San Francisco Encounter

Whenever you get completely carried away, youre halfway to San Francisco already. Here love is perpetually in the air along with dinner plans and stray glitter, because this rambunctious city cant wait for a fresh excuse to flirt, dine out or throw a parade.

Lets face it: SF gets away with a lot because of its good looks. Just when its beauty seems familiar, you turn a corner to find a glorious alleyway mural, Victorian roofline or sea-breeze-sculpted pine that entirely changes your outlook. The Pacific forms a dazzling natural boundary to the west, but there are no other observable limits here. One San Franciscan wearing nothing but combat boots is possibly wacko and probably chilly but two could be a date, three is a theme party and four makes a parade. And if you get goose bumps in the fog, march your rear guard across town: when its drizzling downtown, its probably sunny in the Mission.

Yet somehow the city with its head in the clouds hasnt lost its grip on the continent or reality, despite earthquakes, fires and prognostications of certain doom by the righteously indignant. With free thinkers and wild parrots nested on its 43 hills, San Francisco refuses to be brought down to earth, and instead forces cable cars and spirits to rise to the occasion. Through unrelenting outlandishness, this city of fewer than a million people has become a global capital of cuisine, technology, gay liberation, skateboarding, eco-consciousness, comics, street art, documentaries and poetry.

Spontaneity is the only law obeyed without question in San Francisco. No one can commit to a date next week, but everyone suddenly shows up when theres a war that needs protesting or someones handing out free cupcakes at same-sex weddings in . San Franciscos stratospheric booms and breakneck busts arent for the weak of heart, but as anyone whos clung onto the side of a cable car will tell you, this town gives one hell of a ride. Anyone up for a parade?

Sunday services sing at the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church
LAWRENCE WORCESTER

As youve probably heard, San Francisco has a wild streak about a mile wide. Everything San Franciscans hold dear is found in the 1-by-4.5-mile wilds of Golden Gate Park: free spirits, free music, Frisbee, protests, fine art, bonsai and a balding penguin.

This green scene started with a forward-thinking citizens petition in 1865 to turn 1017 acres of SF sand dunes into a park, which scared off even New Yorks Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmstead. Idealistic 24-year-old William Hammond Hall championed the effort, and spent the next two decades tenaciously fighting casino developers, theme-park boosters and slippery politicians to create the worlds largest developed park one-upping Olmstead. By 1886, sunny days brought one-fifth of the citys population to their park, ignoring the citys newspaper dire warning that its scenic benches could lead to excess hugging.

Hugging remains a constant danger in the romantic park, from sunset views near quixotic oceanside windmills to Hippie Hill, where a daily drum circle does its rhythmically challenged best to restart the Summer of Love. The park has been updated since the 19th century the wacky Eskimo village is gone, and the , a landmark collection of arts and crafts in Herzog & de Meurons sleek copper-clad bunker, now oxidizing green to match the park.

Wild as it is, the park has its contemplative moments. The National AIDS Memorial Grove offers consoling shade, while the stand of old-growth redwoods at Strybing Arboretum is ideal for meditation before a fierce match at the (pictured above).

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Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park
THOMAS WINZ

Even before your ferry arrives on the Rock, youll start plotting your getaway. The obvious gambit is laundry duty, and sneaking out in a load of sheets. But then what? If youre caught youll get sent to D-Block solitary, a tiny cube where days are marked by a light shaft traveling across the wall or you might be interrogated using techniques only alluded to in the otherwise thorough Alcatraz audio tour, with first-hand accounts by prison guards and prisoners of the Rock.

For maximum creep factor, book the popular night tour to watch the sun set over the Rock and tour the darkened cell house. Pause in the library to check out the books the average prisoner read at a rate of 75 to 100 per year though none of the books could have references to crime, violence or sex. Tense 20-minute meals were served under armed guard in the mess hall, where no spoon was left unaccounted for and a sign ordered prisoners: Take all that you wish eat all that you take. If you dare, step inside a cell and take off your headphones for a moment, and listen to the sound of carefree city life traveling 1.25 miles across the water. This is the torment that made perilous prison breaks and flying leaps into riptides worth the risk, from the 19th-century founding of the prison to hold Civil War deserters and Native American dissidents until Bobby Kennedy officially ordered its closure in 1963.

Outside the cell block, youll notice faint graffiti on the water tower that reads, This is Indian Land. This declaration was made by Native American activists, whose request to turn the closed prison island into a Native American study center was repeatedly turned down in the 1960s. Finally, on the eve of Thanksgiving, 1969, 79 Native American activists broke a Coast Guard blockade and took over Alcatraz in protest of the violation of treaties and appropriation of lands from 106 Native groups. Over the next 19 months, some 5600 Native Americans visited the occupied island, sparking Native American activism nationwide. Before the FBI seized the island in 1971, public support pressured President Richard Nixon to restore Native territory and strengthen self-rule for Native nations. The protest is commemorated in Red Power graffiti found throughout Alcatraz and at the dockside processing center, where an award-winning documentary featuring protesters first-hand accounts is screened in a small side room.

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D-Block cells at Alcatraz
KEVIN LEVESQUE

May you live in interesting times goes the legendary Chinese curse, and the 41 alleys packed into 22 square blocks of Chinatown have lived through 150 very interesting years. In these narrow streets, San Francisco grew up too fast, surviving booms, bootleggers, bigotry and trials by fire to reach a wise old age.