San Francisco

It's the street after street filled with damp cars parked outside all night -- streaming ships of the city unable to find a harbor . . . It's the dreamy silence of Pier 44 on a sunny mid-afternoon -- where customs officers, white-capped longshoremen and shipping officials quietly play cards over a counter to prove that men can get along with each other . . . It's the endless rows of cabs lined alongside the places where people gather -- Yellow feet for the ones tired out in the work of having fun . . . It's the 7:30 p.m. flurry of humanity around the tiny neighborhood movie houses -- tinsel palaces of escape for those who slave by day in the temples of Big Business.

It's the smoky, all-night pool parlors of North Beach -- fraternity houses for the lonely brothers who've been black-balled by life . . . It's the Saturday tea dansant at the Palace -- where the most beautiful girls in the world gather under one roof not to be admired, but to admire Artie Shaw, who only looks the other way . . . It's the Old San Francisco restaurants -- with their ancient waiters serving the same old food in the same old way because tradition is their master and an increasingly cruel one, too.

It's the cold, refined handsomeness of outer Pacific Avenue, which picks up its skirts daintily and stares haughtily in another direction as the street swings into a less correct district . . . It's the frenzied burst of activity on the city's playgrounds each Sunday morning -- the people joyously breaking their backs on the Day of Rest, losing their heads in an escape from six days of headaches.

It's the parade of Willkie buttons in the noontime eating places -- men wearing their political hearts on their sleeves . . . It's the blind, hatless banjo player feeling his way smilingly along Post in the afternoon sun -- making tinny music for the ears in the midst of women making silky music for the eyes . . . It's the indescribable conglomeration of beauty and ugliness that makes San Francisco a poem without meter, a symphony without harmony, a painting without reason -- a city without an equal.

-Herb Caen