Day 6: Rest Day
Welcome
Yesterday we enjoyed a day of rest and leisure in San Francisco.
We received the gift of beautiful weather on our day off. Spring was truly imprinting itself on the Bay Area and the air smelled fresh while the sun warmed my skin as I walked through a neighbourhood rich in trees, berms, and colourful wooden houses. Damask Rose was the name of the café I visited, an establishment in the satisfyingly named suburb of Bushrod, technically in North Oakland, as we were staying right on the border of Berkeley’s southern neighbouring city. It was a room that had been powerfully decorated with chandeliers like exploding stars, walls of flamingo and magenta, and a garden of plastic leaves, roses, and other flowers that hung from the roof and crawled along shelves like in Poison Ivy’s lair. I ordered a Muhamarra flatbread and a large black coffee, no cream or sugar, just the coffee, nice and hot and strong, the way I like it.
At 11am five of us left the Airbnb and headed to the local metro station to catch one of the fine trains of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Five sports fanatics were headed out to enjoy a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark; one of the great American pastimes and a fine cultural experience for the New Zealanders in the touring party who hadn’t been lucky enough to witness this fine sport in the flesh. Our train took us through Oakland, past the port and then under San Francisco Bay, stopping at Embarcadero Station so we could disembark and climb back up to street level.
We walked along the waterfront and soon found ourselves part of the crowds, a procession headed towards Oracle Park, the impressive stadium that sits right at the waters edge on South Beach. Inside the grounds we made our way upstairs where hotdogs were purchased along with cans of beer, the essentials to get us through the next few hours of play. The grass was a lush green and the stands were packed with fans eager to see the San Francisco Giants teach the San Diego Padres a thing or two about throwing and hitting the leather, yarn, and cork sphere, this noble pursuit to which they dedicated their lives.
Cheering, or possibly booing.
It seemed like the ball was hard to hit. For both teams. Most of the time the hitters missed, and the game ticked along patiently with plenty of athletic prowess on display for little result. The stadium organ filled in the gaps in play with quick stings and sometimes even full songs. In the seventh inning the crowd sung along to ‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame’. Several times the groundsmen appeared, a crack team of rakers towing their equipment like a team of oxen, carefully moving the bases out of the way and combing the dirt back to a pristine condition so play could continue uninhibited.
The Padres were up by two home runs for a good part of the game but in the 8th inning the Giants scored three quick home runs and pulled ahead, thrilling their home crowd, and generating a deafening applause. This was followed by an impressive demonstration from the promo squad who suddenly appeared with t-shirt guns, firing tightly rolled garments high up into the air that arced back down into the outstretched arms of people who were hopefully catching the right size. They must have done the trick because the home team closed out the game quickly and confidently from that point, cleaning up the final innings with ease and leaving their fans to file out of the stadium in a merry mood.
We weren’t ready to head home yet so we walked back along the waterfront and eventually made our way to The Buena Vista, a café that serves a famous Irish Coffee that was as delicious as it was expensive. Right across the street from that establishment was the Friedel Klussmann Memorial Turnaround, and as we sipped our drinks we watched cable cars rolling down Hyde Street, sidling up to the end of the line and onto this rotating piece of track to be hand-rotated for the return journey. The opportunity to ride this iconic piece of public transport infrastructure was irresistible.
There were wooden benches for seated passengers, or railings for those who wished to stand on the sideboard and hang from the outside of the car. “Left side lean in!” the driver would call as we passed another cable car running in the opposite direction. He yanked an enormous lever to lurch us forward up the steep incline and then another lever was attacked aggressively to slow our descent once we crested the hill. The brakes gave off an acrid scent, savoury and pungent like smoked fish. Finally, we rattled to a halt at the end of our crosstown journey, right across from Embarcadero Station where we boarded the BART for our trip back to Berkely, a satisfying end to a great day in the bay.
