Across America Lara MarlowePerhaps returning to the state where I was born meant more to me than I realised. For whatever reason, I was seized with a kind of euphoria when the Pacific Ocean appeared over the aircraft wing.
California is what it always has been, my brother Bob said on the telephone: It's really nothing, and everybody fills it up with their dreams and ambitions. The things that originally drew people here, like open countryside and clean air, exist no longer. Our generation was the last to smell orange blossoms on balmy evenings.
I always thought the Pacific was the end of America, and possibly the world; the place where everything fell into the sea. But California is also the laboratory where global trends begin - Levi's, Hollywood, the hippie movement, personal computers, gay culture, the tax revolt...
In his book Brown: The Last Discovery of America, the gay, Mexican-American San Francisco writer Richard Rodriguez says the Californian melting pot is the wave of the future, that America will no longer be black, white, Asian and Hispanic, but a mixture, that is to say: brown.
Rodriguez began our conversation by quoting Karl Marx, who said California would be the epicentre of a new civilisation, that the 1848 Gold Rush was more important than the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, because it would bring the entire world to California.
For all its power and invention, California always had a reputation for eccentricity. The first person I met at San Francisco Airport was a blonde make-up artist named Payton Lamb, lugging a portrait of Che Guevara.
"Jean-Paul Sartre said he was the most complete human being," she said solemnly. "I really admire him. He was a revolutionary who did not want to take power."
But sometimes, as Emily Dickinson wrote, much madness is divinest sense. Alexandrino Wenderson (25), a Brazilian-born cab driver, said there was "no way" he'd vote for George Bush. "He's caused a lot of trouble," Wenderson said. "He might start something else. It's like he's trying to fix something that can't be fixed."
Few cities display their wealth and poverty so brazenly as San Francisco. Sak's Fifth Avenue, Neimann Marcus, Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermes are clustered around Union Square. Macy's has already opened its Christmas boutique.
Men rummage through rubbish bins in front of the shops, and beggars are lined up every 10 metres down Powell Street.
"Spare change? Spare change?" a woman with grey hair asked me. "Don't use my last name. Don't take my picture," she pleaded. "I could be arrested for panhandling." Jane (60), a former research assistant at Stanford, suffers from degenerative arthritis and lives on $760 a month, of which $485 goes in rent. "I'll vote for Kerry," she says. "I think he'll take the burden off the poor."
San Francisco's Democratic mayor has proved unable to stem homelessness in the city. About 10,000-15,000 people live on the sidewalks, pushing their belongings around in shopping carts, sleeping on cardboard boxes.
Renee Saucedo is a Hispanic community leader whose centre has lost $200,000 in government funding since Bush came to office. She decries the "waste" of scarce federal funds on armed security guards for ferries crossing San Francisco Bay. Al-Qaeda is not going to target the ferries, she says. The money would be better spent on the homeless.
Republicans like Paul Lynd, president of the gay political group Log Cabin, wish Mayor Gavin Newsom would take "quality of life" measures similar to those that banned homeless people from the streets of New York. "Tourism is our number one industry. The people going down the hills in cable cars see all these beggars. It's terrible for our image," Lynd says.
California is the richest and most populated state in the US; the world's sixth largest economy, with 38 million people. But the figures are misleading. "California is not this place where everyone is wealthy and drives a Mercedes," Saucedo insists. "People are struggling and living in poverty. The majority of Californians are not covered by health insurance."
Saucedo and Lynd both graduated from UC Berkeley, but they inhabit different worlds. Her office is a windowless cubbyhole in the La Raza Centro Legal, which helps Hispanic immigrants. Lynd's law firm, in a glass tower overlooking San Francisco Bay, caters to corporate clients.
Statistics show how economically polarised the state is. Twenty per cent of California's population earn more than $250,000 a year; 20 per cent live on less than $14,000.
Saucedo's hero is Caesar Chavez, who as leader of the United Farm Workers fought for decent wages for immigrant labourers. Lynd's hero is Ronald Reagan, "because he inspired people to believe our best days were ahead of us". Saucedo prefers the term Latino to describe people of Mexican and Latin American origin. "Hispanic is the term the government imposed on us. Latino is a name we gave ourselves. They always called us a minority. In a few years, we will be the majority." Hispanics comprise more than a third of California's population already.
"In the Bay area, George Bush is like a devil," Saucedo continues. "He's spending billions on the war instead of health care and education. Latinos don't support the Iraq war, because it's immoral. Remember, America several times invaded Mexico."
In his glass tower, Lynd still thinks it was necessary to overthrow Saddam Hussein. San Francisco has always been a centre of anti-war protest, and he was annoyed by demonstrators who tried to shut down the financial district at the beginning of the war.
"It's weird," he continues. "We're at war, but it's not like the second World War, when food was rationed and women stepped into men's jobs. We don't really feel it in our daily lives."
More than a million gays and lesbians, an estimated quarter of homosexual voters, voted Bush in 2000, when the Log Cabin (named after Abraham Lincoln's birthplace) group to which Lynd belongs endorsed Bush's candidacy.
He estimates 15 per cent of San Francisco's population is gay. They were delighted when the Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a "domestic partners" bill into law this week. There are more than 50 college scholarships reserved for gays nationwide. And California has spearheaded the "gaby boom". There is no obstacle to homosexual couples raising children obtained through adoption, in vitro fertilisation, surrogate mothers and other means.
The annulment of more than 4,000 same-sex marriages by the California Supreme Court did not discourage gays in San Francisco. In this extremely litigious state, five law-suits are challenging that ruling.
But Lynd was deeply disappointed by President Bush's decision to side with the religious right against gay marriage. Though he feels betrayed by Bush, he cannot bring himself to vote for John Kerry.
The senator from Massachusetts says he favours civil unions rather than marriage for gays. But when he campaigns in Missouri, an important swing state which has just amended its constitution to ban domestic partnerships and civil unions as well as same-sex marriage, Kerry agrees with the amendment. Like many other interest groups, gay voters can't figure out where Kerry stands on the issue. "This is not a year of good choices," Lynd concludes.
Tomorrow: Lara Marlowe concludes her journey with a look back at the people and issues she's encountered while crossing America.