Yesterday morning I left my room early on foot and walked ten minutes with my backpack to the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station. Like the hotel where I am staying, it is directly along the freeway, I chose the hotel to be close to the station. It's the furthest station out on the Blue line of the BART towards the east.
I caught the 8:25 train. I had left with ample time I thought, but I had not figured on the impossibility of buying one of the new loaded-up plastic fare cards---exactly the kind of system I worked on in Portland. The interface in the kiosk was a disaster, No button to actually buy the card when you are using a credit card. I kept hearing the station announcement for the train while I frustratingly retried the process. I was saved from missing the train only because I had a handy twenty dollar bill and could buy one with cash.
The BART car was the classic kind that has been used since the 1970s. There were three people in the car when we started. All of us with masks, of course. Scattered throughout the car. The automatically door of the car had trouble shutting. This would cause issues as the train progressed. At one station the female BART employee hectored the phantom causing the door to remain jammed, lecturing the person to let the door close.
Going west we went up into the hills, with the houses becoming sparser, and then crossed through a gap where one could see the Bay, as well as the sprawl of south Oakland. We down into Oakland and passed the industrial storage yards for shipping and logistics. There were grass-covered train tracks, fences of seamless graffiti, barbed wire around lots full of cable spools, trucking depots, and plain ornamented metal buildings housing all manner of things that make the world operate. I love this part of Oakland.
As we got near downtown Oakland, the names of the BART stations came back to me, from my many visits to this city over the years, going back to the spring of 1984.
By the left we got to the last stop in downtown, the seats of the car were full. By that I mean that each bank of seats, or pod of facing seats, was occupied by a person all to themselves. Two or three were standing. A panhandler came through asking for money.
Soon we were in the tunnel and I felt the pressure in my ears as we zoomed in the tube under the water. We came up out an Embarcadero. It was a Sunday morning, but the platform looked dark and dead. Likewise at the other stations going up from the water---it felt like I was in a much smaller city than San Francisco, even for a Sunday.
I waned to ride the train all the way to Daly City, which was the end of the Blue line. I was forced to change to another train on the way because fore some reason the one I was on stopped before the end. There was an announcement about what passengers were supposed to do, but it was mumbled by the woman over the intercom, and each time she started talking, the train picked up and the noise completely drowned out what she was saying.
I got off the train into the station not knowing what to do. Fortunately another train came by, a modern one bound for San Francisco Airport, and I hopped on that. The cars reminded me of the ones in Europe, flexed out at the sides and with ample poles to hand on to, like a gymnasium, and no wide pods of facing seats. Much closer seating.
I rode the rest of the way to Daly City, which is just over the border from San Francisco city limits. From there I could walk down to the beach, I figured. The station was the quintessence of concrete modernism. I couldn't help find the aesthetic interesting. The raised platform was so clean, empty, and bright on a Sunday morning, and one could see out for miles to the south, but not to the ocean.
Getting down to the beach proved harder than I thought. I had looked at the map, and loaded it up on my iPhone, and figured I knew the general route, but it proved impossible to follow due to lack of pedestrian crossings over mini freeways with concrete barriers and fences around golf courses, and street blocked entirely. I cut down through the campus of San Francisco State---the wokest place in the world. There a smattering of woke banners on the lampposts. Kids were out playing soccer.
A large park offered the opportunity to head along some trails, and I thought they might take me to the ocean, but they popped back out onto the sidewalk after short distances.
Finally after almost two hours angling, zigzagging, and picking my way along trails and sometimes doubling back, I made it in sight of the beach, at the end of Sloat Avenue. I could hear the ocean. I went down onto the beach and sat on the sand in the sun. The breeze was cold in a bracing ocean breeze way, so I kept my hat. I ate the lunch I packed in my backpack.
Coming down from Daly City, about two-thirds of the people I passed were wearing masks. On the beach many were maskless, but many not. People strolled in groups along the edge of the water, in the stiff ocean breeze, wearing masks. But the fishermen tending the rods stuck into the sand at regular ingtervals and their families, if they brought them, were not wearing masks. Nor were the surfers, some of them not even wearing body suits. Nor were many others. Nor was I. I had taken mine off outside the Daly City station, once I saw one person not wearing it, who happened to be a young woman on a bicycle.
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