Yeah, and you've also got a pretty good view of where you are too. "How romantic." "Isn't it, Tim? Look from here." You realize why they picked it. It's surrounded by brutal currents, supposedly sharks - the whole number.

Okay, back to North Beach. What do you like to do when you're there?
There are a lot of cafés all up and down North Beach. There are a bunch of restaurants that have been there for a long time. And it kicks at night - all up and down North Beach. I think people are going more for like Tosca, City Lights, and all the restaurants there. City Lights is a great bookstore. It's wonderful. Green Apple Books is another great bookstore, for new and old books. They call Jeannette Etheredge [owner of Tosca] the Night Mayor of San Francisco. A lot of people hung out at Tosca: Hunter Thompson, the cast of The Right Stuff when they were shooting the movie. It's almost like the Russian embassy too. Because she knew like Baryshnikov and Nureyev and all of those guys. It has a pool table in the back, and it has its own clientele. People like it dark and kind of moody. On an on night, it's pretty wild.

When you returned to San Francisco in 1976 after attending Juilliard, had the city changed?
Not that much. It was before the dot-com boom, so it was a quieter time. I went back and was taking workshops. It seems like fern bars were big then. Most of them are gone. Washington Square Bar and Grill is very much still there. That's where you used to go and see Richard Brautigan. That is actually a very sweet place to go. There's another great restaurant on Washington Square - Ed Moose owns it - called Moose's Restaurant. Traditional, but they've got an interesting clientele. They have a great history. Washington Square Bar & Grill was kind of like a writers' and poets' bar. Specifically, I remember seeing Brautigan in there a lot - in different states of disrepair.

What are your favorite sites?
The Golden Gate Bridge. Fort Point, which is under the Golden Gate Bridge, is kind of impressive because it was this old battery, and then you look over, and you're right under the Golden Gate Bridge. Golden Gate Park is quite lovely. Oh, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum is amazing. It's quite beautiful. It's very impressive from the outside because it looks kind of like a samurai fortress done by Frank Lloyd Wright. But it's quite beautiful in the sense that once you walk in the space, it's really extraordinary in how it accentuates the art. But you're also just struck by how the space works. Way beyond feng shui.