The San Francisco City skyline view from the Golden Gate Bridge after the fog had lifted in the afternoon last month. Photo / Anendra Singh
The San Francisco City skyline view from the Golden Gate Bridge after the fog had lifted in the afternoon last month. Photo / Anendra Singh
When I was in my final years of primary school, I remember studying far-flung parts of the world — such as the pampas in Argentina, a bustling Tokyo, the Midlands in England and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco — that flipped me straight into daydreaming mode.
Little did I know, four decades on, I'll be standing in the middle of the 2.7km suspension or truss bridge, connecting the Frisco Bay estuary to the yawning Pacific Ocean while building rapport with Marin county.
The plan is to run the bridge but the bitterly cold afternoon early last month plants doubts in my head. The cutting wind has its way but it doesn't stop me from walking halfway up as joggers, cyclists and skaters make the most of it on a day when a blanket of thick fog lingers stubbornly.
The views are still breathtaking from the 227m frame of the orange landmark built in 1937 — the brainchild of Joseph Strauss, Charles Ellis and Irving Morrow — but which has since shed about 6800 tonnes and is painted annually to ensure passing ships notice it on murky days. I lean over nervously to look down and see coins lodged in clefts and corners of steel ledges.
Sports editor Anendra Singh breaks from tradition to run the majestic Golden Gate Bridge for a brisk walk on a testing autumn's day in San Francisco last month.
Three babies — all boys — were apparently born over the years on the bridge that, ironically, claimed 11 lives during its construction. Other similarities with the Hoover Dam aren't lost on me, especially the opposition to its creation.
I have an "mmm" moment when I discover Roy Raymond, the founder of lingerie retail giant Victoria's Secrets, had committed suicide from the bridge on August 26, 1993, at 46 to steal the thunder, as it were.
Parking is chaotic as my childhood mate, Mohammed Salim, and his patient wife, Di, try to find a vantage point. It's a bit like trying to make your way up Te Mata Peak in Havelock North on a public holiday but 100 times more chaotic. Miraculously we somehow find a park as scores of sightseers alight from tour buses and vehicles.
Again, as I had done at the Grand Canyon, I wonder what it would have been like to have visited the bridge in the northern summer but the Salims warn me to be careful what I wish for. The summers are relentless and energy sapping as I note trendy homes hugging the esplanade areas.
Earlier that morning we visit East Pier 39 on Fisherman's Wharf, marketed as the "Disneyland of San Francisco".
Mercifully parking isn't that much of a task but tour operators is an option for those not wanting to conform to the right-hand rules. I pop into a gallery where surreal art is the going concern.
The African American bloke manning the desk reveals he only moved there a year or so ago from another state and has no intentions of going anywhere else anytime soon.
Just as the female Uber driver — who is a professional singer by trade — in Los Angeles had visited Auckland, he intends to travel to New Zealand because he has heard so many good things about the Land of the Long White Clo.
The California state's marquee tourist attraction, the Alcatraz Island Prison, has graffiti on its face, proclaiming "Indian Land". Photo / Anendra Singh
A tout, whose English isn't very distinctive, tries selling us passes to a quick cruise around the harbour to see the now abandoned Alcatraz Prison. The site of the first lighthouse built on the Pacific Coast, it became a federal prison for such notorious convicts as Al Capone and George "Machine Gun" Kelly.
The island penitentiary shut shop in 1963 because of a breakout, which Hollywood brought to universal fame through Escape From Alcatraz in 1979.
Spots of rain and low-lying mist shroud the white structure for clear photos but it's not enough to make out graffiti proclaiming "Indian land" on what is now a major state tourist attraction.
Salim strikes a chord with two middle-aged women from New York, talking about his fascination with the Big Apple and buying retirement property there some day, as waves rock and roll the vessel that also takes us to the massive piles of the Golden Gate Bridge.
We disembark to roll down towards the wharf only to find buskers, hawkers and entertainers trying to woo the hordes towards their activities.
Street breakdancers on cardboard box mats, shirtless jugglers, screen painters with drum-roll lines sneak in anti-racist messages and other political views to the amusement of the public. It's all free, apparently, until they pass around baseball caps and containers to collect money from the spectators.
I agree with my hosts that they deserve some form of payment but I struggle to comprehend why the city fathers aren't adequately compensating these ambassadors who are instrumental in raking in tourism dollars for the municipality.
It's a part of American culture that bothers me. Heaping guilt on tourists — unsuspectingly at that — is a major put-off because your budget dictates where you venture, especially in light of an inferior kiwi dollar.
It's hard work on cardboard box mats for these street breakdancers but should visitors fork out money for them, considering they do such a great job selling San Francisco? Photo / Anendra Singh
Is the gratuity system an institutionalised form of begging? Methinks it's more a snapshot of how the US treats its working population than a test of the generosity of visitors to the Land of Opportunity.
"You up there — yeah, you on the balcony," the six-pack sporting juggler on stilts yells out to people eating at a seafood restaurant. "Just roll up $20 on a coin and chuck it down to me and I promise I'll throw the quarter back to you."
It's funny but some in the milling crowd downstairs slink off while others oblige. To his credit, the juggler gives $10 to the girl he has picked consenting to be his assistant from the throng. Her parents capture the stint on videotape.
