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TITLE: VIGNETTES OF SAN FRANCISCO
AUTHOR: ALMIRA BAILEY
EBOOK: E05101 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

Vignettes Of San Francisco

By
Almira Bailey

Vignettes

Title

As Pilgrims Go to Rome
At the Ferry
The Union-Street Car
The Latin Meets the Oriental
The Pepper and Salt Man
The Bay on Sunday Morning
Safe on the Sidewalk
Port O'Missing Men
Market-street Scintillations
Cafeterias
The Open Board of Trade
The San Francisco Police
A Marine View
Hilly-cum-go
I'll Get It Changed, Lady
Fillmore Street
In the Lobby of the St. Francis
The Garbage-man's Little Girl
The Palace
Zoe's Garden
Children on the Sidewalk
Feet that Pass on Market Street
Where the Centuries Meet
Bags or Sacks
Portsmouth Square
Miracles
Impulses and Prohibitions
Stopping at the Fairmont
San Francisco Sings
Van Ness Avenue
The Blind Men and the Elephant
You're Getting Queer
The Ferry and Real Boats
A Whiff of Acacia
It Takes All Sorts
The Fog in San Francisco
A Block on Ashbury Heights
The Greek Grocer
Billboards or Art
Golden Gate Park
Extra Fresh
On the California-street Car
Western Yarns
Mr. Mazzini and Dante
On the Nob of Nob Hill

Vignettes of San Francisco

As Pilgrims go to Rome

In the same way that the poets have loved Rome and made their
pilgrimages there - as good Moslems travel toward Mecca, so there are
some of us who have come to San Francisco. Then when we arrive and find
it all that we have dreamed, our love for it becomes its highest
tribute. And I don't know why it is sacrilege to mention Rome and San
Francisco in the same breath. As for me I greatly prefer San Francisco,
although I have never been to Rome.

I love San Francisco for its youth. Other cities have become set and
hard and have succumbed to the cruel symmetry of the machine age, but
not San Francisco. It is still youth untamed. They may try, but they
cannot manicure it, nor groom it, nor dress it up in a stiff white
collar, nor fetter it by not allowing a body to stretch out on the grass
in Union Square or prohibiting street-fakers and light wines served in
coffee pots and doing away with wild dashing jitneys.

Then there is something about San Francisco's being away out here from
everyone else, a city all alone. New York is five hours from Boston;
Philadelphia is close between New York and Washington; Baltimore is a
trolley ride away; Chicago is only overnight from all the other cities,
while Atlanta is only two sleeping car nights from her sister cities.
But San Francisco, out here as far as it can reach with one foot in the
great Pacific, nearly a week from New York and a month away from China,
some people wouldn't like it, but something vagabondish in me rejoices
to have run away from them all. Especially at night when the fog comes
in on the city and shuts out even Oakland, and fog horns out of the
Golden Gate call mournfully, and boats in the bay go calling their
lookout calls, I get this feeling of far-offness from the rest of the
world that is very gratifying.

And I love the sound of San Francisco, the sound of its singing - some
cities roar and others hum, but San Francisco sings. And I love the look
of it and the feel of it. I love to stand, on its hills in the mornings
when the bride-veil fog is going out to sea and the smoke and steam and
fog and sunshine make one grand symphonic morning song. And I love to
stand on high hills on clear days when all her cubist houses stand bold
in the sunlight and the cities across the bay are so close to the touch.
And I love its color, flowers and girls and splashes of the Oriental.
And I love its Bohemia which is not affected, but real. I love it
because it is young and live and spontaneous and humorous and
beauty-loving and unashamed of anything that is life. Oh, I don't know.

If I were in New York and it should begin to suffocate me I would run
and run across the continent and never stop once until I landed on the
top of Telegraph Hill.

At the Ferry

The shrill of newsboys, the bass of older venders, the call of taxis,
trolleys that proceed all day in ordered sequence, the wide swing of
traffic on the Embarcadero, a tang of salt in the air, the atmosphere of
flowers for sale, hoarse call of ferries in the bay like politicians who
have spoken too much in the, open air and lost their voices, the
beautifully ordered hurry and bustle and expectancy of people on their
way somewhere, and over it all the mentor of the police.

