I got to San Francisco airport at 2pm to find it had been canceled altogether.

“Oh, that flight’s been canceled,” announced the man who I was trying to give my check-in luggage to. “You’ll have to change your flight at the ticket machine.”

The ticket machine said that no flight would be available until tomorrow. “But I have to fly today,” I told the machine, realizing I was talking to a machine but struggling to follow my own advice on this blog by remaining Zen and avoiding Airport Rage.

Then a lady shouted, “Anyone with a canceled flight should line up at Desk 16!” Trouble was, the line didn’t move. There was a long queue and one person at the counter who couldn’t do anything.

People were getting angry. Some seemed to have Tourette’s. They all complained to each other how inconvenient all this was and how their situation was more pressing than everyone else’s. “I have to be there,” they said simply.

Soon the cellphones came out. “Agent! Yes! I want to talk to a person!” they cried to the United answer service. “I have to be there,” some said simply. Some made it on to other airlines and flights, and passed on details like betters with inside tips. “Try Delta… I made the 6.15.”

Other people got disconnected and transfered to other operators who were confused. There were some tears. Those who made it to the front counter were raising their voices to dangerous levels.

Luckily I made it to another airline, but my ticket looked strange, like it had been booked at the last minute. I was treated with deep suspicion. Mysterious symbols were scrawled on my ticket in red. I was told to wait behind a fence. My laptop was swabbed and I was ordered to step into the Explosives Check Machine, which hissed air at me.

The flight left three hours later, but I could still make my transfer in LA. However, upon arrival I encountered a two-hour check-in queue. There were two staff to check in hundreds of people on two Air New Zealand flights, although they had devoted three staff for the Business Class lines. People’s Tourette’s sprang up again. “This is a SHIT service!” blustered the man in front of me. I hung my head, ashamed of my national airline and dog tired of airport gloom.

Somehow we shuffled forward one by one, then ran like athletes and made it onto the flight. We took off at 10pm Sunday night, Monday lasted 30 seconds as we crossed time zones heading west, and we landed at 6am Tuesday, stiff-legged and lugging our cases out into the crisp, early morning sunshine. Free again.

I try and limit myself to collecting postcards. I have quite a large collection now. It may add up, but they generally cost 50c-$1 each, and they don’t take up much room. I used to buy it all: the clothes, the toys, the wooden figures and keyrings. I’ve learned not to.

But the souvenir industry is huge, a billion dollar monster with tempting shops everywhere you turn. For example, I had an encounter with yet another one today when I took a ferry over to Alcatraz Island, here in San Francisco.

Alcatraz was a prison for many decades, housing hardcore prisoners such as Al Capone. It was a windy, bleak, stony place, with narrow cells and little hope (nice views, though). After completing the audio tour, I coincidentally found myself in the souvenir shop. So, what was the building which formerly housed some of the country’s worst criminals selling?

DVDs. Posters of inmates and grim slogans. Alcatraz salt & pepper shakers. Magnets, playing cards, toys, t-shirts, badges, handcuffs, toy knives… and so on. Really. Salt & pepper shakers? Classy. A compulsory photo of me standing in front of an Alcatraz background was on offer for $22.

So when did this madness start? Check out An Ode To Souvenirs, a great piece about the history of souvenirs dating back to Homer’s Odyssey. It reminds us that we buy souvenirs to remember our trips (”we’re trying to buy back our memories”), but also as status symbols to show where we’ve been, and because human beings simply like collecting things. That’s how I feel about my pile of postcards, although I have no idea what to do with them all.

To be honest, my most sought-after souvenir would have to be a snowglobe (I’m a fan of Citizen Kane). They’re on sale everywhere, but I have yet to find a nice one. So I keep looking.

What do you buy when you travel, and what do you have on display at home?

Related Reading:

• Buying Tasteful Souvenirs
• Trash and Trinkets – souvenir buying guide from Australia’s The Age newspaper

… and a windbreaker, because it’s frickin’ cold. That wind blasts in right off the coast. Still, it’s mostly sunny and summerish right now. The streets are steep, with rolling cable cars bulging with tourists and the bell being pulled and the clackety-clack on the tracks. Everyone vanishes over the hill to Fisherman’s Wharf, where clam chowder and boat trips and sea lions on the dock await.

If you’re going to San Francisco
You’re gonna meet some gentle people there…

… and some crack addicts, if you linger around Union Square. Apparently homeless drug addicts are more prevalent here than anywhere else in the States. The SF Chronicle devotes an entire section of their site to it, with sensitive, illuminating articles.

Meanwhile. suits pace in the Financial District, shoppers bustle through markets selling herbs and teas in Chinatown, hipsters sip espresso and ponder life in North Beach, while tourists scurry to galleries in Soma and face the wind heading over the Golden Gate Bridge.

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there…

Really? I’ll have to look for the love-in. It wasn’t on my walk today.

All across the nation such a strange vibration…

The two major earthquakes here were in 1906 (followed by a gigantic fire) and 1989. Haven’t felt a tremor yet…

In The Art of Travel, philosopher and writer Alain de Botton notes that before we visit a place our expectations are unrealistically molded by images of it we’ve already seen in another context, either on TV, on postcards, in films etc. My impressions of San Francisco were thus founded on the following:

A giant, green, angry, scantily-clad man running up steep hills (Incredible Hulk). A deadbeat dad masquerading as a Scottish nanny (Mrs Doubtfire). A teenage girl from Russian Hill being rescued from the ordinary by her grandmother, who informs her that she is a princess of a small European country (The Princess Diaries). Privileged kids living by Alamo Square in a picture-perfect Victorian house (Full House). A lost soul leaping off the pier next to the Golden Gate Bridge (Vertigo).

Vertigo aside, I’m cringing at that list of ‘entertainment’.

What about you? Have you visited San Francisco? What were your impressions?