5 July 04

Riding the Ferry

As Numenius says in his post from yesterday, we took the ferry from Vallejo to San Francisco and got deposited right at the ballpark rather than at the Ferry Building owing to some crisis or another. It gave us ample time to wander around SBC Park, enjoying what has to be one of the great sports arenas of the world.

When you go to a city by ferry rather than by driving there over a bridge, your whole perspective of the city changes. Obviously, you’re looking at the city from below rather than from above, with all the literal and metaphorical implications; but there is somehow this shared sense among fellow ferry-riders that we’re ON to something: we share a secret.

Cities are formed by arteries and what’s between them; organs, if you like. Arriving by ferry deposits you plonk in the middle of an organ. You bypass the bloodstream, go straight for the heart. It’s a good way to travel.

It’s also what my father used to do in the early 1960s; take the ferry from Tiburon to the Ferry Building. I always feel a connection with him when I do this. The ferries, the buildings, the city have changed, but not, I think, that essence.

Posted by at 07:52 PM in Nature and Place | Link |
  1. My brother works in the CBD of Sydney. He is so lucky that he lives in Manly and travels to and from work every day on the Manly Ferry. Your organ metaphor is equally apt in Sydney as arriving at Sydney’s central ferry terminal is like being injected straight into the heart of the city (after a leisurely cruise on the harbour). That would make working in Sydney CBD almost tolerable.

    — Geoff    6. July 2004, 02:35    Link
  2. Yup, absolutely right-cityheart-to-cityheart. I had that sensation after the earthquake in ‘89 when they reactivated the ferries while the Bay Bridge was down. (And when I was a little kid, my biodad would drive his car onto a ferry in, I think, Oakland, and we’d float over to the City for big outings, drive through the Ferry Bldg.) I had some temp job in the City in ‘89, so went over every morning, all foggy and chilly-I’d forgotten that sensememory. Thanks for reminding me!

    — Doc Rock    6. July 2004, 07:37    Link
  3. Travelling by ferry has something so soothing—and almost mystical (and mythical) about it, too.

    If I can, I always take the Larkspur ferry into San Francisco, preferably the slow one. In fact, recently they changed all runs to the fast ferries, and people have been very unhappy about it. They want the slow ferries back … and I don’t blame them. There is quite a little society of commuters on these slow ferries, with certain people always taking certain seats and getting certain drinks in the mornings, like coffee or tea, and drinks, beer, usually, on the way back in the afternoons.

    I used to also love taking the ferry from Vancouver (Tsawassen, really) to Schwartz Bay on Vancouver Island, when I used to live in British Columbia, Canada….

    — maria    6. July 2004, 19:58    Link
  4. Years ago part of my journey to work by motorcycle involved taking the Woolwich ferry across the Thames. Although the river is pretty wide at this point, it’s still very much a river – just a ribbon of water threading it’s way through the capital. Yet on misty autumn mornings something magical happened. With the far bank completely hidden, the routine trip turned into a voyage into the unknown – some days it fun to imagine we weren’t on the Thames at all, but out in the middle of the North Sea. You couldn’t have told the difference.

    — andy    7. July 2004, 02:53    Link

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