No Alcatraz, instead a hippie trail head full of zombies

Hmmm. Tourist season strikes again. It seems you need to book ahead for the Alcatraz tour during the summer tour season – like at least a week in advance. Guess I’ll just hit the hippie trail to Haight Ashbury instead.

It’s been a long time since the summer of love in 1967, but the dope is still lingering in the air of Haight Ashbury. In many ways it’s a lot like Nimbin. A social microcosm that’s a hangover from the 1960s, complete with ageing long-hairs that refuse to grow up who are now siphoning money out of young kids keen to experience the ‘dream’ and middle-aged hipsters trying to regain their youth.

I’d been reading about Haight Ashbury in books, so was keen to experience it for myself. It’s the place to buy dope, incense, tie-dye and t-shirts about dope and incense that are tie-dyed. It’s also the sight of the postcard row of houses on Alamo Square that you might recognise from the 1980s cheese-ball American sitcom, Full House. They’re playing it again on GO at the moment. I loved it then, but now it just seems so lame. Bob Saget the dad, has built a parable for the young kids into every episode that’s so transparent, Jesse is just a Fonzie wannabe ‘Have Mercy’ sounds suspiciously like, “Heeey’ to me and uncle ‘Joey’ is not funny – just lame.

Still I took a few pictures, not because I’m a fan of Full House (anymore), but because I’m a sucker for American architecture.

That was one of the best parts of my time in LA – taking a tour of mid-century American architecture in LA. Just me, Laura, the tour guide and American architecture historian and a whole lotta great houses and buildings conceived and constructed in the 1940s with curved glass panels for walls that would be an engineering feat today, let alone back then. It was geeky, but Lou, you would have loved it. Highly recommend it.

As Steinbeck would write, my dogs is tar’d (my feet are tired).

Yesterday I walked from Marina across the Golden Gate Bridge (what a way to help conquer a fear of heights) and down to Sausalito for lunch. Yes, I walked. Most tourists drove or biked. Some even caught cabs from San Francisco, but on Nic’s advice, I walked. You get to see the detail of a place on foot – but boy do I have buns of steel now! All those hills!

I love the story that some architects moved in quickly and were able to inject some style into the Golden Gate Bridge before the city engineers built another functional concrete pylon structure. And I love that they painted it orange. Would so many postcards be sold of a grey concrete pylon structure? Would they sell as many t-shirts? I doubt it.

Sausalito is another great little town – a bit like the Bay areas own Carmel. It’s another icecream, souvenir t-shirt and art village. I don’t know about you, but it’s not often that I stop off the beaten track for an icecream and a good ‘vista’ as the Americans call it and think to myself, “Hey that $6,000 painting would look good at my place, think I’ll buy it”. I don’t know, do people buy art on impulse Bill?