As we wander off past the hawking brush painters — their strokes as abrasive as the music booming from the ghetto blasters — and the solo middle-aged artist totally oblivious to the cacophony around him as he strums out a reggae number, I smile in satisfaction at The Strip in Las Vegas for preparing me well.
But that sense of immunity is put to the test soon after. A mime artist, face in navy, stands motionless like an oxidated statue on a low stool as we go past but comes to life the second he sees two young Japanese females advancing towards him.
Surprised, one of the women curls up to him — as a moggy does when you're sitting in the lounge — while the other snaps photos on her cellphone.
"Magical moment of tourism," I think, trying to capture the entire process when the artist's joker-like expression morphs into a menacing one behind the facade and all that heavy clothing. He waves me away, covering his face with the other hand to disguise the hint of maniacal glee creeping in.
"They want to be paid for any photos," Salim reminds me as I look gobsmacked.
We move into the crush of multitudes on the dock where a sea lion bobbing in and out of the water catches my eye as seagulls play chicken.
Unbeknownst to me there's a colony of them lounging on floating jetties around the corner. The resident sea lions had invaded the space after the 1989 earthquake. I wonder if there's going to be a collection for the blubbery, honking marine mammals' welfare — my cynical journalistic mind pushed into overdrive by now.
Di points out that she and Salim had spent their memorable dating days here during its infancy. In fact, he proposed to her in front of the rainbow-coloured monument, so I ask them to relive the moment for me.
We take in lunch on the bustling sidewalk of one of many seafood restaurants along the prime waterfront. I want some of that sun pushing its way through the fog as we seek shelter from the building to ward off the icy wind.
I see lip-smacking patrons spooning chowder from a bread bowl and my saliva glands concur. The Salims, as they've for the best part of my 13-day trip, refuse to let me reach for my wallet. Di also buys two serves of fish-and-chips, as it dawns on me we'll struggle to do justice to it.
I see lip-smacking patrons spooning chowder from a bread bowl and my saliva glands concur at the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Photo / Anendra Singh
I gleefully slurp up the chowder, dismissing any reaction of fresh cream in it. I demolish the sourdough cover with it's crusty finish but the bowl isn't happening. I wonder what happens to the bread leftovers after I drop my gluten-free guard. Feeding them to seagulls — or any form of wildlife in the state — is illegal. Di yearns for rich doughnuts and I object but she's persuasive. Indian sweets trump that, I tell her.
Salim makes it sound spontaneous but I suspect it's premeditated as he hits the highway — this time through the multi-lane Oakland Bay Bridge — to visit his parents in a 90-minute drive to the nearby Stockton. I catch up with the parents in almost four decades and his mother's cooking takes me back to my misspent but memorable teenage years.
I reminisce with his father, a retired airport immigration officer, before we drive back to the Salims' home in Hayward via the Richmond San Rafael Bridge. The next day I attend an extended family birthday party at a community hall for a teenage girl aspiring to become a GP. Culture is still a statement for immigrants whose children speak with an American accent.
Hayward offers countless boutique brunch cafes and we patronise two of them before I return home to Hastings.
On a Sunday morning, Salim, an auto transmission business owner and petrolhead, takes me to a Pleasanton Vintage Car Show at the Alameda County Fairgrounds.
You can cut the testosterone in the air with a knife as Salim haggles for motor parts. It includes a trade show of house alarm system, bamboo pillows and muscle heat packs. I want to buy but my plane luggage weight restriction is nagging away with success.
Salim tries to convince me to take a sporty number, promising to buy it and ship it to me, but I laugh dismissively. The motor muscle image aside, I can't imagine losing sleep over one parked in my garage.
The Pleasanton Vintage Car Show at the Alameda County Fairgrounds is a crowd puller on a Sunday morning. Photo / Anendra Singh
On the eve of my departure, Di takes me for a run along the therapeutic marina at the laid-back town of San Leandro. I enjoy the run along the concrete trail with a view of the ocean but my calf muscle starts tightening from all those days of dormancy. I finish the run at a hobble but notice a police patrol officer perched near the golf course keeping an eye out on the morning joggers.
I thank and hug my overly hospitable hosts at the Frisco airport, realising they had selflessly taken time off work to make it a lifetime's experience for me.
"Come again," they say. I offer a feeble maybe smile but admit it won't be anytime soon, although I wonder if my wife, who couldn't take time off he retail work to join me, may have other ideas.
Only a day after I return home, I watch on TV scenes unfolding of a shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, north of LA, where a teenager kills two students before turning the pistol on himself.
It takes me back to a brainstorming session I had with a parent in Las Vegas who had given me a tour of his house and shown me his cache of guns locked away in a closet.
He tells me over a lovely dinner he has no qualms about letting his young boys handle the firearms because he feels it's part of security in the US.
I disagree with him to put my anti-gun side of the debate but I wonder if he sees what I mean after Nathaniel Berhow's actions on his 16th birthday.
San Franciscans Mohammed Salim and wife Diana relive the infancy of their dating days at this rainbow monument at East Pier 39 on Fisherman's Wharf last month. Photo / Anendra Singh
