More Cali

Interestingly, Chinatown in San Francisco is like two parallel worlds. Grant Street is where the tourists go and buy tchotchkes like fans, jade stuff, dragons, etc. But just one street over is where the Chinese people do their shopping -- all sorts of fresh food markets, small restaurants, etc. It was fascinating to enter on one side and come back down the other. Unfortunately, we got steered wrong (and by an actual Chinese person). The best dim sum in San Francisco is NOT in Chinatown. It's over in the Embarcadero District at Yank Sing, but we didn't realize that until it was too late. So, we went for dim sum the next weekend, too, to rectify the situation. In other news, I pulled a classic Chickadee move and got us onto the cable cars ahead of a 2-hour line, just by being nice to the ticket sales guy and dropping a few Austin musician names. Sometimes it pays to be a former semi-locally-famous rockstar. When you go to San Fran, look for Cyrus at the ticketbooth. He rocks. Sunday night we had reservations for a night tour of Alcatraz. Our boat left the dock right at sunset, so we had some spectacular views of the Golden Gate with the sun going down. Alcatraz itself, well, maybe I'm just a bleeding heart but I think that prime real estate could be used for something far more positive than memorializing such a desolate place. Perhaps a garden or a park? Still, I was mostly struck by two things: How close the prisoners were to freedom, and yet how far; and also how kind and compassionate the guards seemed toward most of the prisoners. The excellent audio tour was narrated by former guards, and in general, they seemed almost affectionate toward their charges. Almost. These were the worst of the worst, sent there because they were incorrigible. Yet, one prisoner was a gifted artist. And the music hour was one of the most treasured privileges. Actually, incarceration and freedom became something of a theme for the trip. Monday, we headed to SFMOMA. We particularly liked the exhibit of photos by William Eggleston, a '60s and '70s photographer working with deeply saturated colors to shoot vignettes across the American south and west. In contrast to, say, Diane Arbus, his photos seem never to sensationalize or condescend or gawk at their subjects. They merely show what is, honestly and beautifully, in each person or scene. And the colors are luscious. I was also struck by an exhibit in which photographer Deborah Luster shot portraits of inmates at Angola Prison in which they seemed to be unveiling their truth for the camera. The photos are printed on postcard-sized metal plates, with the information the prisoners gave about themselves etched on the back. All of the plates are housed in a big metal cabinet with a light on top--they must be viewed one at a time, by one or two people at a time, so that you come face-to-face with their radiant humanity. And the sound of the cabinet drawer as you slide it shut sounds eerily like the clang of the bars closing at Alcatraz.