San Francisco, Birthdays and Capitola

 

                                                      San Francisco Birthdays and Capitola

Nice flight back into SF - and with Alan on hand to pick us up it was all very easy. Ann added a bit of drama to the arrival by heading straight from a rest room break to luggage pick up while I waited for her to appear outside the rest room. We did catch up after I gave up my waiting and headed to the baggage hall. 

Bruce and Alan had decided to take charge of the birthday celebrations and they did a fantastic and very generous job of the events. We began the celebration of Ann's NZ birthday appropriately with Mumm. Bruce was heading to SFGMC practice, so we were hosted by Curtiss and Alan.

Next morning Bruce had singing tuition scheduled so we accompanied him to that. While Bruce exercised his vocal chords we walked the neighbourhood; a new part of SF for us. The Dogpatch, a little peninsular on SF Bay and old industrial area currently being redeveloped from its previous life as a steelworks and shipbuilding area into some smart living accommodation. There are several theories for its name ranging from a reference to packs of dogs who roamed the area scavenging meat parts from a nearby slaughterhouse to the fictional middle-of-nowhere setting of Al Capp's Little Abner. 

The area has some lovely buildings, and still large areas fenced off while remediation works continue to make the soils in the old industrial area safe for habitation. Some remedial work was in progress on doing that as we strolled by.

One resident was displaying a distress signal in what I suspect was most likely an anti-Trump statement.

You could also buy a new Royal Enfield motorcycle, if you were keen to get back to 1950’s motoring.

We picked up an important piece of merchandise on that outing, Ann’s birthday cake. We also walked into a Wholefoods Store that had a very nice cheese display. I’ve been missing my 'Cheese of the Week' purchases at Maison Vauron in Auckland, so loaded up with a few cheeses and some wine which would undoubtedly find an occasion on which to grace the table.

For Ann’s 75^th birthday dinner we gathered at Canela, a local bistro and tapas venue. We had a lovely evening with some very good food and wine. The wine cellar was quite a feature, an all-glass affair, well stocked with beautiful wines. I tried to get myself locked in there. We headed home for our dessert, another slice of birthday cake. 

 

Napa Valley

Next outing was a trip to the Napa Valley, one of California’s renowned wine-producing regions. We’d been here on a previous trip, and struck a beautiful day for this return visit.

We left SF on the Oakland Bridge and started the day with a muffin bun breakfast at the famous Napa Model Bakery first opened in 1908. This is a highly recommended spot for any future travellers.

Our first tasting appointment was Miner Family Wines. It was early in the day but we were surprised to be the only group tasting at 11 00 am. Just one more group turned up in the time we were there, in fact the Napa Valley was pretty quiet overall. Perhaps this is a part of the tourism drop associated with the Trump administration's anti everyone who is not a card-carrying Republican. We tasted some very nice wines, all served in the appropriate Riedel glasses, and with the tasting cost at $30 per head, it was nice to see that charge dropped when wines were purchased. 

Next port of call was Silver Oak Vineyard where we sampled just two reds, a Napa and a Sonoma vintage. We had some a good conversations there with our host who was planning a NZ trip a little later this year. There is obviously a wine interest there and we gave them the recommendation while in Auckland to visit Kumeu Valley Wines to taste some of the world’s best chardonnays.

We lunched at Gott’s Roadside, an iconic spot that’s been running for 25+ years. Ann and I shared an Ahi Burger; California does a really good job on tuna.

The tasting 'coup de grace' was a visit to Mumm; a lovely tasting and some great views out over the vineyards from the patio. It was a bit busier here, but apparently still a lot quieter than when another group of Bruce's NZ friends came for a visit at this time last year. We splurged with the Legacy Selection tasting at US$55: a Brut Reserve, 2020 LH Edition Blanc de Blanc, 2016 DVX, 2017 DVX Rose and another complimentary taster. A great end to the day!!

