From Alameda point there is a ferry for $5 that crosses to downtown San Francisco.
Mission District: Hot, sunny, Latin American.
Haight-Ashbury: Cold, overcast, Bohemian.
The fog of the North Californian Coastal variety has proved to be a remarkable feature of the landscape every time our path nears the ocean. The Redwoods seemed to ensnare it and hold it to the ground and further south, you can see the stuff rolling in on the wind and evaporating over the hot inland. In San Francisco, it lingers around some of the hills, instantly plunging the temperature to cold, but doesn’t reach others. It was pretty much always around the Golden Gate Bridge. Film crews must have spent entire budgets waiting for a clear shot for their California dreaming film and I feel like I’ve stumbled across some big conspiracy to cover up the real weather situation on the sunny West Coast. [I just watched the Rise of the Planet of the Apes and, after seeing a standard shot of the Bridge in all it’s sun-drenched golden glory at the beginning of the film, I was impressed to see the escaping apes utilize the fog that had shrouded one half of the Bridge to force their way past the cops. I can’t help thinking now whether I would have realized the significance of that had I not seen San Francisco with my bare eyes. To the uninitiated, it must have looked like the monkeys had radioed ahead for a smoke machine or something.]
