I’m still coming down from Monday nights DCfC/TPS show. I keep wondering if I should bite thge bullet and see if anythings hit the resale market for tonight’s final Berkeley show, but I know it’d be a steep upcost and I can’t bring myself to do that.

But I’ve been thinking a lot about the band and what brought me here and what brought me to this particular hotel.

I told you before I’m staying at Music City Hotel which is on Bush near Larkin’, sort of just south west from the main markets at the waterfront. I chose this place not for it being a music-themed hotel but mostly for the price. While a lot of other places in SF mirror the high prices of Toronto $200-400 a night for a single room, my 2-twin capsule room was $400 for the entire 6 days I’ll be here. It’s sort of like a hostel in that I can have a new roomate (so far I’ve had 2) at any given time and the bathrooms are just down the hall (single use, thankfully – it’s just a little nicer not having to share shower space with strangers).

My first night I came back to find that I did have a roomate who checked in some time after I’d gone out for the day. Being friendly and hospitable and not wanting things to be awkward, I introduced myself the next morning when we were both awake. Lindsay was only in town for the night though, travelling from Portland Oregan back home somewhere about an hour and a half from here and just stopping in to SF on the way. She’d gotten in late and still managed to sneak a few things in before having to check-out by 11. We talked briefly about the city and she’d assured my own thoughts that there are some streets a little worse for wear thgan others in this neighbourhood but once you know to skip them, there’s a lot of great places to check out and spend time in here.

I always find that a little sad about any city, though.

San Fransisco is funny because in many ways it is far more progressive than Toronto is; the transit is cleaner, cheaper, and so far more reliable and with multiple options to get around; There are those weird Waymo self-driving cars everywhere which is literally like stepping into the future (we don’t have that) and frankly freaks me out a little, still; There is vegan/gluten-free everything you can find if you’re into those alternative diets and not too many fast food places (unexpected).

But having spent some time down those streets that I should maybe avoid more often, it’s also very sad to see that contrary to all these things there are so many people living in the streets, many with clear severe mental health issues, many who look like they haven’t eaten in weeks, and many with severe health problems and terrible arched backs that have obviously been made worse over the years by not being able to afford adequate health care. In the United States of America. In one of the most prosporous states.

OF course you can’t have the extreme wealth as seen by those who head Silicon Valley without stepping on a few people to get and stay there – and that’s the thing I can’t really stop thinking about here. My heart hurts as I peer south down Larkin Street and see so many who have been failed by the great governing powers that run this place and who undoubtedly, like me, find themselves avoiding them.

Yesterday I walked myself west to first find some food. I didn’t want to eat at a coffee shop and the only breakfast place that eventually popped up with Mel’s Diner, so I ate there. It’s a chain restaurant with a menu far larger than any menu should be, but it hit the spot and the staff were friendly. I sat at the countertop to give myself a true American diner experience and edited some photos quickly on my phone while I wolfed down the El Rancho breakfast burrito; Thankfully it was not as spicey as it appeared to be on the first bite. That burrito with some hashbrowns and 2 cups of coffee were something ridiculous like $30.

Breakfast places just aren’t what they used to be.

We have the same problem in Torono, though. Our minium wage in Ontario only just went up to $16.55 but that won’t help you pay rent or keep groceries in your fridge, nevermind anything else. If you want to eat out, any given meal at anytime of day is sure to set you back a good $20-$30 unless all you grab is a muffin and a coffee from Tim Hortons for $10. I think price wise, SF is just about in the same ballpark as home.

After the diner I continued on to Golden Gate Park and decided to walk through it on my quest to see the Ocean Beach. Now that’s a nice park, SF! If I lived here I’d definitely use it to run and cycle through, it’s so spacious and has lots of little trails you can turn into off the main roads, I don’t think we have one comparable in size back home. I was feeling pressed for time though so I didn’t get to see as much of it as I would’ve liked to.

I’ve been walking most of my trip so far because that’s just what I like to do – I think it’s the best way to get a true sense of a city. When you drive through neighbourhoods quickly, you don’t get to understand them as well if you even notice them at all. But everything is quite far here, the real nice places are spread out pretty well and I’ve had to give in a couple times into taking transit, but at least it seems to function well here.

So I finally made it over to Ocean Beach but I could only hang around for half hour or so before I’d have to make my trek back to Music City to change for my trip to Alcatraz Island. The beach looks massive though and I’ll be heading back today to really take it in and hopefully work on my sun tan a little. I walked it as far as I could north which leads to a series of small trails that looks out towards the Golden Gate bridge. It’s in forest trails like that that I always feel the most at ease and happy no matter where I am in the world and I’m reminded that I’m really not a city-girl, but I do like to be near enough to cities to enjoy the shops and restaurants they offer. So far that trail has been a major highlight of my trip. and I recommend checking it out if you can.

When I got back to Music City after walking for a long stretch of California Street (nice, spacious but uneventful street) and grabbing the bus to Clay/Polk, it looked like I still didn’t have a new roomate joining me. It’s a gamble choosing these types of accomodations.

I walked through Chinatown to get back to Pier 33 where you grab the Ferry for the tour I chose – a night tour that’s mostly handheld audio-based. After Chinatown, you reach what I think is basically Little Italy and there are lots of restaurants, cafes and bars withstreet patios that make the area feel much more European which for me is quaint and comfortable. A large church overlooks a plaza and later, someone will be getting married.

