The Frisco

If you’re going to San Francisco, forget that old song about wearing flowers in your hair. Try to extend your stay instead.

Words: Kate Coughlan  Photographs: Matthew Williams

IT WAS A TOUGH assignment. On the way home from another tough assignment, photographer Matthew and I were to spend 24 hours in San Francisco gathering material for a travel article. We were up for it.

Our aircraft (sporting the new Air New Zealand long-haul facilities of lie-down business-class sleepers and premium- economy extra legroom) was due to depart at 7.45pm on Friday. It was Wednesday 8pm when we finished our work at the Carmel Ranch of multi-billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

We’d shared family dinner with Rupert, his wife Wendi, their toddler daughters Grace and Chloe, farm manager Rob Reynolds and personal trainer/security guard Matt Garry plus nannies and a butler named William. Wendi and Rupert, ever the charming hosts, kissed us goodbye and waved as we drove down the winding road to Carmel Valley Village.

Our minds turned to the next task – San Francisco, hundreds of kilometres away to the north. Here’s the plan: back to the hotel, rise before dawn, pay the bill, point the rented red Toyota at San Francisco International Airport, abandon it there and train into the city.

Good plan, simple to execute until the shiny clean interior of the airport fails to yield vital information. Where is the train? Could it be this mysterious chart on the wall with the word BART prominently displayed? Could BART stand for Bay Area Rapid Transit? I knew that. (Well, I do now.)

Our hotel, Hotel Vitale, small and perfectly located on Mission Street at Embarcadero opposite the Ferry Building, was once the BART bus central depot. Today it is the beating heart of downtown where lots of very hip people gather to talk, stay or – especially on Friday nights – chill with dozens of other very cool people in the Americano Bar. The hotel has terrific views across the bay to the Golden Gate Bridge and down the Embarcadero where it seems everyone knows everyone and has time to kiss and chat.

Matthew and I have barely dropped our bags, rushed across the road to the Ferry Building, ordered a goat’s cheese salad and a glass of water each, before we are jumping to conclusions. Judging a city by its culinary debut is shallow but with so little time it isn’t likely that we are going to get to the bone marrow of the matter. "Living here would be a treat if it’s all like this," Matthew announces, settling back to enjoy the sunshine at our outdoor table. The goat’s cheese salad is perfect: spicy arugula leaves scattered with lumps of gooey cheese and ringed by slices of a nectarine so tasty I want to hold the flavour forever.

These San Franciscans seem leaner, happier and quieter than the Californians we’ve been with for the past few days. Comparisons are odious and all that but where are the stretch Hummers we’ve gotten used to in Monterey and the Third Race (women displaying the mummifying effects of extreme cosmetic surgery) among whom we’ve shopped at Carmel? What about the Steinbeckian hardness of the farmers’ faces in Salinas?

With these gross generalizations under our belts, as well as the goat’s cheese salad, we decide to split. Matthew isn’t mad about museums and I’m not crazy for Chinatown. We will meet at the Carnelian Room at 6pm. Our guidebook says this is the best place from which to view the sunset. After reading Mary Moore Mason’s description of the daily dressing and undressing of the Golden Gate Bridge we want a ringside seat.

"The Golden Gate Bridge’s daily striptease from enveloping stoles of mist to full frontal glory is still the most provocative show in town," wrote the editor of the British magazine Essentially America in 2000.

I telephone the Carnelian Room to check we can take photographs. We can’t. "But," says the telephonist helpfully, "do come for a drink and do bring your camera." I don’t think she has in mind the gear Matthew and I lug to the 52nd floor of the Bank of America Centre, tripod included. But she smiles.

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