By Michael Ledwith

August 29, 2024

Literally.

For years after we moved back to Chicago from San Francisco I would have dreams that I went back to our apartment at the top of Russian Hill. Sixty feet from Macondray Lane. A block and a half from the Octagon House. With a view of the Bay and Alcatraz from our front steps.

Macondray Lane – Note how steep the street is.

In the dream I fly to SFO. Take the crew bus to the TWA parking lot. Find my BMW 320i, with a crank handle sunroof, waiting for me. Speed out of the lot, on to US 101, listening to America’s best progressive rock station KSAN, turn off Union Street to Leavenworth, find a parking spot, turn the front wheels toward the curb because the street is so steep.

Up the steps, through the entrance door, into our apartment.

In the dream no one lived there anymore. When I opened the door, the front room was empty. No furniture. Empty rooms as I walked through the flat.

But somehow the stereo system was there. Bose 901 speakers still hanging from the ceiling. Turntable, pre-amp and amp on the wood floor of the den.

Stacks of LPs here and there on the floor.

Then the couch would somehow appear in front of the fireplace.

I’d build a fire because it was always freezing on the top of Russian Hill. Have a beer and Van Morrison would fill my dream and my lost life in the apartment with Wavelength.

In my dreams the apartment was always empty and vacant like this. Empty with the exceptions noted above and furniture that came and went based on the whimsy of the dream curator.

In dreams that would leave the pillowcase back in Chicago wet with tears the next morning, I’d leave the apartment, walk down Union Street, and have dinner at the Washington Square Grill.

Washington Square – the Grill was to the left – you might recognize the church from Dirty Harry.

A favorite restaurant when we lived in San Francisco with its magical rose-colored lighting that made everyone look like a movie star.

At the big round table on the right near the bar. Greg and Linda would be there to greet me. Wayne and Ana. Miguel Angel Miranda, the handsomest man in the world, sometimes with his 12-string guitar, sometime not.

In one dream, Christy’s dad Hayes, looking young and handsome, looked around the grill, nodding to the owner and the head waiter as if he knew them. Smiling, perhaps hearing the faint sound of fog horns, perhaps smelling the ocean from the bay a half mile away, asking everyone at the table with his pure sincerity, how are you?

I always thought his three years at sea during WWII and my life since age thirteen in the ocean surfing was part of why we were more father and son, than father-in-law and son and son in law.

Why I loved him so, and why I miss him so much.

Dinner at the Washington Square Grill was part of my San Francisco dream for years. So was driving along Fisherman’s Wharf buying paper cups of crab and bottles of Anchor Steam from street cafes.

After college I had always wanted to live there. Most of my friends did too.

Why?

Movies of course: Bullitt. The Conversation. The Maltese Falcon. Dirty Harry.

It was so beautiful. It was so hip and cool. Rock and roll. Haight Ashbury. Chinatown. KSAN. Fillmore West. The Condor Club with Carol Doda. Sausalito, just across the Bay. Fisherman’s Wharf. Lombard Street.

The dream went away after twenty or so years.

But, whenever I was in San Francisco since 1980, I’d take the same walk: from downtown to 1942 Leavenworth.

Via Chinatown, Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope where he almost offered me a job, a drink at Vesuvio, wandering around City Lights Bookstore, up through North Beach to Columbus Square, remembering the scene from Dirty Harry, a hard left and a steep climb up Union to Leavenworth. A dip cone at Swenson’s.

Down Union to Van Ness. That part of Union so steep that drunk one night, walking up it back to our apartment, I, as a joke, laid down on the sidewalk to see if the street was steep enough that I could roll down it…it was.

To Fort Mason where we stayed when we sailed back from Japan.

Walk to Aquatic Park. Ghirardelli Square. Then while away an hour or two with my new books and Irish coffees at the Buena Vista Bar watching the cable car turnaround. Sometimes watching the fog roll in.

I once drank six Irish coffees there talking about soccer with Jack Hyde, the trainer of the Oakland Stompers.

Then the long walk to Fort Point, cab back to the Mark Hopkins and a drink at the top of the Mark…jackets required.

That San Francisco is gone with the wind. Purposely destroyed by politicians practicing their politics. As if dynamiting Mount Rushmore, although I should probably not give them any ideas. Human feces maps. Shoplifting gangs killing iconic stores. Empty storefronts. Homeless camps. Criminals empowered. Not cool. Not hip. Not the stuff dreams are made of.

But Christy and I…and Wayne and Ana, and Greg, and Linda, and Miguel and Michael Jones in his dream, will always have San Francisco.

For, as Hemingway wrote about being young in Paris:

If you are lucky enough to have lived in San Francisco as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for San Francisco is a moveable feast.

I dreamed about San Francisco the night after I sent this contribution to John Kass News.

I dreamed that its former City Attorney, Vice President Kamala Harris had invited the former Mayor, Gavin Newsom to walk the 1942 Leavenworth tour with her…for old time’s sake.

To reminisce about the city where, as young professionals, they built their resumes. And, as adults destroyed all that was good and beautiful and wonderful about the San Francisco of my dream to build their political careers.

The tour following the suggested itinerary, but with armed guards of course. It’s too dangerous otherwise.

Aides staring at feces apps on their iPhones to protect Kamala’s Manolo’s and Gavin’s Guccis.

Unmarked police cars driving point to avoid street crimes in progress. Palestinian Flags, not American ones, placed here and there along the way to appease academia and the woke California press.

Cutting Fort Mason and Fort Point from the walking tour because, well, they’re military forts and they hold the American military in contempt.

Picketing, not drinking, at The Top of the Mark because Mark Hopkins was a Robber Baron and Nob Hill built on indigenous lands.

Ending up drunk and bitter at the Buena Vista where the bartenders refuse to serve them, and the regulars shun them because the vista is no longer bueno.

Kamala and Gavin don’t miss San Francisco.

Its destruction was a means to an end.

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Frequent contributor Michael Ledwith is a former bag boy at Winn-Dixie, who worked on the Apollo Program one summer in college. A former U.S. Army officer, he ran with the bulls in Pamplona and saw Baryshnikov dance ’Giselle’ at the Auditorium Theater.  Surfer. Rock and roll radio in Chicago. Shareholder, Christopher’s American Grill, London. Father. Movie lover—favorite dialogue: “I say he never loved the emperor.”