Rediscovering a Bottomless Well of Culture Up North

My wife and I recently spent a week on a trek to San Francisco in search of that city’s supposedly superior culture.

It was a lovely drive, up U.S. 101 to San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay, where we spent the first night, then up California 1 to Monterey, where we spent the second.

Those two highways offer some of the state’s most tranquilizing scenery--golden hills spotted with brown cows and old barns, and rocky seascapes below forests of pine.

In San Francisco we stayed at the Inn at the Opera, a charming small hotel only half a block from the Opera House. Part of our package was a pair of tickets to the San Francisco Pops, at the Civic Auditorium, and a pair, for the next night, to the Kirov Ballet at the Opera House.

Remembering a Chronicle column by Herb Caen about having to dress for the opera, I wondered whether I should have packed my tuxedo. I needn’t have worried. The Pops crowd was about as casual as a Raiders crowd; the Kirov crowd was more Hollywood Bowl.

Before the Pops, we had dinner at Stars, a nearby restaurant that served excellent food and was clamorous with the chatter of exuberant young people.

The Pops concert was a picnic. The Civic is an enormous barn. The main floor was covered with picnic tables under red-checkered tablecloths. We sat on picnic chairs. You could buy wine by the bottle and drink it out of as many plastic glasses as you needed.

The conductor was dressed in Marine blues, like John Philip Sousa, whose music he conducted throughout the evening with appropriate brio. It was a rousing performance, and the crowd sometimes sang along or clapped in unison. At the climactic march a great American flag was unfurled from the proscenium arch, and thousands of balloons floated from the ceiling.

The Kirov was more what we expected of San Francisco, though I didn’t see a single tuxedo. The ballet was about as good as ballet can be, it seemed to me.

Before the ballet we had dined at Act IV, the Inn at the Opera’s very small, very charming dining room, and after the performance we returned for champagne and chocolate mousse.

The inn occupies a space only 26 feet wide. Somehow a lobby, an elegant bar and the restaurant have been squeezed into this space. The lobby used to be a liquor store. The service in the bar and restaurant was exquisite. I felt like Edward VII.

That morning we had taken a cab to North Beach and been deposited on a street that seemed to have five or six pizza parlors and as many coffeehouses every block. Embedded in the facade of a cafe called the Condor, a weathered bronze plaque said:

The Condor, where it all began. The birthplace of the world’s first topless and bottomless entertainment . . . Starring Ms. Carol Doda.

Ah, San Francisco--cradle of culture!

It was that morning, by the way, that the story of Ross Perot’s withdrawal was in the papers. The cab driver told us that Perot’s defection would help Clinton.

We dropped into a coffeehouse. My wife ordered a caffe latte and I ordered a decaf. We sat at a tiny table surrounded by denizens of the neighborhood. I mentioned what the cab driver had said, and a rather hirsute young man leaned toward us and snarled, “How come you take the word of a cab driver when you can get it straight from a coffeehouse bum.” He said Perot’s dropping out would help Bush.

Having thus received the wisdom of San Francisco’s cultural elite, we walked over to the financial district to keep a luncheon date at Sam’s restaurant with Herb Caen. Mr. Caen and I have often jousted about our respective cities, but I hope we are friends.

He had assured us that Sam’s was “real old San Francisco.” It was narrow, crowded and noisy. The waiters were all men who looked like Mafiosi. Most of the customers were men in business suits. They stood six deep by the bar in the little entry, drinking and waiting to be seated.

Caen confirmed a story we had heard--that his girlfriend, Ann, had hired 76 trombonists to play “76 Trombones” on his 76th birthday. She had managed to have part of Bush Street, in the heart of the financial district, blocked off for this rousing celebration.

We drove home down Interstate 5, all the way in one day, stopping only at the Harris Ranch, near Coalinga, for lunch. Having just passed the ranch’s notorious feeding lot, with its thousands of penned-in cattle emanating noxious odors, I was hesitant to order a hamburger; but it’s the specialty of the house, and it was very good.

Once home we both felt culturally enriched by our visit to what Friscans call The City.