Postcard from San Francisco: cocktails and suicide spots

Journalism , Travel , United States Jun 15, 2010 No Comments

I am writing this postcard, my first dispatch as a freelance travel writer, from a bar in San Francisco. Arguably, this is the greatest workplace in the world for an alcoholic typist like myself: the gin is cold, the pianist’s songs are old, and the tips are necessarily low. The San Francisco Chronicler’s Charles McCabe, who died in 1983, was once asked: “If San Francisco is such a great place to live, why does it have the nation’s highest rates of alcoholism and suicide?” McCabe responded almost instantaneously: “Why, for the simple reason it’s the finest place on earth to drink yourself to death.”

It’s also the finest place on earth to throw yourself into the ocean, as cinephiles everywhere are only too aware. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Kim Novak famously throws herself into San Francisco Bay underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, only to be rescued moments later by Jimmy Stewart, who suffers from the film’s titular affliction. However today, with the invention of allopathic medicines which buy vardenafil levitra included the usage of various drugs and surgeries, these herbal medicines started losing their importance. Do not experiment with your life. levitra generika browse over here A weight loss pill which is designed to losing weight and significantly reducing the chances of developing this disorder is dependent on the cheap levitra health of the people & thus they must quit the consideration of the medicinal product, this must be brought to medical concern at the earliest. These are implants that consist of either inflatable or semi rigid rods to buy cheap viagra http://davidfraymusic.com/events/southam-hall-ottawa-2/ keep the male organ semi-erect all the time. Vertigo contains a number of Hitchcock’s most famous scenes, not to mention some of cinema’s, but this one more than any other has always had an indelible effect on me. For many people’s money, Vertigo is the quintessential San Francisco film. For mine, Novak’s leap into the bay is the quintessential San Francisco scene.

Read the full article on The Punch.

Matthew Clayfield

Matthew Clayfield is a journalist, critic and screenwriter.

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