“Valour, Atlas, do you want bagels? It’s a long flight to San Francisco.”
Valour and Atlas. Are they astronauts? Alsatians? No, they’re two small boys with their dad, in their hoodies, travelling on the packed transatlantic Aer Lingus flight.
It’s the transatlantic tech shuttle. There’s a Maga hat and many laptops. At arrivals in the Harvey Milk Terminal, Valour and Atlas scamper around the baggage carousel, small boys not burdened by their baptism.
The sun is shining, the sweet smell of legal grass drifts in already from outside. Welcome to San Francisco.
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While I am probably a little long in the tooth for this, at the age of blankety-blank, myself and my partner are relocating here for a while.
On my third day I pop into one of the many local nail clinics for a pedicure. “Did you feel it?” inquires my Vietnamese nail technician.
“Not a thing, you’re very good.”
“Nooo, the earthquake, this morning.” It measured 3.7 on the Richter scale. And yes I did feel it actually. We were putting it down to our boisterous neighbours upstairs. The Start Pups. Four young tech students with boundless amounts of energy and ideas for a rich future live above us temporarily.
They are perfectly pleasant, but bless them they have the energy of four giant cocker spaniels. Spaniels who work loudly and play indoor basketball at 2am. On school nights.
The apologies are as enthusiastic as the play, but youthful memory is, shall we say, short. I imagine one day we will see them ring the bell on Wall Street and we can say, ‘those little Zuckerbergs kept us awake for a month’.
One of the many white robotaxis drives by on Pacific Street, its rooftop dalek device whirrs, no one at the spinning steering wheel, the passenger reads their phone as the car defies the 31 degree hills with magic brakes.
A female SFPD cop peers in the window of another empty robocar, its engine humming, blocking traffic. “I’m gonna tap on the window and give it a ticket, see what it says,” she says.
Mazzeratis spin along the bay front Embarcadero, the historic landing spot for the gold rush pioneers of 1849. Then, they sailed here on clippers and abandoned the ships in search of golden fortune. This coastal chunk of the city is built on those ships, thousands of them sunk into the mud.
Today the Bay Bridge shines in the distance, as today’s frontiersmen, the tech bros, strut along in hoodies loudly conversing through earpods, deftly walking around, without breaking stride, the occasional sleeping form on the sidewalk.
Their baseball-hat-covered brains are unhindered by any self-awareness. Alongside the robotaxis clank three lines of cable car. It is thrilling to catch one down to the local swimming pool in the Joe Di Maggio playground. Tourists queue for tickets, while locals, it seems, just hop on and off. And they thank the driver.
I get chatting with the unmistakable Edwin Heaven, rocker and author, outside Elias the Lebanese chef’s sandwich bar. “Hey Irish girl, you from Dun Leery?”
In a leather jacket and hat emblazoned with the Playboy Bunny logo, Edwin Heaven does not appear to be a reverend and I don’t think this is his first rodeo. “Fifty years of rock’n’roll in this town,” says Edwin, “The beatniks, the hippies, the punks, and now, you know, the bros,” he nods sagely.
His terrier dog Tulip perches on his knee eating chunks of the impressive turkey sandwich. The former manager of San Francisco 1980s punk band The Nuns, Edwin passes over a promo card for his latest book, The Night I Got David Bowie Laid, Sorta.
Edwin is fine company and we eat in the sun as he regales me with tales of legends The Ramones, Blondie and The Thin White Duke.
Waiting for the bus on Broadway in Chinatown, an elderly Chinese man on the corner bends to light a match. Ah, a pipe, how sweet. A cacophony of cracks, bangs and flashes rip out as fireworks shoot in all directions. I leap away from the smoky spectre on to the bus. He scurries inside cackling. Happy New Lunar Year.
Tatiana works the cash register in Trader Joes supermarket where they play the Pixies and eggs are rationed. From Moscow, she is one of the many older employees working here and has been in San Francisco for 30 years. She has been to Ireland. “I am a biochemist, yes? Years ago we left Russia to work in Cuba, stopping in that beautiful airport, yes Shannon, lovely.”
Edwin rolls his eyes at a passing gaggle of tech bros. “Ah man, they all look the same, with their hoodies and the caps and their pods shouting, shouting, markets, buyouts, ayy eye, whatever”. He pauses. “Though you know if it was 50 years ago, well, I suppose that would be me.”
