For my birthday this year we went away to San Francisco for the weekend, the weather was sunny and super clear (if a bit cold), and we spent the day at the SFMOMA (Museum of Modern Art), which I have not visited for many years and is a great day looking at art (it’s huge). I miss going to huge museums, it is one of the things about London that I loved most. Well, the gift shops anyway. The shop at the SFMOMA is probably the best museum gift shop in the world. After we’d been in the gift shop for a while we drove up to the hotel, which is easily our favourite in the city, the Fairmont on Nob Hill. We’ve only stayed there once before, for our anniversary seven or eight years ago, so it’s a real special treat. The Fairmont is historic and very grand, in a classic sort of way rather than a Vegas sort of way. Presidents have stayed there (remember them?), and famously it is where Tony Bennett first sang about leaving his heart in San Francisco, presumably they didn’t have a lost-and-found back in those days. These days if he sang that, he’d have hundreds of comments online from Fox News viewers making up stories about people stealing your body parts here. Nob Hill is very steep, and it’s a big climb to get up here even in the car. We got to our room, thinking we’d drop our things off and go back out to wander about outside, but immediately we saw the view from the window and it was like BAM we ain’t leaving the room before dinner! See above and below. The view looked across a wide view from Russian Hill on the left to Telegraph Hill on the right, with Alcatraz right in front of us. Squeezing down each end of the window we could make out the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid, but I couldn’t squeeze those into my sketches. We relaxed in the room admiring the view and I sketched, as did my son (who’d forgotten his sketchbook but used my iPad). We were up on the twelfth floor, but being on Nob Hill our elevation was really high anyway. There was so much detail. I have dreamed of drawing this view, but there was so much detail there was no way I could do what I did with that sketch from the Hilton I did in 2021, which was a bit lower down (though included the building I was drawing from here). I did my best to keep up with the changing afternoon-evening light, and drew a few smaller sketches as well to show what the light was like. Here is Alcatraz. It always reminds me of the third X-Men movie. 

I drew a couple of quick ones of Coit Tower as well, as the late afternoon turned into sunset, to show the magnificent colours as the light changed. It was last year I think (was it the year before?) that I went up to the top and did that long drawing. I’ve drawn a lot of this city now. I’m not done yet, but the plan was that we’d spend the night in the city, and then next day after my family drove back to Davis I’d go out and do a lot of drawing by myself and get the train home.

Dinner was at the famous Tonga Room, downstairs at the Fairmont, and that was great fun. I love that place. The cocktails ain’t cheap, nor is the food, but they were strong and the food was super filling, I could barely eat half of mine before I was full. No dessert for me. The band floating on the pool played great music, and every half hour the showers came on imitating a thunderstorm. I love the Tonga Room, though I wish the bathroom was not such a walk. The next morning we got room service breakfast, and sat looking out of the window until it was time to leave. Well I sketched of course. The light was very different again in the morning, the shadows creeping in a different direction, getting shorter rather than longer, and it was another clear day. Imagine if it had been foggy. So I drew the view below, mostly of the tall towers of Russian Hill. I’m very lucky to be able to come to this city and to a hotel like this with a view like that and draw it. Ever since I was a kid I loved to look out of a window and draw. I like being down there on the streets among it all, but it’s always special to look at it all from above.   

I never spent the day out drawing. I was already sketched out, and feeling pretty tired. It was cold out, and the thought of getting the train back to Davis later on a Sunday evening with work the next day, well I didn’t fancy it, so I rode back in the car. As we waited I popped across the street and did a quick outline of the hotel, drawing it in later with the statue of Tony Bennett singing about leaving internal organs in San Francisco. I started idly wondering why it was called Nob Hill, but it was time to go home. A nice weekend in the city, and a big thanks to my lovely wife for arranging it.

BTW, I realize from looking at the blog post that the small size of the panoramic drawings do absolutely no justice to them whatsoever, but if you click on them it takes you to my Flickr page where you can see them a little bigger.