San Francisco: Taxicabs and Poetry

We try to hail a cab on Stanyan Street on the edge of Golden Gate Park. Fifteen minutes later, we wonder who told us San Francisco is cab-hailing city--either our hotel concierge or the cab driver who dropped us off. Not today, it isn't.

A taxi finally pulls up; a sweaty man in sloppy business attire jumps in front of us and steals the cab. The guy can’t pretend he didn’t see us. He says, “I’ll give you $20. I really have to get somewhere.” Now he’s halfway inside the cab as he says this so his offer is no offer at all, only a way to ease his conscience. We decline: we’re tired and his conscience doesn’t deserve easing.

I bet he’s from New York.

We pop into the cozy, Victorian Stanyan Park Hotel across the street and ask the girl at the front desk to call a cab for us. She obliges us cheerfully. The girl chatters to the other couple in the lobby about a local oil store. She recommends using blood-orange oil to make brownies. Note to self. The Stanyan Park Hotel, listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, is worth considering for our next San Francisco trip.

Before dinner, we walk to City Lights Bookstore, the landmark bookstore co-founded by beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Independent book stores are rare and City Lights is probably the best known of them all. City Lights carries two copies of our friend Daniel Nester’s poetry book, God Save My Queen, Part II. Perhaps they sold out of Part I?

I buy both parts of Gore Vidal’s memoir. Gene buys a Noel Coward memoir.