So Long, Frisco, So Long!

Originally posted October 2, 2019.

Following my heavenly sojourn in Niles, I returned back north to San Francisco to strike a few items off my bucket list. Thanks to one of my oldest friends, who lives on Alameda Island (off Oakland) with her nice family, who offered hospitality for a night, permitting me a platform from which to dive.

Barbary Coast:

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This merely amused me. More on the Can-Can here:

 The St. Francis Hotel, site of Fatty Arbuckle’s infamous party:

Donna Hill, author of two great books about Rudolph Valentino, took me out for lunch in Chinatown!

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Clarence A. Thayer, for whom this schooner is named, is a distant relative of mine. Or I, of his. 

Alcatraz! I couldn’t get a good shot of this, and while I was trying a flock of pelicans went by, which I couldn’t get a shot of at all! 

A statue to motion picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, located in the Presidio. 

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I took close to 80 pictures in the Musee Mecanique — I shared them on Facebook. Putting them all here seems a tad excessive.  

My favorite thing of all in San Francisco is the Palace of Fine Arts, a remnant of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, a.k.a. the San Francisco World’s Fair.  It stands like a ruin, enormous, glorious, apart, and I’m guessing overlooked by most tourists. It’s just in the middle of a park, totally free to look at. Walking through it is like being in a Thomas Cole painting. Every vantage point reveals something awe inspiring new perspective. My photos don’t do it it justice. 

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So long, Frisco, we hardly knew ye! Me for western New York and the big Marx Brothers festival in Fredonia!