The Perils and Pleasures of Barcelona

We’re going to be mugged. Everyone says so. Everyone has a second-hand horror story about Barcelona, which is, according to these alarming reports, the most crime-riddled city in Europe, maybe the world.

Either that or we’ll absolutely love it. Everyone who doesn’t have a second-hand horror story about Barcelona says so. It is, according to these sun-kissed reports, the best city in Europe, maybe the world.

For us, Barcelona turns out to be neither the worst nor the best city in the world, or indeed in Spain. We see no crime at all, but the pre-trip warnings colour our whole visit. We spend so much time clutching our bags and scanning the crowds to spot our knife-wielding attackers that we sometimes miss what a cool city Barcelona is.

Barcelona’s a party town, the first great world city on our trip, and a shock to the system after the more reserved and stately experiences of Andalusia, with its sultry nights and friendly, promenading citizens.

When we get there, Barcelona is packed with 20-something Brits on stag and hen weekends but even so, and unlike the broadly homogeneous Seville, Barcelona is incredibly diverse, which is hardly surprising for a city of 4 million people, and which spans a wide geographical area. So there is no single Barcelona, there are many Barcelonas.

We’re staying in the funky Born district. With its narrow winding streets it’s not dissimilar to Seville. Elsewhere there are wide, straight boulevards that cross the city from one side to the other (the Diagonal, for example, runs in a straightish line for about 11km). There’s also a long boardwalk where the Mediterranean washes upon Barcelona’s shore.

There are further ways that Barcelona differs from the other parts of Spain we’ve visited. Most notable is the sense of Catalan nationalism. Barcelona may be in Spain but it hardly feels like it. Catalunyan flags hang draped from apartment windows, while the art gallery is quite pointedly the national (ie, not regional) art gallery of Catalunya. The language seems, at least when written, to be as close to French as Spanish, and everyone speaks Catalan. My carefully learnt Spanish for, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish,” draws stares that seem to say, “Me neither, mate, not if I can help it.”

One of Catalunya’s favourite sons is the architect Antoni Gaudi, and we anticipated falling in love with his work. We’re both fans of Art Nouveau and thought its marriage with Arabic design influences and the bright colours of Barcelona would charm the socks off us.

Sometimes it did; Gaudi’s undulating lines and Mad Hatter facades can be hard to resist. Casa Batllo and parts of Park Guell were delightful.

Park Guell: part genius, part Mad Hatter’s tea party

However, Gaudi’s most famous work, the still unfinished Sagrada Familia church, is awful. For a place of worship, it is remarkably profane. Partly that’s because it crawls with tourists, all ticking off their ‘must see’ lists, and we were equally culpable on that count. But Sagrada Familia was noisy and busy and flashes were firing and skill saws were buzzing and the interior was more gaudy than Gaudi.

Much more spiritual is Barcelona Cathedral. Flash photography is banned, silence is requested and people are turned away if they dress inappropriately for church. I’m not a believer but if you go to church I think you should respect those who are, and Barcelona Cathedral, unlike Sagrada Familia, feels like a place of worship.

Outside the cathedral we experience one of those special moments you sometimes get when you travel. In the square at the front of the cathedral, a man is playing guitar and singing Catalan folk tunes. The yearning music sounds more Cuban than Spanish, and completely different to the Andalusian flamenco we’ve been hearing. Out of the growing crowd, a couple of 70-somethings clasp hands and begin to dance, swaying gently to the rhythm, eyes locked. Lost in the moment, lost in each other, lost in their own form of worship.
RICHARD and MELANYA

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• We have become invisible to wait staff. They are not rude, unfriendly or incompetent. Rather, they practice a form of benign neglect. A shame, because the food is so good you want to order more of it. Good luck with that
• Across the alleyway, hearing the TV screen Spain 1-5 Holland and the viewers become increasingly subdued as their tragedy unfolds
• As well as speaking Catalan, everyone can speak fluent Spanish and English
• Sculptures on the roof of the Gaudi-designed La Pedrera gave George Lucas inspiration for the Storm Troopers in Star Wars

Recuerdos de la Alhambra

As a prelude to Spain’s greatest treasure, it’s quite the scene setter.

We wait at the edge of a rose garden, blanketed in twilight and a not-quite-cloying floral scent. Across the valley we can see the Albayzin district, where our apartment lies and itself a UNESCO world heritage site. All the while, swifts fly and call overhead.

