The Allure of San Francisco

I first visited San Francisco on a lightning quick three-week circumnavigational perimeter road trip around the US with my cousin Alex in 1988. We stayed in style at the Royal Pacific Motor Inn on Broadway at the edge of Chinatown and North Beach and motored our way up Route 1 in our 1983 Hondo Accord hatchback. I was so enamored of the Bay Area that I moved out to Berkeley a year or so later during a gap year between high school and college. I lived with a group of UC Berkeley students on Claremont Avenue, worked with a wine-swilling landscaper and bought a red 1978 Toyota Land Cruiser, which promptly broke down, not before I removed the doors and drove around the Southern California desert. After a stint at the University of Vermont, I transferred out to San Francisco State chasing a girlfriend. We quickly broke up and I embraced living as a student in the Sunset District, biking along Ocean Beach and getting an English degree at SF State. I met a new girlfriend, lived in Larkspur and explored the Lost Coast far up the Pacific Coast. Fast forward ten years after time in Zimbabwe, New Mexico, Vermont and the Virgin Islands, I ended up meeting my wife who was working as an attorney in San Francisco. I lived again on Claremont Avenue and savored the Bay Area. San Francisco’s pull remains strong over the years. The skyline, the Bay Bridge the Golden Gate, the sun, the breeze, the eucalyptus, the views. These photos are from our most recent visit back in 2024. I flew a DJI Mavic 3 drone for the aerial views of San Francisco and a Nikon D850 digital camera with a 28-300 mm lens.