hWhen I came up out of the ground at the 12th Street station, the first thing I see is the beautiful glass towers of the Civic Center area. They are lit sublimely in the afternoon sun. I can see them when I'm still in the station.
I saw some of them coming in, once we came up out of the Bay Tube approaching downtown. Ask, says the sign on top of one. The sign for a once-prominent-but-still-hanging-in-there search engine graces the crown of one of them.
There is a pleasant coffee shop right next to the escalators. The headline of the local newspaper is about the successful launch of public stock for Twitter. The people in the coffee shop look like Indian tech workers on the way home fro a commute, mixed with locals.
When I come all the way up outdoors., I see the classic Italianate Tribune Tower on the other side of Broadway. San Francisco is a dream. Oakland is the beginning of Real California, Real America. It's a normal nothing-to-ashamed-about city that is smack dab across the way from one of the Special Places on the Earth. That makes Oakland seem both overly dull by comparison and also imbues it with the warmth of knowing that while being amidst this normal dull American City, you can go right across the bridge to Urban Paradise.
No comments:
Post a Comment