Finally, at 10pm, we are ushered in to a dream world: the Alhambra’s Nasrid Palaces.

We’ve been waiting for hours and we are primed, yet neither words nor photos (or postcards – we checked) do justice to how these palaces look at night.

They are artfully and subtly lit, all the better to emphasise the intricacy, artistry and delicacy which make you feel you have stepped into the Tales of the Arabian Nights.

Barely a surface is left unornamented. The walls, the ceilings, the floors, all pay tribute Spain’s Arabic heritage with an artistry that is staggering. And despite the level of detail, there is no sense of fussiness, just beauty. Just perfection.

This sort of detail adorns almost every surface of the Nasrid Palaces

The moon plays its part, its path traced in reflecting pools as bats and the ever-present swifts skim the water. All you can do – the only appropriate response – is to sit and absorb the magic, in awe that now and again, maybe once every few hundred years, humans manage to get their shit together in a way that leaves you humbled and speechless.

But the city of Granada is a paradox. On one hand is the Alhambra, with its otherworldliness and enchantment. On the other are the graffiti, the dreadlocked hippies selling unremarkable trinkets from blankets spread out on the streets, and a callousness towards tourists that is in stark contrast to our other Spanish experiences. This Granada is more than a little frayed around the edges.

We do have one other special moment in Granada, though. The Capilla Real, in the town centre, houses a tomb that contains the bodies of Ferdinand and Isabella. These are the monarchs who unified the country, and you again get that sense of bearing witness to historical and cultural crossroads. Spain begins here.

The coffins of Ferdinand and Isabella. Image source: Wikipedia

In a simple display area above the crypt are personal items owned and used by the king and queen. Here, among these bits and bobs, you find real people: a battered crown, clothing – their actual robes, last worn 500 years ago – Isabella’s rosary beads, Ferdinand’s sword.

The weapon’s hilt is tiny; Ferdinand must have been a little man by today’s standards. You are reminded of the words of ee cummings: “nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.”

And for a few seconds you are no longer seeing history, you are hearing poetry.

MELANYA & RICHARD

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Tiny buses on tiny, winding streets
• Walking around the Alhambra’s Generalife garden and realising I’m humming Joaquin Rodrigo’s guitar work ‘In the Generalife’
• It’s 30 degrees celcius and you can still see snow

Road trip: Seville to Granada

I hate mountain roads. They make me dizzy and sick and very, very scared. Which is why I find myself swigging from a bottle of cheap brandy as we wend our way from Seville to Granada. (In case you’re wondering, Melanya and her father split driving duties – drink responsibly, kids.)

It’s quite some landscape. There are, in turn: craggy, raw mountains and precipitous edges; fields of thirsty-looking crops; cork plantations; and towering cacti that could double as props in a Sergio Leone movie. Dotted around the place are the enormous wind turbines that power so much of southern Spain. It’s beautiful. I wish I could experience it sober.

Our trip takes in a number of Andalucia’s white towns. ‘White town’ is a euphemism for ‘small group of houses clinging to the side of a cliff’. They are as attractive as the countryside we’ve driven through to reach them. Ronda, Grazelema and the troglodyte village of Setenil are gorgeous. The whitewashed buildings gleam in the sun, and there are few straight lines, which creates shapes and angles you simply don’t see in New Zealand.

Seriously, whose idea was that?

Setenil looks particularly alien. The dwellings jut defiantly from the rock face, and as we wander we can see, through open windows, how sloped ceilings are formed from the bare face of the mountain. They lend the impression that these are hardy homes for hardy souls.

Still, you wonder: how on earth do these people get by? If you own a whitewash business you’ll have plenty of work on. There’s agriculture, though the white towns all seem a long way from farms. Tourism is clearly important, there are lots of visitors; but what about the times there are no tourists? It seems a tough gig.

Setenil

Somewhere on the journey (I’ve had too much brandy to be certain of the exact order in which things happen) we stop at Bolonia. It’s an unspoilt seaside town, except that the sea happens to be the Straits of Gibraltar, and those lights you can see across the water are coming from Africa, just a few miles away. Magical.

Also magical is Bolonia’s other party piece, Baelo Claudia, a Roman city so large they’re not even bothering to excavate the whole thing. In some ways Bolonia is more arresting than Italica. For all its size, Bolonia’s ruins are on a smaller scale than Italica’s, more distilled. Its structures, including markets, give a keener sense of everyday lives, people just going about their business, doing what people do. You manage to convince yourself that you can identify with shopkeepers who’ve been dead for 2000 years. What a precious gift.

