If you're going to San Francisco.

It’s probably the coolest bus ride you will ever take if you’re in San Francisco. Your first clue to this is that you are handed a pair of 3D glasses before boarding. Your second clue is the bus itself — a colorful, psychedelic ride that’s spouting soap bubbles floating in the crisp Bay Area breeze. The inside of the bus is wallpapered with graphics that come alive when you put on your 3D glasses, and the seats are benches in the middle facing the windows, on which a documentary is projected and, synchronized with traffic, the bus windows open to reveal the actual places and streets.

Then there is the guide Sarah David of Antenna Theater, the company that created the Magic Bus — a half-tour, half-documentary multi-media ride through the most culturally important districts of San Francisco (Haight-Ashbury, North Beach, Chinatown, and Golden Gate Park). A word about Sarah: If you’ve ever heard the song San Francisco, then you’ll know what the Mamas and the Papas were talking about when they sang:

If you’re going to San Francisco,

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

If you’re going to San Francisco

You’re gonna meet some gentle people there.

We weren’t just going somewhere, we were going to some other time.

Fellas, we’re riding back to the ‘60s, the Summer of Love, of counter-culture, free love, LSD and other drugs, racial protests, the Grateful Dead, and then to the outskirts of the decade — to the ‘50s Beat Generation.

This was no ordinary tour bus. Then again, San Francisco is no ordinary city, as participants of this year’s Pow Wow, the annual travel trade show organized by the US Travel Association, discovered.

Bridging the gap: The iconic Golden Gate Bridge, one of the 20th century’s construction marvels

We were hosted by Delta Airlines-Philippines, headed by Gina Campos who, by the end of the event, declared: “You know, this is the best Pow Wow I have ever attended.” And to think that past host cities have included LA, New York, Las Vegas, Orlando, St. Louis and many other destinations in the US.

We were standing in front of the San Francisco City Hall, watching a colorful and wonderfully choreographed light and sound show with the City Hall façade as canvas. Inside — as well as in the other buildings and tents in the Civic Center — were various buffet tables featuring the best restaurants in the city and the wineries of Nappa Valley and Sonoma County.  

It dawned on me the massive logistics and security planning the city undertook to open the City Hall to thousands of guests. Then the answer came immediately: This is San Francisco. Of course it can pull this off. And with a lot of panache, music, dancing — and trannies walking around dressed in carnivale and period costumes.

It was my third time in San Francisco and, still, it felt like it was my first. It is a city that remains in people’s consciousness thanks to the many movies filmed there, the TV shows, video games (SIM City recreates the 1906 earthquake), its architecture, and its colorful history with artists, poets, writers, hippies, musicians and politicians.

The Magic Bus Tour and a walking tour of North Beach (Little Italy) and Chinatown are wonderful ways to explore the streets of San Francisco.

Haight-Ashbury

Iwas born in the ‘70s, but the decade before fascinated me even as a child, and one of the things I always read about was Haight-Ashbury, the district named after what could be the world’s most famous intersection: Haight and Ashbury streets. Or what Hunter Thompson called “Hasbury.”

San Francisco knows how to throw a party: The City Hall was the canvas on which the light and sound show was projected. The Civic Center was turned into carnival for the night with clowns and trannies greeting guests.

San Francisco, then and now, is defined by social movements. There was the drug-addled counter-culture of Haight-Ashbury, the Beat Generation in North Beach, and right beside Haigh-Ashbury, what’s considered as the first and today’s largest gay neighborhood, The Castro, in large part due to the US military’s offloading of servicemen in the city after they were discharged for being gay. By the ‘70s it was a flourishing neighborhood with townhouses formerly owned by Scandinavian settlers.

It may seem unbelievable now, but back during the hippie movement, the Victorian apartments and townhouses (formerly single houses that were divided up) were cheap to rent.

Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane — they all lived near the cross street. With the drug culture and rock and roll lifestyle of Haight-Ashbury, thousands of young people flocked to the district in the summer of ’67. They were, metaphorically, trout fishing in America — rejecting mainstream society’s culture. They spurned marriage and institutions, which they saw as bondage to free thinking and behavior. They were in the epicenter of a revolution that was being played out simultaneously in New York, Toronto, and across Europe. Elsewhere in America, another kind of revolution was taking place as civil unrest and race riots were happening.

In Haight-Ashbury, with eyes wide open and bare feet touching the ground, the hippies lived freely, they shared their resources (unfortunately, including needles), lived among strangers, expressed their ideas in creative ways, and became “one with the Earth.”

Love was free, but Haight-Ashbury paid the price. The summer peaked at 100,000 people. The neighborhood just couldn’t contain it. The Summer of Love quickly turned into the Winter of Discontent.

By October, they staged a mock funeral for Haight-Ashbury telling people not to come, but to bring the revolution where they were.

