My
son Steven remarked to me that I had “just scratched the surface” of our
vacation in San Francisco in my recent compilation on the subject. He was right, of course. Like all major cities, San Francisco and its environs
are a large subject. One week is nowhere
near enough time to take in everything the region has to offer. This realization makes it easy to understand
why some people return to the same places repeatedly. They simply want to experience everything in their
favorite vacation spots.
San
Francisco, with its surrounding waterways and with the happy memories it that holds
for me, remains one of my favorite locations for both vacation and
nostalgia. It’s difficult to mentally
separate even the present-day city from the memories of the happy golden years that
I spent aboard ship. With these thoughts
in mind, let us once again take a stroll through the town and along the
waterfront and perhaps even another voyage across the bay.
Starting
in the historically Italian North Beach neighborhood on Sunday morning, June 8,
1980, we come upon the Church of Saints Peter and Paul:
Operated
by the Salesian Fathers, who provided the photograph, this church offers Masses
in English, Italian, and Chinese, and its façade displays the famous opening
line of Dante’s Paradiso:
La
Gloria di colui che tutto muove per l’universo penetra e risplende.[i]
This
verse rendered into English becomes:
The
glory of him who moves all things through the universe penetrates and shines.
Returning
to this church with Steven on Saturday, August 2, 2025, I photographed this inscription
for both old times’ sake and posterity:
In
concurrence with Dante, I’ve long regarded the Deity in seafaring terms, as the
Master and Chief Engineer of the universe, and I’ve seen his glory countless
times both on the world’s oceans and in the celestial sphere above them. Saving this thought for another day, however,
we next climb Telegraph Hill and proceed to the Coit Tower to take in the view
of the harbor front. With Steven on that
same Saturday, I recorded this northward view which shows the historic
freighter Jeremiah O’Brien resting quietly alongside her pier:
Next,
this eastward view shows several of the old freighter piers as well as the San
Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and Yerba Buena Island:
For
comparison, here is the same view on that June Sunday in 1980:
Looking
northward that same afternoon, we see a scattering or recreational craft on the
bay:
Since
the development of containerization, most of the cargo is now handled at more
modern facilities in Oakland. These old
piers have been repurposed and now host an assortment of offices, restaurants,
retail shops, museums, and some light industry.
Their facades have been cleaned up and now present a pleasing aesthetic
at street level as we see here on the last day of July of this year:
At
the approach end, however, some of the old piers seem less well preserved but
sport vestiges of their glory days. Here
is Pier 33, seen from the ferry Alcatraz Flyer on Tuesday, July 29, 2025. Note the very faded but still legible inscriptions
of the structure’s former tenants: the Union Line, the Pacific Far East Lines
and the Furness Lines:
Also
on that same overcast morning we see the Coit Tower by looking upward from street
level at the waterfront:
Forty
and more years ago, two ferry lines connected San Francisco with the
communities of Sausalito and Larkspur to the north of the city. Now, a vastly expanded fleet also links the
city with Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, and Richmond. The voyage to Oakland took Steven and me
under the Bay Bridge on Thursday afternoon, July 31. This was my first time sailing across the bay
and passing beneath the Bay Bridge since the Comet returned from Japan early
on the morning of Easter Sunday, April 22, 1984. It felt great to be back and crossing the bay
again, especially on such a bright and sunny afternoon:
Most
of the ferries that serve San Francisco begin and end their voyages at the
iconic Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street. In the 1980s the front of this building was
obscured by an ugly, unfinished, and never-used elevated expressway. Irreparably damaged in the earthquake of
1989, it was subsequently demolished, and the classical façade of the Ferry
Building was once again exposed to the light of day. Since then, the Ferry Building has been
completely refurbished and restored to its former grandeur. Now, besides hosting ferries, its cavernous
interior contains retail shops, restaurants, and other travelers’ services. Its clock tower, seen here on Saturday, August
2, is visible from all around and stands out as one of the gems of the city
skyline:
The
rejuvenation of the iconic Ferry Building leads me to recall that in my teenage
years I had developed an interest in architecture and even looked into studying
it formally at the university level. To
my great adolescent dismay, however, I discovered that it was a five-year
full-time program that led to the degree of Bachelor of Architecture, and that
was followed by a two-year full-time program that led to the degree of Master
of Architecture. Seven years in
college! I was horrified, and so I never
pursued the matter further. But my
interest in the subject has remained with me through all these years, and I
found San Francisco to be an architecture lover’s dream. I suppose entire books have been written on
the subject, but I’ll content myself with a few amateur photographs.