Richard

Melanya and her father, Robin, in Bolonia. That’s Africa in the background

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Brandy works a treat
• Cultural dislocation #1257: watching expat Kiwi Zane Lowe interview celeb magician Dynamo on Spanish TV
• There is an insane number of road signs in Spain, giving detailed instructions for everything. The Spanish road code contains 64 pages of signs

Reasons You Must Under No Circumstances Visit Cadiz

Cadiz is the worst place in Spain. Don’t go there.

Do not take the ferry from Puerto de Santa Maria, because if you do your boat will not slip serenely in to the terminal, and you will not arrive at a magical world where the square has fountains that shoot playfully into the air, while around you people relax at a cafe, drinking freshly brewed coffee.

Cadiz, fresh off the boat

You should definitely not visit Museo Cadiz. Don’t believe anyone who tells you it contains priceless treasures, relics of a time when Phoenicians fashioned heart-breakingly intricate golden jewellery, or Romans produced glass objects so delicate that only an act of God could explain their survival.

Cadiz contains no ancient fortifications facing defiantly out to the Atlantic, but if it did, you would not be moved to feel that for people to build walls so sturdy, they must have realised the preciousness of what they were protecting.

Cadiz: one photo, nine centuries of architecture

You must under no circumstances visit the mercado centrale, a galleried market of fresh-caught fish, and meat and vegetables and fruit, because it most certainly does not include the ripest, juiciest figs you have eaten, figs that may well cost a fraction of what they cost in Auckland but which would nevertheless be better coming vacuum packed from Countdown.

When you walk down the street in Cadiz, the air is not alive with the sounds of canaries, and nor do geraniums punctuate the whitewashed walls with their vibrant red.

You will not have the finest meal you experience in Spain. Your plate will not be piled high with sardines caught just that morning, and if it is, they will not be about the best thing you have ever tasted, and the sun does not shine and shine and the sky is not the deepest blue.

And since you are not sharing that meal of perfect fish, the sea breeze does not tangle a wisp of hair in your wife’s mouth and she does not look as beautiful to you in that moment as she ever has, and you will not reflect that it is a great moment to be alive.

So don’t go to Cadiz. Don’t. But if you do, don’t tell anyone.

RICHARD

Richard and the Yellow Lamborghinis

I am worried about yellow Lamborghinis.

I should probably explain. I first encountered The Yellow Lamborghini Principle on an English football podcast I follow (The Guardian’s Football Weekly, though the term Yellow Lamborghini Principle is mine). I’m paraphrasing here, but the upshot is that a young professional soccer player, seeing a yellow Lamborghini during one blazing, booze-filled summer in the south of France, thought the Italian supercar was fantastic and bought one for himself. When he got the thing home to Sunderland in Britain’s dreary north east, he realised his error. Context is everything.

I explain this because I am in grave danger of leaving Spain sporting a pair of blue suede shoes with orange detailing, or a piece of leather wrapped several times round my wrist. I am not young enough, cool enough or European enough for these things, but I know beyond all reason that they will make me look fantastic. At least, they will make me look fantastic in Barcelona, especially when set off by the neckerchief I’ve been desperate to buy. I will look less fantastic in Auckland. I have to remind myself of this every time I enter a store: am I about to buy a yellow Lamborghini?

For those who care about these things (you know who you are. Julian), the shoe shops in Spain are staggeringly good, and the YLP has not prevented us from each buying two pairs of shoes. But only the lack of footwear in my size saved me from a third pair. Blue suede. With orange detailing.
RICHARD

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Shoes are very cheap in Spain. I recently bought a pair of Diesels in NZ that were reduced from $220, but the equivalent pair in Spain are €75 (about NZ$115)
• Almost all shoe shops sell men’s and women’s shoes, and the range of men’s shoes is mindblowing by NZ standards
• Camper shoes even fit Kiwis with splayed duck feet

 

Two pairs of shoes, yesterday. Blue suede not pictured

 

 

Seville

I am having a bit of a moment. When I was 12 or thereabouts, and had been learning classical guitar for four or five years, I promised myself that one day I would visit the guitar’s spiritual home. So here I am, sitting in a Sevillian plaza, drinking a beer (which, by the by, costs €1.20), listening to a couple of young guys playing flamenco.

