Dearest Family and Friends
This is the first monthly epistle from quirky, friendly, beautiful, sunny San Francisco. Contact Details:
57 Cumberland Street, San Francisco CA 94110 (from 18th November)
Phone Number: +1 415 738 2112
Skype: nadinemellor
I only arrived here two weeks ago, having flown over melting Greenland (astonishing to see icebergs and the air is so thin it all looked very close) while watching An Inconvenient Truth followed by The Devil Wears Prada (life is full of such juxtapositions) sitting next to a jolly of Top Shop executives. After Greenland, cloud shrouded Canada and Washington State with just a few mountain tops protruding, so it wasn’t until half an hour to go I sighted my new home.
Luck has always found me (must remember to thank the universe more often), I was sitting on the left of the plane for a perfect bird’s eye view of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, then the Bay Bridge as we approached to land. Colman was overjoyed to see me – it had been the longest we’d ever been parted - but relax! I’ll refrain from sharing the details of our reconciliation (you can take the girl out of England but) – and drove to grandly-titled The Paramount - our corporate apartment home courtesy of Yahoo! We are staying in SOMA (south of market) beside the financial district, downtown. Best described as Woolloomooloo meets Holborn – corporate meets residential meets industrial. We are on the 11th floor overlooking the CBD but as the building reaches 42 storeys (well slightly less accounting for plant rooms, the lobby, and there’s no level 13) the only landmark we can see is the top of the Bay Bridge. The view from the rooftop is somewhat more spectacular – if you don’t suffer from vertigo and can bear to look at it – as this is one of the last skyscrapers as you travel south along the peninsula. 
The building is billed as luxury executive accommodation with everything the modern young couple just moved here from out of state could require (strangely no kettle though and the bed sags in the middle so I roll into Colman all night) although essentially soulless and compact. We are opposite the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society, and the Moscone Convention Centre which featured the Direct Marketing Association of America’s convention in our first week – the Customer is on a Journey, Be the Destination.It took a while to recover from sheer core exhaustion having been so frenetic in the run up to leaving, as well as not sleeping for months (still not so but plus ca change), but all is restored now.
Extraordinary how one seeks out routine from the get go. I wake at 6.15, at work from 6.30 to dovetail with Europe as much as possible, breaking at lunch to swim in the side open air rooftop pool on the 5th floor – am now sporting freckles and cossie lines as the weather has been simply perfect since I got here (although rain is now forecast for the rest of the year until the end of February…) 
I can go for a day or two without ever leaving the building – and when backstroking see only skyscrapers and blue skies. Late afternoons for on errands, music and the radio - am hooked on the fantastic eclectic Late Junction playlists on Listen Again on Radio 3 (today was Romanian singers, plain chants, Norwegian nu-folk, Moroccan beats and Spanish flamenco) and feeding my Archers addiction (I long predicted Ruth and Sam), reading (it really is 140 channels and nothing on TV) – almost unknown to have this quiet restorative time. Somewhat interrupted by the banshee wails of fire engine sirens.Our first weekend we spent flat hunting – our first joint housing venture. One apartment had recently been finished to a high standard but overlooked a gun shop, so I said it was vetoed on those grounds and then agonized I’d been too bolshy in making such a stand. We found an apartment on Day 2 which was evidence of our desirability as tenants in a competitive (and expensive) market (no pets, no smokers, no kids, no waterbeds).
We will have 2 spacious bedrooms, sitting room with bay window, dining room (which converts to extra bedroom if required), large kitchen, share of beautifully kept garden, very nicely decorated, in the ideal part of town – funky Mission meets yuppie upscale Noe Valley right beside the only nice park around – Mission Dolores - and one block away from the pool. My old friend Bettina and her family are a ten minute walk away. Cafes and restaurants and a happening street scene round the corner, a few blocks from the Latino quarter, yet the flat is on a quiet residential road. Perfect. Only downsides are we share the garden with 2 other apartments, and don’t move in until 18th Nov. Marking time until then; living out of suitcases.
San Francisco is everything I had been told it would be and more: a stunning natural setting with varying microclimates; lots of neighbourhoods each a few blocks wide but with their own subtle character; street tableaux (lots and lots of homeless everywhere which is disconcerting, most are tramplike, a few have talent – witness the chap playing the buckets tunefully with gusto or the fellow playing Greensleeves hauntingly on the trumpet); gay-friendly; pet-friendly (Paul Mitchell has a dog shampoo range); sub-cultures abound; Latino influences; lively restaurant scenes; and all introductions have so far opened doors in a very welcoming fashion. More details in the next missive.San Francisco Experience of the Month
Bikram yoga is big here. And what luck I thought, there’s a studio one street away! So eager beaver signed up for a month’s classes on day two. For the uninitiated, Bikram is when you do a series of 26 poses in 105F heat for 90 minutes. “Easy”, thought I, conveniently ignoring the fact I’d not been to a class of any description for over six months, hadn’t practiced yoga for two, get headaches in saunas, and was fatigued to the core. Oh yes, and everybody else was wearing swimming costumes while I had long yoga trousers and sleeved T-shirt.
