San Francisco 1994 (Travel Flashback)

Flashback is the appropriate word here -- this is 2400 Fulton Street, which, when I was growing up around the corner, was owned and occupied by the members of Jefferson Airplane.

We used to sit on the concrete ledges in front to wait for the bus to school every morning, and the previous owner used to let us play in the backyard, so we felt very proprietary about the house and didn't see why we had to stop snooping around just because someone else lived there.

Sometimes we rang the doorbell and talked to whoever answered: Jack, Jorma, Marty, unknown young women with long hair and miniskirts. (Never, much to our disappointment, Grace.) I was only inside once, on Halloween, when we were invited to scoop loose M&M's out of a huge plastic bag. No other children had come by so they encouraged us to take all of them, thousands and thousands of candies. Which, of course, my mother made me throw out.


The house was white when they bought it, and then it was green, and then for many years, black with gold trim. In 1994 it was back to this unadventurous cream color, but it's still a mansion in a neighborhood that has never really required one.

Viewed from behind, from the street below, it looks more like its neighbors, which are mostly flats and apartment buildings, with an occasional single family house.