Sixteen miles per hour and I’m absolutely terrified. You wouldn’t think a
grown man could be terrified at such low speeds, but it’s because I’m being
chased up one of those Steve McQueen hills by a tram.
Unlike Steve McQueen, I’m not in a Ford Mustang. If I were, it wouldn’t be a
problem, would it? But instead of the Mustang, I’m in a bright yellow buggy
with a top speed of 40mph. That’s 40mph if you threw it off a cliff. Top
speed up a San Franciscan hill seems to be 16mph. Sorry, 15mph. No... 13,
11, 9?
The tram is filling my wing mirrors and dinging its bell. I arrived in San
Francisco only yesterday, and it feels like four in the morning, I don’t
know whether trams are like buses (they can stop) or trains (they can’t). So
I have no option but to keep the throttle open, lean forward, partially
close my eyes and pray.
The brow of the hill is within sight, but it’s too close to call: bystanders
on either side of the street are stopping to watch the slow-speed chase.
It’s not often you get to see a tourist squashed by a tram.
Three hours earlier, I was in a garage near Fisherman’s Wharf, receiving
buggy instructions. “Don’t go up steep hills, be careful on tram tracks and,
whatever happens, avoid the Interstate,” said Dave as he wheeled out the
buggy. Dave is the Scottish general manager of GoCar, a unique city-tour
concept set up by expat Brits two years ago.
Like Tetra Pak, Innocent Smoothies and Archimedes’ principle of buoyancy,
GoCar seems so obvious now someone else has thought of it. It’s a buggy that
does GPS guided tours: eureka! No maps, no guidebooks — just you, a buggy
and a computerised woman chatting you around the city.
After the brief safety briefing, the obligatory signing of a form saying
everything’s my fault if I get killed, and a final reminder not to go on the
Interstate
(“To be honest, only a complete moron would manage to do that”), Dave showed
me how to fire up the engine (just push a button), how to turn the woman on
and off (just push another button) and how to reverse (just get out and
push). Then I was off. For the first hundred yards, I couldn’t stop
laughing, because it’s very, very exciting to be in an open-top buggy in San
Francisco (even if it was bright yellow and I looked like a big penis in my
helmet). Then I panicked a bit and pulled over to check I could remember
which side of the road — sorry, street — Americans drive on.
As I pulled over, a police car did as well. Right behind me. Immediately, I
became furtive. The only really illegal thing I’ve done in my life was to
steal a penny chew from Woolworths.
I was eight, but hardly a day goes by when I don’t feel guilty about it. I’m
just not the criminal type. So why is it that whenever I go through security
at an airport or walk past a policeman or park in front of a police car, I
start behaving like I’m on the FBI’s most-wanted list?
As the cop got out, I just sat there, stiff as a board, sweating like I’d
swallowed 60 condoms of heroin, thinking: “What have I done, what have I
done, what have I done?” As ever, the cop wasn’t interested in me: he just
walked straight into the coffee-and-doughnut shop, and I continued
unmolested.
With the coast clear and the heat off, the sultry GoCar GPS woman, whom I
would come to know affectionately as Pamela, piped up to say that we were
approaching San Francisco’s tourist hot spot: Fisherman’s Wharf. “But we’re
going to escape all this and find the real San Francisco,” she said.
Which sounded great. With coachloads of excitable tourists waving and taking
photographs because a man with a big penis helmet in a bright yellow buggy
is more interesting than tacky Fisherman’s Wharf, I set off along the coast.
Pamela pointed out Don Johnson’s restaurant and OJ Simpson’s school before
refusing to say which house in a very posh street belonged to Robin
Williams.
Then we tried our first hill, and it reminded me of going to the cinema in my
Vauxhall Nova when I was 17. I’d be trying to impress Josie or Caroline, or
some other equally unimpressable girl, and we’d hit the precipitous River
Hill just before the cinema. The Nova’s struggle up that hill became a
symbol of my own adolescent struggle to comprehend the mysteries of the
opposite sex: a slow, embarrassing death, grinding through the gears.
Fortunately, the woman in the GoCar was a computer and, when we made it to
the top, she was, unlike the Carolines and
Josies, still as chirpy as ever. “Phew,” she said. “You didn’t think we’d make
it up that hill, did you?” At the Golden Gate Bridge, I stopped to watch the
mad surfers flirting with the rocks below. Then Pamela guided me to some
less familiar vantage points, so I could take pictures without lots of
tourists laughing and taking pictures of me, before we headed off to Ocean
Beach to put a toe in the Pacific.
