It was light jacket-and-scarf weather in San Francisco’s Haight district last night. A welcome change for a veteran of New York’s inferno-like temperatures, but nonetheless odd. Leaves were fluttering and tree branches were slightly swaying in the ocean winds. But what an appealing place to savor for a few days. In Alan Parker‘s Shoot The Moon (’82), Albert Finney quipped that San Francisco “could die of quaint.” I think it’s more stricken with exquisite design sense than anything else.

Even the bums…excuse me, the homeless have a little something extra, a slight panache. This morning I passed by a couple of no-accounts squatting on the swidewalk, and one of them had a fishing pole jammed into a chain-link fence with a paper cup saying “be kind” hanging from a fish line. Openly characterizing would-be good samaritans as fish that the bums are trying to hook and reel in…very cool! I didn’t give them any money though.