Vertigo, or in the Footsteps of Jimmy Stewart

October 25-27

After I sent my last e-mail, we headed out to Foley’s for dinner.

We sat at the bar, and met a lady from San Diego who was watching the World Series. She was very happy. She comes from Cleveland and has lived in Chicago. So she was rooting for the Indians and the Cubs.

That was game one, and the Indians trounced Chicago six-nothing. 

I’m not sure how it came up, but I mentioned my connection to Mechanical Engineering magazine. Everything I know about engineering I have learned from Samuel Florman’s books and from working on the magazine.

She, however, has a technical background and has written computer software of different kinds. 

She told us, though, that when she started out there were few women engaged in information technology. There are fewer now, she said.

I was surprised by that at first and am not sure that she is accurate. But I remembered stories about women being driven out of jobs by the boys’ club atmosphere of many engineering and IT departments. I wouldn’t know first-hand if that was a widespread problem either.

She was drinking red wine and well ahead of me, so she was feeling no pain when she left.

A short time later, a business group of some kind took over the end of the bar.

One guy was not only uninhibited but also limber as hell. He wound up winning a blond away from a guy who just wasn’t as hip.

After a few minutes, they were doing dips and catches as if they’d rehearsed them. Maybe they had.

By that time, I was feeling reckless enough to try dancing. I had no idea what I was doing, but sometime well after I turned 40, I think, I learned how to move my knees to rock my ass. So I was able to fake it. 

Tried something that resembled a merengue.

Joanna really knows how to dance and could follow whatever I decided on the spur of the moment to do.

I may have faked it pretty well because we got a few fist bumps when the music stopped. I mean, how often does anyone get to see geriatric clinch dancing?

One guy even said he wanted a hair-cut like mine. I told him he’d have to stop cutting it.

I looked at the check the next day. I had signed it at about ten to one in the morning.

Wednesday we asked the desk for some directions. We walked a block up Powell to the corner of Geary and took the 38R bus toward Land’s End. 

The route went West on Geary, a trip that included an endless climb. It was like cable cars half-way to the stars and all that.

We got to see plenty of the city on the way. Churches and squares and confusing intersections. The Victorian wood houses known as painted ladies. Lots of cars and a few pedestrians.

We needed to change to the 28 line. I asked the driver about making the transfer. 

Bus drivers are very friendly here. He told me the cross street we needed was called Park Presidio (I had the name wrong). He also told me when we got there.

The second bus took us north through the Presidio to the visitor center at the Golden Gate Bridge. I was going to test my vertigo.

We oriented ourselves at the visitors’ center, where we bought a refrigerator magnet shaped like the bridge, and then we went for a walk.

There was information posted in a concrete pit that once held a large antiaircraft gun. There were also three model suspension bridges on a table. 

Each model had towers of a different height. You pull on a handle to test how much pressure you need to apply to tighten the cables. The taller the towers, the less pressure. 

When the bridge opened it was the world’s longest single-span suspension bridge and also had very tall, maybe the tallest, towers. The design allowed the safe use of a lighter cable.

The bridge starts over land, indeed soars above an old fortress, and by the time you get over the water, it must be several thousand feet high. I say that because the altitude made me light-headed.

This walk wasn’t as bad as the time Jack T. and I crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande Gorge near Taos in a high wind. That day, I expected to be lifted up and dropped a million or so feet into the river.

Crossing the Golden Gate, though, every time I stepped to the railing, to take a snapshot or to look at the birds and boats in the distance below us, I got wobbly.

I had to walk a few feet away from the edge. I felt better when I took my hat off instead of trying to hold it on my head. There was no heavy wind, but a stiff breeze up there.

But it was well worth the effort. The bridge crosses the strait at the head of the bay. On one hand you see the City of San Francisco and Alcatraz, and on the other the Pacific Ocean.

This was my second visit this year to an Alfred Hitchcock shooting location. I was at Mount Rushmore in July.

Appropriately enough, the Golden Gate Bridge appears in “Vertigo.”

We got as far as the first tower and decided it was time for lunch. There is a cafe back on solid ground. Not much to choose from, but I had a hot dog so big and full of sauerkraut that I had to eat it with a knife and fork.

