Station.
        We erupted onto Market Street, country rubes staggered by the enormity of it all, trying to collect our bearings.
        “Uh, do you think we could stop and get something to eat?” Kyle asked in his tentative way as we walked up Market Street.
        “Yeah, let’s,” I said.
        Still speaking softly, “Do you think we can find a place with no pan handlers at the front door?” He had an aversion to pan handlers.
        I shrugged. “I don’t know. We can try.”
         After a few blocks, we found a place with no panhandlers at the front door, went in, ate burritos, then walked again.
        We had planned to take a cable car up Powell but at the turnaround, a line of tourists snaked halfway down the block, so we trudged up Powell, immersing into a kaleidoscope of people, sights and sounds: honking horns, beautiful women, dazed sightseers, impatient businessmen, old-world Chinese, new-world Japanese, elderly people, flamboyant queens, so much color and commotion that we were both overwhelmed. At O’Farrell, we stopped and leaned against a picture window. Each time the traffic light changed, a throng of every race, nationality, culture, and language would move past, countless people in a hurry.
        Powell began climbing more steeply and reached Union Square, a flat, open city block surrounded by tall, blue-glass buildings. There was a colorful Korean celebration of some sort, a stage, dancers in blue, yellow and purple gyrating to whiney, steel-guitar sounds and thudding drums. Speeches echoed over a PA system in English and Korean, then more dancing, olive-skinned, black-haired Asians everywhere, tents around the perimeter selling cell phones, health foods, skin lotions, and anything you could think of.
        “Is this some sort of religious ceremony?” Kyle asked.
        I shrugged. “I don’t know but it’s really spectacular.”
        He was eyeing the dancers. “Imagine how many years it would take to learn all those intricate steps, and with such precision.”
        “Yeah. Amazing,” I agreed.
        We continued up Powell, then turned right at Bush. When that street crossed a precipitous bridge, we had a bird’s-eye view of a street far below. We realized it was Stockton heading through a tunnel beneath us, yet existed on top of the hill too, the same street running through the tunnel and over it at the same time, a unique city-built-on-a-mountain oddity. I spotted a familiar sight