Thursday 26th April 2007. Dine Out For Life day, San Francisco.

How many people are there in San Francisco, or indeed in any city around the world, that don't know where they are walking?

I would argue many as I head back today along The Embarcadero that the answer is very few. Do you know what is under your feet?

The buried ships of San Francisco...Along the Embarcadero once stood a series of floating warehouses that acted as storeships during the gold-rush.

In the early 1850's with buildings in short supply, the ability to store incoming cargo until prices rose made warehouses immensely profitable. Some of those permanently moored vessels remained in place simply being covered by the in-fill as the area was reclaimed.

Vessels such as the Rhone, LeBaron and the William Gray which lies buried 18ft beneath the sidewalk along Battery Street between Filbert and the Italian Swiss Colony Building. There are infact an estimated 40 such gold-rush vessels entombed under the streets of San Francisco.

My first stop today is to be Levi's Plaza a pleasant spot to sit and write before I head off up Telegraph Hill.

The White Angel of San Francisco...

While I turned my head that traveler I'd just passed melted into mist...maybe we all see too little??

"It was Westering and Westering. And when the old men came to the edge of the continent and saw they could go no further, they broke down and wept. Down and out in the waterfront in Frisco. The end of the line. Out of work. Out of Food. And out of hope. San Francisco - at the end of the line - had always had more than its share of transient men, on the move, looking for work. During the Great Depression of the 1930's the number of people without homes and without food overwhelmed the city's many charities, as bread lines wound around city blocks, and each day, soup kitchens fed one hot meal to thousands who otherwise would not survive. Here at the foot of Telegraph Hill, from June 1931 through September of 1933, one woman carried out her own plan to help. Her name was Lois Jordan, the soup kitchen she set up on Abe Reuff's junk-filled lot, bounded by the Embarcadero and Battery, between Filbert and Greenwich, became known as the White Angel Jungle. "Seamen without ships, longshoremen with no cargo to load, railroadmen out of jobs, carpenters with nothing to build...penniless and friendless in a big city, they have been fed, clothed and mothered by Mother Jordan"".

It was certainly symbolic that the waterfront office-kitchen her men built for her was in the shape of a land-locked ship...symbolic for me of the fact that she was the one ray of hope in an otherwise desperate situation, the one passage out of despair and also interesting in the fact that under her soup-kitchen in the subterranean world lay all those buried warehouse ships that few, if any, of the men would have known about.

In 1876 a group of San Francisco citizens purchased four lots at the crest of Telegraph Hill and bequeathed the land to the city as a public park in memory of California's pioneers...and trust me don't drive up here, walk the steps, it's a great climb!

The view from atop Telegraph Hill only serves to confirm for me that the Bay Bridge is the more beautiful.

From White Angel Jungle at the foot of the hill to Coit Tower at its crest the Great Depression is played out in very different ways.

The tower was built in the depression era and dedicated in 1933 as a memorial to a true city character, Lillie Hitchcock Coit, who had died in 1929 leaving one third of her estate for the purpose of adding beauty to the city she loved.

Aged seven she had come to San Francisco with her wealthy Kentucky parents. She was destined though to be saved from a terrible fire by the volunteers of the Knickerbocker Engine Co. #5. Later seeing firemen struggling up Telegraph Hill she dropped her school books and joined them becoming in the process the #5 mascot, rarely was she to miss a blaze.

And her life was one of colour. She married Howard Coit of Telegraph Hill against her parents wishes, she smoked cigars and often dressed as a man to enable her to gamble in the saloons of North Beach. Indeed when an envious relative tried to shoot her and a friend who ran to her aid was killed she fled to Paris. In 1923 after years in Europe where she was a favourite at the Court of Napoleon III she returned to San Francisco where she died aged 88.

So as for her tower...It is a 210ft tall tower of fluted reinforced concrete by Henry Howard with interior fresco's by local artists. These murals were part of a 1934 Public Works of Art Project and fascinatingly for a tower built at the height of the Great Depression the murals contain a strong political message about American exploratory characteristics. These are scenes of bustling industry, inventiveness and commercial strength...This is the land of plenty, of the great American Dream...yet all this was painted against a backdrop of unprecedented poverty?

And a nice aside...the tower is designed as a fire hose nozzle reflective of Coit's admiration for the city's firemen.

And a little history...During the gold rush days a lookout station stood on Telegraph Hill to observe and signal the arrival of incoming vessels.

Now I am off to Lombard Street, the world's crookedest street with eight sharp turns on its forty degree slope which were constructed in the 1920's to allow traffic to safely descend the steep incline...but these switchbacks are world famous to every child because of Herbie, the Lovebug!! Here I get chatting to the mailman...now that's quite a job in these parts!

I really love the way this city flows with the topography of the land as I wander the streets of Russian Hill and Nob Hill...And I get to meet the coolest Big Issue seeler...I think its called Streetwise here, but anyway; he was an older African-American gent who had been well-travelled, though he kept insisting I was Irish.

Off through the Chinatown Gate to eat at Cathay House joining an illustrious list of diners that includes my fellow Chautauquan President William Jefferson Clinton and the likes of Chairman Jiang Zhen Min, Nancy Polosi and President and Mrs Bush Snr; but then again this has been the place to dine in San Francisco's Chinatown since the days of FDR and Eleanor.

Appropriately I am a rat having been born in 1972, but apparently that means I have been blessed with great personal charm, a taste for the finer things in life (well that is certainly true) and considerable self-control...the world will be the judge?

Tucked down Maiden Lane (no:140) just off Union Square sits an unimposing building that remains for the most part unknown to most San Franciscans and visitors alike and yet it is arguably this city's greatest architectural treasure. The Xanadu Gallery is a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece. As you descend from its bubble lights around the body of the building you really do feel that you are inside a champagne glass.

Designed as the V.C. Morris Giftshop this now gallery space specialises in art and antiquities from around the world and what a place for these treasures inside a champagne glass as it pours.

Today it is San Francisco's day to host Dining Out For Life supporting the fight against HIV and Aids and here it is a full 25% of your dinner bill that will be donated by participating restaurants to the fund.

I dine tonight at the ultra-trendy 2223 on Market, but even here in liberal educated San Francisco these people talk s*** politics. The conversations I listen too are so small minded and localised and ignore the great big world out there beyond America's shores.

Also I have to deal with stereotypes...sorry, but I first tried a restaurant called Mecca which I could not stand for more than a few minutes. It was wall to wall stud muffin, all waxed and buffed chests and identical. Why can't people think for themselves and be individual?..but then again, the conversation in this place is so boring and stereotypical!

Human beings can be so superficial and that saddens me. I wish more people would say what they actually want and act on their dreams and then maybe the world would be a better place?

Anyway, being loyal to the project themes I stuck to local produce...let's hope California's finest red will drown out the ignorance around me? By the way this is a fantastic spot. Great service from James Orona, my waiter and great food. It is buzzing here with a lovely cocktail bar for pre-dinner drinks...I didn't try it after all you look such a sad-o drinking alone...that's not my bag!

And thanks to the manager, Kyra Rice-Leary for a lovely evening!