So I took the ferry early into San Francisco this morning. The city still lay under cloud and fog, and a biting wind blew across the bay. I was quite fiercely reminded of Vancouver in October. Mark Twain observed that "the coldest winter I even spent was a summer in San Francisco", and I was starting to see his point. Not that it was extremely cold, but the wind and damp fog seemed to cut through more than simple frost. I arr...

I celebrated my first full day in the bay area by getting lost in Oakland. I drove up to the proposed meeting point, a list of directions from google maps beside me. I got as far as Martin Luther King Drive, but couldn't find the turn off to University Drive, and ended up driving up, down and around until I ended up in the port. I'd been warned by several people about the east side of the bay in general and Berkeley and Oakland drivers i...

California. The most potent symbol of the American Dream. Immigrants have poured into the state, from other parts of the U.S. and around the world, in the hope of landing a nice house in the sunny suburbs of Los Angeles or San Diego and a life as perfect as a 1950s sitcom. The skyscrapers of Manhattan symbolise America's economic power, and the Whitehouse and Capitol its political might, but California represents something else - America's cul...