From Ghirardelli Square, I walked down to the waterfront, and took in the view of the C.A. Thayer, a three-masted schooner that is a part of the Maritime Museum at Fisherman’s Wharf. I spent the night on the C.A. Thayer with my class when I was in third grade. We all pretended that we were whalers on the way to Washington, and we learned sea shanties and how to tie knots. She sat there in the harbor, calm and proud, as I viewed her from the hill. I hope elementary classes still spend the night on board; it was a wonderful experience that made me appreciate ships greatly.
I had some appointments downtown, so I drove towards the Civic Center and parked in another lot (street parking in San Francisco is about as scarce as it is in Philadelphia). I walked to Davies Symphony Hall and the War Memorial Opera House, where I spent so much of my time singing in the San Francisco Girls Chorus. Circumnavigating these structures, I realized that in my childhood memories, everything was so much taller! Not that any of these buildings are small, mind you…but they certainly looked much less intimidating as an adult.
I remember everything about that opera house. While I was in the SF Girls Chorus, I got to be in the children’s chorus for Carmen, La Boheme, I Pagliacci, Cavalleria Rusticana, Werther (where I made my SF Opera debut and performed with Alfredo Kraus and Renata Scotto) before I grew taller than the five-foot maximum height. I also remember exiting the stage door by the courtyard and seeing my mom’s car waiting for me, all prepped with pillows and blankets so I could sleep on the way home.
After my trip down memory lane, I met with a friend from Philadelphia who had just moved to the Bay Area, and then I went to sing at a performance class at the San Francisco Conservatory. The class was run by Marcie Stapp, a renowned vocal coach (and the wife of a colleague of mine), and it was an opportunity for students and professionals alike to work on their audition skills.
If you are in the San Francisco area and are interested in working on your operatic rep, you should come to this class. It’s very informal, informative, and the group is supportive. Because it was summertime, the class was pretty empty (only 6 people), but it apparently gets very full once the regular season begins.
Now that I’m back home, I feel like it’s apropos that I am ending my SF tour with a story about singing…after all, I left San Francisco to sing in college, and this time I left to come back to Philadelphia and my singing career here. But I’ll always love San Francisco, and I will miss the smell of eucalyptus and salt air. As I swelter in this humidity back on the East Coast, I will miss the cool, cool fog most of all.
Most people who grow up in a particular city have their own favorite spots that may not be a part of a tourist’s itinerary, but which nevertheless are places to which they return when they are no longer residents, but visitors.
Pier 39 was the first stop on my “tour,” since I knew I’d have to buy an Alcatraz shirt (the ferries to Alcatraz leave from Pier 39). I parked in the big parking lot next to the pier and wandered around taking pictures. It was still cold and foggy (I had forgotten that summer in San Francisco usually means highs in the 50s), so I was on the search for a jacket over my poorly-chosen summer dress. Turns out that I was doomed to spend too much money at the tourist trap, and I ought to just get used to the idea.
Ghirardelli Square holds many good memories for me, because my grandfather used to take me there when I was a kid. I believe that’s where my love for chocolate really started, and even though I know it’s all pretty much the same, I believe in my heart of hearts that Ghirardelli chocolate is the best chocolate in the world. I apologize to the Hershey’s fanatics out there or those that believe the only good chocolate is Swiss chocolate…the fact of the matter is, if I ever leave my heart in San Francisco, it’ll be swimming in a vat of Ghirardelli chocolate.
I was greeted at the door by three noisy mini pinschers, all of whom thought I was a terrible threat, and all of whom also thought they were six-foot tall deadly killing machines. The only way they could have really harmed me, though, is by blowing out my eardrums with their high-pitched barking, especially when the barks bounced off the hardwood floors and cabinets in the kitchen. I sat down in the living room to muffle the sound, and they finally decided I was OK after they were able to sniff me and jump onto my lap.
The family arrived shortly afterward, and we went out to dinner at Camille’s favorite restaurant, Olive Garden. She insisted on changing into her birthday dress (which she had just received a few hours before), and she made the rest of us feel like we were the underdressed entourage, which I suppose we were.
As I mentioned