San Francisco is the first sight in the eyes of a sailor, a fisherman, a tourist, a traveller; it’s a pier, a mooring, the first foot put ashore.
It’s also a carousel, a set of colors, neon sights; it’s a combination of styles, a parade of both fancy clubs and scruffy pubs.
San Francisco is a happy child, laughing and running, full of life; it’s a war veteran, a soldier who is still fighting to survive.
San Francisco is a wild animal, the powerful sound of the ocean, the smell of saltiness that fills your nostrils; it’s a sea lion who is strutting in front of astonished eyes, and the fishy smell that scares someone away.
San Francisco is a hill, a straight, endless road, full of ups and downs; it’s a dangerous, steep road, to which you have to pay close attention.
San Francisco is a protest, a demonstration, a display of ideologies; it’s a colorful mural in a place with a spicy fragrance, every day painted with different messages.
San Francisco is a bridge between the two sides of the society, the various people and cultures, it brings them together and known each other, connects them indistinctly; it makes them look closer, but at the same time it splits them with its length, its depth, its hardware.
A poem written along the sidewalk on the pier in San Francisco:
Awakening Gatha
Walking in the morning
Time smiles in my hand.
This dawn
lasts all day.
— Deena Metzger
