade by the Falun Gong. Maybe they were answering the lady with the cardboard sign.

I think the message on the banner translates roughly as “Falun is great.”

The weekday schedule of ferries makes it difficult to visit the island. We missed the 9:20 ferry and the only other one leaves at 1:05. 

It arrives 40 minutes later, and the last boat off the island leaves at 3:20. An hour and a half didn’t seem like much time to see the museum so we’ll try again this weekend when the schedule is less difficult.

We went to the Boudin Bakery, which claims to make sourdough from a mother dough raised on wild yeast years ago. It has a gift shop, restaurant, and glass window behind which bakers make loaves in fanciful shapes—crabs, alligators, teddy bears.

We were starting to get hungry and remembered Yee’s on Grant Street.

We strolled up to Columbus Avenue to get the bus. It would take us to Stockton Street, a block west of Grant.

As we walked closer to Columbus, we crossed Lombard, part of which is the crookedest road in the city. It sounds like the block where all the thieves and con men hang out.

Joanna had actually seen it on an earlier visit to San Francisco. She remembered it was at the top of a steep hill, but couldn’t remember where. Then she saw it.

I wouldn’t have known what it was without coaching. That part of the hill is so steep that the road takes a number of switchbacks so vehicles can negotiate it. From a distance, it looks more like traffic on cross streets. 

A No. 30 bus was waiting on the corner when we crossed Columbus Avenue. We got off at the first stop in Chinatown, walked over to Grant, and there was Yee’s. 

Joanna did the ordering in Cantonese. We had beef tendon, fried pigeon, crispy pork, along with gai-lan (Chinese broccoli), and rice.

The tendon was chewy, but not tough. The pigeon was savory, salty, and had a gamy taste, maybe from living on the street.

Years ago, I used to eat lunch sometimes at a Chinese steam table restaurant in New York on 33rd Street. I could get something there called General Tso’s chicken, but always wondered what bird it really was. So I may have had pigeon before, but can’t be sure.

Even divided between the two of us, Yee’s served up more food than we could handle.

We stopped at a bakery, though, and bought a couple of egg tarts and buns for later.

We also went back to the TenRen tea shop. We bought two of the teas we sampled this time.

One, Ti Kuan Yin, is a very aromatic green tea named for the Buddhist Blessed Mother, and the other is a variety called pu-erh, which is blended with Buddha fruit that gives it a touch of sweetness. I had tried Buddha fruit juice in Siem Reap. 

There was also a 36-year-old pu-erh, but that was prohibitively expensive.

Laden with pastry and tea that will preserve and soothe us, we came back to the Holiday Inn where I have brought my report up to date.

Good night all. I’m headed out for beer soon.

Love to everyone.

Harry