Plays Well With Others

It Just Smells…

San Francisco—one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Well, from a distance. Get up close and you’ll definitely have a different opinion. Culturally, San Francisco is certainly diverse. Lots of different people, lots to do, lots to see. And maybe if you LIVE in the City, you get used to those strange smells that waft out of the sewers and from the homeless people that line the streets.

I was just reading Dooce this morning, her entry about her latest visit to San Francisco. At one point she describes her stop in the Mission for a burrito:

After the meeting we drove back up to the city and grabbed a burrito in the Mission. My favorite part about burritos in San Francisco is the fact that they are bigger in circumference than the tires on an SUV and that they are perfectly round like the cross-section of a redwood tree. I thought there was no way I’d finish half of my burrito, but three-fourths of the way through it I saw the light at the other end and rationalized that since I don’t eat one of these things but every six months I would go ahead and finish it. The 5,000 calories wouldn’t hurt me.

As a true San Franciscan, born and raised, I can attest that there’s nothing better than a real burrito—San Francisco style. At least 10 inches long and 4 inches wide, full of greasy meat, watery sour cream, a teaspoon of guacamole, a sprinkling of cheese and a pound of lettuce, it’s a a couple of meals all rolled into one. If you manage to finish it, you’ll feel like you just swallowed a VW Bug. You know, that kind of meal where you can actually feel the large lump of food sitting in your stomach. Yeah, you won’t be eating for a few days.

But after the burrito she mentions taking BART to the airport, which is an experience in itself for those not familiar:

Sadly I then had to grab BART to the airport and here’s where I’m going to lodge my complaints that have nothing to do with the fact that I had just consumed eight ounces of liquor and a burrito bigger than my dog’s chest cavity. That train looked and smelled like the shoe section at a JC Penney in a bad part of town. Twice I had to get off the train because I couldn’t hear what stop we were at, and the second time I got off I had to wait 25 minutes for the next train. And then when I finally got to the airport ten minutes before my flight left, I was so tipsy I couldn’t operate the touch-screen electronic check-in. Hello, airlines! LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR HERE.

San Francisco is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And from a distance it looks amazing. The trees, the hilly streets, the gorgeous skyline and the glistening water are just some of the things that make the City appear so great, but once you step inside it’s a whole other world. As I mentioned previously the smells take some getting used to. It just smells like pollution. Like a garbage dump. I’m sure it’s all of the tall buildings that trap the smells in the downtown area. And then the piece de resistance is our rail system, which gets you from the Peninsula to the downtown area and around the Bay. You’d think such a beautiful city would have a Class A transportation system, but you’d be wrong. BART is a train wreck in itself. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and get one of the “clean” cars, but for the most part it smells like a locker room full of smelly feet and looks equally bad. Most of the seating and flooring is covered in some kind of splotches—and these are the “new” cars with the blue seating. They actually had some cars with the older brown seating which looked even worse. Inside you basically feel like you’re in a sardine can and the noise is just unbearable at times. I’m sure it’s well above the noise threshhold most humans should be subjected to. It’s probably quieter cranking your iPod up to full volume—well if you could hear your iPod inside the train. And, for the unknowing tourist, trying to hear which stop is coming up is near impossible. When we travel we just keep an eye on the signs posted outside the train and make sure we know which stop comes before ours. Definitely not a great travel experience and far from an asset to show tourists.

That said, in San Francisco, the good outweighs the bad. So for anyone planning a visit, there’s a ton of entertainment, great food and sights to see. Just avoid BART and be aware that when you’re downtown you’ll be giving up your rights to clean air. You’d probably get cleaner air smoking a filtered cigarette.

Why do I get the feeling I’ll be getting a letter from the Tourism Board about this?

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