pier 39, san francisco

Yesterday we went to one of those famous tourist places.

I was taught by some one, to call them tourist traps, and that is not always a bad name. I do try to avoid them, even going camping in national parks during the off season.

But this was Pier 39 in San-Francisco. I was here as a boy, but SF in 1949 was totally different (and smaller) than it is now. We went to the wharfs and saw people actually fishing, and catching fish. My memory is the fishiness of the whole place.

This time Pier 39 was a place to buy clothes, jewelry, nick nacks, food and food and food and food. Didn’t see any MacDonalds, but I may have missed that one. There sure was no lack of places to eat.

We had a light lunch at a outdoor cafe that featured bird scavengers. We dropped a couple french fries and a minute later we looked down and they were gone. They were faster than a good server, and more stealthy too.

This time I took my camera, with fresh charged batteries, and took a bunch of pictures.

What struck me as much as anything was the mixing pot SF has become. As we walked along we became part of a lot of conversations, and fewer were in english than you might think.

There was one very elegant family I noticed. Mother, two daughters and a husband, tall handsome women with features we would expect to see in old time San Francisco. But they were beautiful and very self assured, elegant is a good word to use again.

There were a few women in head scarves, but mostly the image was that everyone was wearing pretty much the same costume, while they talked all over the place.

It was also a big enough crowd (by no means overflow) but you wanted to keep track of each other. My two grandsons kept an eye on Miriam, as I did photographs.

We had a great time the 6 of us.