By now, I was au fait with the controls of the buggy, and I had decided that
Pamela was perfect. Two hours driving around a city with a woman doing the
map-reading and we (a) hadn’t got lost and (b) hadn’t had an argument. This
is perhaps unprecedented in the history of the automobile.
For the remaining two hours, I lived the north Californian dream. I was
cheered on by non-ironic hippies in Haight (“Cool, man. Dig the buggy for
sure, dude.”). I battled through a bee-pollen smoothie at an organic cafe
off Chestnut Street; I overheard a man phoning another man from the farmers’
market in the Ferry Building because quinces were in: “Geoff, you won’t
believe this: they’ve got quinces. I know. How many shall I get? Great. How
do I know they’re ripe? Great. I’ll call you from the asparagus stall.” And,
when my confidence in Pamela was sky-high, I went down Lombard Street, which
is or isn’t the world’s most crooked street, depending on whom you ask. By
the time I got to the bottom, I’d been photographed a thousand times. I now
know how George Clooney feels. Such an invasion of privacy.
All that was left to do was to get Pamela back in one piece. I’d avoided the
freeway, got a complete overview of Frisco and hadn’t looked as stupid as
anyone using the other unique mode of tourist transport that is popular here
— the Segway. There was the garage, just over that next hill. I’d make it
before the next tram came along. I was sure I would.
Ding-ding.
NEED TO KNOW
Matt Rudd travelled as a guest of British Airways and the St Regis hotel
Renting Pamela: you can hire a GoCar (00 1 415 441 5695, www.gocarsf.com)
for £22 for the first hour, £17 for the second and £12 per hour after that.
After five hours, there are no additional charges. The buggy seats two and
there’s room in the boot for cameras and day sacks.
Getting there: British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com),
United (0845 844 4777, www.unitedairlines.co.uk) and Virgin Atlantic (0870
380 2007, www.virgin-atlantic.com) all fly nonstop from Heathrow to San
Francisco; from £370.
Where to stay: the St Regis (125 3rd Street, 00800 3254 5454,
www.stregis.com) is the newest deluxe offering in town, with doubles from
£238, room-only. More modest is the Washington Square Inn (1660 Stockton
Street; 00 1 415 981 4220, www.wsisf.com; doubles from £76), in a great
location and beautifully furnished.
Tour operators: don’t go all the way to San Francisco without
exploring the rest of northern California. British Airways Holidays (0870
243 3406, www.ba.com/holidays) has 10 nights in and around San Francisco,
with three nights at the St Regis, two in Sonoma, two in Lake Tahoe and
three in Yosemite, from £1,510pp, including flights from Heathrow and car
hire. Or try Kuoni (01306 742 888, www.kuoni.co.uk) or The Vacations Group
(01582 469661, www.vacationsgroup.co.uk).
By sea, by sky, by silly scooter: more ways to experience San Fran
YOU DON’T have to ride a bright yellow buggy to explore San Francisco. There
are other equally special ways to see California’s greatest city. You could
go...
BY KAYAK
Escape the hippies and health freaks. Get out into the bay in an appropriately
ecofriendly kayak. City Kayak (00 1 415-357 1010, www.citykayak.com) offers
a range of tours from £27, most of which require no paddling experience
whatsoever — although if you fancy the three-hour adventure out to Alcatraz,
you’ll need to do nine whole press-ups to prove that you haven’t got bingo
wings.
BY BIKE
Show the Americans that you don’t need a gas-guzzler to get around town. Use a
bike. No, not a Harley, a good old push-bike. Blazing Saddles (202 8888,
www.blazingsaddles.com) offers mountain-bike rental from £4 per hour, with
tandems from £6. Cycle across the 1.7-mile Golden Gate Bridge (there is a
cycle path), then get the ferry back.
BY PLANE
Okay, enough non-polluting green transport. Let’s go flying. With SF Air Tours
(00 1 800 450 6958, www.sfairtours.net), one-hour tours in an acrobatic
Cessna start at £79pp — you’ll sweep over the bay and buzz the Golden Gate
Bridge, all with you at the controls. Ridiculously, you don’t need any
flying experience, let alone a pilot’s licence — as demonstrated by Ed
Grenby, who writes about his “flightseeing” experience in the next issue of
the Sunday Times Travel Magazine (on sale January 4; £ 3.40).
BY SEGWAY
Yes, the world’s most embarrassing form of transport — the one so easy to use,
only George Dubya falls off it — is available for your delectation. The San
Francisco Electric Tour Company (474 3130, www.sfelectrictour.com offers
daily three-hour tours of the waterfront on the 8mph Segway for £38, giving
innocent bystanders ample time to laugh their heads off at you, you idiot.
