San Francisco is a place rather shockingly different from any I have previously visited. Never have I been in a place where nearly everything seemed to match in age, to belong in a specific time. It would be so easy to film a period movie there. Also, everything there looks faded—cheerful or garish pastels seem to whisper that they once were brighter, before the California sun. The hills seem to have tipped the houses down their flanks, cramming them into cozy closeness, and everywhere ornate ironwork, decorative stone, or crazy color schemes allow each row house to scream, “I am unique! I am different!” in its own special key. It is quaint and busy, individual yet still a big city: full of the reek of people, the breezy surety of its own importance, and the deafening havoc of life, traffic, music, commerce, death.