Enthroned on hills, San Francisco captivates the stranger who sees it
from the Bay by the vivacity of its landscape long before revealing any
of its intimate lures. Whether you approach in the early morning, when
gulls arc wheeling above the palette of tones of the Bay, or at night,
when illuminated ferryboats glide by like the yellow-bannered halls of
fable, the buoyancy of San Francisco is manifest.
It increases as you pass through the Ferry Building, the turnstile
behind the Golden Gate, whose blithe tower of the four clock dials is
reminiscent of the Giralda in Seville.
In another moment you are in the surge of Market street, the long bazaar
and highroad of this port of all flags. An invisible presence dances
before your footsteps as you sense the animation of the street. It is
the spirit of San Francisco, weaving its debonair spell.
Here Tetrazzini turns street singer and Jan Kubelik is a wandering
minstrel enchanting crowds at Lotta's Fountain under Christmas eve
stars.
From Dana to Stevenson, from Harte to Mencken, San Francisco has
captured the hearts of a train of illustrious admirers. Rudyard Kipling,
master of the terse, has tooled a brisk drypoint of the city in a few
strokes. "San Francisco has only one drawback," he writes. "'Tis hard to
leave."
Cradled as a drowsy Spanish pueblo, reared as a child of the mines, and
fed on all the exhilarants of the gold-spangled days of the Argonauts,
San Francisco is like a dashing Western beauty with the eyes of an
exotic ancestry.
Bristling with contradictions, the city presents the paradox of being
the most intensely American and yet the most cosmopolitan community on
the continent, with aspects as variable as the medley of alien tongues
heard on its streets.
A festival of life is staged at this meeting place of the nations,
farthest outpost of Aryan civilization in its westward march.
Inez Haynes Irwin in her Californiacs sounds a warning for the stranger
in San Francisco.
"If you ever start for California with the intention of seeing anything
of the state," she admonishes, "do that before you enter San Francisco.
If you must land in San Francisco first, jump into a taxi, pull down the
curtain, drive through the city, breaking every speed law, to Third and
Townsend, sit in the station until a train--some train, any train--
pulls out, and go with it. If in crossing Market street you raise that
curtain as much as an inch, believe me, stranger, it's all off; you're
lost. You'll never leave San Francisco."
This booklet aims to keep the curtain up.