They’re not that flash but this is something I’ve dreamt about for 30 years. I’m close to tears.

This happens more often in Seville than is manly. I am overcome with alarming regularity. It occurs particularly in churches, where I have an overwhelming desire to genuflect, which seems odd for a non-believer until you remember that the buildings are designed to do this to you; they are literally awe inspiring. The most awesome of them all is Seville Cathedral. The world’s third largest cathedral after St Paul’s in London and St Peter’s in Rome, Seville Cathedral is so big the tower has its own identity. Known as the Giralda, the tower dominates the skyline and is the symbol of the city. It was built by Moors in the 12th century, unlike the main part of the cathedral, which is new-build muck begun in 1402.

Seville Cathedral, with the Giralda to the right

The cathedral is one of those places where you keep saying ‘wow’. Every time you look up at the Gothic arches far, far above: wow; every time you see another exquisite Baroque sculpture: wow. Oh look, there’s Christopher Columbus’s tomb. Wow. It must be difficult being a hipster in Seville – your mouth is constantly agape, ironic detachment has no place here.

Sevillians seem appropriately proud of their heritage – eating tapas (at 11pm, obviously) with our host’s son-in-law, he speaks of “living history”. Here’s an example: La Seta (‘The Mushroom’ – it’s the name locals use, not the architects) is an elegant modern structure in one of Seville’s most popular plazas. (It’s a bit like The Cloud in Auckland and yes, people complained here, too.) When they excavated to build La Seta, they discovered a Roman town beneath. So they turned that in to a museum, and now the one plaza houses Roman ruins and a stunning 21st century edifice. Wow.

Defiantly modern, La Seta rests above Roman ruins

The arts are important here, too, and it’s hard to walk down the road without bumping in to a statue of some poet or other. We are less willing to celebrate our cultural heroes in New Zealand. Maybe it’s a bit namby pamby. In Spain it’s different. You can take tours of the Sevillian places mentioned in operas, with Carmen, The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville only the three most famous of many works set in the city. And everywhere, there are tributes to the recently deceased Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He wasn’t even Spanish.

There are numerous other wow moments. Italica is a Roman city on the outskirts of Seville. In Spain, they just have this stuff lying around. Incredible, and really quite moving. We walk on roads constructed more than 2000 years ago. What were they like, these builders? Were they happy with their lot? Or were they slaves, forced to serve the empire? Whichever it is, these roads, more than 2000 years old, are in better nick than the strip between Bombay and Huntly; I hope the builders were proud of their achievement.

Italica boasts a fairly intact amphitheatre, where people were thrown to wild animals – you can still see where the animals were caged – and gladiators did battle. We attend the modern equivalent when we enter the Sevilla football team’s stadium, to catch our first international soccer match: Spain (the reigning world and European champions!) vs Bolivia (champions of not much at all!), in a pre-World Cup friendly. It’s an average game but a superior night out (literally a night – the game kicks off at a very Spanish 10pm). The stadium, Sanchez Pizjuan, is only two-thirds full but the noise is deafening; I chant myself hoarse, even though I don’t speak the language. For those who care about these things, the ref is a homer, the penalty a travesty, and Fernando Torres misses an absolute sitter (oh, Nando, where did it all go wrong?), but Spain wins 2-0 and that’s all that matters. [Author’s update, the World Cup horrors of Spain 1-5 Holland are still some weeks in the future.] Are All Blacks games as much fun as this or are Kiwis too reserved?

Speaking of Kiwis, Lorde is inescapable. There’s an odd sense of national pride, and a correspondingly odd sense of cultural dislocation, hearing Lorde playing in a Spanish cafe. I don’t have any strong opinions about her music so I’m surprised how tightly you grasp these things when you’re away from home. I also spot a CD of Jack Body’s music, conducted by APO composer-in-residence Ken Young, in the local FNAC store. Weird, when you’re so far from home, to find music involving people you know personally.

Go Kiwi, etc

One thing that strikes you as distinctly Spanish, though, is the sight of people walking the street at night. They may be on the way for tapas or they may not; there’s just lots of people about. It makes the city feel crowded, although only 800,000 live in Seville. What’s especially notable is how many people dress up simply to stroll these narrow, winding roads that never go where you think they will. Teen boys, on dates, might wear a suit and tie. Girls are elegant and heel shod, despite the cobbled streets. Whole families promenade too, from grandparents to babies, and it’s usual to see very young children out at 11pm. It’s quite lovely, and can be explained at least in part by the fact that although Seville’s climate means people live outside, nobody has a garden. Public spaces are therefore important, and Seville has some cracking plazas that buzz until midnight seven days a week.

