Once I was over that post-vacation bout of Covid (it finally got me!) which kept me indoors again for a while (it was like 2020 nostalgia all over again), I was bursting to get out and explore places again. Nothing like a busy vacation to make you want to come home and not do much; nothing like being at home not doing much to make you want to get right back out there again. San Francisco is the most interesting place that’s nearby, and it’s always good for some sketching and exploring. Besides, it was going to be about 107 degrees in Davis, so I thought bugger that, it’s like 70 in the city. The Capitol Corridor Amtrak train is certainly a lot more expensive than when I first started coming down here, but the views are still totally worth it. I like to get the very early morning train, and look out the north side of the train (out of the direct morning sun). I love that journey across the Valley, through the Delta, past the Bay. So I painted some of the scenes in my little Fabriano book.

I arrived in the city, early, did my usual thing of go straight to the Ferry Building to eat a couple of bombolini and figure out my next moves. I didn’t have a plan; I often don’t have a plan, even though I love to tell everyone “I always have a plan”, but on my sketching-exploration days, I follow my nose. Draw from something high up. Go somewhere I haven’t been, while also going places familiar and drawing different stuff. Maybe somewhere I haven’t been in so many years. I’ve been down coming to San Francisco to sketch since 2006, a few times a year. It was very sunny, none of the cooling fog, but still nearly forty degrees better off than in the Davis pizza oven. I had a quick look in the Hyatt, thinking I might sneak up to the top floor as I’d done before (I recall sketching from the top-floor restaurant on one SF sketchcrawl a long time ago with some other bold urban sketchers, we asked nicely and they said sure). No such luck, so I jumped on a streetcar and went down the Embarcadero, getting off at Greenwich. There I sketched the Pier 23 restaurant, as it was opening up for the day. I remember coming here about eight years ago when my friends James and Lauren got married, and afterwards we wandered the city having beers, and this was one of those places we stopped at, looking out over the waters with some tasty Anchor Steam, the taste of San Francisco. Actually, one of the other reasons I was in San Francisco was that a few days before, it was announced that Anchor Steam would be halting production, after well over a century of producing lovely local beer. It’s the only beer I like to drink when I’m in the city, it reminds me of stopping off after a long day of sketching and relaxing with a pint or two before the long journey home. I would be looking for that later on though. I finished this sketch, and drew these metal pipes sticking out of the ground next to me, before going on a bit of a climb…