I love where I live. I love it a lot. But lately, I've been getting pangs of severe homesickness. I miss San Jose. I miss the Winchester Mystery House, and Kelley Park. I miss eating at La Villa and Chaat Cafe. I wonder constantly - Did Sarah Winchester ever get homesick for New Haven? Did Alexander Hamilton ever get homesick for Nevis or St. Croix?
I have an advantage that they didn't have, of course. I have the internet. It allows me to at least look at photos of these places I've loved and left behind. But this, too, is both a blessing and a curse. Because the internet, you see, also allows me to discover places that I never got to see in person. Not just in San Jose, but all over the Bay Area, which will always be my home, even as I make a new home for myself in New Jersey.
This list is meant to serve not only as a place for my wistful longing, but as a plea to my friends back home who are reading this. I never got to see these places, but I encourage you to go look at them! Take lots of photos and send me photos, tell me everything, let me live vicariously through you!!!
1. Grave of Bert Barrett's Left Arm (San Jose)
Why is it that I only learn about this now that I have left San Jose?! All my friends back home, I beg of you - someone go visit and send me photos! Got that? Alright, so, the story is that in San Jose's Hacienda Cemetery, there is a grave plot for Richard "Bert" Barrett, but not for his body - the headstone reads "his arm lies here". Apparently in 1898, young Bert blew off half his arm in a hunting accident, and either he or his family decided to bury it here. (The rest of him lived another 61 years and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.) I just find it fascinating and quirky - in that special San Jose way that I love and miss so much - that someone decided not only to bury the arm, but to give it its own headstone! And the biggest tragedy? It's really close to where I used to live! If only I'd known about it before I moved!
2. Harris-Lass House Museum (Santa Clara)
I actually did try to visit this once - it's right down the street from the pink monastery - but it was closed for renovation. And granted, it may not be the most impressive museum in the Bay Area, but there are two things about me you need to understand. First, I love love love house museums - all the fun of museums combined with getting pretend I'm going back in time? Sign me the fuck up. Second? I'm a bit of a completest who wants to visit every single museum in every area I've ever lived in, and the fact that this stone was left unturned bothers me. I mean, look at how cute that house is. And the museum isn't even just the house - it includes the barn, the summer kitchen, the orchard, and a beautiful garden. I could easily spend a few hours here, and since it's so close to other attractions like beautiful historic cemeteries and that monastery and even the Winchester Mystery House, I totally could have made a whole day of it. I just... didn't.
3. Haas-Lilienthal House (San Francisco)
Speaking of house museums! I've been utterly charmed with this house museum in San Francisco since driving past it way back in 2013 or 2014. And yet, I've never gotten the chance to step inside. Which is a damn shame, really - of all the charming old Victorians in San Francisco, this is the only one which still retains its authentic furniture and artefacts from the Haas and Lilienthal families. It's also got some unique features, such as a basement ballroom and an ornate dollhouse. It's no Winchester Mystery House of course - it's not quite that eccentric - but it is just as decorative and charming, and I long to go inside!
4. San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers (San Francisco)
I recently visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (I didn't make a blog entry about it because I didn't think anyone would be interested, but if you are please tell me and I'll do one!) and discovered that much to my delight, I freaking LOVE botanic gardens. ESPECIALLY when they have giant greenhouses that allow me to come face-to-face with plants from different climates all over the world! But it turns out San Francisco has one of these greenhouses as well - and I did actually plan to go to it before I moved, but alas, every time my plans fell through in one way or another. Which is a damn shame because from its Victorian architecture to its real-life corpse flower, it would have offered me an entirely different experience from Brooklyn's. And? It's the oldest wood-and-glass conservatory in America - older than New York's, even! You just can't beat that kind of pedigree.
5. Filoli (Woodside)
Ah, Filoli - a gorgeous old estate with beautiful period rooms and 16 acres of gorgeous gardens to walk through, as well as a feature in the 80s TV drama "Dynasty". (I'm dead serious.) The name comes from its previous owner William Bourn's motto: "Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life." Is it cheesy? Slightly. Do I love it anyway? You bet your ass I do. This is another one that I'd planned to go to more than once but just never really got the chance. Woodside was just so out of the way. As I said earlier, though, I am very partial to house museums and I do regret never going. If you go, as long as you're in Woodside be sure to stop at the Woodside General Store for a 2-for-1 Belle Epoque Woodside experience, like I always meant to do!
6. Orchestria Palm Court (San Jose)
Back to my beloved home San Jose for another one I meant to visit but plans just could never solidify - although I do still have hope that I'll get to eat here. There are loads of restaurants I never ate at - Naglee Park Garage and San Francisco's Straw among them - but this one is particularly unique in its backstory. The story goes that engineer Mark Williams had a growing collection of turn-of-the-century self-playing pianos that he was running out of room for, so he did what anyone would have done. He opened a restaurant with vintage decor and antique-inspired but healthy-enough-for-a-modern-Californian locally-sourced food, lining the walls with his collection of self-playing pianos! They've even got an in-house old school soda fountain! It's only open on weekend nights and the menu does change often based on what's in-season, so if it intrigues you as much as it intrigues me, that's something to keep in mind.
