Duck tales

My aunt Barbara, Eric and I spent Saturday morning making quacks on the Bay Quackers SF Duck Tour. We need out of town visitors to provide excuses for us to do this sort of thing, which I had been looking forward to for a long time.

The tour is about an hour and a half and has a land-based portion which goes through North Beach, Chinatown, and SOMA, and then it has an aquatic portion where the "duck" vehicle launches into the water near China Basin and cruises around by the ballpark at about 3 nauts, also known as pretty much standing still. This allows the Captain to invite any children on board to drive the duck in the water, which several of them did. The youngest of them, who looked to be about 4, repeatedly ignored the instructions to just hold the wheel steady and turned us in a pretty aggressive 720 degree spin before the Captain plucked him out of the seat and handed him back to his father.

The tour included a wealth of information about San Francisco's history, notable people and places, and even some colorful nuggets about the present day. I would guess about 40% of it was true or close to true and the rest was greatly exaggerated or just completely made up. Was Columbus Street really created in response to Italian fishermen's demands for a shortcut from their North Beach enclave to the wharves? Did the Chinese really have an underground tunnel network snaking around under Chinatown until it was shut down by the city post WWII? Did the Bush Man really put two children through college by scaring tourists at Fisherman's Wharf? Is Riceroni really made in Chicago??

In addition to a lot of information of dubious accuracy, we also got to keep our "quackers," the yellow beak-shaped noisemakers we had gleefully honked during the tour. Walking home last night from a local bar where we caught the last few minutes of the Super Bowl, Eric re-discovered his quacker in his pocket and made some quacks at the corner while we waited for the light to change. A young gentleman leaning against the light post smoking chortled in our direction.

"Y'all tryin' to call ducks...in San Francisco?" he drawled, and then guffawed loudly. "Well I never."