We went to Pier 39 last weekend, mainly to see the Aquarium of the Bay but also to see San Francisco. As a teenager I spent a lot of time in San Francisco either just hanging out or working. It is fun to visit every once in a while, and our visitor (I’ll call him ‘Michael’ from now on) wanted to see the city. When he first came to the states he flew into San Francisco but he really doesn’t remeber seeing any of the city or the bay.
Pier 39 was fun. They have some interesting shops and a whole lot of touristy stuff. The aquarium was a bit of a disappointment in that I was expecting more, something on par with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We were expecting to spend much more time there than we actually did. So we spent more time wandering the pier and Embarcadero, the road in front of the pier.
Along the Embarcadero you can find many street performers of various levels of ability. There was the every popular “take a picture with a punk: $2” guy with foot long spiked mohawk and all, the bongo drum dude, the steel drum guys, the acrobats, and the robot guy. The robot guy was painted all in silver and just standing there with a cup in his hands. If you paid him any attention he bagan to move and make odd noises. All of these things were very new and jaw-dropping for Michael.
We went to eat at the pier at Chowders. As you may guess, it sells as its specialty clam chowder. Michael, being Korean, thinks that every Asian person that he sees might also be Korean. The person that took our order in Chowders was Asian, but come to think of it, everyone working there was Asian. Anyway, he wanted to know if she was Korean. She wasn’t.
Chowders is unique in that they serve their soup in a bowl made out of a round loaf of sourdough bread. I was hungry and ate my bowl…
On the way out of the restaurant the woman who waited on us was heading quickly out the door with a cigarette in her mouth. Michael was very shocked and surprised to see a probably college aged woman smoking. In Korea, it is very unusual to see college age women smoking. Perhaps society has changed some, but I would say that there is a definite negative stigma attached to women who smoke. The exception to that would be the 할머니 crowd. They can smoke without any problem.
I asked Michael if he would smoke when he got older. He said that he didn’t want to but that he probably would. There seems to be a social obligation to smoke if you are a man. Michael seems to understand this and most likely will not try to oppose it, whether he wants to smoke or not.
All in all it was a very interesting day. Everyone got an interesting view of the world beyond the country. Nobody started smoking, yet.