Three
stops on the subway from the Ferry Building is the Civic Center. Presiding over this campus is the San
Francisco City Hall, a building that looks more like the capitol of a state or
country than of a city. Here we see it
in less-than-ideal photographic conditions in the early evening of Tuesday,
July 29:
Sharing
the Civic Center acreage with City Hall are the San Francisco Public Library, the
San Francisco Opera House, the Supreme Court of California, the Asian Art Museum,
the Federal Office Building, the Herbst Theater, and the Graham Civic
Auditorium. While they are all architecturally significant structures on their
own, together they form an even grander masterpiece that can rival any European
capital. On the lighter side, the Civic
Center, and particularly City Hall, were portrayed in the James Bond film A
View to a Kill in 1985.
More
sublimely, in the nearby Mission Dolores neighborhood, the original Mission
Dolores chapel, dating to 1780 and erected by the Spaniards when they first
brought Christianity to the region, still stands and remains in use. Miraculously, this building survived the earthquake
and fire of 1906 while the entire surrounding neighborhood was destroyed. Here we see the interior of the colonial
Mission Dolores on Friday, August 1:
Adjacent
to this venerable structure stands a newer basilica that features non-identical
twin spires. This is the taller of the
two on the same day:
Surmounting
the main altar of the basilica is a dome complete with pastel-colored
stucco-like walls supporting a red tile roof, all key elements of Spanish
Mediterranean architecture:
For
many years, San Francisco had a large Spanish Mission style railroad station at
the corner of Third and Townsend Streets.
Unfortunately, this magnificent building was demolished in the postwar
era. Happily, however, as part of
California’s more recent investment in public transportation, classic railroad
stations in nearby cities have been restored and rejuvenated and are now heavily
used. On Thursday morning, July 31, Steven
and I visited the lovely Southern Pacific station in San Jose which still proudly
bears the name Southern Pacific Lines over its center arched window:
The
interior, also renewed and refurbished, has a bright and airy atmosphere
enabled by the oversize arched windows, another architectural feature that the
Spaniards brought with them from the Mediterranean:
While
these and many other cultural aspects of San Francisco and its environs combine
to make it a fascinating seaport and a world class city, my favorite part
remains the ocean. Accordingly, then, I
will indulge myself for a moment and revisit the city’s oceanfront. On Friday
morning, August 1, Steven and I rode the Judah Street trolley to the end of the
line at the western edge of the city:
We
disembarked from the trolley, hiked the short distance through the dunes and across
the brown sandy beach to the sea:
Standing
at the water’s edge, we gazed upon the great Pacific Ocean. A low overcast, a gray veil of fog, and a
cold onshore breeze laden with salt spray combined with the mild surf to form a
magnificently beautiful and inspirational sight. Only a few other people were there, mostly joggers
and dog walkers who did not linger. Thus
undisturbed and undistracted, we stood there and stared at the sea and sky and
watched and felt the unceasing motion of the wind and waves. Time itself seemed to stand still. In the back of my mind, however, I realized
that the time we had at this spot would be much too short and would pass much
too quickly. I would have been perfectly
content to remain there in front of the Pacific Ocean all morning and then
return after lunch.
Eventually,
Steven said to me, “Well, I know you could stay here all day, but I’m getting
cold.” He was not dressed as warmly as I
was, and my paternal concern for my young son overrode my desire to stare at
the ocean all day. Reluctantly, then, and
with many backward glances toward the sea, I walked with him back across the
beach and through the dunes to the trolley stop.
It
felt very difficult to leave this beautiful location, but it had indeed been a
great privilege, especially after so many years, to have stood again before the
great Pacific Ocean. The scriptures
enjoin us to “stand in holy places” (D&C 101:22). Surely
the oceanfront is a holy place, one where we can at least temporarily escape the
world of human concerns and be inspired and edified by communing with the Deity
through the sublime magnificence of his Creation. While standing in this holy place, Steven and
I truly saw “The glory of him who moves all things.”
[i] Dante Alighieri, Paradiso,
third part of the Divina Commedia, c. I. v. i.
