The twenty dollar San Francisco dream

When I was 14 I was terrified that the world was about to end in a nuclear war.

To be fair, I wasn’t the only one. It was the height of the cold war and even the British government was anticipating us all going up in a mushroom cloud, delivering a leaflet called ‘Protect and Survive’ to every household, telling us what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.

‘Take shelter under your kitchen table,’ was one sage piece of advice.

Hmm, even at the tender age of fourteen I was pretty sure this would be about as helpful as a chocolate teapot.

‘Jaysus, we’ll all be vaporised immediately,’ was my dad’s cheery reassurance, reasoning that, as we lived perilously close to a US airbase in North West London, we’d be one of Russia’s prime targets.

I didn’t want to be vaporised, I wanted to live, so I started going on CND marches in London, where I learned all about the peace movement, and these people called ‘vegetarians’, and John Lennon songs, and smoking weed (or dope as it was called back then).

I started listening to The Doors and reading novels by Jack Kerouac and immersing myself in the stream of consciousness world of the Beat poets.

And it soon became apparent that one place was the beating heart of this movement…

San Francisco.

I remember sitting on my bed at the age of fourteen, reading a book of Jim Morrison poems and practising rolling a joint using writing paper and cotton wool (so that I wouldn’t make a fool of myself the first time I rolled one for real!) and vowing that one day I’d live in San Francisco and write poems about peace and wear flowers in my hair. I might even become a vegetarian - if I could ever learn how to stop loving bacon.

Then I came across a novel called Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, featuring a colourful and hugely loveable cast of characters in 1970s San Francisco, and I became even more determined to one day live there. 

Years passed.

We didn’t perish in a nuclear war and life happened.

I became pregnant at the age of 25 and abandoned my dream of a North Beach garret in which to write poems and wear daisy-chain headbands.

Every so often I’d think about San Francisco, in the wistful way in which you think about ‘the one who got away’. But although I ended up making many trips to the States over the years, I never made it to the west coast.

Until this week, when I finally - FINALLY! - made it to San Francisco.

When I arrived at my downtown hotel I was thrilled to discover that it was right across the street from the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle - one of the Bay Area’s largest newspapers, with a perfect view of their iconic building from my desk.

The Chronicle was founded by two teenage brothers named Charles and Michael de Young back in 1865, funded by a $20 gold piece, and it was originally named The Daily Dramatic Chronicle, which I absolutely love!

Interestingly, it was also where Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City began life over a hundred years later, as a newspaper column.

As I pondered this the other day while writing at my desk, I had a strange kind of full circle moment.

I thought back to my fourteen-year-old self sitting on her bed, reading poems and rolling pretend cotton wool joints and dreaming of one day being a writer in this city.

It was my equivalent of the teenage de Young brothers' $20 dollar newspaper dream.

And although it’s taken me years to achieve it, here I am, a writer in this city - for a week at least.

Since I got here I’ve been spending most of my spare time in North Beach, home of the Beat poets, retracing their footsteps and hanging out in the famous City Lights bookstore and Vesuvio Bar next door.

living my best life in the trippy Vesuvio ladies bathroom

And as I walk these streets, with Jim Morrison waxing lyrical in my earbuds and breathing in the ever present smell of weed, I can feel my fourteen-year-old free-spirited, peace-loving self sparking back into life inside of me.

And thanking me for finally - FINALLY! - realising her dream.

Until next week,

Siobhan