"Maybe one night not long enough to see San Francisco?" said the woman at the front desk, in a strong Chinese accent, as she ran my debit card through the system.
I was at the Redwood Inn on Lombard, having just come straight down Russian Hill on foot toting my bags and my easel board.
I explained to her that I had been staying in a different hotel for a couple nights, but that I wanted to change for tonight.
"Where you stay before?" she asked me.
"Hotel North Beach," I said. "It's nice, but it's old. Bathroom is down the hall. For my last night here, I wanted my own bathroom."
The North Beach Hotel on Kearny is one of those throwbacks to the old San Francisco. It reminds me of the room at the beginning of Bullit.
It looks like it surely a flophouse at one point in the 1970s. It's now nicely renovated, but it still has both the good and bad points of being the old style of lodging. The rooms are tiny---less than a hundred square feet. They have sinks, but no toilets. It harkens to the earliest of true American hotel rooms, invented just after the turn of the Twentieth Century by Ellsworth Milton Statler (a great forgotten American, the founder of the modern lodging industry). He's someone who deserves a really great biography.
The sole window looked out over a central courtyard well at other windows less than ten feet away--the most unscenic hotel view of any room in the City, to be sure, but in a way I didn't mind. It made me it feel as if I were in some kind of cave, even those the frenzied activity of North Beach was only a few feet away outside. It serves my need for balance and retreat.
I might still be there but that the guy across the hall was fond of leaving his door open with his television on full blast loud all night long. The first night there I went down to complain at 3 am. The Russian security guy in a blazer mumbled knowingly, "Oh, yes, the guy in Room 65." That got the sound turned down, but it was up again the next night. I could tell from previous experiences in apartment living that people who do that kind of thing are unable to understand how annoying they are, in some kind of autistic way.
At least night two was quieter. The shows he was watching were quiet enough for me to get to sleep. But that was enough. I decided that for my third and last night in the city I go for a more conventional motel up along the stretch of Highway 101 as it approaches the bridge---a strip of conventional California-style lodging.
The cable on the Hyde Street line was broken---all the cable cars were stranded---so I wound up having to walk all the way to Lombard from North Beach (I chose to do that, to be sure---it was either the cable cars or nothing, I decided).
When I finally got here, all I could think about was having my own bathroom to take a leisurely shower. After checking in, I got my key and took the elevator up to the top floor of the motel. As it happens my room wasn't ready. The Chinese housekeeper was still cleaning it up.
Fortunately there's a little staircase that goes up to the roof of the motel. Here is where I am sitting, looking out over the rooftops towards the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin. It's perfect and sunny, with the slightest breeze to keep me cool as I type this.
It's quite an upgrade on the view from my room at the North Beach. I find if you are patient, the view will find you. It reminds me of something I was thinking the other night, as I was indulging in my night jaunt up to Coit Tower, and feeling bolder than I have in a while, about exploring new places.
When you are in the City, there is some kind of playing that must go on. Either you play in the City, or the City plays you. Take your pick.
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