Joanna had more clam chowder. The stuff is everywhere out here, and so far has always been very good.

It was terrific to sit by the window and watch the soaring bridge and the traffic on the water. The small boats get quite a rocking when they pass the strait under the bridge. 

The supports of the bridge may have someting to do with that. But it’s also the narrow where the ocean meets the bay.

Besides ferries and small sailboats, there are windsurfers and container ships crossing each other’s paths.

When we got back to the Union Square neighborhood, Joanna remembered a nail salon on Powell Street, so she went there to have her nails done.

I killed some time with an IPA at Bartlett Hall. It was the house brand called Tropical Yacht. 

It reminded me of Lagunitas, with a hint of fruit sweetness, probably from the choice of hops rather than the addition of fruit to the brew.

With her freshly manicured fingertips, Joanna was ready for dinner. We went to Cesario’s, a short walk from the hotel on the corner of Mason and Sutter.

Joanna had penne with Bolognese sauce. I had penne with a sauce that included spinach, eggplant, and olives.

The wine was also good. I had a Chianti and a nero d’Avola. I also finished the last half of Joanna’s nero.

After half a glass of wine and a plate of pasta, Joanna was starting to get drowsy. We walked to the hotel where we said good night and I went down to Foley’s for more wine.

I was trying to behave. At least, I made it back to the hotel before 11.

Thursday was a day of frequent drizzle, so we sheltered at the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park.

There’s a transit hub a couple of blocks from the hotel at Powell and Market where you can get trolleys, buses, or subways to take you anywhere. You can also get a cable car if you want to waste time standing in line.

The route to the museum, in the Golden Gate Park, was easy. The No. 5 or 5R bus takes you directly to the park. You get off at 10th Avenue and stroll a short distance into the park to the museum.

Cars here actually stop for you when you come to the crosswalk. So crossing the park road was not dangerous.

The museum has several collections, including a Mesoamerican section and another on the art of Oceania. 

The first floor has an exhibition of sculpture, much of it glass. One piece is the figure of a woman wearing a simple dress. It’s a little smaller than the Infant of Prague.

The entire figure is translucent and under the folds of her skirt are the hints of legs. I have no idea how that illusion was done. 

Some of the others were downright funny, like a scowling giant in a multicolored suit.

The largest area that we visited is devoted to American art from Colonial times to the present.

Most of the Colonial painting is portraiture. Landscapes take over in the 19th century. Many are the Romantic scenes of towering trees and mountains with tiny people somewhere in the foreground. I love that kind of thing.

The later 19th century and early 20th show the influence of the Impressionists.

There are Copleys, Whistlers, and Homers. But the big hit of the painting galleries is a take on Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of George Washington. 

The painting is very similar to the Gilbert Stuart portrait used on the dollar bill. It is hanging on the wall near the elevator on the second floor.

Next to it is something much newer, by an artist named Ray Beldner. It is a reproduction of the Peale portrait rendered in stitched-together dollar bills.

We took some minestrone in the museum cafe and stepped outside briefly in the drizzle to look at some of the installations on the lawn.

We came back to the hotel for a breather. We didn’t want to walk far in the rain, so we went downstairs to Foley’s for dinner. 

Nothing spectacular: crab cakes, bangers and mash, a few familiar ales. 

Life is good.

Love to all.

Harry

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

Notoriety, Correction, and Ripper Nostalgia

Sept. 19-20

I went to St. Giles Cripplegate a few days ago, so I decided to give St. Giles in the Fields equal time. I’m glad I did, because all these years I have been misinformed.

I had read long ago that St. Giles in the Fields was established by parishioners fleeing the thieves’ den around the other St. Giles. Good story, but not so, it seems.

The nave of St. Giles in the Fields was closed when I got there. 

But the narthex was open, so I was able to get a brochure with a brief history of the parish. I expected to read one thing and found something completely different.

The parish developed from a chapel connected with a leper hospital founded in 1101 by a queen named Matilda. She had recently married King Henry I, about whom I know nothing.

