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Best and worst of San Francisco

Friday August 26 2016
dome

San Francisco’s City Hall, which has a gold leaf on the dome. PHOTO | ELIZABETH MERAB

San Francisco can be many things depending on its guest’s preferences. If you are a nature lover, then the small city by the bay has more than enough scenic views to offer.

You can for instance have a glimpse of rolling hills and the year-round fog or soak in the wonder of the Twin Peaks (two prominent hills with an elevation of about 925 feet) located near the geographic centre of San Francisco, California.

If you make your way down Lombard Street, you will have a front seat view of cars cascading down the  city’s most crooked street, which is paved with bricks and garnished with blooming hydrangeas.

But if your interest is in marvelling at manmade features, then the city on the tip of a peninsula surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay has spectacular architecture to offer its visitors.

The Alamo Square’s famous “postcard row” at Hayes and Steiner Streets is not only a visual treat but also one of the most photographed locations in San Francisco.

It features the famous “painted ladies” (colourful Victorian houses) against a backdrop of downtown skyscrapers.

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The city also boasts of having the world’s last manually operated cable cars rolling up and down the hilly railed roads.

But the icing on the cake for the little city is the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, which introduces one to the prime movie magic feel.

San Francisco is a great-looking town, to say the least.

The southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area is Silicon Valley, home to many of the world’s largest high-tech corporations and thousands of startup companies.

San Fran, as the locals call it, is known as the home of Airbnb, Uber, Apple, Google, Twitter, Nasa and many more.

It is a city that’s reinventing itself with every refresh of a Twitter feed, while cranes rise all over downtown and an army of young techies flock into neighbourhoods across the city.

However, San Francisco is more than just the physical headquarters of today’s virtual world.

For starters, in the past 25 years, earthquake science and engineering have kept pace with the Bay Area’s tremendous transformation.

After watching houses and bridges collapse on top of jellylike soils, our tour guide Shawn tells us the city enacted stricter building codes for new and existing structures.

But the city of San Francisco, just like many others, has its downside. For instance, when walking in the streets, I spotted a number of homeless people begging for food, pushing trolleys and sleeping in culverts.

The city is known as the “homeless capital of America,” a fact that saw the Chronicle term homelessness “the shame of the city” in a 2003 series.
Racism is also prominent despite the diverse cultures.

There are some people who still hold the view that the colour of your skin does indeed define you.

One of the saddest parts of my trip was when an attendant in a renowned cosmetic store refused to serve me, but warmly ushered in my white friends.

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