Into the West

There’s a new kid on the block in terms of getting to the American West Coast from London. It’s the new British Airways London Gatwick direct to Oakland route, which, at the time of my booking, was significanlty cheaper than the cost of other London to San Francisco flights. This means that there’s now a fantastically affordable way to see both Oakland, the San Francisco Bay area and much of Northern California.

Oakland itself is the county seat of Alameda County. It’s the largest city in the East Bay region and has a population of just under half a million. The city has more than fifty neighbourhoods – including downtown Oakland, Lake Merritt (a large estuary and the first official wildlife refuge in the US), East Oakland, North Oakland, West Oakland, areas more loosely divided into “the flatlands” and “the hills” – the latter being the more affluent. While the city has had a lot of social problems over the years, it is rapidly gathering a reputation as an artistic powerhouse, with a thriving visual art, Jazz and music scene. Coming fifth in a recent list of “America's Most Hipster Cities”, Oakland has also attracted its fair share of the hippy community priced out of San Francisco since the 1980s. One of its famous former residents, Tupac, said of Oakland in a 1993 interview, “When I got to Oakland, that's where I learned the game. So that's why I give all my love to Oakland. If I'ma claim a city, I'ma claim Oakland.”

If Oakland is only to serve as your entry point to the West Coast, it’s a good choice as the city is well connected to Northern California via Amtrak (to Sacramento and Berkeley etc) and to San Francisco via the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport). Greyhound buses also operate out of Oakland and cover a vast network – with routes to other Californian cities and beyond.

My own visit took in a two-hour journey, via Amtrak, from Oakland (you can go from Jack London Square - or from the closer-to-the-airport but less salubrious stop of Coliseum – both on the BART) to Sacramento. For just under thirty dollars, I got to travel this spectacularly scenic route along the East Bay area. It’s a fantastic journey for such a low price, with the majority of the track running right along the coast. For many white-collar Americans, Amtrak, like much about public transport, does not have great appeal, but to visiting Europeans who, arguably, use public transport with a lot more enthusiasm, it’s truly a wonderful service. It’s clean, has free wifi, and most trains have cafés that also sell beer. I thoroughly enjoyed my journey to Sacramento on this route, despite my jet lag. I travelled alone and soon enough got talking to a businesswoman who was getting off at Berkeley. Note: if you specifically want to visit Berkeley University, Amtrak from Oakland Airport (via Coliseum or Jack London Square) is a cheap and convenient way to get there without hiring a car.

Sacramento Train Station is a beautiful Beaux Arts building, wide and spacious with a dark wood-panelled interior, providing a welcome shade to the striking heat once you exit the train (once away from the Bay area the temperature rises). This city is the administrative capital of California. Like Oakland, the public perception of Sacramento in the past has not been good, i.e. that it is uncultured and bland – as mentioned in Lady Bird (the film’s director Greta Gerwig hails from the city) - though this is an outmoded, rapidly changing profile. Again, like Oakland, Sacramento now features high up in hipster lists. Because of the success of Silicon Valley (where there have been two waves of digital revolution – the dot coms of the 90s and the more recent social media explosion), property prices in San Francisco and surrounding areas have skyrocketed, the effects of which have been felt also in and around Sacramento. Housing developments are spreading out beyond the city – many of them vast – though these are, in the main, high-end etc. This growth has added to a recent sense of cultural self-sufficiency in Sacramento, which now boasts several notable music festivals, such as the City of Trees Festival in Bonney Field.

Boegar Winery, Placerville

Sacramento was formerly an important distribution point, a rail, stagecoach and pony express terminus – which was vital during the period of the Gold Rush (1850s). It’s the sixth largest city in California and, as mentioned, is currently one of its fastest growing. A friend who lives in the city spends two hours each morning in traffic to get to work – a common pastime it seems for commuters to most Californian cities. There’s plenty to see in this tree-filled city (it purportedly has the largest tree canopy in the US), there’s fine dining and bars, and a tour to the Old Town (or "Old Sac" as it is called locally) is a must: here, much of Gold Rush Sacramento remains intact, with rows of ornate shop facades and original steam trains to admire. The region around the city is also dotted with wineries and a visit to any one of these is a lovely way to pass an afternoon. I visited the Boegar Winery in Placerville, 45 miles east of Sacramento, towards the foothills of the Sierra Nevada – and also Mount Vernon in Auburn, 35 miles northeast of the city.

City Lights, Columbus Avenue

Based for a while in the small city of Roseville, a twenty-minute drive south of Sacramento, I can vouch for the all-round hot weather – which coming as I did from a rainy, cold London was a real tonic. Roseville is a shiny new city, built on an older Gold Rush town. It’s pretty enough and worth visiting if possible.