The chapel became a parish church and added “in the fields” to its name seven Henries later, when Henry VIII dissolved the monastery at the hospital.

The current building dates to the early 18th century. That makes it a few decades older than St. Paul’s Chapel in downtown Manhattan.

This section of town, along with the Seven Dials, which adjoins it, was the notorious slum. There may have been slums around the other St. Giles, but this is the neighborhood once known as the Rookery. 

As the brochure puts it, the area in the 18th and 19th centuries was “the most notorious in London for squalor and degradation.”

I decided to stroll around the Rookery a bit—well, what used to be the Rookery. It’s a commercial district now. One of the streets specializes in musical instruments where you can buy or sell new or used guitars, flutes, lutes, pianos, and the like. There are stores that advertise repairs to instruments, too.

It was about here that I noticed the top of a huge round building, made of metal and glass with text running in lights too dim to read near the top. It was a true eyesore.

I’d expect to see something like this among the Soviet relics in Prague. Not in a city full of townhouses four stories high.

I headed in its general direction to find out what it is. As I came nearer, it was no longer visible. Either I was too close and those four-story buildings were enough to block the view, or somebody had agreed with me and removed it.

I asked a policeman who was ticketing a parked car about it. It is the BBC tower.

I never did find it, but found two other grotesque buildings in the same general area. 

One has a scalloped white wall that looks like plastic. That one is forgivable, though, because it’s a museum, and many modern museums are ugly on the outside.

I have no idea what the other one, right across the street from the museum, was designed for. Large heating vents are exposed in a pattern on an outer wall, like the back of an electric clothes dryer. Someone may have thought that was decorative.

Having visited the Rookery, I was ready for another crime scene.

I took the Central Line from Tottenham Court Road station to Liverpool Street, where I promptly got myself lost in East London.

My destination, the Ten Bells pub, was a lot closer to the station than I realized. I even had a map and couldn’t find the turn. 

I was supposed to go north on Bishopsgate and take a right onto Brushfield St. To start with, I came out on the wrong side of the station. 

I may have already been past the turning point when I found Bishopsgate.

In any event I walked until long after Bishopsgate became Shoreditch High Street. I hid in a corner from public view and checked my map. It was a long walk back, but mostly downhill.

I was crossing a large street and looked in the general direction I wanted to take. At the end of the road was a large sign reading “Truman’s.”

Truman’s has been “proudly brewed in East London” since some time in the remote past, maybe the beginning of time.

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to go to the Ten Bells. It’s the only place where I knew Truman’s ales were on tap. That and a little Ripper nostalgia.

I was also getting very hungry. It was after noon and I hadn’t had anything but coffee so far. And remember, I had gotten a lot more exercise walking than I had planned.

I made for the sign and found it belonged to a pub called the Golden Heart, On the wall outside was the silhouette of a man rendered in bottle caps.

The place was on Commercial Street, the same as the Ten Bells.

But it wasn’t the Ten Bells. Was I close?

Yes, there was the pig on the sign for St. John Bread and Wine, a great little high-end restaurant that serves food to go with wine, rather than the other way around. I ate dinner there five or six years ago, even had a mildly sweet wine to go with the Eccles cake I had for dessert.

That’s before I found how great IPAs are with dessert.

The Ten Bells is a couple of dozen steps farther down Commercial Street, on the corner. The Ten Bells has one tap of Truman’s and it was out of order. 

I chose something new to me, Franciscan Wells Chieftain, described as “Irish pale ale.” It was a cask ale hopped like an IPA, very good. 

Aside from that faulty Truman’s tap, the Ten Bells has the distinction of being the only connection for several of Jack the Ripper’s victims. 

They were all street-walkers who lived in the neighborhood. 

I’ve read conflicting reports. At least two, and maybe all, of the women drank at the Ten Bells.

The Ten Bells, I discovered, doesn’t serve food, so I finished a half pint and left. 

So it was back to the Golden Heart. The bar has two Truman’s taps, and only one was out. I ordered a golden ale, which was very savory, and asked about food. The place has no kitchen.

So far, that’s a full pint on an empty stomach. So I was feeling good.  

But I needed something solid in there, too. I was getting wobbly, and not from the beer.

