San Francisco

Wow, different again.

San Francisco, with its peculiar topography, bridges, bays, parks, architecture and myriad forms of municipal transport, looks and feels more like something from Sim City than any other place in America. It is beautiful and odd and foreign and familiar all at the same time.

Thanks to some hefty frequent flyer miles L's acquired, I got to tag along for this leg of her November audition tour. Whilst she was stuck inside working, I got a day to myself to zip about. Impossible, of course, in such time to get a proper insight or understanding of a whole city, but it is possible to form some first impressions.

So, firstly, density. How wonderful and thrilling to be somewhere squashed up, where every square foot of ground counts. Houston is so lazily spread out that the very air is thin, but San Francisco is piled high and squeezed in, from the bay to the ocean and therefore immediately has the air of a properly exciting city.

Secondly, the hills are spectacular and stupefying, just as they seem to be in Vertigo, or Bullit, or the Dirty Harry films, or even Crazy Like A Fox (don't tell me you don't remember that, I know you do). In fact watching the streets bend up and up, the impossible angles rendered by sedate lines of traffic, it's hard not to feel part of a vast optical illusion.

San Francisco feels like a city that's happy to play up to its reputation. The cable cars and trams are all carefully preserved from classic eras whilst the buses proudly proclaim their zero emission status, the overhead cables clicking and singing with juice. The architecture varies enormously with white-cubed casas in the hills near the airport, grand and ornate Victorian town houses in the heights, immaculate classical civic buildings around (and including) City Hall and everything else, scruffy and smart in between. Every single billboard I saw was an advert for iPad, but at the same time there is a faded resort charm to the place, rather like Brighton I suppose.

It's a very diverse city, a broad mix of white, black, hispanic and asian Americans; the kids are very cool and there's plenty of delicious individuality on display from all walks of life. But, in some senses, San Francisco is very much the end of the line. There are certainly more homeless people there than anywhere else in America from what I've seen. And, perhaps not coincidentally, plenty of people who look like they are headed in the same direction: young men with wild beards and ragged clothes, ranting at nothing. I wonder if there is a current in this country that pulls or pushes people out west to California. Maybe people end up here simply because they keep going until they hit the ocean and then there is nowhere else to go.

The ocean was my favourite thing. It really does feel like the end of the world, the outer limit; especially if you are keenly aware of the time zone you are in, knowing that there is nothing beyond that is not Tomorrow. The beach itself is vast and empty, fading in each direction to a pale mist that allows mere hints of distant objects. But the sea is even bigger, of course, and emptier and the only sound is that steady insistent drone of waves and motion that becomes almost a lullaby, because no matter how large and savage are the waves that crash upon the black/gold sand, their ferocity is nothing in relation to the size of the ocean.

We went for the sunset and were not disappointed. The sun sinks fast and cleanly out of a cloudless sky and plunges in the endless waters, extinguishing itself. The last of the daylight leaks away immediately and within minutes the world is dark.

We made our way back into the city and took a cable car up into Chinatown. Getting off the cab and suddenly being surrounded by Chinese script, lanterns, restaurants, shops and people was a reminder that there really was something across that ocean after all.