A few days into my trip, I drove with a friend from Roseville to San Francisco. This is a long drive but the motorways are well signposted and easy to navigate: California is all about cars, after all (think of all of those songs about driving along Californian highways). As a passenger, it was fascinating to see the miles of parched land, making it easy to see why one of the most important issues in this part of the world is water. California has seen several years of record-level drought and this, combined with a spike in population growth, has put pressure on the state’s long-neglected water management infrastructure.

San Francisco is the cultural, commercial, and financial heart of Northern California. The city  - which has several nicknames including “Fog City”, “The Paris of the West” and the abbreviated “SF”, amongst others, was founded in 1776, when the Spanish established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate, named after St. Francis of Assisi. Known as a sanctuary city (for the moment at least, President Trump has threatened to change this status), it is not the comparatively densely-populated metropolis it seems; the population is in fact under a million –though it is experiencing great shifts since the success of Silicon Valley, which is now leading to the gentrification of former notoriously down-at-heel areas such as the Mission District and the Tenderloin. The latter, despite a formerly high crime rate, is experiencing rapid gentrification and house prices are skyrocketing. This, of course, has contributed to a huge homelessness crisis in the city, and it’s hard to ignore this issue. I saw several “tent cities” during my trip (particularly along railway sidings). Nonetheless, the undulating streets, the flower-filled gardens and varied architecture, the gorgeous mix of Victorian, Edwardian and Mission Revival styles, and the imposing properties on streets such as Pacific Heights (with houses built after the 1906 earthquake by the city’s wealthy bankers) - makes for a great European sensibility, justifying the “Paris of the West” moniker. It’s a city that everywhere seems to ooze a liberality and artistic aesthetic. On the ground it seems essentially European, but in the air it is undoubtedly American: the tall skyscrapers, most of them built after the 1906 earthquake, headquarters of banks and large US corporations – and the imposing Golden Gate bridge towering over a deep blue San Francisco bay, a beautiful, optimistic sight indeed.

During my visit, I went to SF MOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) and saw the visiting Edvard Munch exhibition (this was outstanding) and also the more regular exhibitions, including famous works by Frida Kahlo. This really is a world class gallery, all white walls, wood and glass, smaller than its New York sister but more convenient in a way – easier to navigate between exhibits, which here include some of the world’s most iconic paintings such as pieces by Edward Hopper and Rothko. The city is also home to the world’s largest collections of engravings by William Blake, exhibited at The William Blake gallery, which moves from Geary Street to a new location in June 2018.

San Francisco is also a highly literary city, especially famous for the City Lights bookstore on Columbus Avenue, founded by Lawrence Ferlenghetti – who famously published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems in 1956 (which prompted an obscenity trial). From the 1950s to the 1980s, the city – particularly the North Beach area - was a magnet for counterculture in the US, from the Beat poets to the hippies of the sixties to the gay rights movement of the late-seventies. The world-famous Magic Theatre is based in the Fort Mason district and is where the late Sam Shepard premiered many of his plays. A visit to the theatre for theatre and performing arts aficionados is a must; the narrow halls of the theatre are lined with posters of Shepard’s plays, many of them from the 1980s and starring then unknowns such as Ed Harris and Sean Penn.

San Francisco is also well regarded for its cuisine. I ate in many of its vegan eateries, while Martina O’Loughlin in a recent Guardian feature commended San Francisco as having “a fabulous food scene” and singled out restaurants such as Benu (across from the back of SF MOMA) and Saison, and Lers Ros in the Tenderloin.

In terms of transport, the city is easy to get around - via the BART, or tram or bus - and parking whilst I was there seemed to be very straightforward: just park and find a meter. Other fascinating areas of interest include the colourful Haight Ashbury area, which still pulsates with its hippy past.

It is also possible to travel by train towards Palo Alto (home to Facebook etc). I took the Cal Train from the Mission District to Palo Alto Station and explored Stanford University; both Palo Alto and Stanford are fascinating places to visit – as is nearby Muir Woods and areas further towards the ocean such as the spectacular Half-moon Bay. There’s a wonderful farmer’s market on Sundays in Palo Alto, though, in this part of the world (with its high density of billionaires), the cost of living is high (I paid 5 dollars for a head of lettuce, organic of course) – but if you prepare well and will consider public transport it’s possible to see an awful lot of Northern California without breaking the bank.

There are four flights a week from Gatwick direct to Oakland. Prices start from around £400 return.