Well then, let’s start with the streetcar. Here it is—the streetcar. One of the symbols of San Francisco. It rattles loudly down the street, and from the middle of the car it’s operated by a big Black guy yanking on ancient-looking levers.
This guy right here. But if you think he’s just standing there leaning on his vehicle, waiting for someone to run and get him a pizza, you’re mistaken. He pushes and turns around the streetcar. At the end of the line, on the turning platform, it can only be done by hand.
As you can see, the streetcar has running boards. You can absolutely stand on them while it’s moving. More than that, if all the seats are taken, they’ll most likely make you stand there rather than inside the car. So if you think you’re being clever and grab one of those prime open side seats, all that really means is that at the next stop there’ll be some lady standing right in front of you, pressing her stomach against your knees. And instead of the wonderful scenery, twenty centimeters (about 8 inches) from your face you’ll have the lady’s face. That’s exactly what happened to me. From the streetcar you can take one of those classic SF photos: “Alcatraz emerging from behind a hill.” Here:
One of the two routes goes to the waterfront. Once I got there, I did three things. 1. I finally learned how to use focus:
2. I took the classic photo that every fool with a camera eventually takes.
3. I saw something that really got me thinking. What kind of bait even is this? What do they catch with it? Maxim Parker-Kononenko, as LiveJournal’s chief fisherman, enlighten the concerned public.
Oh, and speaking of fishing. Right there at the waterfront:
The biggest one I found cost $11.50. Five minutes later, you can eat it.
I can confirm that the seals really do lounge around ten meters (about 33 feet) from a million tourists with cameras. Except they’re not seals—they’re sea lions. They look perfectly content, but they roar so loudly you can hear them from a kilometer away. Probably from happiness.
San Francisco is very cold in winter. Believe me. Yes, yes, very. The frosts are absolutely terrible.
But the fog really is there. Or maybe it’s not fog so much as some kind of haze. This is the view from our hotel restaurant:
And here it is. The most photographed object in the world: the Golden Gate Bridge.
Once, a little deer (aww) ran across the bridge and stopped traffic on it for 20 minutes. And the bridge is also an object of desire for any suicidal person—the number one such site in the world. A new victim every two weeks. After the thousandth jumper, they even stopped the official count. They decided that the statistics themselves were pushing people with problems in life toward it. A 67-meter (220-foot) fall from the bridge takes 4 seconds. The body hits the surface of the bay at a speed of 120 km/h (75 mph). There’s only a chance of survival if you enter the water feet first. That was the case with all 26 survivors of jumps from the bridge. On that cheerful note, I’ll end my photo report and wish everyone a Merry Christmas.
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