A WEEKEND IN THE CITY Five Great Places in San Francisco
	OCTOBER 2005

by Don Huntington
Photos by Russell Byrne

My wife, Rae, and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary in August by taking a short 3-day 2-night trip to San Francisco — our favorite destination. We drove into The City in brilliant mid-day sunshine and checked into our Union Square Hotel.

At 6 in the afternoon the fogs rolled their gray masses across the brilliant sun like Tax Day’s appearance bringing gloom down upon an otherwise sparkling spring. However, just as April 15 sometimes shows up with some benefit, such as a large income tax refund, the fog often gives a payoff by quietly blunting the edges of buildings and supplying the cityscapes with soft filters.

During our two nights and three days in The City we experienced a few things too good not to share.

The Chancellor Hotel
One of the drawbacks to spending a weekend in The City is the price of hotel accommodations, which can run 300 bucks a night, or more. Our first impulse was to low-ball the experience by taking a room at a cheaper hotel, of which there seem to be a lot. However, we discovered on the Internet a wonderful compromise. The Chancellor Hotel is reasonably-priced and sits right on the edge of Union Square and is within walking distance of wonderful places for strolling, shopping, and (above all) for eating.

The Chancellor Hotel proved to be perfect lodging for us. It is an old building but very well maintained. We got a room right on the top (15th) floor with a marvelous view of our fire escape. Drawing near to the window we could peer right down on the cable cars bustling up and down Powell Street. Sticking our heads out the window provided us with a nice view of Union Square. By actually climbing through the window and onto the fire escape I had a marvelous view of the city.

The bathroom was modest-sized, but sported the largest bathtub I ever sat in that didn’t have water jets and underwater lights.

The hotel has only 10 rooms per floor, which has the advantage, that my wife especially appreciates, of no room being too far from the elevator. The staff discovered that it was our anniversary and we found a complimentary bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice and a small card waiting for us when we got back from an excursion. Complimentary cookies and coffee were spread out near the bottom of the elevator providing a welcome snack that we took advantage of on several occasions.

The General Manager, Wes Tyler, informed me that The Chancellor had been built following the 1906 earthquake. For a time, at least, it was the tallest building in the city. Perhaps it was the most modern, as well, since it was one of the first hotels with wall-to-wall carpeting. The hotel has been owned by a single family almost the whole time.

Sears Fine Food
We ate Friday lunch at a famous San Francisco eatery, called Sears Fine Food, on Powell Street only a dozen steps from the hotel entrance. We discovered that nothing had changed about the place in the two decades since we had eaten there last. The ambiance was still casual elegance, the service was still good, and the food was still delicious. In particular, their huge apple dumpling specialty was as scrumptious as ever.

If you ever try one of Sears’ apple dumplings, here are two things that we learned from experience. First of all, tell the waiter you’re going to split this with your companion. (Eating one of these as a solo experience would constitute an act of gluttony.) The server will cut the dumpling in half and provide a second dish. Secondly, order a dish of vanilla ice cream on the side and divide it between the two dumpling halves. Yum!

Sears is a restaurant frequented by locals. On any morning you’ll find a line of people outside waiting to be seated for breakfast. They all know that the breakfast is worth the wait!

Beach Blanket Babylon
The big event on Friday night was our attendance at Beach Blanket Babylon. We walked the 11 blocks to the venue and caught the 10 p.m. show. I had wanted to see this since we moved to California, 25 years ago when it had only been playing steadily to sold-out audiences for five years. We had the best seats in the house, which only cost $45. BBB (as it is referred to by insiders) is held in the Club Fugazi that provides a large nightclub sort of venue. We sat in the very front row. Performers standing at the front mikes singing and dancing were almost within touching distance. When they were doing some of their high-stepping numbers, I actually hoped a few times that they would avoid kicking me in the forehead.

Of course, we knew BBB was going to be a musical revue kind of show. We weren’t prepared for the fact that one of the evening’s main stars was an African American woman, with the unlikely name of Emily Baloney, who had a body with approximately the same proportions as the dumpling we had eaten at Sears. She gave the impression that she would have been perfectly round if she were two inches taller.

The other main performer was an ancient showgirl, named Val Diamond, who looked old enough to be my mother. However, they were both amazingly talented and really put on a good show. It turned out that Val Diamond has been doing Beach Blanket Babylon for the past 26 years, so I guess she’s had time to bring her singing and acting up to a high polish.

