A short guide to San Francisco

San Francisco's Coit Tower atop Telegraph HIll, as viewed from Russian Hill

Fog poured like milk from the northwest over the Marin Headlands toward the orange icon spanning Golden Gate and in minutes blotted both from view, then just as quickly raced across San Francisco Bay and vanished on approach to Oakland, the burnished glow across the water restored.

"It's like that here," a 30-year Bay Area resident told me later. "People say, wherever they are, wait 10 minutes and the weather will change. Here, it's literally true."

San Francisco proper is home to nearly 4 million people who already know this and maybe blot it from their minds as they struggle against the nerve-fraying tide of traffic and tourists. But to the wide-eyed ignorant such as myself, years removed from his last visit, this glittering jewel around a rocky, rolling thumb of land 47 miles square has abundant capability to impress and mesmerize.

Those capabilities are triggered first by the weather, which visitors notice the moment they debark from whatever they're riding. Upon my arrival, I was a five-hour flight removed from a sticky, 100-degree summer that had not varied much in a month. Yet the air swirling around the open jet door at San Francisco International was half as hot, hardly sticky and sweetened by salty plumes wafting from the sea. Exposed to it fully 10 minutes later, and feeling chilled 10 minutes thereafter, I realized I never thought to pack a jacket or light coat because I believed summer to be much the same everywhere. In fact, San Francisco never really has a summer as the rest of know it, and never really has a winter, either. It warms most noticeably in September and October between the waves of ever-present, sea-smelling fog, and snow is as rare here as it is in, say, Los Angeles. Fortunately, light fleece windbreakers with "SF" stitched into the breast are as abundant as sea gulls and apparently popular enough even among locals that it's possible for visitors to blend into the street crowds.

And, boy, are there crowds, up one hill and down another, lining the Embarcadero, munching at Ghirardelli's, and bobbing atop packed ferries plying the bay. At times, one might wonder if the whole world is here, and judging by the variety of languages heard in the hotels and restaurants and sightseeing excursions have justifiable cause to believe that's possible. It turned out that the time I visited, mid-August, coincided with the height of "holiday" across Europe, when virtually everyone there who can pursues a change of scenery. Thus, I heard in a place halfway around the world from our mother continent  British English and French, German and Portuguese, Russian and Greek, as well as Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Turkish, variations on Arabic, and almost as many American dialects as there are Americans. Much of that verbal polyglot was just at Fisherman's Wharf, the former home of one industry, actual fishing, and now home to another, tourism and T-shirt shops and sea lions who sun themselves on floating docks near the shopping-mall-themed Pier 39. Thus, the former Yerba Buena, founded by Spanish colonists in 1776 and forced to grow up fast in the wake of the California Gold Rush a mere 73 years later, is as much a city of the world as London, Paris or Prague.

Also much like those cities, San Francisco also has the trouble of the world heaped on its 44 hilly shoulders: poverty amid plenty. Walk in any direction and chances are good one will see examples of homlessness and despair within a block or two of starting out. The 30-year resident told me he has watched his color-dappled metropolis, once mildly busy, transform into one streaked with grime, beset by gridlock and rife with homeless. This all happened over the last decade and a half, he said, behind the first tech boom-turned-bust rolling out of nearby Silicon Valley, when jobs dried up but the skyrocketing cost of living did not. A subsequent smaller tech boom in the late 2000's improved matters somewhat, but San Francisco remains in the throes of a swelling gentrification that has pushed all but small portions of the city beyond the reach of middle-income Americans. The 30-year resident himself pays over $1,000 per month for less than 1,000 square feet of living space.

"I don't like what I've seen," he said. "In some respects, it's not a pretty place anymore. But I can't imagine living anywhere else. Most people who live here can't imagine that, either."

Tourists are left to imagine plenty, however, with such sights and scents as San Francisco has. There's the aforementioned Golden Gate Bridge, a symbol of America as much as the city, and Coit Tower, the stunning art deco topper on Telegraph Hill and probably the best urban beautification project one can conjure. The Transamerica Pyramid remains San Francisco's tallest structure, though the insurance holding company that gave it that name no longer resides there. And hill after hill is shrouded in the curious mix of Victorian and modern architecture recognized as uniquely San Franciscan.

As for scents, one also wonders how an upstart restaurateur can make it around here. The city's eclectic epicurean opportunities are as many and varied as its visitors and they too occupy nearly every street corner, thankfully crowding out the chain gangs that unartfully decorate American suburbia. In Chinatown, of course, sits a raft of good food served up by greasy spoons as well as finely appointed eateries, but there is a wealth of international cuisine dotting the other 60-plus neighborhoods on the peninsula. I liked Au Roi, a cozy Thai place on Post Street near Lower Nob Hill, that serves to-die-for salads, and Caffe Roma Coffee Roasting Co. on Columbus Avenue in North Beach, where java lovers will find a powerful house blend that cuts through a drinker's foggy morning like a gale. My spouse, on the other hand, fell in love with Salty's Fishwich near Pier 41, where, served through a street side window, one can order a hunk of haddock wrapped in seasoned slaw and served on a huge bun. We ate there twice.

So, to summarize, I would advise bringing with you to San Francisco a camera, a healthy appetite and a tolerance for scenes of despair. Above all, bring a jacket. Because no matter the time of year, it gets chilly here.