San Francisco – down the Mission

Walk down almost any street in San Francisco and you’ll come across someone talking to themselves. Not always crazy people, sometimes it’s people just talking to whomever will listen. Street car drivers, buskers, perky homeless people requesting a quarter, they all add to the ambience which is very different to anywhere I’ve been on the east coast. Maybe it’s the balmy but mild conditions year-round that give this sense that the street is a place to hang out, not just for getting from point A to point B.

Down in the Mission on a Monday night, waiting for a bus, a Cuban band plays unnofficially in a corner square in front of a supermarket. A couple start dancing in front of the crowd and passers-by jump up on park benches to get a better view. We’d just finished a burrito (shared because even a single burrito in the US is family sized) at Farolito Taqueria after discovering Artillery (24th and Mission), a shop full of gear by really local, as in Mission area, designers. At first glance I thought it was just a hipster-den, but beneath the surface it actually had some substance. I walked out of there knowing I was doing my bit for the local community by buying a bag, a dress and a t-shirt for Peter.

Speaking of hipsters, there’s about 10 times more of them in the Mission area since we were last there in April 07, particularly on Valencia. Not that I mind. More cool shops in addition to the bookstores and record stores we visited last time, lots of bike porn (although far too many fixies) and even a decent coffee place.
Given the general low standards of coffee in the US, Ritual Coffee Roasters was quite a find only hours after I got off the flight from Sydney. I ordered a machiato to go and the guy tried to convince me to have it in a real cup in the cafe “to keep the temperature high and not have any paper taste.” I somehow didn’t think their coffee would be so precious to deserve such treatment and I was right. What came was more like a piccolo latte rather than an espresso with a drop of milk, but it was perfectly nice, almost as good as the stuff around the corner from work. I couldn’t believe that people were lining up out the door only to order grande mochas. Surely the single origin goodness wouldn’t come through in a milkshake sized chocolatey coffee? Baby steps, baby steps.

But the hipsters haven’t taken over this area, rather, they sit nicely in the varied pot of cultures. While Valencia is becoming gentrified, Mission St is still full of local stores, and most importantly for me, cheap good food. Mexican, African American and Vietnamese still dominate the area named the Mission because the first outsiders to arrive, the Spanish in 1776, they set the local Native Americans to work building them a mission. It never really turned out so they ended up handing it over to the Mexicans who made something of the area. Two Mission Mexican meals into the trip, I’m grateful for it.

Chicago is amazing

This is one fantastic city. There’s something beautiful to look at in every direction – old and ornate terraces, new and shiny skyscrapers, tulips in bloom on the sidewalk and the fog covering up the tips of buildings.

And the people are nice, the food is good, the transport works. We’re just back from seeing an excellent play by one of my favourite playwrights, Harold Pinter, called The Betrayal which was on at the Stephenwolf Theatre. There’s still the Art Institute of Chicago and Millenium Park to go.

Can I stay here?