Where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars
New York has had the delight of the coldest damn winter since I moved here four years ago. How cold? Colder than the Antarctic it seems at times--or at least that is what I learned from the nifty weather box on Jano's site. While everyone I know was planning trips to exotic and warm locales like St. Thomas and Puerto Rico this weekend, I went back to the Golden Gate, the Muir Woods, the Haight! Ah yes, the hippie-come-yuppie-come-techie city of San Francisco which inspired Douglas Cross to write the lyrics to a tune which became Tony Bennett's signature song. Rumor has it, he used to show up in Union Square with a microphone to croon tribute to the city.
When I left NoCal four and a half years ago, it was bittersweet in many ways. When I first got to Stanford, I was rather depressed--San Francisco was a good 45 minute drive from campus and me without wheels! I was pretty miserable there the first few months (some of my friends blame it on me being a dorky SLE student) and wanted to head East to New York, Boston, anywhere but Palo Alto, California. I had 18 years of island fever and I felt just as isolated on The Farm. I had that itch to leave and go somewhere, anywhere, foreign and away. California seemed too much like Hawaii and I couldn't deal.
It took me leaving for Oxford my junior year to discover the beauty of Stanford upon my return. Oxford was very different from Stanford: lots of speeding trucks that occasionally hit pedestrians and cyclists (the first time I saw a Mercedes lorry), tea shops, covered markets, large grocery stores where you pack your own groceries, and coaches to London, trains to anywhere else including Chepstow--there's a hitchhiking story here involving me stepping on a dead muskrat or a human heart... still undetermined. Oxford was my gateway to Europe though I only managed to see most of the UK (sorry, I missed Ireland, the land of my brethren) and Paris and Versailles. I had a foreign beau and drank afternoon tea in the JCR. I had friends from Harvard Summer School there who met me in London for dancing and turning lighters into flame-throwers (yes, that was me, the pyromaniac, who still has no idea how she did it). Very different from Stanford and it changed me completely.
I returned to The Farm with a new outlook on everything. As if I wasn't outgoing and aural enough, I had an irrepressible energy (though I think that can be attributed to a sunny spring quarter as opposed to a dank English one) and I wanted to do everything and meet everyone. That included more trips to San Francisco my senior year via borrowed cars and the CalTrain, wine country trips with my galpals, formals and pub nights, hiking 11 miles up Mt. Wittenberg and the trails along the coast of Point Reyes and then heading to Oakland to rave until 6am. I recall a very interesting San Francisco pub crawl that saw me downing lots of lemon drops at a bar I can barely remember... not due to the lemon drops though.
And then, just like that *poof*, it was gone. Diplomas out and New York on the agenda. Yet as much as I adore my New York with its unending energy and the many people who give it the personality it is world renown for, as Tony sings, "I left my heart in San Francisco, high on a hill it calls to me to be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars." And so, I return again and again--thanks in part to my many friends who still live there or moved back and my brother who traded the Chicago winters for the San Francisco fog. I've come to know it better with every visit and seem to fall in love with it a little more each time I return with each new thing I discover. From the Muir Woods (can you believe I never went while I lived there--am I retarded?) to the streets of Chinatown, I can't help but feel at home there. With two more visits scheduled within the next 4 weeks and likely others this year, this may prompt my friends to come out full force to coax me to move out there to spice up their lives. They've been trying for 5 years and I'm still in NYC though. My NYC friends have an easier time convincing me to stay in NYC since I'm here already and my heartbeat is in sync with the city's. But San Fran keeps my blood pressure down and my thighs in shape. Ah the dilemma. I always return to NYC with this desire to sell everything and start from scratch somewhere, anywhere, everywhere. And why not San Francisco? Why not London? Why not someplace I've never dreamed of living like Palau and Jellyfish Lake (I almost wanted to say Alkali Lake a la X-Men until I remembered what they did there to Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike)? I'm not sure why and I'm still trying to figure that out. Until I find my purpose in life, which I'm expeditiously working towards, I'll have to settle for my short skips across 35 states for In-N-Out Burgers and Ghirardelli Square, Monterey Bay and Santa Cruz, the Mission and the Haight, Golden Gate Park and Baker Beach, and my heart, at the top of the hill, waiting for me to return.
