And when you've lost that part of the city, you've lost San Francisco. When I arrived in the City in 1950, I came overland by train and took a ferry from the Oakland mole to the Ferry Building. I thought perhaps it was Atlantis, risen from the sea. I certainly saw North Beach especially as a poetic place, as poetic as some quartiers in Paris, as any place in old Europa, as poetic as any place great poets and painters had found inspiration. But this past weekend North Beach looked like a theme park, literally overrun by tourists, and kitsch was king.
Automobiles destroy it, and they destroy more than the poetry.
All over America, all over Europe in fact, cities and towns are under assault by the automobile, are being literally destroyed by car culture. But cities are gradually learning that they don't have to let it happen to them. And in San Francisco right now we have another chance to stop Autogeddon from happening here. Just a few blocks from here, the ugly Central Freeway can be brought down for good if you vote for Proposition E on the November ballot. I've been to other great cities on poetry tours and found not a single independent bookstore left in neighborhoods where chain gangs have moved in.