With just a bit of time to kill before the Ferry I helped myself to San Fransisco’s finest street meat, a small Spanish woman with a cart outside the docks whose husband would reappear at random intervals with a fresh batch of onions and vegetables being mixed in a van beside them. That set me back another $10 but, it really hit the spot after a long day of walking.

It started to rain as I paid so I tok shelter sitting on a ledge with a small covering for as long as I could before I had to get into the uncovered ferry line and wait for the arrival of our boat. They serve drinks and snacks on the ferry it turns out but I opted to skip it.

The ferry to Alcatraz takes about 20 minutes; loads of birds swoop around overtop of the island as you approach it and it’s a little ominious feeling at night. As you appraoch the dock, stretched across one of the larger buildings on the island is the phrase “Indian Land.” After the pirson finally closed in 1963, a group of Native American activists occupied the island from November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971 to protest the American government for taking the land from their people.

One of the greatest shame’s of humanity is our ability to pin point other cultures or persons as less-than our own and to allow the brutal massacre of human life to occur with the sole mission of complete power and control; to avoid Larkin Street, to me, is not much different.

The Alcatraz tour is I chose is pretty self-led and shorter than you’d think although I suppose it’s on of those “When you’ve seen one cell black you’ve seen them all” type of things. You learn about some of the at times remarkably petty crimes that led people to be housed there, the escape attempts and you can walk into solitary confinement if you’re morbid enough to want to know the feeling of complete discomfort and isolation and you can sit in the dining hall while listening on your hand held audio recorder to the awful stabbing that occured so many years before within it.

Rest assured, this place is a prison.

I will say, I thought the audio recording was pretty welll done. It’s narrated by former correctional officers which is a nicer touch than just some random historical bloke as most audio tours are; it really does help to get a better understanding of waht it would have been like to be a prisoner there.

Alcatraz wasn’t open very long nor did it see too many feet through its doors, but unfortunately the only reason it closed down was the lack of funding and not for the absolutel inhumane way this is to treat human lives. Some of them warranted it, I’m sure, but some of the crimes you learn about here on this family-friendly tour are almost shockingly simple it’s amazing that someone had the gull to say, “you stole $16 worth of food, so you’re going to this prison island we developed.”

And then you’re reminded about all the people who are still sitting in American prisons for equally petty crimes; a dime of weed here, a bad tax return there.

Murderes and rapists I can understand, some of this other stuff doesn’t make any sense to me, though.

When the tour is over you get a nice skyline view of San Fransisco to ease you back into normalcy; the juxtoposition against coming from the prison is hard to shake off at first but frotunately you were just a tourist.

I stopped in Little Italy and treated myself to a cup of gelato knowing if I didn’t, I’d probably run out of time for any on this trip at the rate I was going.

And then a funny thing happened when I got back to Music City.

I had a new roomate.

They were reading so after a quick hello I jumped into the shower so I could feel human again, but once I got back and settled into my side of the capsules I opted to start another conversation with a stranger. The capsule rooms are designed in a way that funnily enough are not unlike the prison cells. If I’m sat in mine, they’re on the other side of a wall wher eI can’t see them in theirs.

Our conversations then start sort of like they would in Alcatraz, I imagine.

“Hey so what’s your name? You just got here?”

“Katherine. I’m only here for one night” (Lucky, or not?)

“Oh what are you in for?”

“I stay here once a week; I have a class at Berkeley.”

Funny, that, I was just in Berkeley. We chatted a bit about the town and what she goes to school for (optometry) and then we chatted a bit about that and I told her that was a smart career choice. I actually got my eyes correccted a couple years back and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for myself. “Gotta choose something for your career” she said and I laughed, largely in limbo in my own life juggling various art projects that most people wouldn’t call anything sort of a career, “Yeah, you sure do,” and I repeated that she’d make a good choice with hers.

The conversations fell away and we both kept to ourselves the rest of the night.

When I was in Chicago a couple years ago at a similar type of music-based hotel that also has hostel-like accommodations, I was having a terrible time trying to sleep in our room that I shared with something like 8 other people, all in our own bunk beds that were much smaller than my new luxury capsule, so just after midnight not wanting to disturb eveyrone else who was struggling to sleep, I had walked over to the front desk. One of the major problems with this type of arrangement was the lights were on full blast inside and nobody seemed to know if it was normal or not to keep them on at night with so many people coming and going – a problem of extreme politeness.

I asked the guy at the desk about this knowing it was kind of a stupid question but, I’d never stayed in any sort of hostel before and I didn’t really know the lay of the land and I too, suffer from extreme politeness.

He gave me a hard time about it with a shitty attitude telling me to just shut off the light before we got into a bigger argument where he called me poor and pissed me off, thereby terminating my stay at the Chicago hostel after just 1 night. I wrote about this a bit in my CF Goes to Chicago series: The Getaway Hostel.

As I went to get ready for bed I noticed that unlike Lindsay, Katherine was also keeping the light on (and the switch was on her side of the capsules).

But one thing I have at my capsule that I didn’t have on my Getaway Hostel top bunk is a little blind that I can pull down an escape into absolutle darkness. My solitary confinement.

I slept so well.

---

This blog is part 5 in my ongoing series chronicling my trip to San Fransisco.
Catch up with the previous blogs below or jump to the next one: 

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

---

In case you didn’t know, I have a couple of side projects inspired by the bands that inspired this trip.

Check out Death Bus for Blondie including my entire Asphalt Meadows cover album (and then some) and Canada Post, everywhere you stream.

Thanks for reading.