"Help pass the time pleasantly," so does the electric piano coax away
our nickels. To those who know music it is a horrible sound, but to the
rest of us its tunes are rather gay. On the wall a defunct comedy
flashes. Hypnotized, but never amused, we gaze at it as we wait for the
great doors to swing back. A woman is thrown from an auto by her
husband, and in her fall displays a pair of husky, ruffled underwear.
Time was when that would have raised a howl of joy, but no longer. She
hardly touches the ground when we find ourselves gazing at an orchard of
California figs, zip, the woman picks herself up, gazes comically at the
audience for a laugh and receiving none, hops with phenomenal agility up
astride of the hood of the auto, piff, a yard of Santa Rosa hens, ping,
the husband throws his wife up to the roof of a skyscraper, the
commuters gaze solemnly, biff, a scene from Santa Clara, clang, the
gates are opened.

On the Sausalito side, a jammed together happy vacation crowd,
grotesquely varied and elaborately gotten-up hikers, bags and suitcases
to fall all over everywhere, professorish looking men off, "taking a
book along," people laden with all the cheap magazines in the market,
smartly dressed people on their way to country homes in Marin and
Sonoma, a well modulated, nicely groomed crowd - bing, the doors slide
back and everybody rushes off for a holiday.

Commuters and tourists, most of the time I'd rather be a tourist. They
are easily distinguished in the crowd, an accent from Louisiana, a woman
who has just returned from the Orient, a man with continental manners,
they are easily distinguished. and the predatory red-capped porters know
them well. We are wistfully sorry to be going only to Oakland, we long
to go out on the Main Line, the out-leading, mile-wandering, venturesome
Main Line. Reluctantly we turn to where duty and necessity calls us
ignominiously to the electric suburban.

The first sight of San Francisco. "Ah, this is San Francisco!" The
shrill of newsboys, the bass of older venders, the flash of electric
signs. Do you prefer "Camels", "Chesterfields" or "Fatimas"? the call of
taxis, invitations to hotel buses, the wide sweep of traffic on the
Embarcadero - "So this is San Francisco."

The Union-Street Car

It is surprising how many people patronize the shabby little thing. But
then it waits right where those who leave the ferry may see it first as
though it were the most important car in town, and I have a fancy the
big cars humor it a bit and give it first place. Besides, it goes
anywhere in the city, Chinatown, the Hall of Justice, the Chamber of
Commerce, the Barbary Coast, St. Francis Church - sinners, saints and
merchants may travel its way - Portsmouth Square, Telegraph Hill, Little
Italy, Russian Hill, Automobile Row, Fillmore street, the Presidio and I
expect with a little coaxing it would switch about and run over to the
Mission. It has actually been known on stormy nights to take its
constituents up the side streets to their very doors.

It is a surprising little boat which looks like nothing more than a bug
crawling up the backs of the hills with its antenna of khaki-wound legs
sticking out fore and aft. Those who have traveled in Ireland tell us
that it is much like the jaunting cars, and it is not unlike the
Toomerville Trolley.

One night I set out to find the little thing to take me home. I was in a
strange part of the city and when my friends told me to get on and get
off and get on again I did as I was told. With blind faith I told the
conductors to put me off and they did. I continued in this way until
long after midnight when I found myself at a lonely corner with no one
in sight. I waited and waited and was getting nervous when I spied a
blue uniform. I looked sharply to see if he were a motorman, a fireman
or an officer from the Presidio. I am careful about these matters since
last summer when I was coming North on the President, and asked a naval
officer for some ice water. I rushed up to him and told him, which was
true, that it was the first time I had ever seen a policeman when I
wanted one. This led him into a defense of the San Francisco police,
which I told him was quite unnecessary with me for I thought them the
finest policemen in the world, probably because they are so Irish.

"Irish," said he with a twinkle, "I'm not Irish."

We chatted awhile until the Union street car came along, and then that
policeman who said he wasn't Irish leaned over and whispered
confidentially, "If you miss this car, there'll be another." I suppose
they get lonesome.

You see how I am wandering away from my subject. That is because I
followed the Union street car. It switches from subject to subject just

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