San Francisco - Alison Bing [47]
GLIDE MEMORIAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH Map
415-674-6090; www.glide.org; 330 Ellis St; celebrations 9am & 11am Sun; 27, 31, 38, F, J, K, L, M, N; & Powell St
‘Go ahead!’ shouts the lady in the wheelchair as the rainbow-robed ex-con closes his eyes to hit a high note. The 100-member Glide gospel choir is kicking off another Sunday celebration, and the welcome is warm for whoever walks (or rolls) through the door – the 1500-plus congregation includes gays, lesbians, transsexuals, single-parent families and many who’d once lost all faith in faith. After the celebration ends, the radical Methodist congregation keeps the inspiration coming, providing a million free meals a year and housing for 52 formerly homeless families – now that’s hitting a high note.
POWELL STREET CABLE-CAR TURNAROUND Map
cnr Powell & Market Sts; & Powell St;
‘Wire-rope railway’ was a name that didn’t inspire confidence in Andrew Hallidie’s invention in the 1870s, when crowds steered clear of his rickety wooden trolleys on their early downhill runs. More than a century later, the two cable-car lines from this terminus seem more like carnival rides than commuter transport – and therein lies the appeal.
Pause for a moment at Powell and Market Sts, and you’ll notice cable-car operators leaping out, getting a good grip on the trolley and slooowly turning it around by hand on a revolving wooden platform. As technology goes, this seems pretty iffy. Cable cars can’t go in reverse, emit labored mechanical grunts on uphill climbs and require burly brakemen and bionic brakewomen to lean hard on the handbrake to keep from careening down Nob Hill at alarming speed.
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SF’S SEE-THROUGH BUILDINGS
Market St cuts a diagonal across San Francisco’s tidy east–west street grid, leaving both flanks of four attractive, triangular flatiron buildings exposed to view. Among the XXX cinemas surrounding Golden Gate Ave, Taylor and Market Sts, you’ll find the lacy, white flatiron featured as broody Brad Pitt’s apartment in the film Interview with a Vampire. On a more respectable block above the Powell St cable-car turnaround is the stone-cold silver fox known as James Flood Building (opposite), a flinty character that has seen it all: fire, earthquakes and the Gap’s attempts to bring back bell bottoms at its ground-floor flagship store. Flood’s opulent cousin is the 1908 Phelan at 760 Market St, where the ground floor offers a glimpse of people making online love connections on the display computers at CompUSA. That adorable little slip of a building on the block at 540 Market St is the 1913 Flatiron Building, whose sunny disposition outshines all the overwrought bank buildings along nearby Sansome St.
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But SF has always been a town of risk-takers, and locals casually leap on and keep their balance like pro surfers – you can tell SF novices from their white knuckles and death grips on slippery wooden benches.
WESTIN ST FRANCIS HOTEL GLASS ELEVATORS Map
415-397-7000; www.westin.com; 335 Powell St; Powell-Mason, Powell-Hyde;
For a bird’s-eye view of Union Square, head for the front desk (in the new building), find the glass-walled tower elevators in the corner and soar 32 stories high for drop-dead vistas. Shhh! Don’t tell ’em we told you.
BOHEMIAN CLUB Map
415-884-2400; 624 Taylor St; 2, 3, 4, 27; Powell-Mason, Powell-Hyde
The most storied, secretive club in all San Francisco was founded in the 19th century by bona fide bohemians, but they couldn’t afford the upkeep and allowed the ultra-rich to join. Now the roster lists an odd mix of power elite and famous artists: apparently both George W Bush and Bob Weir are current members. On the Post St side of the club’s ivy-covered brick wall, look for the plaque honoring Gold Rush–era author Bret Harte, which depicts characters from his works. On the extreme right is ‘The Heathen Chinee.’ It’s not a racist attack – quite the opposite