Someone in section a few weeks back decided to ask us this question
and after some brainstorming this is what I came up with:
Golden Gate Bridge.
Hippies.
House.
Rich people.
Amoeba.
Vacation.
Too many hills.
LSD.
Sailing.
Seals.
Alcatraz.
Suicide.
Suicide.
Haute Cuisine.
Rice-A-Roni.
Burritos.
Bohemian club.
Getting too drunk.
Spending all my money.
Expensive.
These are the first things that come to mind when I think of
San Francisco. I’ll say right now that I’m not even from California so my idea
of the city before I came to Santa Cruz was very picturesque and hallmark –
I’ve always viewed the place as a West Coasty Boston with much better city
planning and less assholes. In fact, one of the reasons I came to Santa Cruz
was because I figured I’d be going off to San Francisco all the time… something
I’ve sadly let myself neglect this past year.
Thankfully, this class has helped me come out of my safe space here at SC and explore the city in ways that I had never done before. Instead of being trapped with my family on vacation as another faceless tourist, I’ve spent the past four visits in the city as an eager flanneur ready to explore its lesser-known parts.
Thankfully, this class has helped me come out of my safe space here at SC and explore the city in ways that I had never done before. Instead of being trapped with my family on vacation as another faceless tourist, I’ve spent the past four visits in the city as an eager flanneur ready to explore its lesser-known parts.
I went to check out Haight-Ashbury after it had repeatedly
come up in class. I had been to Amoeba few times before but I didn’t know that
the neighborhood was so iconic. I got kind of sad because when I took a day to
explore around the area, there was really nothing worth mentioning. The place
seems to be crawling with commodification of its own cultural iconography – all
there appeared to be were dispensaries and gift shops with tie-dye/hippie junk.
I expected to see artists and bohemians doing interesting things in the streets
but was instead met with panhandlers and tourists.
Hopefully next time I end up in San Francisco I’ll find more
time to explore the lesser-known parts.
It's interesting, as whenever I think of San Francisco, I think about the places in San Francisco that I usually go to whenever I visit the city. I think of Pier 39 because I used to perform songs in front of the Christmas tree there every year with my high school. I think of AT&T park and all the Giants games I went to with my dad there. I think of the Warfield, and how I go there for a lot of concerts. It stands out to me that these places, to some extent, all appeal to me as a tourist, but I've been to each of these places enough times that there's also a certain familial history there, certain memories that always spark back up. I think it's important to visit parts of the city that you aren't supposed to go see, but for the "tourist traps," I'm not sure if there's harm in them when you have invested history in them. Just an observation from someone who would love to explore more of a city that I only visit a few times a year.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about having had a sort of romanticized view of the city until recently stood out to me. Although I grew up near San Francisco and have gone there pretty often throughout my life, I honestly had not been to many of the lesser-known, non-tourist-y parts of the city until this quarter. I have family there so I would usually to go to parks (especially Gold Gate Park obviously) with them or go to my favorite thrift shops and restaurants on Mission or Haight or downtown, etc. to shop and eat and relax and such. It’s just become very obvious to me over the last few weeks that even people like me who know the city pretty well and like to think we understand and embrace the city’s history and culture, can actually still be the most familiar with the more tourist-y, expensive parts. It’s a little upsetting to me to realize that, but I know I will continue to seek out artistic, non-commodified places wherever I can to make up for it.
ReplyDeleteAlexander-
ReplyDeleteI think you make a great point, which is that I feel many of us take for granted the kind of 'postcard' view we have of the world outside of our own experiences in the places that exist 'out there.' I, too, had a fairly simplistic and picturesque idea of the city by the bay until I visited the city, at which point I was faced with a much more complicated and nuanced reality involving intense socio-economic inequality and struggle. But that realization, I think, is beautiful in that it lends a reality and a soul to a city that it can't have in the two dimensional postcard view. This doesn't mean that inequality = soul, just that really actually LOOKING and seeing these individuals for who they are and what they face is a vast improvement upon never seeing them at all. The breaking of the perfect picturesque view is a sign that you noticed - which means that you care - and that is a step in the right direction, no matter how small.