Last Sunday, I walked from the famous Fisherman’s Wharf to the equally renowned City Lights Books; I wanted to see this sacred site. Founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the bookstore and publishing house became a haven for free thinkers and anti-authoritarian political writers like the Beat poets.
Any peripatetic adventure in San Francisco will include hills. The sidewalks actually sparkle. Trolleys are heard clanking toward you before you see them rise over the hill.
As I moved through the touristy area, the colorful row houses and trendy wine bars gave way to the graffiti and grit of a tunnel overpass. The wind off the bay dried the sweat from my face. Chinatown restaurants selling Pig Knuckle soup.
Everywhere my legs took me, I saw dogs, many of them Chihuahuas, parading about with their owners. It later occurred to me that the city was named after Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals.
As I walked back from City Lights, a small unleashed dog came trotting up the street. He barely acknowledged me, so intent on his purpose.
An older man with a striking resemblance to Mark Twain (bushy white hair and walrus moustache) smiled at me from a doorway over a steaming cup: “That doggie’s going visitin’!”
It was a day for pilgrimages.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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