In a previous missive, written about San Francisco, I speculated about poverty, and whether all countries have these things. Of course they do, but it’s less apparent in Seville than it was in SF. We see few beggars and, so far as I can tell, no homeless people at all. This is likely because of how family structures work here (if you’ll excuse the anthropological musings about kinship). In our experience, families are supportive in a way we’ve not seen elsewhere. Our host’s sister, for example, financially supports several of her grown children. Moreover, it’s possible to live inexpensively here. Everything seems so much cheaper than home: food, clothes, alcohol. Seville has 60% unemployment among people under 30 but, as a tourist, you’d never know it.

I love Seville. It’s too hot (the night we went to the soccer, it was 39C at 8.30pm, though a very balmy 27 when we walked home at midnight), it makes me feel fat (OMG, people here are beautiful and skinny. I love/hate them all), and I feel unsophisticated in a way I never have before: you sense the weight of history at every corner, and it makes you realise how young New Zealand is. Our oldest surviving building dates from the 1830s. Here, in this mediaeval walled city, you’d struggle to find a building so new. That’s not a value judgement; there are pluses and minuses, and of course NZ’s history pre-dates European settlement. But I love things like siesta – the city closes between 2pm and 5pm – I love the swifts darting here and there, and I love that Seville is a city that’s relaxed about how cool it is, in a way the people sitting outside of SPQR on Ponsonby Rd will never understand. I like that. I like it a lot.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

• the clip clop of horses’ hooves on cobbles
• cars needing to make three-point turns to get round ruinously tight corners
• panel damage on every car (see above)
• beer and water costing the same
• being woken on Sunday morning by thunderous drums and almost-but-not-quite-in-tune trumpets

RICHARD

San Francisco

Guess the bridge…

It begins oddly. At the airport, someone has left a didgeridoo unattended and is being asked, over the tannoy, to retrieve it. You can’t just leave these things lying around; who knows what havoc they could cause in unskilled hands?

Before long we’re on the tarmac. Engines begin to hum and then whine, building to a crescendo, preparing to launch us on our way to the US. Suddenly everything dies. The lights go out, the air conditioning stops, the engines are silenced.

Something electrical has blown and we are delayed for an hour. It’s not an auspicious start. I’m also fretting about the didgeridoo.

We land in San Francisco after 12 agonising hours in the middle seats of the central aisle (but I can totally recommend The Secret Life of Walter Mitty). We are tired and wired, and must take a train to reach our hotel. This should be interesting; it’s the sort of practical, directions-related thing at which I am complete rubbish.

Miraculously (to an Aucklander), the public transport works as public transport should, and the ease with which we navigate it belies my fears of becoming hopelessly lost. Still, early days, eh?

During the 10-minute walk from the BART train to our hotel I note that San Franciscans are trim and fit looking but appallingly dressed. Baggy jeans, sports clothes and leggings are everywhere. Even the suits are ill fitting, and wearers look slightly shambolic as a result. Anyone wearing decent clothes is very clearly visiting from Europe.

Judging Americans for their dress sense is the sort of shallow behaviour you’d expect from me, but their country surprises me in completely unexpected ways. Over the next three days the city manages to dispel just about every negative preconception I have about the US. San Francisco is intoxicating. And it’s gorgeous, too. You know San Francisco will be cool but it’s surprising just how beautiful this place is, with buildings that are by turn pretty and awe inspiring, and a cityscape that bursts with hillside gardens and unexpected vistas.

The latter are made possible by San Francisco’s unique geography. You think Auckland is hilly, try this place on for size.

We attempt to shake off our jet lag by walking and walking. San Francisco’s vertiginous swoops make this feat more impressive than it sounds. We walk through Chinatown and gorgeous Russian Hill, where we see stunning deco buildings and the famed Telegraph St parrots.

We wash up at an excellent soul food restaurant that we only later discover is in the city’s notorious Tenderloin district. It’s here that we get a first glimpse of the weird duality that marks San Francisco: incredibly polite and friendly service, and hundreds of homeless people roaming the streets after dark. We will experience plenty more of both.

