Heyyy, welcome back to my personal saga of San Francisco!

Like I said before, my connection goes beyond me and back to family like my great aunt Martha who called the City home from the 1940’s, and to another Martha who set up shop there – quite literally – long before that. 

So last time, I brought my San Francisco story up through high school days where it could have ended since I’d reached “going off to college” age. Except it didn’t – because I’d journey all of three miles from home to attend UC Berkeley and, per some dorm room lottery luck, the view from my freshman and sophomore windows would still give me a look across the Bay!

More than anything, it was joining Cal’s Glee Club (the height of coolness!) that deepened my relationship with the City. I spent a choral retreat in some World War II barracks at Fort Cronkhite in the nearby Marin Headlands. I was among those who “kicked off” an NFL divisional playoff with a performance of the National Anthem in Candlestick Park (former home of the Giants and 49ers). And we Glee Clubbers helped fill the audience at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall for a “sing-it-yourself” rendition of Handel’s “Messiah”!

Plus, how many people do you know who lent their voices to the launch of the California Lottery?! This gig involved riding on one of the City’s iconic cable cars and singing a bespoke jingle (“The California Lotterryy-yyy – Lottereyyyyyyyyyyy!!!”) as backup for celebrity John Davidson with his impeccable and entirely wind-resistant coif!

A cherished Glee Club tradition was crossing the Bay every Christmastime for caroling! A couple busloads of us would fan out through the festively decorated City and celebrate the season at every kind of venue from retirement and nursing homes to fancy hotels. It was so much fun, I’d do it all today if I had the chance! (Might make sense to wait until December though.)

Outside of my own performing, there was room to catch other acts in San Francisco too! From the dance floor of the legendary Fillmore, I saw hard-working Huey Lewis and the News in their up-and-coming days. I mellowed my harsh by taking in soulful Dan Fogelberg’s show at the Cow Palace. And my gang used to love hitting comedy clubs like the Punch Line! I never had the privilege of seeing local boy Robin Williams onstage – but I did spy him at the back of a venue once, exploding with empathetic joy whenever a fellow comic’s joke landed to laughs. 

Another parting of the San Francisco ways for me might have been my graduating from college and heading off to seek my fortune! Except it wasn’t. (Not so much, anyway, in the seeking terms – and not at all in the fortune ones.) Instead, I sampled Bay Area commuter life with an ad agency job at an office right by the Montgomery Street BART station. I was only there about a year, so I missed my one chance to witness the financial district’s bygone New Years tradition of throwing last year’s desk calendar pages out of office windows. Other than the creating-horrible-mountains-of-garbage aspect, those day planner snowstorms seem like they’d have been a glorious thing!  

After that, I finally did go out into the world, moving to SoCal and ending up a paralegal in the entertainment biz. Now that I’ve shifted to working as a tv extra, some of my experiences in the City have come back around to proving more useful than just being bits of nostalgia! I did take acting classes at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, and I worked as an extra in several films – so yeah, it only took 40 more years to fulfill my destiny!

What followed my moving was a long period where I didn’t see the City much. I think I was afraid of getting homesick and rushing back – “throwing away my shot” and all. Little by little though, LA became my happy home, and what’s also come back around is my visiting the Bay Area as often as I can to catch up with friends – 

And San Francisco is definitely one!

When I was little, Dad took me to see a theater company called The Lamplighters that specialized in performing his beloved Gilbert and Sullivan – and now, as fate (and exceedingly talented friends) would have it, I’m enjoying that same company’s charming performances again!

I’m strolling to the Embarcadero with lovely (and Lair-y) friends for coffee and cocktails – at the appropriate hours for each beverage, of course! (You know, more or less.)

I’m “retreating” again to the Marin Headlands, this time to hike its history-laden hills!

Truth be told, I recently ran out of steam before fully tackling those hills, being not nearly in the kind of shape I was when I ran the Bay to Breakers. That’s a spectacular piece of a San Francisco racing tradition that began in 1912 with a route going from the Embarcadero, straight up the steep Hayes Street Hill, through Golden Gate Park and spilling out onto the Pacific Coast Highway right at the glistening sea! My big brother Jack did one better by becoming part of an even older Bay Area racing tradition – he conquered The Dipsea, with its course that climbs and plummets its way from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach and has been run since 1905!

As it happens though, our family’s history with San Francisco is even older. 

Before Great Aunt Martha, there was my three times great grandmother, Martha Edgar. She was born in Canada in 1820, widowed in 1847 in New York City, and remarried (unhappily, it seems) in California in 1860. According to a series of San Francisco business directories, this widow and mother added “entrepreneur” to her bio by running a shop at successive locations, selling items like stationery, toys and “fancy goods”!

I don’t know what her shops looked like – but I’m fortunate to know how Martha looked at the time from this “cabinet card”:

It’s close to the size of a playing card, and the back indicates it was taken at the photo studio of Bradley and Rulofson on Montgomery St. – just a short ways from Martha’s shop locations and from where I used to work. Maybe we strolled some of the same paths…

So my kinswomen were among those who came to San Francisco over the years, perhaps for the chance it offered to reinvent themselves. Martha Edgar ended her days in Oregon – but fate would bring her descendants back to California and to the Golden Gate! 

Through Native American times, Spanish rule, the Gold Rush and the Earthquake of 1906, San Francisco seems to me like this place where grand dreams have been built and dashed and built back up again – layer on layer on layer. And as the City continues to change and grow (not without its pains), I’m delighted to be back visiting this dear old friend that helped form and inform me once upon a time!

I don’t know. Maybe I’m being too sentimental about what I consider my ever-pleasing, ever-surprising City by the Bay. (Saw my first Waymo vehicle there last year – just sayin’!) Maybe one of these days, a visit will leave me feeling bored or disappointed – as if I’ve finally seen and done it all there.

Except it won’t.

Cheers!