I wound up backtracking to the Liverpool station (which isn’t too far if you don’t go by way of Shoreditch) to the Railway pub directly across from the Underground entrance.

I had a plate of fried shrimp with peas and chips, the thick fried potatoes often called something like steak fries in the States. I wolfed it down.

I have no idea if it was good, bad, or just fatty. I was so hungry by then, taking breakfast around three in the afternoon, that notepaper with malt vinegar would have tasted good.

I had two half pints with the meal. Both are ales I’ve had before. One, Abbot Ale, is a gentle pale ale. 

The other, Greene King IPA, seemed a little disappointing this time. Maybe it’s not popular at this place and sat too long. Or maybe my palate was off. Or distracted.

Then I walked a few blocks to Mitre Square. I had been there several years ago. It’s a small paved space where the body of one of the Ripper’s victims was found.

At the time of the crime, it was probably surrounded by tenements. 

When I was there the first time, there was a park bench in the middle of the space. The bench certainly didn’t date back to the 1880s, but it gave the place an eerie sense of presence.

The bench is gone now, and all that’s left is a slab of concrete. Maybe they are going to replace the bench. I hope so.

On my way out of Mitre Street, I passed the Craft Beer Co., a pub with 18 conventional taps and seven or eight cask taps. Not one is Bud or Coors Light. In other words, my kind of bar.

I tried the house bitter, which I was told, is made in Kent. It was interesting. It didn’t have much perfume, but then, bitters usually don’t. It was dry in the mouth and turned a little sweet on the way down, but not too sweet. 

Thornbridge Jaipur IPA had a great floral perfume, like the best IPAs. The flavor was complex and a lot of fun. It had a little of that pine-resin edge common to IPA. It wasn’t at all sweet, but was like drinking the perfume of the flowers.

I rode the Underground to Holborn and got as far as the Queen’s Larder on Old Gloucester Street, about halfway to the hotel.

The bartenders confirmed the story of the place’s name. 

Queen Charlotte personally tended the mad King George when he was hospitalized in the neighborhood. She stored the food for his meals in the cellar of the building that now houses the pub,

The Neurology Hospital is still in operation, although Charlotte and George are long gone.

At the Larder, I had a half pint of Pathmaker, a single-hopped ale, which was quite good, and Hopspur, a cask ale that was pleasant enough. It came across almost as tart as a wild ale, but not quite as sour.

After a stop at the President, I finished the evening at the Friend at Hand. 

I got into a conversation when a man sat at the other end of the table.

He is Jock, from Dumfries. He said his family goes back about 800 years in Scotland. Now, if your ancestors live in any country for half that long, you’re going to be everybody’s cousin. He is connected to Robert Burns, for instance. 

His wife’s grandfather was a Jewish refugee who moved to England in the 1920s from Latvia. Things were bad enough, I guess, to drive him out even before Hitler got there.

I had to turn in early because my wake-up call was at quarter to six.

I couldn’t remember how long it would take the Picadilly line to go from Russell Square to Heathrow. Turns out, it was only little more than an hour. 

Anyhow, I got out of the hotel around eight, and by 10 I had checked my bag, passed security, and was eating scrambled eggs with smoked salmon at the Something-or-Other Kitchen in the airport. 

The plane trip has been very unusual. I got to the waiting area and wondered if it was the right place. I don’t think the plane is half full.

This is a 767, seven seats across—two, three, and two. There is no one else in the entire row besides me. Nobody sitting in front or in back of me, either. I can recline in coach, if I want, with a clear conscience.

Most of the seats have been taken in business class, but economy is wide open. I’m glad I didn’t pay for extra leg room. I have all I need here in the proletarian seats.

The plane landed on time, around 3. But the landing was rough. The plane was waffling on the way in and we hit hard.

I don’t know if there was interference from shear winds or if the pilot was drunk. 

Everything after then went fine. Even passport control, which like everything else associated with Newark, is inefficient and slow.

I took a cab to Joanna’s house because I had parked my car at the far end of her driveway.

I’m sending this from a Comfort Inn in Fairfield, N.J.

I need sleep.

Good night, all.

Harry