The Best Minds of My Generation Destroyed By Fog

After another immense and delicious breakfast at the Millbrae Pancake House (this time special mention goes to the omelette made with linguica, a Portuguese sausage I'd not been familiar with - along with ham and another sausage, thereby offering three contributions in one dish from that wonderful, magical animal), we take our first venture into San Francisco, taking in the beaut-- OHMYGODSOMEONEDESTROYEDTHEGOLDENGATEBRIDGE!

ahem...sorry. Just a lot of fog, actually, a lot of fog, to the point where it looked like someone took the Photoshop erase tool to the upper 2/3rds of the bridge. So we ventured down to the Bay and took in the sight of the visible portion of the GGB, but we'll be returning to get some more unobstructed views if at all possible.

So we embarked on the city-circling 49-Mile Scenic Drive, which is a nice way to get oriented. Of course, the omnipresent fog made it somewhat less scenic than one might hope... here's the view from atop Twin Peaks (no, not that Twin Peaks), which should provide a breathtaking panorama of the city but actually offers only a misty purgatory:

The drive did take us, however, past the Palace of the Legion of Honor, a classically-oriented art museum used in Vertigo as the spot where Kim Novak went to stare at the "Portrait of Carlotta."

Here's us outside the museum:














And here's Jimmy Stewart:




We spent some time in Golden Gate Park (the SF equivalent of Central Park), where we spent an inordinate amount of time and shots trying to line up with our half-headed friend up top, before resuming the Scenic Drive, which we got about halfway through before ditching it to go find some food. By that time it was about 7:30 on a Saturday night so North Beach, the Italian section, was thronged. We eventually settled on a so-so place that met our requirements: not much of a wait, and willing to allow my T-shirted self in the door. It was also directly across the street from one of our main reasons for hitting the are, the legendary City Lights Bookstore, owned by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the epicenter for the Beats.

Here I am perusing the shelves in the poetry room upstairs, and we of course picked up a copy of Ginsberg's Howl and a collection of Ferlinghetti's San Francisco poems.

Today we'll complete that scenic drive, hopefully catch a better view of the Golden Gate, then head over to The Rock for our nighttime tour of Alcatraz. That's the plan, anyway.

P.S.: I forgot to mention this little puzzler yesterday, but can anybody explain to me while the 60+-year-old Sikh guy running a 7-11 in San Jose in 2007 would have a brand new-looking stack of "Al Bundy for President" bumper stickers prominently displayed on his counter?