"All Midwesterners adore San Francisco, the city of Sam Spade and the waterfront, the basso complaints of the big ships, the trolleys rumbling along Market Street, the Mediterranean colors of buildings, the river of fog in the Golden Gate, and the beautiful hybrid faces of young people.

Back where I come from, we mostly look like we walked out of a 1958 Sears catalog, but here, everyone is in a minority, and sitting outside a coffee shop, I’m struck by the handsomeness of this passing girl with Asian eyes, Hispanic cheekbones, Creole skin. An old bum stops at my table and I give him two bucks. He may be the reincarnation of a Gold Rush tycoon, one of the many who rose suddenly to vast wealth, built a fabulous mansion on Nob Hill, and died young of something we now have a pill for. He moves along and a man in a suit and a tall dark-haired woman in Italian sunglasses pass each other, and he stops and turns, stunned by her beauty as she strides across Irving Street, gone from his life forever. You shouldn’t come to San Francisco unless you’re prepared to have your heart broken."

--Garrison Keillor in "The Art of Travel"