"If You're Going to San Francisco" - J. Philips

I'm on the grand tour of American cities. Today I am in San Francisco. It is a beautiful city, I don't know if it's the light, the water, the the hills, the cable cars, the old world funkiness, the people, or everything all together, but it feels good here. It's a classy city on a hill. I'm staying at a grand old hotel, the Warwick, and it's comfortable, and somehow classic, old-world. This place seems a relic from a grander time, although, here everything seems to be thriving, there's a feeling of prosperity, but also of cultured funkiness that's cool and comfortable.

San Francisco for me represents the Beats: Ferlingetti, Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder. I'm looking forward to stopping into City Lights bookstore, it is the literary Mecca. This city also evokes the "summer of love," the Grateful Dead, Santana. Plus there's Coppola's Zoetrope. It's also the city of Gavin Newsom and his crusade for the Gay Americans. I'd say San Francisco represents some of the best of the American Experiment.

I'm blogging from a Starbucks this morning. Sipping a latte. Hoping that the business meeting I'm heading to won't absolutely bore me out of my skull. It looks to be a long day, I'm hoping to be able to break away and soak up some SF energy.