Capitola By the Sea

For the next adventure we headed for a weekend at Capitola, with a visit to the Livermore Outlet Stores en route. Ann needed some new gear for walking, so we visited each of the sports-focussed outlets and a few more just for interest. A lot of dross but purchase was achieved, so that at least made the visit worthwhile.

It was the first time we’ve visited Capitola where Bruce and Alan bought a property about 10 years ago.

This weekend happened to be the seaside town’s annual Beach Festival so we had a bit of entertainment built in. 

On the drive into Capitola we called into Point Butcher Shop on Portola Drive to get some meat for a BBQ. The New York cut steaks looked very good so we got a couple of nice chunky ones for dinner. I cooked these on Bruce’s electric BBQ and they were sensational!

We did a lot of sightseeing walks in the village. The town has a long pier (rebuilt since terrible storms in 2023 took out a restaurant and the middle section of the construction). Like Santa Cruz pier, it is  complete with resident sea lions.

The waters close to shore have areas of kelp forest that are hunting grounds for sea lions and sea otters and the seabirds. There was quite a bit of bird activity within sight of the pier and lots of birds diving to get a feed of anchovies.

The town has a small river, the Soquel Creek, that has it's delta artificially sealed off by sand for the summer months. This creates a lagoon that is an integral part of the town activities.

 The walk along the creek is lovely and all the riverside houses have patio areas right next to the water. The old high railway bridge whose future is under discussion at present, may end up being part of a cycleway. 

The town has an interesting mix of architectures and housing styles, the multi-coloured houses of  Venetian Court sit alongside the lagoon and some pay the price of a little bit of flooding impacting the buildings from time to time. Built in 1924, this development is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

The houses along the cliff tops leading back towards Santa Cruz are often very classy joints, but many are obviously threatened by coastal retreat of the foreshore cliffs.

This is a great little town and a fantastic retreat spot for Bruce and Alan and the family. Their Gilroy St home comes with resident and itinerant squirrels and racoons and also some lovely friendly neighbours whom we met in the two weekends we stayed.

The beach festival provided plenty of entertainment, with an evening of 'light boats' (decorated barges) parading down the river and a Lighted Drone Show which was very professional . If you go toYou-Tube and search for Capitola Festival 2025 Light show, you will get to share the event we saw. You’ll even see the 'light boats'! 

Saturday morning at Capitola is Farmers' Market time. There is a great array of fruit and vegetables and provides an opportunity to stock up for the week. Lots of beautiful produce, strawberries, pluots and plums plus lots of veggies, flowers and other produce.

We had an introduction to the guilt-ridden joys of Gayles Bakery, a celebrated local supplier of bread, pastries, cakes and other delightful things. My birthday cake was ordered from here, but we are going to have to come back for next weekend to pick that up and deal to it.

As part of our festival wandering around the town we coffeed, relaxed and listened to the local ukelele band playing their festival contribution with plenty of dance opportunities.  We could also watch a few Mums and Dads teaching their kids to surf in the gentle onshore break behind the Ukelele Orchestra Bandstand. 

After a very pleasant few days at Capitola Alan took us back to SF, along the scenic coastal route, with a brief stop at the Pigeon Point lighthouse and then a photo-op at Half Moon Bay for the fields of Halloween pumpkins.

San Francisco Tourists

Back in SF we planned the next day to do the Barbary Coast walk which taking us through Union Square, Chinatown, and Maiden Lane, in the past a street of many brothels. Then through Jackson Square at the top of Chinatown with lots of card-playing elderly Chinese enjoying the outdoors in the sun.     

On then to City Lights Bookshop, home of the beat poets, and Café Trieste, the first espresso coffee  house in the West (1956) for lunch.

We enjoyed our pizza and a pastry at Café Trieste, surrounded by the walls of photos celebrating its long history, and then paid a visit to the cathedral of St Peter and St John in Washington Square, where Marilyn Munro married Joe DiMaggio many years ago. Then past Coit Tower and down onto the Embarcadero and home on the F-Line tram, almost to the door of Bruce's house on 17^th Ave in the Castro district. An epic walk!

