Okay, so you want to ride on a cable car... I can deal with that. Cable cars are cool in their way -- though at $5 a ride they hardly count as public transit any more. Still, it's neat that the city keeps these museum pieces on the road (you understand that cable cars are entirely mechanical 19th century technology... down there in the track there's really a cable being pulled along, and the car reaches down and grabs the cable in order to accelerate. One of the neat touches: When the car is going down hill, it's weight puts energy back into the system). But if you're going to ride a cable car, you don't have to crowd in at Powell and ride the line to Fisherman's Wharf. There's another cable car line that goes cross-town on California up over Nob Hill. It's much less crowded. Why not give that a try?

The California Street cable car line starts near where it intersects Drumm and Market street. It dumps you off in the neighborhood of Van Ness. It can be hard to think of a reason why you would want to be on Van Ness -- but you can see for yourself that San Francisco can be kind of boring, and walk back a block to Polk Street, where there are some good cafes and so on, and if you're feeling adventurous, you could walk down into the Tenderloin... see Northern Expedition #1 below.