The next day we catch a train to Berkeley, home to one of America’s most prestigious universities. School’s out so the place feels surprisingly empty, though we almost attend a graduation, which is also surprising. Instead we stumble upon the music auditorium, which displays posters for upcoming concerts from, among others, Michael Tilson Thomas, Jordi Savall and recent APO visitor Bernard Labadie, who is bringing his orchestra Les Violons du Roy. No one like that ever came to Waikato Uni.

If Berkeley is most famous for the University of California, I’m equally excited about visiting another local icon: Amoeba Records. I manage to restrain myself. Mostly.

Back in town we hop on a cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf, which is as tacky as we were warned, with souvenir stores all on the verge of closing down. It’s a surprise in a city that is otherwise not tacky at all, even in the tourist areas.

Among the latter is The Haight, which we visit the following day, and which is famous for one summer in the late 1960s when it became the centre of the universe. It is no longer the centre of the universe, but you can still walk past buildings within which the likes of Hendrix, Joplin and The Grateful Dead resided.

Janis Joplin lived here

The Haight’s architecture is astounding. Skinny three- and four-storey houses loom above the sidewalk, crowded so close to one another you’d struggle to slip a credit card between them. They are the epitome of Victorian elegance.

They are mostly fakes. Seven in eight of the original Victorian mansions were destroyed in 1906 as fire swept through the city following the earthquake. The majority of the houses you now see came from the Sears catalogue. You bought a kit set house; Sears dropped off the bits and you erected it yourself. Amazingly, they’re still standing, with many of them, including the famous Painted Ladies, meticulously maintained and festooned with gold leaf. City laws now require these houses to look broadly the same, and there is block after block of these lovely buildings. It’s utterly unlike NZ and its higgeldy piggeldy housing stock. I like how NZ has modernist structures sitting cheek by jowl with villas, but wandering through The Haight, it’s hard not to think that San Fran got it right.

(At least, that’s the case in town. Out of the city you can see places where San Fran has not got it right. The insistence on conforming to this ideal type has led to plenty of architecturally dishonest terraced boxes that seem to give only a cursory nod to minimum regulations.)

We reach The Haight via Golden Gate Park. Golden Gate Park is lovely, and huge. It’s big enough to contain buffalo and was designed to be larger than Central Park, specifically to spite Central Park’s designer, who refused an offer to build an equivalent space in San Francisco. Confusingly, and despite being called Golden Gate Park, it’s nowhere near the Golden Gate Bridge, which we are yet to see, other than as a pair of mist-shrouded towers in the distance.

In the evening, following a guide book’s recommendation, we set off in search of Bourbon and Branch, a bar in the style of a speakeasy. It lies behind a nondescript door and if you don’t know it’s there you sure as hell won’t find it. If by some fluke you do stumble across it, you hit a buzzer. And then you wait. Eventually someone comes to the door and says, “Yes?” The appropriate reply is “Books”, and you are promptly asked for ID (!) before being ushered through a restaurant, behind a revolving bookcase and in to a darkened dream world of exotic whisky and floor to ceiling bookshelves. A great end to the day.

Our last day in SF and we head out in search of Golden Gate Bridge. When you manage to find it (who knew it would be so difficult to locate?), Golden Gate Bridge is breathtaking, all the more so for its utility, the fact it’s just a bridge to get people from one place to another. We’ve got bridges at home. Nothing prepares you for this one. Experiencing it, you can see how the US became the greatest country on earth and it’s a reminder of America’s enduring power.

There are times where you can see that America’s form of capitalism really does work. The service is unfailingly polite; if it’s not, people go elsewhere and your business closes. This is not the case everywhere in the world. Moreover, capitalism, as America practices it, allows you to put your trust in things. The cable car is old and rickety but you know it’s safe, because the culture of litigation ensures it.

These efficiencies make the homelessness that more jarring. It’s the flipside of the capitalism that works so well in other contexts. America’s poor seem, from the outside, to have been left to fend for themselves. And in what’s still a depressed economy, there are plenty of them. We are told that SF has 30,000 homeless people, out of a population of 800,000. It’s astonishing. It’s a tragedy. The richest, most powerful country in history has utterly failed its vulnerable. Do all countries have these binaries? I guess we’ll find out.

But for a visitor who doesn’t have to live these day-to-day realities, San Francisco is a wonderful town. Even if our final memory is of a bum aggressively trying to scam us at the train station as we head to the airport.