It is hard to not be inspired to write when I am sitting 31 stories into the sky at desk set before a panoramic view of San Francisco bay. I am watching the mighty Pacific marine layer slowly pull away its veil from the water and bridges of the bay. Each day, the ocean rolls tendrils of cool mist across the city and most afternoons it releases its icy grasp to give the citizens of San Francisco a few hours of sun-drenched relief. This cycle of cool morning fog and hot afternoon sun is a pain for city dwellers but a blessing to the grape vines in the valleys to the north. Without it, and we would never know the smooth buttery-oak flavor of a good Napa Chardonnay.
The biggest problem with San Francisco’s unusual weather patterns is that it actually gets colder in summer time. That can be quite a shock when you step off a plane from Iowa where it’s just above 80 during the day and just below 80 at night. Dressing for that weather is fairly straightforward: just grab a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and you’re good to go
all day. But in a San Francisco summer your attire ranges from jeans and a fleece for your morning stroll to Starbucks to short sleeved shirt at the farmer’s market in the afternoon, and back to windbreaker in the evening when that bitter wind comes sweeping off the bay. No wonder Mark Twain wrote, “The coldest winter of my life was the summer I spent in San Francisco”
Just one problem: he never wrote that!
According to Snopes.com and a Mark Twain biography site, no evidence of that quote has ever been found among his works. However, in 1879, he did write that that last time “he could recall such a cold winter was last summer.” Unfortunately, he was referring to a summer in Paris, not San Francisco. With all due respect to America’s greatest humorist, I have been to Paris in summer and found it to be quite pleasant. Cool, yes, but pleasant. San Francisco is not.
Mr Twain (er . . . Mr Clemens) certainly would have known about the weather in San Francisco, where he worked as a newspaper correspondent starting in 1864 with the San Francisco Daily Morning Call. He gained national attention the next year when his story, "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" was published in the New York Saturday Press. From there he went on to publish other travel-related stories in Newspapers and Magazines until his first book was released in 1867. The rest, as they say is . . . well, you know.
Mark Twain was in San Francisco for that city’s 1865 earthquake (not the “real” great one of 1906). Here’s how he described his experience:
“A month afterward I enjoyed my first earthquake. It was one which was long called the "great" earthquake, and is doubtless so distinguished till this day. It was just after noon, on a bright October day. I was coming down Third street. The only objects in motion anywhere in sight in that thickly built and populous quarter, were a man in a buggy behind me, and a street car wending slowly up the cross street. Otherwise, all was solitude and a Sabbath stillness. As I turned the corner, around a frame house, there was a great rattle and jar, and it occurred to me that here was an item!–no doubt a fight in that house.”
I am sure Twain rushed back to his desk to write his newspaper story, but I wonder what he had for a view to inspire him. I can be certain that he didn’t have the vantage I am enjoying from 31 floors up in my hotel. Yet back in Twain’s day there were some hotels with spectacular views.
One of these fabulous old hotels is the San Francisco Fairmont. Perched atop Nob Hill, a ridge straddling downtown and Chinatown, the Fairmont, along with its antique twin the Mark Hopkins, enjoys an ideal location, assuming you don’t have to walk up to them from far below in Union Square. My wife Kristi was fortunate enough to have a business dinner event in the Crown Room at the Fairmont, a room with by far the best view in the house. She sipped a flight of Napa wines as day turned to dusk and dusk turned to night. To her left, the Golden Gate Bridge was bathed in the rays of the setting sun as it valiantly held the icy marine layer at bay for a few more precious hours. Ahead, stood the Transamerica Pyramid, Coit Tower, and all the lights of downtown stirring to life as the sun faded from the sky. And to her right lay the Oakland Bay Bridge, the arts district of SoMa (South of Market) and Pacific Bell Park . . . er. . . AT&T Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants.
The view from the Fairmont is certainly wonderful now. But it was not so pleasant when it first opened. It just so happens that the hotel opened in 1906, only a couple of weeks before the “real” great San Francisco earthquake (and two years after Twain’s death). The structure survived the quake but was damaged by the fire. Her grand opening was to be delayed one full year, when the gala event featured 300 lbs of turtle, 13,000 oysters, and fireworks over the bay. Why did they serve turtle? I have no idea- I’m sure it made sense to them at the time. Kristi was not served turtle- she enjoyed grilled vegetable risotto and a white chocolate tulip with fresh raspberries. But she says she would have been happy to try the turtle and oysters.
Where was I during this enchanting spectacle? Her dinner was not open to spouses, so I was on my own for those couple of hours. In case she decided to leave the dinner early, I chose to make myself available at a moment’s notice by taking up a perch on a barstool in the same building. I hurried through the night up Nob Hill from Union Square (when I say up, I really mean up- see “crappy location of Fairmont”, above). I had expected to wait in the lobby bar- an opulent yet sterile and predictable ambiance of neo-classical extravagance. But when I arrived at the hotel I was intrigued by the name of another bar, this one in the basement: the Tonga Room.
At a glance, I knew the Tonga room was my kind of cheesy. Tiki figures, bamboo walls, thatch roofs over the tables, a pool with floating boat, and even a simulated thunderstorm with flashing lights and rain from overhead sprinklers every 30 minutes. The dance floor is decorated like the deck of a sailing ship- complete with rigging and part of a sail. What is kind of cool is that the rigging and wood railing is actually from a real ship: the SS Forrester. The Forester was one of the last tall ships to make regular trips between San Francisco and the South Pacific. She would carry California lumber and other products to exotic Pacific ports and return with coral, crafts, and tropical hardwoods. And now its gutted remains sit mostly unrecognized in this tourist trap of a bar.
I settled into a corner barstool, ordered a daiquiri, and amusingly took in the wonderfully cliché surroundings. I about fell off my barstool laughing when my drink came- complete with one of those tiny paper umbrellas! The extreme irony that I would find such a wonderfully cheesy place in the heart of San Francisco’s most prestigious hotel kept me smiling all night. To continue the tropical drink theme, I next ordered a Mai-Tai.
Oops.
A word of caution to those seeking to imitate this travelogue: don’t order the Mai-Tai unless your single goal of the evening is to become intimate with the underside of your table.
Kristi found me an hour later curled up on a couch in the lobby. No, I am not quite sure how I got there. But I do remember purring contently as I nestled into the 400 thread count throw pillows while listening to the antics of three teenagers from France on the next couch over. Kristi rescued me from my stupor and poured me into a cab for our ride back to our own hotel. Next time, we should stay at the Fairmont- I gotta try another one of those Mai-Tai’s!
PS: The Underdog Pool starts in one month- get ready. If you are now ready for a trip to the Fairmont and the Tonga Room, USC plays at Stanford November 11th. Mai-Tai's go great with the sweet taste of revenge.
