SAN FRANCE

Evening Post, Issue 73, 23 September 1936, Page 9

SAN FRANCE

ITS EXOTIC FLAVOUR

BETWEEN TWO BRIDGES

Anyone who hears or reads the word bridges in these aays thinks at once of San Francisco, whose Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge, both rapidly nearing completion, are the two largest and most spectacular achievements of, their kind in this or any o trier country, says a writer in the "Christian Science Monitor." Obversely, anyone who writes of San Francisco has to guard against the temptation to haui statistics from his kit and fling them at the defenceless reader. Yes, I could tell you just how many miles of freight cars would be required to haul the steel, exactly how many tunes the wire in the cables would girdle the globe, and precisely how many 33,000----ton battleships would equal in displacement the concrete poured for the bridge foundations. But there is one little fact that stir 3 me more than all the tremendous figures. In more than three years of construction work on the Golden Gate Bridge there has not been a single accident of any consequence. Swirling tides have raced a hundred feet above men's heads. Wild winds have dashed against the workers on the catwalks 700 feet in air, but always each worker has returned safely to his home. Never has the thought of money .or speed taken precedence over safety. The officers and the engineering staff have taken extraordinary precautions to protect every worker as though he were indeed a brother; It is a record to increase one's faith in American business. Materialism has doffed its hat to humanity. THE CITY BETWEEN. Between the two bridges is a city that is a world in itself. San Francisco is not merely an agglomeration of 750,000 persons working for their daily bread. It is a cross section of civilisation as we know it in this third decade of the twentieth century. It is sound, eager, young, altogether American, and yet in a sense it is more cosmopolitan than New York itself, for whereas New York's contacts are largely with Europe. San Francisco is tinctured also with the exotic civilisation of the Orient and the subtle grace of Old Mexico. It has its extensive Latin quarter, its Greek and Russian quarters, even such specialties as a Finnish quarter and a Basque quarter. The most casual wanderer over Saa Francisco's hills and dales quickly captures the feeling that he is walking through the world in an afternoon. Could anything in London itself look more Londonesque than does the Temple Bar Eestaurant at the end of a cul-de-sac called Tillman Place? Yet just a few blocks distant Canton climbs a hill and then climbs down again. One sees very few Chinese women in the congested little triangle which New York calls its Chinatown, but in San; Francisco there are many of them in evidence and many slant-eyed youngsters too. It is fascinating.to Watch the girls in the telephone exchange. They know their thousands of Chinese clients by name and those who call up seldom bother with numbers. Lee Hong Far calls up the exchange and asks for Wong Sung. And the, girl gives him Wong Sung. . . • THE LATIN QUARTER. The Latins live beyond this-trans-planted city of China. They dwell at the base and on the flanks of Telegraph Hill and in that extensive section known as North Beach, thought the beach itself is only a dim memory. This is not a synthetic Latin quarter, not a hothouse edition ■ of the Boulevard Montparnasse. It is the permanent home of many thousands of mixed Latins; The Italians of San Francisco are a: fine type, law abiding, energetic, valuable to the city. -One of them, Angela Rossi, is Mayor of the city. At a perl dinner, I met the rival editors of twoimportant Italian newspapers of the city. They were on opposite sides of the Fascist fence. Political divergence could go no further. But both wera urbane, citty, charming—and ■ convincing. Colonial Mexico is the root of oldest; San Francisco and one finds this well preserved in the Dolores Mission, sixth in the famous chain established ia Alta California. That doughty pioneer Juan Bautista de Anza picked the-site but in the background at Monterey was Father Junipero. Serra, a. Franciscan friar who really sought, as few ever have, to walk in the footsteps ot the great Poverello of Assisi.