Travel to San Francisco – Amateur Traveler Episode 159 Transcript

page 3 of 15 of Travel to San Francisco – Amateur Traveler Episode 159 Transcript

Chris: Interesting. And when Richard mentions Treasure Island, Treasure Island is a mostly man made island by the Army Corps of Engineers, halfway between Oakland and San Francisco, off the Bay Bridge, the site, originally, of a World’s Fair, and, as I learned from you I believe, originally targeted to be the location for the San Francisco airport, but…

Richard: Yeah, that’s right! Crazy thought. I still harbor a vague wistfulness that that didn’t come to pass, but you can still see them – I guess they’re little landing slips, water based landing slips, where the China clippers used to, sea planes used to fly out off to Hawaii and the Philippines.

Chris: Interesting. So I think I actually interrupted you – you were starting at the Lands End, and where to, from there? Whither from there would we go?

Richard: Well, after we enjoyed the WPA Building, we travel north along the Great Highway, you’ll pass – at the very end, you’ll know the end’s coming because there’s a steep upgrade and a curve – if you look to your right, you’ll see a bunch of condominiums, and what you should do at this point is feel sad because what used to be there was a fabulous something called “Playland at the Beach”. There were rides, Ferris wheels, clowns, ‘catch the brass ring’ kind of stuff, but that’s gone, so let that just drift out of your head, and then keep travelling north, and you will see something I believe is clearly labeled as The Cliff House. It’s the first big building on your left as you go up and around this sweeping curve, and the Cliff House, I honestly don’t know if it’s worth stopping there or not. It’s somewhere that I never go, it’s recently been renovated, depending on who’s counting, there have either been, I don’t know, five or seven different versions of this building. The first one went up, as you probably heard on my Podcast just last week – what year was that? – 1853 or something? Or ‘60 something? I’m not good with dates.

Chris: Before the great quake, before the great quake, before the 1906 quake? Is that the…?

Richard: Yeah! I think before the ’68 quake too. It was a good long time ago, but it was at a time when Mark Twain was in town, so let be a touchstone. That thing, it just, I don’t know if it’s cursed, I think there’s something about San Francisco at being at the edge of the world, being built on unstable ground, having burned to the ground, you know, six times before all the big earthquake even came along. This whole theme of things rising from the ashes – you can’t get away from it. The Cliff House is emblematic of this. They just keep falling into the sea, or having ships loaded with explosives drift into the rocks below and explode, all kinds of things going on.

Chris: Oh, I missed that story, ok.

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