The Great American City
If someone asked me what TV show was the first to make an impression on me, I would have to say it was a toss-up between Gunsmoke (started as radio in 1952, then TV from 1962-1975), Have Gun Will Travel (radio and TV from 1957-1963) and Bonanza (TV from 1959-1973). All westerns, which remains the true and original American art form when it comes to TV in my estimation. Last year we visited Dodge CIty, Kansas, the home of Gunsmoke and it was somehow underwhelming, probably because despite its prairie location, it still feels more midwestern than western. But both Have Gun Will Travel and Bonanza were sited in the far west and specifically linked to San Francisco, the epicenter of the 1849 California Gold Rush. Paladin the man who had a gun and would travel to use it, based himself out of the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco and the Cartwrights of the Ponderosa, who went to Carson City, Nevada for their groceries, went to San Francisco across the Sierra Nevadas (probably stopping overnight in Sacramento) to party in the big city of San Francisco. That’s where Levi Strauss produced his famous denims to sell to the miners of Sutter’s Mill where the gold rush began, once again proving that the American Way is to sell into the American Dream rather than to buy into it. By my reckoning, that makes San Francisco the Great American City.
I can’t remember when I first visited San Francisco, but I suspect it was in 1970 while Bonanza was still on the air every Sunday night, prime time in every American’s home. We were visiting my future brother-in-law Bennett’s family in Monterrey, where they had a home on the 17-Mile Drive on the Peninsula. Bennett’s family was from the more “landed gentry” part of the American immigrant pool. They were from France and they settled in Pittsburgh and became part of Big Steel that helped build this country and propel it westward on iron rails. It seemed fitting that they settle into the beautiful and rugged seascape of Monterrey, which has for most of the past century been a place of privilege, not unlike the northern shores of Lake Tahoe, where the massive Ponderosa spread its wings. I think of both Tahoe and Monterrey as playgrounds for the well-to-do of San Francisco. The other is the vineyards of the rolling hills of the Napa and Sonoma valleys to the north of the City.
We are visiting friends in Sonoma, on our way north to the coast near Mendocino for a few days of catching up and celebrating my friend Frank’s 86th birthday. We come up this way at least once a year, but only occasionally bother going into San Francisco. For years San Francisco was the dream place to live and work except that there always seemed precious few jobs to be had there compared to more mundane places like New York City. That changed quite a bit with the introduction of the silicon element into our vernacular and way of life, the technology boom spreading northward from the campus of Stanford University from Palo Alto up into the Peninsula of San Francisco. But the rugged and chopped-up topography of the area has made for many different pockets of everything from microclimates to culture. As one drives north towards the Bay Area, as it is generally called, one can go west along the coast, through Silicon Valley up through the heart of the Peninsula, up through East Bay where Oakland and Berkeley live, or even further east through Walnut Creek and up through Vallejo over the Calquinez Straight that feeds into San Pablo Bay and on into San Francisco Bay. The point is that there is no right way to do it other than what the traffic-connected GPS tells you, and then the routes are so disconnected that once you commit, the route is locked in for better or worse. The one thing we tend to be sure to do is avoid going into San Francisco proper at all costs. It seems far less the cultural and upscale hub that Paladin and Joe Cartwright enjoyed and now just seems to be an expensive, unpredictably chilly place with an inordinate number of homeless people within view of every otherwise scenic spot.
Our GPS was bringing us up to San Jose at the base of the great bay. San Jose is now the largest city in the Bay Area, probably due to its proximity to Palo Alto, Cupertino and Mountain View and Sunnyvale and all that technology. It is there that the GPS must decide to go east or west based on the best traffic information available to it at the moment. We chose to stop there at some dining congregation point called a “square” in Cupertino, which meant that we suddenly found ourselves in a parking structure with high-tech colored spaces-available indicators that spilled us out to a panoply of restaurant choices for lunch. We chose a Thai place and were surrounded by Asian clients and staff, which probably had less to do with the cuisine than the technology of the surroundings. Every table buzzed of job offers, option grants and generative AI projects. It was good food but a somewhat intimidating ambiance. After lunch the GOPS stayed its course and took us up through the heart of the Peninsula to the Golden Gate Bridge. That gave us just enough of the streets of San Francisco to remember why we avoid the place. What used to be quaint and Victorian (in a Wild West version) now seems dialed-in, but ever-so-slightly trashy as well. The winding road through the Presidio reminds one of the old elegance of the City as maintained by that bastion of traditionalists, the U.S. Military Command. Then its onto the Golden Gate for a harrowing mile of VERY narrow lanes on what now seems grossly outdated infrastructure that symbolizes the gateway to the Pacific. I fear that its a toss-up as to which ends first, the lifespan of the Golden Gate, the viability of the City of San Francisco or civilization as a whole as we know it.
Heading north through my namesake county of Marin we pass the upscale communities of Sausalito, Mill Valley and Tiburon and head across the Petaluma Salt Flats that seem like San Francisco’s version of The Great Gatsby’s ash heaps of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. It is that barrier between urban frivolity and pastoral splendor. Then we turn north to Sonoma and the ills of the Great American City seem to fade into the vineyards and rolling hills of the Sonoma Valley. Once we arrive there in a few miles, we are surrounded by what we all aspire to in life, a village environment where breakfast baked goods and neatly trimmed lawns and artfully arrayed exotic plants and bushes adorn every unique and sweet little street. Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, the homeless still wander about looking for a microclimate they can survive and a park bench they can inhabit for the duration. Unfortunately, this is what has become of many of the Great American Cities and there is scant reprieve from this destiny unless we turn ourselves more towards the kinder, gentler ways of governing and economic sharing that us liberals deem a requirement and conservatives deem an undue burden.