Ferry Rides

Francisco,

When I think you possibly couldn’t offer me more pleasure, you give me the smell of the stale salt from the dark waters and a chance to embark across one of the most breath-taking natural wonders of California. You’ve taken what you got, and made it into an art form, into something in the surrounding cities cannot ignore. The San Francisco Bay is wide, restless, and, frankly, a jewel.

Ferry Rides aren’t just a convenient commuter tool, and if that’s its sole purpose well then, commuters shouldn’t complain of public trans. It’s a pretty cheap chance ($8) to embark on a potentially exciting hour out of a dismal day in between home and work. It doesn’t even have to be about A to B. There’s everywhere, any which way, all along the water—Berkeley Pier to the east, giving rest to cream sails in the twilight after a long tackle at the waves across to the stacks at San Francisco’s downtown; sea village charm of Sausalito on the furthermost western border, with pink stucco and fairy-like cottages stacked as neatly, if not tightly, as its sisters out in Pac Heights or Telegraph Hill—and even those you can see clearly from the little rusty boat, growing smaller and smaller at the base of prim Coit Tower diminishing from view and into the horizon where the crashing little waves meet the skyline.

Is it all a dream? It really feels like it, everything that makes You, Francisco. I’m in love. I love the seagulls fussing about, the cold wind that makes my dead long hair fly about my face—the fact that my eyes are always caught by that 75-year-old faded red structure that stretches across the western hem. Simply put, it’s the panorama. The Bay is that dusty Polaroid tacked to the back of the closet—a treasure well hidden but when viewed and admired, there’s nothing more touching than this. Only those in the Bay know what it means to see this water; we all retreat back to this literally picture perfect photograph to rekindle our inner passions for life and remind that all of life is precious, beautiful, and full of potential, everywhere you look.

The waters call, the boat pipes out that glorious diesel smell… and it makes me hum a Smiths song. This is no dream, but my own waking golden reality, a unique part of the West Coast that’s exactly what everyone else in the world thinks it is.

Paris