What I'm reading: "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
What I'm listening to: "Waiting for My Rocket To Come" by Jason Mraz
When I left NoCal four and a half years ago, it was bittersweet in many ways. When I first got to Stanford, I was rather depressed--San Francisco was a good 45 minute drive from campus and me without wheels! I was pretty miserable there the first few months (some of my friends blame it on me being a dorky SLE student) and wanted to head East to New York, Boston, anywhere but Palo Alto, California. I had 18 years of island fever and I felt just as isolated on The Farm. I had that itch to leave and go somewhere, anywhere, foreign and away. California seemed too much like Hawaii and I couldn't deal.
It took me leaving for Oxford my junior year to discover the beauty of Stanford upon my return. Oxford was very different from Stanford: lots of speeding trucks that occasionally hit pedestrians and cyclists (the first time I saw a Mercedes lorry), tea shops, covered markets, large grocery stores where you pack your own groceries, and coaches to London, trains to anywhere else including Chepstow--there's a hitchhiking story here involving me stepping on a dead muskrat or a human heart... still undetermined. Oxford was my gateway to Europe though I only managed to see most of the UK (sorry, I missed Ireland, the land of my brethren) and Paris and Versailles. I had a foreign beau and drank afternoon tea in the JCR. I had friends from Harvard Summer School there who met me in London for dancing and turning lighters into flame-throwers (yes, that was me, the pyromaniac, who still has no idea how she did it). Very different from Stanford and it changed me completely.
I returned to The Farm with a new outlook on everything. As if I wasn't outgoing and aural enough, I had an irrepressible energy (though I think that can be attributed to a sunny spring quarter as opposed to a dank English one) and I wanted to do everything and meet everyone. That included more trips to San Francisco my senior year via borrowed cars and the CalTrain, wine country trips with my galpals, formals and pub nights, hiking 11 miles up Mt. Wittenberg and the trails along the coast of Point Reyes and then heading to Oakland to rave until 6am. I recall a very interesting San Francisco pub crawl that saw me downing lots of lemon drops at a bar I can barely remember... not due to the lemon drops though.
And then, just like that *poof*, it was gone. Diplomas out and New York on the agenda. Yet as much as I adore my New York with its unending energy and the many people who give it the personality it is world renown for, as Tony sings, "I left my heart in San Francisco, high on a hill it calls to me to be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars." And so, I return again and again--thanks in part to my many friends who still live there or moved back and my brother who traded the Chicago winters for the San Francisco fog. I've come to know it better with every visit and seem to fall in love with it a little more each time I return with each new thing I discover. From the Muir Woods (can you believe I never went while I lived there--am I retarded?) to the streets of Chinatown, I can't help but feel at home there. With two more visits scheduled within the next 4 weeks and likely others this year, this may prompt my friends to come out full force to coax me to move out there to spice up their lives. They've been trying for 5 years and I'm still in NYC though. My NYC friends have an easier time convincing me to stay in NYC since I'm here already and my heartbeat is in sync with the city's. But San Fran keeps my blood pressure down and my thighs in shape. Ah the dilemma. I always return to NYC with this desire to sell everything and start from scratch somewhere, anywhere, everywhere. And why not San Francisco? Why not London? Why not someplace I've never dreamed of living like Palau and Jellyfish Lake (I almost wanted to say Alkali Lake a la X-Men until I remembered what they did there to Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike)? I'm not sure why and I'm still trying to figure that out. Until I find my purpose in life, which I'm expeditiously working towards, I'll have to settle for my short skips across 35 states for In-N-Out Burgers and Ghirardelli Square, Monterey Bay and Santa Cruz, the Mission and the Haight, Golden Gate Park and Baker Beach, and my heart, at the top of the hill, waiting for me to return.
What I'm reading: "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
What I'm listening to: "Waiting for My Rocket To Come" by Jason Mraz
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