The major takings from the walk: firstly it was great to revisit some of the areas and places we’ve been to before. Chinatown was very quiet with not many people around.  Macys Department Store on Union Square was a mere shadow of its former self, in fact half the store has already closed down and everyone is expecting the same fate for the part that’s still operating. Retail in San Francisco is very hard work these days. But Christmas is approaching!!

The following day, after a visit to de Young Museum, Bruce loaded the tourists on board and took us on a tour of San Francisco Park to see the bison, around Sutro Heights Park, the scene of a spectacular bathing facility in a bygone age, to Lincoln Park to view the Golden Gate bridge and into the Presidio, an old military area to see the Palace of Fine Arts.

Our trip home from that took us to the 16^th Ave ceramic staircase and some very good city viewing. 

Canela had a tapas and cocktail promotion for the week and Bruce had scored an invitation. So we all turned up to support this worthwhile innovation. The event was sponsored by Hendriks Gin promoting their Oasium labelled product. Bruce’s school and university friend Rose had arrived to stay at 17^th Ave early due to an inclement  weather fore-shortened kayaking trip in Canada. So we had a very convivial gathering as yet another follow up to Ann’s 75^th. Or was it a precursor for Steve's big day!

The following day we did another city walk taking the MUNI into the city and a tram up to Nob Hill to explore some of the lovely homes and history of the area. 

This coincided with Steve's American birthday and we were permitted to walk the labyrinth in the vestibule of Grace Cathedral with free entry as it was a 'spiritual experience'. 

Sausilito and the Harbour

On another revisit of past trips, we caught the MUNI into the Embarcadero, found a ferry ticket and a coffee and then enjoyed the ride across the harbour past the notorious Alcatraz prison that has featured in the news lately with the President looking to reopen the current tourist attraction as a working prison.

Great views of the city and the Golden Gate Bridge. 

We had a very pleasant morning wandering around the shops of Sausilito and ferried back home early in the afternoon after a shared sandwich and glass of wine (not shared) for lunch.

Then with another birthday coming up it was time to make another move back to Capitola.

 

Capitola: Take 2

This trip included a visit to Shadowbrook Restaurant on the banks of Soquel Creek where we had last week watched the light boat display and lighted drone show. An ex–New York City taxicab picked us up in all our finery for the short trip to Shadowbrook. This rambling building sits on the steep side of Soquel Creek. It has many levels and is an iconic local gathering place. There were plenty of tables of guests and also a wedding party on the level down from us. Curtiss joined us having driven down specially for the event which was very good of him. The event by the way was 76 years for me from 1949 to 2025.

The food was lovely and the wine also very good, a local Pinot Noir from Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyards. Back home after dinner we enjoyed a Gayles Bakery Chocolate and Salted Caramel Cake. Not a calorie to be found in it!! Curtiss had done a great job with that order and once again we were hosted by Bruce and Alan. 

We visited the Farmers Market again for some more beautiful fruit and veggies, and then took a tour to Monterey and Carmel Beach. The tour of Carmel Beach and village was a highlight, with some amazing and quite quirky real estate around the beach road at Carmel-by-the-sea. (The second house on the point above the reef) below was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and sold for US$22m 2 years ago.)

We did some further tourist walking back at Capitola along the shore from Pleasure Point heading in the Santa Cruz direction. Lots of surfers in the water, more kelp forests evident and plenty of people out and about enjoying the beaches. We even saw the O'Neill house perched on the cliff where the famous local, Jack O'Neill, perfected his surfboard and wetsuit range.

A visit to Nicholsons Vineyard in the Santa Cruz hills was another highlight. We were joined by Nina and Dan, and Brent, friends of Bruce and Alan and dined on a great picnic sourced from the previously mentioned Gayles. On a beautiful sunny day, we sat under the trees beside the vines in the Day Valley vineyard and enjoyed a very pleasant tasting. Fabrice Leger would have been proud of us. In our 2018 canal boating visit to Bourgogne, we had a a very convivial winetasting at the vineyard Leger et Fils at Tonnere. The first bit of wisdom imparted by Fabrice, and there were many bits, was that you can't taste wine without enjoying some food. 