7. Drawbridge (San Jose)
At the very very very north edge of San Jose there's an abandoned village once known as Drawbridge. I've always wanted to explore some abandoned buildings, even though according to a friend of mine this area is difficult to get to. (As well as technically trespassing on private property.) But think of all the cool photos! Wouldn't that be worth it? I don't have much to say about this one. I just think it looks super cool!
8. Mission Dolores (San Francisco)
Ah, the California missions. While I certainly don't entirely approve of the Spanish missionaries' actions with California native populations, one can't deny some of these old missions are beautiful. I did visit as many of them as I could before leaving, knowing I wouldn't get the chance in New York. Mission San Jose, Mission Santa Clara, Mission San Juan Bautista, Mission Santa Cruz... and yet I missed the one in San Francisco. Ooooops! It's a damn shame I missed it, too. It's the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco, having been founded on 29 June 1776 - roughly contemporary with the outbreak of the American Revolution over here on the East Coast. The interior of the mission chapel, based on photos available online, is uniquely gorgeous. And despite most San Francisco burials being moved to Colma when burials became illegal in the city, Mission Dolores still retains part of its cemetery, which includes some Ohlone graves, now also memorialised with plantings of native plants and a replica Ohlone reed house.
9. The Longest Burning Lightbulb in the World (Livermore)
Yeah okay I probably couldn't make a whole day out of this one - what the heck is there to do in Livermore? - but I'd still like to have seen it with my own two eyes, especially since that thing can't possibly keep burning forever, can it? (At least the website has a live webcam on it...) I kind of admire this little bulb though. It's been burning continuously in a Livermore firehouse since 1901. That's 116 years. It's older than the house I live in now, which was built in about 1912! This bulb has seen two world wars. It's seen Prohibition and the sinking of the Titanic. It's seen the hippies and the yuppies and the weird Y2K panic. That's pretty neat, don't you think?
10. Chapel of the Chimes (Oakland)
I didn't get to spend a lot of time in Oakland at all, which is a shame because despite its slightly unsavoury reputation, there's a lot there I never got to see. I could have made this whole list an Oakland list, really. And perhaps putting a crematorium on this list is just a little morbid - but with architecture as beautiful as the Chapel of the Chimes, can you blame me? It's not like my propensity for hanging out in cemeteries isn't well-known by most of my friends. And this place isn't just a columbarium. It's got Moorish and Gothic inspired architecture, and wikipedia describes it as "a maze of small rooms featuring ornate stonework, statues, gardens fountains, and mosaics." It sounds - and looks - positively otherworldly.
11. Dunsmuir-Hellman Historic Estate (Oakland)
Okay, okay, one more house museum and then I promise I'm done lamenting all the Bay Area house museums I never got to see. Isn't this one just gorgeous though? Built in the neoclassical/Greek revival style in 1899, this beautiful mansion now hosts events, and has been featured in a number of TV Shows and Movies. I don't know as much about it as I do about the other house museums on this list, but I do know that I find it so beautiful that I even once based the home of a fictional character on it, so I'd love to see the inside of it in person.
12. The Wave Organ (San Francisco)
Is it a sculpture? Is it a science experiment? Is it a musical instrument? It's all three, actually. The wave organ is a series of concrete and pipes that you can climb over and sit at and listen as the ocean waves move through the pipes and make sounds. Music, even, depending on how strictly you define the word. I think it would sound like ethereal otherworldly mermaid music, personally. And I'm intrigued by the very idea of a wave organ - I'd love to bring a book and a picnic and just sit and enjoy this, especially since it isn't too out of the way, being fairly close to the Presidio.
13. The Pirate Store (San Francisco)
14. The Tonga Room (San Francisco)
Originally I was only going to include one restaurant on this list, but this one in the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco is just so unique that I can't help but give it its own short little paragraph as well. It's basically a restaurant themed around the Tiki craze that was so popular in the 40s, when this was built. But the retro tropical-kitsch decor and Asian cuisine and cocktails are only the tip of the campy iceberg here. The restaurant features an indoor "lagoon" with a floating stage for the live entertainment, and if that weren't enough, it even rains inside the bar! It's basically like a grown-up version of Disneyland's Tiki Room - minus the avian animatronics.
15. The Inside of the Peralta Adobe (San Jose)
As this building - the oldest in San Jose - is completely surrounded by the courtyard of San Pedro Square Market, one of my frequent haunts when I was in college, I saw it so many times I lost count. But I never once got to go inside of it and that's a damn shame. It's not that you can't go inside - I saw school groups going inside all the time, which implies that you'd be able to even if it was only by appointment. I just need to figure out how so I can see it next time I visit San Jose, since it's not hard to get to. (And then I can eat at the San Pedro Square Market again, double win!)
Well? Have any of these inspired any of you back home to maybe take an outing? Because I was completely serious about sending me photos!
-Nym
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