Excluding a 2:30am (10:30am home time) wake-up, I slept like a baby until 7am. Jack 1, Jet Lag 0. I went to get dressed and realised I had a problem. I have no pants. I had piled them neatly in my bedroom at home and had totally forgotten to put them in the suitcase. Ashamed and faintly disgusted with myself, I put on yesterday’s and tried not to think about it. Any shame I felt was eradicated by a nip into IHOP for some breakfast. I saw a ‘New York Cheesecake Pancakes’ on the menu. I didn’t buy it, imagining that the sugar levels would immediately stop my heart, but I did briefly reflect that this might be the greatest country in the world.
Then, to Alcatraz. I had seen the island looming in the bay on our seaside walk yesterday, and it seemed to me a uniquely sinister figure. Perhaps it was the fact that so many famous fictional prisons (Shutter Island, Azkaban, Blackgate Penitentiary) took their cues from Alcatraz; perhaps it was the conjuration of the naturally unpleasant idea of being locked up on an island with violent criminals. As we stood on the boat chugging calmly on towards the prison, I felt a strange perversity in the fact that we were part of such a large group of tourists excited to explore this monument of state-sanctioned suffering. I am violently allergic to jingoism and I was afraid that Alcatraz would be its embodiment: a ‘thank God we locked these guys away’ tour. But the real experience could not have been further from my expectation. From the moment we pulled into the dock, where the defacement of the federal government’s warning sign has been preserved since the 1969 Native American occupation, I realised this was going to be a very different kind of tour. A permanent exhibition on the occupation was accompanied by one about the ‘Red Power’ movement, detailing the enduring legacy of Richard Oakes and the group of brave Native Americans who held the rock for over 19 months. Red lettering on the water tower still reads: “PEACE AND FREEDOM, WELCOME, HOME OF THE FREE, INDIAN LAND.” Inside the cell house, it was not the bogeyman kind of tour, but a very human account (with testimony of both guards and prisoners) of daily life in Alcatraz. I was touched by the way that, instead of lionising the US prison complex, our tour barely touched on the obvious (Capone barely got a single mention), and instead foregrounded the tragedy of the incarcerated, such as the story of Dutch Bowers, imprisoned for 25 years for stealing $16.58 in a fit of desperation and was shot trying to climb the chain link fence. Our guide took time to highlight the abuses of the state against Native people, in particular the nineteen Hopi leaders who were arrested for trying to prevent the kidnap and indoctrination of their children, as well as the manipulation of language in the press to obscure what had really happened from the general public. That the phrase ‘murderous-looking Apaches’ was applied to manufacture consent for this atrocity was emphasised by our guide, and it sent ripples of disgust through our tour group. “The fight continues,” our guide said. How correct he is. Warnings about media complicity in state violence ring particularly true in 2025, and I was quite moved that, even as the President makes sweeping unilateral decisions to eradicate public information on the ugliest (and most important) facets of American history, San Francisco’s National Parks have committed to their historical and cultural heritage.
After Alcatraz (from which the city looked even more expansive and beautiful) we took a walk into the city centre to buy me some underwear. I once again marvelled at the energy and multiculturalism of the city, but found it funny that American supermarkets are, vibes-wise, basically exactly the same as British supermarkets, only about five times more expensive. We caught the bus back to the coast and ate lobster tacos at Pier 39 while a nearby breakdancing troupe (very good!) poached onlookers to leapfrog over them, which made my dad actually flee in the belief they were trying to make him their next volunteer. The lobster restaurant had bins designed to look like lobster pots. I’m a sucker for good theming, and America is the land of theming. On the bus out to Oracle Park, some locals were intrigued by our accents and I badmouthed English cuisine to an innocently curious American girl.
BASEBALL. Where have you been all my life? We saw the SF Giants play the Seattle Mariners, and the sibs left the stadium infatuated with Lee Jung-hoo (who did admittedly play a phenomenal game). The energy of the stadium was infectious (Let’s go Giants!) and while I did end up wondering if America is the most advertisement-infested nation in the world, there is something guiltily charming about it all. It’s not as if it’s a surprise, after all, and so much of our understanding of America as a magical land of flashing lights comes from the sheer amount of LED billboards there. That said, I couldn’t shake off the lingering spectre of the Oracle company, whose name is now shared with the arena. My only real gripe* with San Francisco is the glut of advertising for ultra-wealthy tech conglomerates, especially when it comes to generative AI. It’s plastered everywhere – AI for image generation, AI for business, AI for spreadsheeting, AI for vetting taxi drivers, AI for internet security. Though I have some tolerance for AI as a tool for humans to make their lives a little easier, and I appreciate that SF is the tech centre of the West, this pervasiveness reeks more like desperation than of a gold rush. Perhaps it’s because all of the best parts of this city are a result of its lived-in-ness. There is a sense of irrepressible humanity here, which throws the sterile, transparently mercenary venture of generative AI into such stark relief. Never have I felt so menaced by the omnipresence of Big Tech as I have in my two days in this city. How can AI ever compete with the experience of hearing The Imperial March slowly fading in, followed by a portly middle-aged man shooting at full speed down the sidewalk on an electric scooter, a chihuahua sitting in a shopping bag that hangs from the handlebars? That’s real American lunatic energy there. God bless San Francisco. The devil take Oracle.
*(I lie; there is a second gripe, which is the Blue Moon beer I bought in Oracle Park which cost $18. I can buy a pint of the same for a fiver in the UK. What the hell is that about?)
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