So Long, Frisco, So Long

Following my heavenly sojourn in Niles, I returned north to San Francisco to strike a few items off my bucket list. Thanks to one of my oldest friends, who lives on Alameda Island (off Oakland) with her nice family, who offered hospitality for a night, permitting me a platform from which to dive.

Barbary Coast:

This merely amused me:

 The St. Francis Hotel, site of Fatty Arbuckle's infamous party:

Donna Hill, author of two great books about Rudolph Valentino, took me out for lunch in Chinatown!

Clarence A. Thayer, for whom this schooner is named, is a distant relative of mine. Or I, of his. 

Alcatraz! I couldn't get a good shot of this, and while I was trying a flock of pelicans went by, which I couldn't get a shot of at all! 

A statue to motion picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, located in the Presidio. 

I took close to 80 pictures in the Musee Mecanique -- I shared them on Facebook. Putting them all here seems a tad excessive.  

My favorite thing of all in San Francisco is the Palace of Fine Arts, a remnant of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, a.k.a. the San Francisco World's Fair, which we wrote about here.  It stands like a ruin, enormous, glorious, apart, and I'm guessing overlooked by most tourists. It's just in the middle of a park, totally free to look at. Walking through it is like being in a Thomas Cole painting. Every vantage point reveals something awe inspiring new perspective. My photos don't do it it justice. 

So long, Frisco, we hardly knew ye! Me for western New York and the big Marx Brothers festival in Fredonia!