Chinatown is a favorite location for movies and TV shows set in San Francisco.

Today, after the gentrification of the neighborhood in the ‘90s, Haight-Ashbury is home to mostly yuppies and well-off tenants in their 20s and 30s. But that corner street remains one of San Francisco’s most photographed landmarks.

North Beach (Little Italy) & Chinatown

The Italian and Chinese Americans had a pasta and noodle contest just recently. The Italians were judged by the Chinese and the Chinese were judged by the Italians.

On a walking tour of Chinatown, I asked our guide, “So, who do you think makes the better noodles?” He looked around and when he saw that there was no local near enough to overhear, he said, “The Italians.”

Both these districts have very active community centers, but it is a telling sign of the flight of the Italians and the flourishing of the Chinese when our tour of North Beach was led by a white-haired man who has lived through history, and our tour of Chinatown was led by a third-generation Chinese-American only in his 30s or 40s. 

“Mr. North Beach himself,” historian and author Alessandro Baccari Jr., said there used to be a beach in North Beach, but now this Italian quarter, which sits side by side Chinatown, is full of quaint cafes, shops and commercial establishments.

Two beloved establishments that have remained in North Beach are still there, attracting Beat fans and the culturally curious: City Lights Bookstore, founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, which published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems; and across is Vesuvio Café in what is now Jack Kerouac Alley, the very same bar where Kerouac and other Beat poets wrote and read poetry, and drank. 

The Embarcadero: On one side is the bay, and on the other side, the city’s skyscrapers

San Francisco’s Chinatown is 24 blocks of herbal and tea stores, apartments, exotic shops, and food markets (locals prefer to buy their produce here because it’s cheaper and fresher). Rudyard Kipling called it “A ward of the city of Canton set down in the most eligible business quarter of the place.”

From The Bridge To Your Plate

Perhaps next to New York or LA, San Francisco’s landmark bridge, its buildings (the TransAmerica Pyramid and Coit Tower are just two) and its distinct rows of Victorian houses are the most recognizable in film and on TV. You don’t need anyone to tell you where it is when you see a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. The TV show Monk is set in San Francisco and routinely includes shots of the city’s skyline and bay.

Both North Beach and Chinatown are favorite movie sets. Cameron Diaz’s The Sweetest Thing was set and filmed in San Francisco. So was Mike Myer’s So, I Married an Axe Murderer. Joy Luck Club, with the movie poster featuring the Golden Gate Bridge, had many scenes on Waverly Street in Chinatown. Then there was Mrs. Doubtfire and her Victorian townhouse and, one of the most famous movies to be shot there, Dirty Harry. Though technically not in the city, who can forget Clint Eastwood’s Escape from Alcatraz and Sean Connery’s The Rock? Further down movie history, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.

The Sean Penn movie Milk, based on gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay politician to be elected to a public office (the San Francisco Board of Supervisors), had many scenes in the Castro district, where he opened a camera shop. 

I wouldn’t be the first to describe San Francisco as a smaller, more compact New York — very walkable, a gourmet and shopping haven with Union Square being the center of commerce — but the atmosphere couldn’t be more different.

This is Northern California, after all, with its laid-back attitude and its always-nippy weather. You can walk from Embarcadero to Union Square during rush hour, as I did, and you wouldn’t feel as if all the employees of the city were crossing the street with you.

Fresh produce at Pier 39

At Fisherman’s Wharf, Pow Wow had its welcome party on a Sunday afternoon, closing off Pier 39 to the public. One section of the pier featured fresh produce from the farms of Northern California — the freshest and biggest strawberries and cherries, organic fruits and vegetables — and another section featured Nappa Valley and Sonoma County wines — chardonnay, Riesling, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir — to go with delectable seafood and steaks. (We started off with the all-time favorite clam chowder in sourdough bread)

San Francisco’s dining scene is exploding with innovative restaurants and chefs — that much our palate discovered earlier in the day when we had brunch at Embarcadero. (Not a good idea to put hundreds of journalists together and more than a dozen wine labels before lunch!)

When I asked a local (Charlie, who married his husband in San Francisco) what the cuisine du jour was, he paused and said it wasn’t a single cuisine that was defining the restaurant scene today, but rather a movement — of changing the way people view food. If its not grown locally (meaning from nearby sources), they don’t want it; if it’s not organic, good luck in developing patronage; if it’s not sustainable, they don’t want it on their plate. They want to know where their food comes from, how it is grown and who benefits from it.  

This going back to nature — of going green and organic in everyday life — has its roots with the hippies. Except back then, from an outsider’s point of view, it seemed just like another crackpot, subculture idea.

But they are probably having the last laugh, because even in the 21st century, the “hippies” are still ruling.

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Delta Airlines flies 13 times a week to the US from Manila, via Narita and Nagoya. Log on to www.delta.com for schedules.