Sam is a global road warrior, not for work but for personal interests and betterment.
Time after time, when she is back home, I like to spend some time with her and learn something new and insightful from this humble but super intelligent best-traveled wise woman.
During our latest Sunday brunch last week, I mentioned my slight frustrations about how little I knew about San Francisco, one of the most desirable travel destinations on earth.
Sam agreed. "No matter where I went, as soon as I mentioned I am from the San Francisco area, people always exclaimed with envy that they wanted to visit San Francisco."
I experienced it first handly when I went to a Canada Trust bank to close accounts and told them my whole family was moving to San Francisco, California.
"Oh! I want to go too!" The clerk cried out loud with genuine sincerity. The February winter storms and -30C degrees outside the building also resonated.
Yet, more than twenty years passed, and I felt I was still a stranger to this city. A city that is merely an hour's drive away from my house.
"We flew around the world and visited all over the places, yet, I hardly know anything deeper about this beautiful city in our backyard, other than the golden gate, pier 39, and Chinatown."
Worse yet, we were seized by recent worsening street safety, the alarmingly surging rates of car rampages, and the out-of-control homeless camping on the streets.
"In the end, we became the hostages of a few crooks and tons of mentally challenged people and the typical pessimistic doomsayers of American media," I concluded.
"We became so worried about the possible street crimes non-stop mentioned in the news that we lost interest in exploring the city and experiencing fun."
Sam nodded with exemplary patience.
"There is one simple solution for that." Sam stopped and ensured she got my full attention, which I did. Then she moved on.
"City walking tours."
That was a moment of epiphany.
Loving a city is like falling in love with a person. You want to know more about it; you want to master the most intimate knowledge of every inch of time and piece of stone and wood from which the city was made. You want to tap its vibe and ride on it, ultimately wanting to become a part of it.
Taking these well-curated city tours is like a way the city is talking back to you.
"A city as culturally rich and diversified as San Francisco deserves many city walking tours. It offers more than 80 of them, and I already took a dozen. Why don't you join me next Sunday?" Sam is always ahead of us at many levels.
That solved a long-hanging minor annoying problem of mine. I'd always wanted to know more about San Francisco but could not find a way to penetrate to the next level of intimacy knowledge I wanted.
Yesterday we went. Sam picked the "Nob Hill" city walk tour.
We started our pre-tour walk from SFSoMA to appreciate a gigantic mural made in 1940 by a Mexican artist. Then we ventured to one pizza restaurant that claimed to be one of the best pizza joints in San Francisco that won some serious world championships. We passed by the Transbay Transit Center and its best-kept secret rooftop garden.
There were so many new skyscrapers surrounding that rooftop garden that it made me sigh with awe.
The weather was warm and sunny, as October is usually one of the best months in San Francisco. And on top of that, throughout the six-hour walk through the inner city, we only spotted one red-faced, smiling young man lying at the corner of the street, apparently daydreaming. Gone were the on-streets homeless camps and smells of urines and yelling filthy mental illness people.
I can love this city more.
Because, as I was reasoning with my walking tour companions, if a quarter of the nation’s homeless people swamped in and roaming freely in a city, for years, that city must have a heart of gold.
“That’s the most positive thinking insights I’ve ever heard about this situation.” My girlfriends laughed.
