Berkeley & San Francisco

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Sunday June 5 through to Friday June 10 was Kate's KBS conference at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB). We arrived Sunday having been in Reno and the Lake Tahoe area the night before. Berkeley is just across the bay from the city of San Francisco connected by a long bridge on the I80 which hops across via Treasure Island. We spent quite a bit of time exploring San Francisco — the photo at left is from a large peace march we attended in the city.

Kate had been to San Francisco before, this was my first visit.

We stayed on the edge of the UCB campus in a high rise student residence. This was the conference accommodation. There were two single beds in our room, both in rather ratty condition, but we pushed them together to make a double bed and made the best of it. There are some views from our room of the campus in the album. Many of Kate's conference friends stayed in the residence as well.

This was Kate's first KBS conference and we learned how fun loving (i.e., crazy) some of the KBS folk, and especially our Scandinavian friends, can be. Kate got invited to play poker with the boys one night and we shared several dinners together with new KBS friends. The Scandinavians would party really hard and yet make it to the morning sessions the next day. On our last night a friend from Norway, who had been partying all night with like minded folk, woke us about 4:00am to give us a drunken good bye — he was catching an airplane back home in a few hours but had stayed up all night!

While there were occasions where we drove over to the city, mostly we rode the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and public transit. The BART is pretty comprehensive and, at the time, fairly unique in that there were no drivers on the cars! They are completely automated. For someone with an IT background this is interesting and a little unnerving ... do we really trust computers to get us there safely?

We'd ride the BART over to the Powell and Market subway station where you could queue up and catch the old cable cars at an end of the line turntable. These cable cars are a signature element of any visit to the city and there are several lines to explore. They're very old, quite small, open cars, with limited seating, and many people will stand to hang off the side of them. They're pulled around the city on various cable lines which run just under the street that the driver latches onto. This mechanism requires a fair amount of effort from the "driver" who is in the middle of the car operating huge levers to catch and grip onto the cable. There must be a fair number of accidents over the years — people falling off and vehicular traffic getting in the way of the cable cars which aren't as nimble at starting and stopping with drivers who really don't have a good view of the road ahead. They're fun to ride but definitely not for the disabled!

From the Powell & Market Station we rode the cable cars over to Fisherman's Wharf for views of the harbor and Alcatraz island out in the bay. The path taken by the cable car takes you up a very steep rise on Powell, past Union Square, and up to Nob Hill (we visited the "Top of the Mark" on Nob Hill, where we stayed years later for a Club Health conference, for the view another day) then a few turns, past Lombard Street (the scenic twisty street with 8 switch backs that descends from Russian Hill), before heading down to Fisherman's Wharf.

At Fisherman's Wharf there's fresh hot crabs and other treats to buy. There boats in the harbor and seals sunning themselves. We wandered our way back along Columbus Ave with views of the iconic Transamerica Pyramid building to find our way into China Town where we had a meal with our friend Chris who explored the city with us. This is a huge China Town, much larger than any I've ever been to. There are lots of great restaurants with affordable, and authentic, meals to enjoy. Lots of shops too. We discovered that they even have Chinese versions of Playboy and Penthouse magazines! I'm not sure if that's only for the local market or they're imports, from China, using these well known titles.

Another day Kate and I wandered along the Presidio and Marine Greens to the immediate west of Fisherman's Wharf for views of the Golden Gate bridge which crosses over the San Francisco Bay to Sausalito on the north shore. The "Palace of Fine Arts" is a lovely spot to visit just at the edge of the Presidio. It was part of the Panama Pacific International Exposition held in 1915 and has been maintained as a beautiful garden space.

Another day we visited "Golden Gate Park". It's a huge parkland extended for a great distance to the shores of the Pacific. We visited the Green House and Japanese Gardens.

We did get out to Alamo Square for some pictures of the "Painted Ladies". This is a group of lovely free-standing Victorian homes, immaculately maintained, and prettily posed with the city behind them. It's another iconic location. But these homes are fairly representative of what you find as you wander the many hills of the city. There are lots of lovely Victorian homes. They're pretty much all wooden construction, in pastel colors, with fancy details. In the city itself, these tend to be more row-house with little by way of garden space.

There are quite a few characters to see on the street. Especially around Haight-Ashbury which still vibrates from the music scene of decades ago. Late in our trip we went to a Pixies concert in the area. The album has photos of some of the characters spotted on the street.

While visiting there was a bit of an earthquake centered over San Jose (there's a clipping in the photo album). We were laying in bed and I asked Kate, "Did the earth move for you?". It's really no laughing matter; a devastating earthquake hit the next year:

"On October 17, 1989, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay Area, killing 67 people and causing more than $5 billion in damages." ... from the History Channel

Photos scanned and blog created April 2022 during the BadAss.II Covid wave and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.