San Francisco Ferries

I recently had my first chance to ride one of these. I had to get him pretty drunk, but - oh, wait, wrong kind of fairy. I'm talking about boats here. You know, the ones that take you across the bay in the event that you either can't get across the bridge, due to a major earthquake or lack of car, or you're just plain sick of swimming. Well, I had to go to Marin on Monday (definitely not my choice of places to spend a Monday,) and I got suckered into taking the ferry. Would the bus have been better? No way. It just didn't feel right to hang out on a big yatch on a beautiful day while my mom was laying in a paper dress staring at a very low ceiling up at Marin General. Nonetheless, her boyfriend told me the ferry was faster and he would pay for it, so I went ahead and took it.

I got out of a cab at the beginning of Market Street, at the Embarcadero. This, of course, is where the Ferry Building is. There's not much to say about the building; it's sort of like a tiny, maritime airport. If airports had organic fruit stands in them. Outside, there seem to be two little docks - I took a gamble and went toward the closer one. Success! It was indeed the Larkspur Ferry that would be docking there, supposedly at 1:25. In front of me in line were two teenage girls trying to buy tickets. They had, like me, obviously never done this before. Yet somehow, between the both of them, two heads were only 50% as good as one, and they took 10 minutes to do whatever it was they were doing. I honestly think if they had gone up individually, they would been in and out without making fools of themselves. The next guy took about four seconds, and then it was my turn. Having had time to study the signage all around me, and observe the interactions before me, I came up to the ticket window like a pro and said, "One adult for the 1:25 Larkspur ferry, please." I handed her $6.75, and she handed me a little orange ticket. Then I asked, "Where do I go?" She pointed to a man at a turn style who was standing a mere three feet from me. Oh. Right. So much for my observations.

The ferry was at least five minutes late, so I had some time to check out the waiting area. There were a couple of vending machines, which I remember had Chili Cheese Fritos. I haven't had those in six years and didn't have any then, either. I remember seeing them mostly because later, in the waiting room, Tom (my mom's boyfriend,) and I were talking nervously about which snack foods were better for you, and I brought up Fritos because they have only corn, corn oil, and salt in the ingredients list. (What. I read ingredients lists. So?) For the record, Chili Cheese Fritos have several more ingredients than that, and I do not recommend them as a healthy snack.

There was an assortment of upper class white people waiting there with me. Some of them were even wearing shorts. I hope they were tourists. It was definitely not 70 degrees out there. When the ferry finally came, a uniformed ferry operative came out and opened the big gate for us. It was exactly like when the ranch herd opens the corral gate and all the cows move slowly towards the big truck that takes them to the hamburger factory. It was exactly like that.

The ferry itself is exactly how I described it earlier: a big yatch. I spent a large portion of my childhood in the Seattle area, and to me, a ferry is an incomprehensibly large boat, fitting not one, sometimes two, but often THREE levels of cars. A lot of cars. And there are several upper levels, all of which serve coffee and snacks. The San Francisco ferries hold no cars, and serve booze and snacks.

I wandered around the interior of the ferry, looking for a place to sit with a nice view. Window after window was covered on the outside with a thick layer of salt mixed with carbon solids, and I could hardly see out of it. But dammit, on my first San Francisco ferry ride, I was going to get a nice view. I sure as hell wasn't just going to sit and twiddle my thumbs, doing what I do best - imagining all of the worst case scenarios that could pan out over the course of the day. I needed something in addition to my ipod and The Miseducation of Lauren Hill to distract me. I made my way all the way to front, where I would have had a decent view if not for an enormous ferry worker standing right in the middle of the starboard bow. (I have no idea which side is starboard - I don't even remember what the other side is called. I'm pretty sure the front is the bow, though.) I got up and wandered around some more, trying to avoid the bar. My mom already thinks I'm an alcoholic, even though I'm usually the last one of my friends to get drunk at a party, and anyways I didn't need her thinking about that right before she went into surgery. But wait - what was that door next to the bar? Was that a door to the outside? Was that an old guy with a camera out there? Yes! Outside! Who needs windows, when you could have the only thing between you and the scenery be a giant pair of UV-protected Michael Kors prescription sunglasses? It was beautiful out there. I paced from one side to the other, looking at the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, then later that other bridge that goes to Marin... As I was looking at the Golden Gate Bridge, the fog was settling in on top of it, covering the suspension bridge right down the suspenders, making it look like a regular bridge, stretching impossibly long without support, in defiance of all laws of physics. It got me wondering, what kid of crazy circus acts could they have on the moon?

I also spent some time watching sea gulls follow the boat. They ride the air current that boat makes going 25 knots or so, to get them across the bay faster than they would be able to fly normally. The ones in Seattle do this, too. It felt oddly familiar and comforting to know that I was being followed by a flock of hungry gulls.

The little ferry made it all the way to Marin.

* * *

On the way back, I shared the ride with Tom. He doesn't drive, either, for the same reason he didn't go to Vietnam - he can't see shit. So he had to take the ferry to Embarcadero with me, and then catch the BART train to Berkeley.

At the Marin ferry terminal, Tom and I stood in the cold for at least fifteen minutes waiting for the little boat. I do what I usually do in the cold - mention every 20 seconds or so that it's really cold, just in case someone forgot. Tom was kind of quiet. He had a smoke, and we both listened to birds singing up in the futuristic rafters. I was wondering why they would have designed something so habitable for birds right above our heads. What if i got pooped on?

The ferry came, and Tom and I immediately headed for the bar. He got a plastic cup half full of J&B, neat. I had a Corona with lime. Tom probably weighs less than me, but he seems to have a higher tolerance... I think he's part Scottish.
We sat at one of the tables I had avoided on the way there. Finally, it was time to relax. I was relieved that, despite my brain's best efforts at a worst-case scenario, everything had turned out perfectly. So was Tom. He and I had never spent this much time with only each other to talk to. We had both brought novels with us for the waiting room, assuming there would be some awkwardness, but neither of us had even thought about taking them out the whole day. In the hospital cafeteria, we had talked about our respective ham and turkey sandwiches. In the waiting room, we had talked about hitchhiking in the sixties, buying real estate, being called to testify as a hostile witness, and of course, which vending machine snacks were healthiest. Now, on the ferry, Tom and I talked about war. He and my father had at least two things in common - my mom, and the fact that neither of them served in Vietnam. My dad was lucky enough to draw a high number - 1600 or so, if I remember correctly. Tom drew 16, but was lucky enough to be mostly blind. Tom's father, like both my grandfathers, served in World War II. We talked about how his father had now reached senility, and thought he was on a cruise half the time, and back on the front lines the other half. Tom told me he never wants to get like that, alluding to one of the reasons he never quit smoking. He thinks he's choosing his own death. We talked about his time at Bank of America as a VP. He was there for 25 years before retiring early to become an "unemployed musician." Looking at him now, it's practically impossible to see the VP underneath the unemployed Berkeley musician, through the long ponytail of white hair, and the matching beard and mustache, stained slightly yellow from smoke of various kinds. It's definitely still there though. My mom is lucky to finally have a guy that's her typical type on the outside, but anything but her typical type in his ability to plan ahead.

As it turns out, the inside of the ferry isn't so bad when you're not trying to distract yourself. The view at night looks fine through the grimy windows - the grime just blends in with the fog. I'm glad you can't fit a car on the San Francisco ferry, because then there would surely not have been a bar. And I prefer the laid-back, California, have-a-drink-on-the-yatch mentality, over the rush-hour, Seattle, grab-a-coffee-and-go-back-to-the-car-deck mentality.

The San Francisco ferry gets an 8.9 out of ten.