Lucky Lucky Lucky San Francisco

I love November in the City. The sudden change of the clock means that the evening rush now is suddenly illuminated by the golden hour near sunset.

The light was that way yesterday down along the canyons of the Embarcadero Center as people were leaving their work and emptying out into the wider canyon of the Slot on Market Street. The restored electric streetcars give it a timeless science fiction feeling.

Last night feel adventurous after dark I slipped out and began walking up Columbus from my hotel, past City Lights to Washington Square where I stopped a while and contemplated the towers of Peter and Paul, lit up white in the night and just crowing the tops of the trees planted right in front of them.

A couple women jogged by in the dark. The place was full of homeless---a man slept under a tarp.

The door of the parish center was open. An old Chinese woman leaned out as I walked by, as if looking for someone else. Then following the plot line of an old movie I climbed in the dark up towards Greenwich Street until I saw the harbor from a vantage point on the flank of Telegraph Hill.

Right as I got there I could see, down on the dark water below, the beautiful mass of a giant cruise ship entering the Bay. It was all lit up, a floating hotel. The lights of its many decks refelected down into the water like long tubules like smears of crayon, It made the ship and its reflection look like a giant techno jellyfish sliding sidways towards the old span of the Bay Bridge to Yerba Buena island. I marveled at how beauitful it was. Behind the island one couls see the new span of the Bridge. It looked like a white LED veil held aloft in front of the old waterfront of Oakland---a triumph of design.

A trio of young men, visiting techie types in their Twenties, walked by me and went up the path into the woods towards Coit Tower. I followed them and went all the way to the tower. After that I wound up walking all the way down to the Hyde Pier. On the way home I got a piece of pizza from a place right where Columbus means Kearny.

The City never felt so beautiful and accessible as at that moment. It felt as if every place I had been to had prepared to me to be able to come back here and experience it this way, as if some kind of reward for every bit of effort I've managed to muster.