Let’s see how a day looks in San Francisco.
To those who bend over a desk or a hot stove for eight hours, I guess a day in San Francisco is pretty much like a day in Des Moines or Birmingham. But if you have a chance to spend those daylight hours just looking around, you run across those little “different” touches that give the typical San Francisco day its own flavor.
At dawn the Bay looks as corny and unreal as a penny postcard. The sky behind the Oakland hills starts to flush and grow streaky with light, and the somber waters slowly become luminous. Gradually the markers of the night go out—the swinging beacons atop the Bridge towers, the dramatic light on Alcatraz, the Drake’s evening star, and the Mark’s blue topper.
There is a final, breathless moment, as though the sun were trying to decide whether to catch a little more sleep, and then suddenly the shadows call it a night and pull the covers over their heads. A damp, scrubbed freshness comes into the air and the invisible hand of a new day sets off a thousand alarm clocks and begins to rub its sleepy eyes.
For a youngster just out of night clothes, Today makes a lot of noise. The garbage trucks, nearing the end of their run, raise a self-conscious commotion, as though to drown out the doubtful perfume they leave in the air. In the produce district, alive and on the job for hours the tempo is quickened, for the work is almost done. Motor men clang a little more authoritatively as traffic comes to life, and the little men who live inside the traffic signals awaken and pull back their shutters. Along Skid Road the panhandlers shift uncomfortably in the doorways they use for bedrooms and wish they had a shade to pull down.
Only the birds greet Today with brightness and chirps of pleasure. The tired lovebirds who necked and parked too long at Coit Tower look up sullenly as the sun begins to arch over the Bridge and then glance around self-consciously as he grinds on the starter and she tries to smooth her wrinkled feathers. The early commuters stomp through Third and Townsend and pack themselves into streetcars, some grumbling already, others staring dully at newspapers, a few trying unsuccessfully to catch a catnap on the rear platform.
In the waflle shops along Powell and on Turk the stubble-faced night owls gulp down black coffee and shudder slightly as the freshly shaved denizens of the day dash in for ham and eggs. Only Golden Gate Park seems to awaken gracefully and begins to shake the sequins of the night off its green shoulders.
The new day starts to develop wrinkles at an early age. The trucks begin their routine of double-parking, and soon there is a traffic snarl with cops to match.
The small shopkeepers, already gray around the gills, open their front doors, switch off the little neon sign, and then stand outside for a few minutes, sniffing the air and wondering idly where the first customer will come from and why. Along Eddy and Ellis the day clerks in the tiny hotels yawn and go about their daily routine of shaking the servicemen who slept all night in the lobby. The stenos of Montgomery Street, most of whom snoozed five minutes too long again, dash madly into office buildings, their fine legs twinkling competition for the inexorable hands on the clock.
Out in the neighborhoods, where life is as monotonous as the houses it whithers away in, Today brings a certain excitement. At each door the same never-ending little drama is enacted. Each backbone of the community flies through the front door, his overcoat tails flapping, and each little woman stands there in her wrapper to watch the lord and master clatter away. He waits at the corner, makes the usual comment about the streetcar service, exchanges a remark about the weather—and reflects bitterly that back in their almost-paid-for home his wife is settling down for another cup of coffee and “Dick Tracy.” That night he will come home to recount his hard day at the office, and she will tell of her hard day shopping, and both will feel sorry for themselves, but not for each other.
The sun has pulled itself higher now, and the shadows are gone from the downtown canyons. The big executives arrive at their skyscrapers, reasonably late, to bump into their red-faced junior execs en route to the midmorning cup of java. Already the early shoppers are complaining about their feet and high prices, and pretty soon the fancier ladies who have spent the morning at their dressing tables will filter into El Prado and the smart hotels to plunge forks into salads and knives into backs. The businessmen who try to make a splash by taking clients to the Palace discover they have no appointments and sidle alone into the cheaper sandwich shops. The morning newspapers disappear from the corner stands and the afternoons, having rewritten the headlines slightly, pop up in their places. The line of cars outside Union Square Garage grows longer, matching the faces of the drivers.
The day becomes mellow and easier to get along with as it ages. The whole town seems to relax; the fog creeps in and the sun, not so young as it used to be, loses its grip on the heavens. The office girls duck into drugstores for a late-afternoon Coke, and the guys, realizing they’re over the hump, stick in the cigar store for another pinball game and make cynical cracks as they watch the boss hustle away to the Olympic Club.
In the cocktail salons the bartenders consult their watches and begin dropping olives into martini glasses, a slice of orange and a cherry into the old-fashioned holders. The lone dolls on the high stools hurriedly apply a new coat of lipstick and start staring at the door. Then five o’clock strikes with a crash heard throughout the city, the streetcars brace themselves for the rush, the cops take a firmer grip on their whistles—and so to bedlam.
And meanwhile, out beyond the lonely Farallones the sun that started all this sinks without a sizzle into the Pacific, painting the sky with a farewell burst of glory. Weakly the street lamps take over the job, and day is done.
Beautiful