Tender is the Night

A couple of weeks ago, Special K managed to swing a bit of an extended visit to my NoCal pied-a-terre and while the weather was decent (i.e. no rain) on Saturday, we decided to head up to San Francisco and enjoy the city.

The only concrete plan we had was to visit North Beach Pizza for lunch (again with the pizza!). Special K had been many years ago and loved it and I had heard from countless people over the past few months that it was indeed 'za bomb. We were definitely not disappointed. We were seated along one of the windows where we had a great view of the top of Coit Tower and so we ordered the "Coit Tower Special" just because (no vegetarians in this duo) . In a word? Amazing. (We had lunch around 2:00 and still weren't hungry at 10:00 pm that evening.)

After pizza, we hiked (you don't merely "walk" on those steep streets) around the hills of North Beach and Telegraph Hill, made it to the Coit Tower lookout and then walked down the stairs towards the Embarcadero where we visited the Ferry Building (a must-see for SF visitors!) and then on to Hotel Griffon for a glass of wine. We had the vague notion of wanting to see some theatre that evening, so while sipping on our vino, we put my iPhone through the paces, trying to find a local theatre with a show that sounded good, but that wasn't a broadway epic style musical. (As an aside, it was nearly impossible to find good, reliable, up-to-date theatre info either online or even in the local freebie arts newspaper.)

We finally found something that sounded interesting and hopped in a cab to head over the box office. From my iPhone's map application, I gave the driver the cross streets of our destination.

He looked up at me in his rearview mirror. "You sure that's where you want to go?"

"Yes, definitely -- the theatre is in that block."

He sighed. "Ok.... "

A few minutes later, we jumped out of the cab and turned the corner to head towards the theatre, and that's when I realized that I had unwittingly requested that we be dropped off in the heart of the Tenderloin.

The Tenderloin is a small, dense neighbourhood in downtown San Francisco that, in spite of its rich history and recent revitalization efforts, still remains an area of squalid conditions, homelessness, crime, drug sales (and abuse) and prostitution. And we walked right smack into the middle of ALL of that. We picked our way around the homeless and those under the influence and once we checked in at the theatre box office, we hustled down towards Market Street to kill some time in the shops before curtain.

After the play, we spilled back out onto the street and while the neighourhood hadn't seemed THAT bad in the daylight, the darkness brought out the most sinister, shady and sleazy elements, and made you not want to linger on the street discussing the show you just saw. (There were also other reasons you might not want to discuss that particular show, but I'll save those for another blog post.)

As I instinctively reached for Special K and hissed "Hold my hand!!", two grubby men seated on the sidewalk repeatedly nattered "Yeah, you BETTA hold her hand! You BETTA hang onto that one!"

You BETTA believe he will! And if he won't, I most certainly will!