I needed a day in the city, and wanted to explore another part of town. Davis was getting too hot, and it’s about 30 to 40 degrees cooler down there. I’ve been spending too much time under trees lately. I took the early Capitol Corridor, the familiar journey across the Valley and past the Delta and along the Bay, and I can’t help myself sketching those colours, it will never be enough. I have sketches of this trip going back a long time now. It’s all a learning process. I listened to, what did I listen to this time? Pulp I think, still in the excitement of having finally seen them play live after thirty years of waiting. I listened to another podcast interview with Jarvis Cocker where he talked about some of his favourite records, and how he never lost the love of vinyl as a format for listening to music, the side of a record being just long enough to experience it, before doing something else like reading a book. I see that. It’s how I felt growing up, when CDs finally came along I missed that ‘two-sided’ construction, but could see that bands in the mid-90s still tried to think of their albums in that way. I was thinking about records and books as part of my destination, though I didn’t think I’d buy any, because I only brought a small bag, and anyway I have too many and not a lot of space at home. It’s good to buy tickets to places where you can look at them and then draw things. I always worry that by spending so much time looking at and drawing things I forget to experience them as well, so I decided that I’d draw what I can, but not be too worried about it. So I arrived at the Transbay Terminal, the fancy bus station in downtown San Francisco, and found the bus that would take me straight out to the Richmond area, and up to Clement Street.

Although I’ve heard about this place for years, I had never been to Green Apple Books, not this one anyway. I drew the smaller one over in the Inner Sunset about three years ago, another September day exploring the city. Clement Street and that whole area on the north side of Golden Gate Park was somewhere that in all these years I had never explored, it felt just a bit far away. The 38R bus got there pretty quickly. I passed by buildings I thought would make good drawings, and old pubs I thought I should take note of and check out some day. I got out somewhere up on Geary near 6th, and walked over to Clement to find Green Apple Books. Fellow sketcher Suhita Shirodkar had sketched the bookshop recently, which gave me the idea to finally come over this way, and it was a good place to explore. A day like this is a big effort, getting up early and catching a not-inexpensive train at 7am, not making it to my destination until about 10am, just to wander about until it was time to make the long journey back. It was foggy, and there were people around having breakfast or brunch depending on how organized they were. I ate a pastry and stood opposite Green Apple to sketch it. I was on a sort of elevated wooden platform where people can sit and drink their coffee, and could see over the parked car. It’s funny, when you stand near a parking spot, there is always the chance that a large car might park in the way to block your view, but I find that sometimes people think about parking there, but do not when they see me sketching. Those people are usually in cars that would not block my view anyway. Then there are those, usually in larger SUV-type cars, that don’t mind blocking my view if they park, even if they notice me. I don’t worry at all, these are occupational hazards of the urban sketcher and I just move down slightly (I am not standing there with an easel), it’s what I expect when I pick a spot to draw. It’s just an observation, I’m not making any judgements about the type of people who drive bigger cars being less thoughtful, and actually I would like to tell those who choose not to park where I am sketching that it really doesn’t block me at all if they park, I’d rather they got the good spot (and save it from a minivan or something). But really I think they just assume I am a traffic warden. Anyway, here I had a good view of the shop. I decided to do all my sketching before going in to browse.

This impish fellow stands in front of the shop, holding a red book and a green apple. The bookshop is much bigger inside than I realized, and going up and down its stairs was like an adventure book in itself. My son would love this place, I thought. My teenage self would too, and after all when I was a teenager what would I do on a Saturday other than get on a train or bus and go exploring for interesting bookshops, usually finding myself in the foreign languages section. There were things I wanted, but I exercised restraint, and just bought a postcard with a painting of the shop on it, and a canvas tote bag for my son. Despite having worked in bookshops, I sometimes get overwhelmed by it all.

Before I went into Green Apple, I decided to sketch the bakery outside of which I was standing. Schubert’s Bakery has been making cakes since 1911 and having eaten one myself I can confirm they are delicious. I got one in a little box, covered in all sorts of fancy chocolate, and had to go back in for a fork because it was bigger than expected, and filled me up so much I never ended up eating lunch. I could not get a certain song out of my head as I sketched, “Blue Suede Schubert” by the Rutles. A good bakery is an essential part of a good neighbourhood, I have always thought that. Somewhere for amazing cakes. Places that do not have this are very much worse off for it. If people end up getting the generic bland cakes from your Targets or Safeways or whatever, the world becomes a much more boring place. Show your local bakeries love! And eat lovely cakes. When I was done sketching and looking around this part of Clement, I walked down a bit further, where there was a local Chinese festival happening, with little stalls lining the street and music, and people canvassing for local elections. I found the bus that would take me further down Geary again and explored a different part of the area.