Lonely Girl Travels

Yesterday I was sitting on the electric white cushions at Blue Pumpkin, eating a sundae and streaming full episodes of the Colbert Report (hey, gotta stay informed). While it was buffering and stalling and generally annoying me, I checked my FB feed and saw a link to this video: “1955 San Francisco Footage Shows City As It Once Was.”

I clicked on it. It was, for a Bay Area native, immediately captivating—an old-timey travel video, the narrator’s voice like something off a grainy old variety show. The camera’s strapped to the hood of a car, as it rolls through streets I knew, but suddenly didn’t know—that seem too wide, too clean, gleaming in a way that seemed too stereotypically California.

I watched all 20 minutes, headphones on, the riverside stretched out behind the glass windows—from the corner of my eye, even that looked too clean, too sunny, too picturesque, from two stories up and behind a wall of glass. Was San Francisco ever really as quaint as the 1955 video made it out to be? Was it a rouse, or is it something the city lost somewhere? Is it a little of both?

I wondered that, and other things. Such as:

1. How’d they get rid of all the fog? How’d they manage to film this on that one clear day? They must have been waiting weeks.

2. Where are all the homeless people at Civic Center? What ever happened to those flowers?—they look so cute.

3. Is it still that green? Is the sky really that blue? That’s changed, right? Or have I just forgotten already?

4. The buildings are shorter and whiter, lay on top of the land like powdery snow.

5. Fisherman’s Wharf when there were still fishermen there, boats docked behind the grottoes. That must have been really cool. Do tourists still expect to find it that way? Is that why so many people still go? Are they disappointed? Do they feel like something’s been lost? Like they’ve been cheated, and they’re not sure by who? Cause I do.

6. Playland by the Sea—like Santa Cruz, but in San Francisco. How cool would that have been? Why did they tear it down, again? Did it burn down, like the Sutro Baths? God, the Cliffhouse sucks now.

7. People in dresses and suit jackets and head scarves and hats—everyone so well-dressed. Was it really like that, or did they just pick the money shots? Was the city really that white, or did they just edit out everyone else?

8. Old cars: like a clean Cuba. The narrator keeps saying one of the best things to do in the city is “drive its many thoroughfares.” Was that really a highlight, or could they just not think of anything better? God, SF traffic sucks now.

9. A ride down Market Street, the Ferry Building at the end of the road. It stands out, doesn’t get dwarfed behind the skyscrapers and trash and clutter. Old marquees and shop signs and street cars—at least they’ve kept one thing.

10. Why have I still never ridden a cable car?

But at the end of it, I was sold: I wanted to leave Blue Pumpkin, leave Phnom Penh, hop in my time machine, strap myself to the hop of an old car like some kind of fucked-up, wind-tossed hood ornament, and cruise through a city I know, in time when I didn’t know it.

So I guess the ad worked.