The show was always manic and the humor always broad. The performers staged some elaborate and droll visual jokes that only lasted a few seconds. One 18-second shtick, for example, supposedly represented In Sync band members sitting in a huge sink. (Get it?)

The show was remarkably clean; the performers seemed to be having a great time. The hats in the final scene really were unbelievably complicated and elaborate. Seating was on a first-come basis. If you do this, come early. The line was 40 feet long an hour before show time.

Fisherman’s Wharf
Our visit at the wharf area was uneventful, except we visited a new wharf attraction, called the Musée Méchanique, in a wharf shed right next to the Red & White Fleet offices. We spent a happy hour with a bunch of century-year-old machines that, for a quarter, would play a song on an antique mechanical music machine, start up rides and performers at some old sawmill or ancient amusement park, or flip pictures in viewers displaying scenes of everything from the San Francisco earthquake to PG pictures taken in some long-deceased woman’s boudoir.

We played the role of Fishermen’s Wharf tourists to the hilt on Saturday by eating clam chowder out of bread bowls while sitting at a sidewalk table and watching The Bushman leap from behind his little shelter of branches and frightening passing pedestrians. He would first make them burst into shouts of alarm and then into gales of laughter. I finally put a buck into the guy’s coffee can as I told him, “I’ve been laughing at you for 25 years; here’s a dollar.”

On Sunday we took a Motorized Cable Car tour that began and ended in front of Macy’s, which was only two blocks from our hotel. This was an interesting tour, full of fascinating facts about the city.

Café Tiramisu
Our big anniversary celebration was at a restaurant in an enchanted little alley street called Belden Place, which was a mere six-block walk from our hotel. The word “alley” doesn’t give the real picture, however, of the location. “Loveable circus” is what somebody called it. It has the demeanor of a little piece of Europe stuck in the middle of San Francisco. Five separate restaurants, serving French, Italian, Mediterranean, Spanish, and Italian cuisine vie with each other in attracting diners.

Pino Spinoso opened his Tuscany-cuisine Café Tiramisu 13 years ago. We arrived at 5 p.m. for an early, sunlit dinner. The tables were all prepared with settings for what looked liked 60 diners when we arrived, though only six people or so were actually engaged in eating. By our 7 p.m. departure, the place was packed with cheerful people. The wine list looked like a phone book for a small village. At a glass of wine per day I think a person could spend the rest of his life in that café without drinking his way through that enormous selection.

Café Tiramisu served up a memorable feast. The pastas are all made on-site. Meat and fish dishes feature walnuts, olives, capers, mushrooms, roasted peppers…. All the things that I suppose people in Tuscany enjoy in their food. A cheerful server named Christina helped us make our way through the menu’s exotic list of risottos, gnocchi, etc.

We ordered an appetizer called Black Peppered Beef Carpaccio with Arugula Salad, Shaved Parmigiano, and Capers. This turned out to be less food than the length of the name would indicate. The beef was served thinly sliced and the “salad” turned out to be a few leaves. However, the dish tasted fine and really was a wonderful “appetizer.”

I believe Europeans to be more intelligent in their eating than we Americans. Did you ever try to eat that giant mushroom cheeseburger you ordered at Chili’s after actually putting away a gargantuan Awesome Blossom “appetizer”? In European-style restaurants, appetizers actually serve to increase a person’s appetite.

I love pasta and, on my server’s suggestion, I got a tasty dish called Pappardelle with Wild Boar Meat Sauce & Artichokes. Rae is a pushover for “the other white meat” and got Pork Chop Milanese Style with Lingonberry and Mixed Green Salad. I must have drunk five cups of their excellent decaf coffee. The real taste rush came after the entrées had been cleared away. In honor of our 40-year celebration, Pino served us a complimentary tray containing ten 2-bite-size samples of each of their desserts. We couldn’t tell which was best….

That tray of varied and delicious desserts seemed to exemplify the entire weekend we spent sampling San Francisco’s boundless list of treats. I think we had more fun together than when we spent our honeymoon, 40 years ago, at Niagara Falls.

Here’s how much fun we had — we didn’t turn the TV on in our room one time during the whole three days we were there!