Ater dinner at home we spent some time chatting with Amy and John, neighbours over the road, sitting in the glow and warmth of their outdoor fireplace.

Back in San Francisco

We headed back to San Francisco for our final few days. The Castro Street Festival provided the first entertainment when we got back. The festival closes off the Castro central streets for the locals to get out and about in their finery (or not). Armed with a beer in my case and a seriously alcoholic G & T for Ann and Rose, we wandered among the sights and stalls and happy people.

This was a lively friendly gathering of the like-minded community with everyone having a bit of fun. It also serves as a fundraiser to help those in the community needing help on addiction or other issues. This fundraising was spearheaded by the very acrobatic Cheer San Francisco squad.

With departure getting closer we ticked off a few more of the 'haven’t done that yet' things and the night trip to Twin Peaks produced some quite good pictures of San Francisco by night.

Galleries

We had a trip to the de Young Gallery in San Francisco Park which featured a collection of the thousands of photos taken by Paul McCartney on tours in USA and England in the early years of the Beatles' success story.  Called 'Paul McCartney 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm' it gave a glimpse of Beetlemania and some intimate and fun insights behind the scene. The photos certainly add a dimension to the realities of the life of these young men catapulted into fame. While not necessarily brilliant, or works of art, this is a great record of the times, and was an excellent opportunity to view this unique collection. 

Alongside this was The Art of the Manga exhibition, featuring original artists from the 1970's.

We had planned to revisit MOMA, and spent a morning working our way through the five floors of displays in this great gallery. This is another 'pictures are better than words' occasion. On advice we went straight to the top level which featured a retrospective of Shirley Jackson's art entitled 'What is Love'. It was fascinating to see the development of her work from water colour to 3D collage hanging pieces.

The following floors held more challenging art: German Art after 1960, reflected the personal turmoil artists and German society experienced, 

an amazing light tunnel over the gallery void and an installation where the viewers were incendiarised, fortunately only on the screen which captured your image as you walked into this display!!

and finally a small but challenging photographic exhibition which among other pieces had an image of Nona Faustine (a famous Black photographer) on a Wall Street intersection entitled 'From her body came their greatest wealth'. Who knew Wall Street first served as a slave market!

Yerba Buena park is just across the road from MOMA, and we were keen to revisit the Martin Luther King memorial under the waterfall in the park. The memorial is a great recognition of the contribution of the man to improving the status of Black Americans in the US, and the quotes on the wall behind the fountain from his speeches still seem particularly apt for America today .

SFGMC

On our final evening we went to listen to  the San Francisco Gay Men Chorus - this is one of Bruce's loves and anchors him in SF.

We experienced a ride to the practice in a Waymo, a driverless car, which in our case happened to be a very nice Jaguar. It is quite an eerie feeling when the car just trundles along with an empty driver’s seat. It never gave us any reason to doubt the "drivers" capabilities.

We were introduced to conductor Jake and assistant conductor Mitch, and warmly greeted by everyone as we listened to some beautiful singing. It is quite something to be welcomed as visitors by 300 mainly men singing the Irish Welcome Greeting. 

On the walk home we visited Martunis for a farewell drink with Rose who, like us, was heading off the next day. Martunis is a piano bar, very dark and absolutely jam-packed, and the cocktails were delicious.

We spent part of our final day doing quick visits to take in everything we hadn’t yet managed to see, first walking in the area to admire local architecture and a great 'bumper sticker' on a bike!

Then a drive with Bruce. This took in the Seven Sisters, Alamo Square, Pacific Heights and a visit to Coit Tower with its wonderful murals of San Francisco in the 1930's and finally Lombard St with its twisty and steep drive.

All in all a wonderful visit to a great city. We had a thoroughly enjoyable time.