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TIME OUT

Art spilled over onto the pavements. Live music burst through street corners. This city rocked.

Photo: Indu Balachandran

Tongue-in-cheek architecture: The escaping furniture.

As we trailed behind him, it turned out that not just the walking tours were free around San Francisco. Sex change operations too didn’t cost a thing! “Only the San Francisco government pays your bills, should you wish to get your gender changed, in this country. But they only do this once. You’d have to pay yourself, should you suddenly wish to get your old gender back!” Mark, our tour guide cautioned.

It soon became apparent that many were quite satisfied with their current gender — especially if their partner’s too was the same. Love was everywhere. We were in the gay capital of the United States.

More pithy one-liners to sum up the city followed — in interesting paradoxes. This was the city notorious for its easy availability of drugs, just as it was the drugs (pharmaceuticals) stronghold of the U.S. It ranked 2nd — after New York — as the city with the most number of billionaires , even as it had the highest number of homeless people in the country.. When the rest of America froze over in winter, it would still be pleasant enough for a cycle ride in San Francisco. And while others sweltered in summer, it’s usually a breeze — sometimes even a freeze — in this unpredictable city. “The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer of San Francisco”…Who said that? quizzed our guide. “Mark Twain!” came the pat answer from someone in our crowd.

While many big cities in the U.S. offer guided walking tours, none has the variety or the number of free tours that San Francisco does. Our brochure listed 40 of them! With 250 free volunteer guides to bring their own remarkable showmanship, detailed research and fun facts — and even the occasional quiz question, this is the most interesting way to get acquainted with a new city. And ours was going to be an introduction to San Francisco — through its many quaint and historic buildings.

On our way to the meeting point, we’d already seen the astonishing house with “escaping furniture” — with entire bathtubs, chairs, table lamps etc. actually running out of windows and doors of a huge five-storey building! Typical San Francisco’s whimsy… and a must-see for the quirky sight-seeker.

We went past the city’s many hip coffee bars, filled with eccentrically dressed Friscans. Somewhere here in one of these coffee bars, Francis Ford Copolla scripted much of his Godfather trilogy. Art spilled over onto the pavements. Live music burst through street corners. This city rocked. Speaking of which, said our guide, it’s time you know more about our earthquake-prone city.

Standing amidst the towering structures of the new “Manhattanised” San Francisco, it was incredible seeing old photographs of the very street we were standing on — completely devastated by the 1906 earthquake. Fifty-five minutes of earthquake, three days of fire. And a vibrant and thriving city — made suddenly prosperous by the Gold Rush — had been reduced to mounds of rubble and grief. “The next big earthquake to hit the city was in 1989. And the last rumble we felt? Well there was a little one yesterday afternoon, as you may have read in today’s papers,” said our guide nonchalantly, even as he summoned us towards some curious buildings coming up. (Earthquake-proofed, we were relieved to hear.) We saw what was declared by Ripley (Believe It Or Not) to be the “skinniest building in the world” — a skyscraper that was just 20 ft wide. And in contrast to this was the gigantic, opulent Palace Hotel — for years considered to be the world’s most expensive hotel — where every American President has stayed since it was constructed in 1897.

Engraved plaques with quotations in street corners reminded us that this was the birthplace of America’s best known poet, Robert Frost, a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Standing in the middle of this urban concrete jungle today, it did seem curious that Frost should have waxed lyrical over forests (“the woods are lovely dark and deep”).

A brisk walk away led us to the very uppity Nob Hill, nicknamed Snob Hill for its line up of billionaire homes and hotels. Our guide pointed out why the rich and famous clamoured for homes here — the most outstanding views of the sparkling Bay, together with its glorious sunsets would greet them as they lounged in their million dollar boudoirs.

For budget-seeking tourists like us, we too saw, though only from street level, what this rich neighbourhood enjoyed of the Bay everyday. Only our gasps then had much more to do with the breathless uphill walk we had just undertaken, on one of the unbelievably steep streets San Francisco is notorious for.

“Big Money is made here…just as much as it’s unmade here too,” declared our guide as we stood in front of the stately San Francisco Mint building. Apparently, 31 million dollars of old and worn out currency notes from all over the U.S. come here to die…every day! More fascinating trivia about money followed: “Who can guess what 90 per cent of these old notes contain?” ventured our guide. Fingerprints? Telephone numbers? We took wild guesses. None of us was prepared for the answer: cocaine! Our guide pointed out the tenacious link between drugs and money…and the fact that cocaine apparently easily transfers onto currency notes and then clings stubbornly on…even one cocaine-tainted note could affect an entire pile of notes. (Well, it did seem to give the phrase “filthy rich” a whole new meaning.)

Our two hours of the free walk-and-talk tour was coming to an end. Our feet needed to sit down — but we weren’t done with the walking yet. We simply had to find San Franscico’s famous café, “The Stinking Rose” (another name for garlic), where everything on the menu had large doses of garlic. Including the ice cream! Bizarre as it sounded, it seemed the appropriate way to round off a day discovering this unique, multi-faceted, eccentric city.

Of course everybody knew where “the funny restaurant that serves garlic ice cream” was. Finding it surprisingly delicious (even though one couldn’t have planned a romantic tryst after that garlicky treat), we were ready to climb uphill and downhill again. This time — all along the quaint Lombard Street, “The crookedest street in the world.”

“Well-- for a city with so many non-straight residents, what do you expect?” chuckled our guide.

Discover lores, legends, landmarks of San Francisco through free walking tours and 250 volunteer guides. A must-do for first-time tourists. Over 40 tours to choose from including Golden Gate Bridge, Theatre In San Francisco, Gold Rush City, Historic Buildings, Japantown and Chinatown.

For more information: www.sfcityguides.org

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