Hallowed exit to San Fran

San Francisco, October 31, 2006
Halloween, a time for ghosts, ghouls and foul fiends to run amok. John Bunyan would have loved it - deviant! Halloween is BIG in the States, bigger than I could ever imagine. For the kids, there's trick or treating where they go around predominantly the neighbourhood shops and receive bountiful supplies of all things sugary and guaranteed to make you sick.

There seems less of an element of tricking than I was used to in my youth - shoving an apple up the exhaust pipe of Mr Allsop's Morris 1100 or simply burning down Mr Gorman's allotment shed. As I recall we often wouldn't give the victims a chance of offering a truce enducing treat. On occasion we would do the tricking at other times of the year just to keep people on their toes. In the States it's more of a marketing exercise for local enterprise than anything - sweets packaged up with promo labels. Particularly ironic was the sweet parcels being handed out by the local dentist, a bit like a doctor decorating the street with banana skins!

Halloween is also massive for the adults in San Francisco in the form of a Halloween parade in the Castro area (the gay area of the city but attended by all sorts of Bunyan types like Dafydd Morris). I decided against going on account of my discomfort in large crowds. Quite glad - 10 people were shot in a...well...shooting incident.

And so ended Phase III. Here are some farewell snaps of San Francisco:

Baz in Vesuvio bar in North Beach with two of his work colleagues not looking too happy with the company. A typical San Francisco street, you can almost sense Steve McQueen from Bullitt in his green Mustang.

View of the city from Twin Peaks (nothing to do with the David Lynch series) and a rather cool tram. On the whole the trams were rather cool...and cheap...and jolly.

Castro area where Dafyyd Morris types like to hang out. Another jolly coloured tram.

The woody interior of a tram. I think I'm a bit tram obsessed. Oh heck.

Just round the corner from Hotel St Paul was Jack Kerouac Street and on the corner is the bar Vesuvio, a Beat hangout where Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassidy and probably Allen Ginsberg & Ken Kesey too would get roaring and spout Beat nonsense or total sense depending on your standpoint. I liked On The Road, seems a bit fitting for my current lifestyle (but don't worry Mum, without the amphetamines).

So here I am at San Francisco Airport, November 1, 2006 bound for Auckland NZ and phase IV of the trip. Blew the last of my US$ on sushi and a margarita. On on.