15 minutes in, I was gasping. The teacher having introduced me to the rest of the class, referred to me a few times during the Hades-like experience, and got the whole class to clap me at the end for enduring it! If I hadn’t already been puce in the face, I’d have blushed.
Colman came home that night to find me moaning feebly on the bed, poleaxed with a savage headache. And the studio sent me a friendly card exhorting me to return. Not on your nellie.
Looking forward to finding the right yoga studio for me when we move into the apartment – I’ve had some classes in this building which are nice, my fellow practitioner told me he was here to release his inner New York!
Anthropological Moment of the Month
Going to the Social Security office downtown was certainly an experience. The sign on the door says ‘It is a Federal Offense to Kill or Kidnap, or Maim an Employee of the United States Social Security Department’ which made sense when I saw the inhabitants of the waiting room. The guards had lots of patience and a gun each. A fortunate combination. The rich tapestry on show included the two welfare black queens with lovely nail varnish discussing their mutual friend in jail, the arsey beanie-wearing bejacketed types (lots of them did seem overdressed given our present clement weather) swearing at everybody, the white woman in a wheelchair with oxygen tubes to her nose whose hippy looking friend/helper/wheelchair pusher in shorts and sandals was cutting his toenails…
Seasonal Event of the Month
Has to be Halloween. What a to do it is here! Large shops along the main commercial drag dedicated to selling Halloween tat, fake cobwebs festooned over pristine topiared gardens, pumpkins and marrows gracing every business and restaurant with witches hanging off doors, skeletons grinning in every window, black fake birds adorning displays, and costumes on show for a week. The local adult entertainment shop had sexy Halloween costumes in the window display.
Last Saturday we went to dinner in Castro (main gay area) and were treated to nurses, Carmen Miranda outfits made out of orange mesh street netting, Mounties, policeman and his escaped prisoner boyfriend, dresses concocted of rubber gloves, an outfit inspired by bathroom items (the loo-plunger was the hat), the NZ rugby team, disco queen glitterballs with Commedia dell’Arte masks, brillo pad bikini, mermaid in a wheelchair, Friesians in drag, pirates, an eight strong stewardess routine repeated every 10 minutes, superheroes, geishas, and the usual fright parade of Halloween monsters.
On the 31st itself thousands converge on Castro and crowd control is always an issue apparently; 9 people were in fact shot (not killed) as the police tried to disperse crowds after the music was turned off at 2230 – the event may be cancelled next year it seems. I was safely in Noe Valley at a street party with hundreds of children trick or treating – my God the sugar rush their parents must have been dealing with all last night…
Expedition of the Month
Last weekend we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge (its actually rust coloured, ‘international orange’) for the first time, with Colman’s brother Patrick at the wheel, to Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, a protected coastal redwood forest. You walk along a river valley with dozens of other daytrippers through awesome (yes the true sense of the word) towering sequoias, then up empty trails for panoramic views out over the hills through different ecosystems and vegetation. Really sublime to be out in gorgeous country, in wonderful tranquil woods on such a stunning day.
Taxi Driver of the Month
An overweight, country & western fanatic, transgender (female to male, apparently used to look like Anna Nicole Smith) with a long term transgender partner (male to female, used to be a navy boy) who drove with a small white lap dog on his lap, and was recommending his new home in the suburbs.
Restaurant of the Month
Woodward’s Garden. Unprepossessingly under a freeway flyover, with homeless on every corner, busy compact kitchen on view, shabby chic red plush seats and velvet curtains, romantic, dimly lit, seasonal New American cuisine, interesting wine list, clientele from the 40-something lesbians to the upscale 50 year olds to the group of chattering 30 year olds, charming. Colman took me there at the end of my first week.
Wine of the Month by Mission Boy
A to Z Pinot Noir 2005
Oregon
Yes it’s got a perplexing name, but this wine confounded more then one stereotype of American wine.
Charming fruit balanced with fresh finish dressed with true (even burgundy-like) pinot mustiness was a relief from one expecting overblown jammy fruit-and-alcohol confection. A wine I could savour and look forward to returning to.The other stereotype confounded? It only cost $16. You don’t have to pay over the odds for impressive West Coast wines. Hooray!
Bird of the Month
Winter wren (troglodytes troglodytes) we saw engrossed bobbing and flitting up and down its own little stream beside the walkways in Muir Woods, Marin County.
Bumper Sticker of the Month
‘Doing My Part to Piss off the Republican Right’
Missing you all very much
Love and big hugs Nadine and Colman xxx
