San Francisco

The seals on Pier 39. Smelly.
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We spent three days in SF, the first after checking in to our Motel (after showers and phone calls home) was spent getting our bearings. Lunch at a cafe round the corner gave us chance to examine the free visitor guides and maps and pick the waitress’s brains about how best get around. A trip to Safeway to stock up on breakfast and packed lunch ingredients, a walk around the Bay area and the day was done, back to the motel to catch up on sleep lost on the train.

Day two, we took the bus into the shopping district at Union Square but had to cut our perusals short when Sam, realising that our budget prevented her from buying ANYTHING, started hyper-ventilating and had to be forcibly removed from temptation (fortunately without resorting to the ‘bag over the head’ method). The distractions to the Cheesecake Factory restaurant in Macy’s helped slightly but when the boys insisted on spending some of their holiday money on enormous slices of cake an already weakened woman folded and ten minutes later the owners of four full bellies (naturally I had to help the boys out with their leftovers) rolled homeward taking the Chinatown and then Little Italy route which gave us ideas for the next day’s trick-or-treat route. In the afternoon, sandwiches by the beach, a walk down Lambert Street, the crookedest street in the world and location in numerous films (remember the car chase in “What’s Up Doc?”) and then an essential trip to the launderette and we only had one day left in SF.

Did the earth move for you too?

Lambert Street. If you play footy at the top make dsure you've got a good goalie.
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But not before, at 8.04pm, when SF experienced the largest earthquake since 1989. Sitting in our room watching TV, Sam and I were shaken like red-headed step-children, but although the local news annoyingly spent the rest of the night ‘butting in’ to our viewing pleasure to update us on the 5 jars of olives that fell of a supermarket’s shelf, and panic reigned the streets as 2 car alarms went off, the only reaction the quake got from Sam and I was “Cooooooooool!”.

Anyway, day 3 was Halloween, the day that the whole of North America has been building up towards for at least two months, and we were in Halloween Central. Up bright and early, the boys were straight into their costumes (glow in the dark scary pyjamas, scary fingernails and Friday the 13th hockey masks) and by ten we were sat on the open air tram car, day travel tickets bought - and given that every other child was at school until at least 3 o’clock the ONLY trick-or-treaters in SF, the city was at our mercy. The boys started off timidly, clinging to their mum they had to be chaperoned into stores even when grinning shopkeepers beckoned them in from the streets. Slowly though, as they both realised that for the first time in their lives asking for sweets gained results they came out of their shells. Through Union Square, pickings were slim, it seems that big corporate America are too busy earning money to take part in the second biggest celebration in the calendar (honestly!) so we got on another tram to Castro, the gay district, which although has been the epicentre for all festivities for years has had Halloween officially cancelled this year by the authorities after 9 people were shot last year! Still, we thought, there’s no way that an upset mayor will stop the largest gay community in the world taking advantage of a legitimate excuse for donning their glad-rags and whooping it up! And we were right, although the evenings parade was a quiet affair nothing was done to stop daytime frolics and the boys were without exception greeted by gorgeous (Sam’s words, not mine) men, in full costumed glory and handfuls of sweets thrust into their hands. Shopkeepers were almost fighting to get to the boys and Stan and Archie absolutely loved every minute. Hugely confident by now we could hardly keep up with them as they ran from trendy boutique to stylish cafe each time, weighed down with treats, and it took a superhuman effort to stop them entering, shall we say....fruity, boutiques, the contents of the windows of which caused even my eyes to open. And even water slightly. Away from Castro now, taking full advantage of the days travel pass, and down to Pier 39 on the sea front where shops had signs in their windows stating “Trick or treat here”......talk about easy! Then up to Chinatown, which turned out to be a Halloween free zone and (why I was surprised by this I don’t know), where two frustrated boys, the wind taken out of their sails, to skip down the street singing,

Sam, Jason and Freddie, a Nightmare on Main Street.
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“Trick or treat, trick or treat, give us some candy, or you’ll die!” Little Italy, where we would eat that evening, was better and by the time we got back to the motel room the boys had amassed about 5lbs of sweets each!

We got to the restaurant early, a treat after a week of restraint, and as it got dark, through the restaurant window the city came to life. As if some demonic being with a Halloween starter gun had shot it into the sky every ghoul, goblin and freak (child and adult) raced onto the streets and so began the largest ‘sugar-high’ ever recorded. It was like eating dinner at some crazy cabaret with an endless hilarious floor-show of made-up midgets running in and out as proud parents, also in full regalia, watched from the pavement. My evening could get no better when, watching one such group of parents I noticed one of the fathers dressed as George Michael (“Choose Life” t-shirt, big hair, white teeth era) with a black cape around his shoulders. “A scary George Michael” I pointed out to Sam with delight. “He’s a Wham-pire” corrected his wife, standing next to our table. Genius.

Halloween, Castro style.
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Highlight of the day. Oh, you had to be there, but early in the day, as an open tram of people passed us as we crossed the road, Archie suddenly stopped still, pointed menacingly to passengers sat at the back and once he had grabbed their attention, took his pointing finger and slowly drew it across his neck as if slitting his throat. Sam, me and the woman at the very back, instantly went into complete hysterics (holding up traffic at the junction) leaving a poor old Chinese man next to her looking very shocked. The best thing was, I could still see the woman creased with laughter as the tram rattled off into the distance.