Cable-Stiched City : They don’t pollute, run like clocks, and stop at all the best addresses

Most of the people who ride San Francisco’s cable cars are visitors, and most of them doggedly ride each of the three lines from one terminus to the other. This is too bad, because it reduces an efficiently working system of daily civic transportation to the status of a Tilt-a-Whirl. True, the cable cars are fun, but they are emphatically not a carnival ride. They can take you places.

I was determined to do a weekend’s worth of exploring in the city almost exclusively by cable car, employing as little shoe leather as possible, and no cabs or buses whatsoever. I would restrict myself exclusively to destinations that were, theoretically, within the sound of cable car bells. By my yardstick, this meant within two to three blocks in most neighborhoods.

My flight arrived late Friday morning and the SFO Airporter bus dropped me off in front of the downtown Holiday Inn in plenty of time to settle in before lunch. I did my settling in, however, a half a block from the Holiday Inn at the Chancellor Hotel on Powell Street, a half a block up the hill from Union Square. The Chancellor is a fine old dowager of a place, thin and tall and quietly elegant.

I got a single room for a quite reasonable $105 per night in the front of the hotel overlooking the Powell Street cable car line six floors below, from which the sound of bells drifted up every few minutes.

I decided to give the hotel’s complimentary health club a miss and get my exercise by hiking down Powell to O’Farrell Street and around the corner to Bardelli’s restaurant at 243 O’Farrell. Dating from 1909, Bardelli’s is a downtown institution, an amiable high-ceilinged, chandeliered, pillared, starched white-tableclothed place where black-tied waiters smile genuinely when they greet regulars at lunch. Within an Italian-accented lunch menu, Bardelli’s serves a favorite San Francisco dish, the Joe’s Special. It’s a kind of scramble of beef, sausage, spinach, eggs, mushrooms and onions. I ordered it, and felt my travel-tense shoulders sag at the first bite.

Window shopping occupied the better part of the afternoon, with wanderings up and down tony Post Street and to various other spots in the western financial district and along Market near Powell. Shortly before local quitting time, I strolled into the Occidental Grill at 453 Pine St., where suited men and women were joyously sipping martinis and smoking cigars, two un-PC activities the place has become known for. I ordered the world’s greatest margarita, shaken and strained, the tequila marinated in stinging red peppers.

Then it was cable car time. I caught the California Street car coming up from the Embarcadero, rode it to the crossing of the lines at Powell and, just a few minutes later, hopped a Powell and Hyde streets car heading toward some of the finest panoramic city views in the world.

First, though, a few tips:

1) There are only three cable car lines: the California Street line, which runs from the Embarcadero to Van Ness Avenue over Nob Hill; the Powell and Hyde Streets line, from Market and Powell over Nob and Russian Hills to the Aquatic Park and the Cannery, and the Powell and Mason Streets line, from Market and Powell tolower North Beach/Fisherman’s Wharf.

2) Don’t line up at the terminus of any of these lines with the tourists. Instead, buy a three-day Muni Passport for $10 and walk up the line a ways to a marked stop. This saves time, except at peak hours when the cars are often full and you may have to wait for another one.

3) Safety and smarts: Don’t stand in the door or behind the grip man; if you stand on the running board, don’t lean out and do hang on; don’t hop on or off the car when it’s still moving (it’s illegal). Finally, they’re cable cars. The word trolley gets a frosty look in San Francisco.

Keep your camera ready on the Powell and Hyde Streets line, and try to stand on the side of the car nearest the financial district skyline. You’ll find postcard vistas at the top of Nob Hill, along the route above Chinatown, and especially at the top of Lombard Street looking toward Telegraph Hill and straight down a very steep Hyde Street hill toward the Wharf.

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I rode this line all the way to the end, which for lovers of Irish coffee means the Buena Vista cafe at the corner of Hyde and Beach streets. The BV, through travel writer Stanton Delaplane, introduced this potable to the United States, and it’s still the benchmark. Then I ambled up Columbus Street and caught the Powell and Mason streets car, which dropped me off conveniently one block from my dinner destination, Capp’s Corner.

Capp’s is an Italian family-style restaurant, one of the few left in North Beach, and is revered by locals and often overlooked by visitors. It’s inexpensive and homely, and the tortellini Bolognese was just the thing to see me through a walk around western North Beach and Chinatown until I hopped a car back almost to the doorstep of the Chancellor.

Saturday morning at 8, I boarded a car outside the hotel and returned to the BV for one of its touted breakfasts. It’s a fine place for that, overlooking the bay and Aquatic Park and the cable car turntable. The omelets and the service are both cheerful and bountiful, and it’s fun to watch the cars come and go, clanging across Beach Street.

Turning right around, I caught the car back up Russian Hill and got off at the Cable Car Museum at Mason and Washington streets. Here you can see the actual powerhouse that runs the cables, examine the machinery of the cars, soak up a bit of history and buy just about anything in the shape of a cable car. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and admission is free.

Most of the rest of the day was spent blissfully riding the cars anywhere they wanted to take me. The financial district is dead on weekends, but the California Street car can still drop you a block away from the Saturday open-air produce market on the Embarcadero in front of the ferry building. I also used it to take me to the heart of Chinatown, at California and Grant streets, and from there I worked my way through a small handful of tiny dim sum places for a cheap and delicious lunch on the move. All day long I rode up and down at will, courtesy of my trusty Muni Passport, chatting with other passengers, jawing with conductors, laughing at grip men’s jokes, watching the city unfold below under perfectly clear skies and warm temperatures. It was a rail rider’s dream.

I ate dinner at a place we had passed many times on Russian Hill, a little Spanish tapas place called Zarzuela on the corner of Hyde and Union streets. There was one more place I had to go that night. One block west of the cable car crossing at California and Powell is the Mark Hopkins, and the Top of the Mark. The most famous cocktail lounge in the city, it still offers one of San Francisco’s most entrancing views, and serves a fine whiskey sour, which took the sting out of the $4 cover charge.

I didn’t need to walk down the steep hill to the Chancellor. A cable car happened along with impeccable timing, I perched happily on the running board and in five minutes I was strolling into the lobby.

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Budget for One

Air fare, LAX-SFO: $121.00

Airport transportation: $15.00

Chancellor Hotel, two nights: $235.20

Three-day Muni Passport: $10.00

Meals: $81.57

FINAL TAB: $462.77

Chancellor Hotel, 433 Powell St., San Francisco, CA 94102; tel. (800) 428-4748 or (415) 362-2004.