Hi everyone,

I am doing Technology Workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area this week and this evening I am fortunate to be staying in the Stanford Court Hotel, which is in the Marriott Renaissance Family of Hotels. It is located on California Street, across the street from the Fairmount Hotel and next to the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental (home of the "Top of the Mark"). The area is known as Knob Hill.

On my first trip to San Francisco as a young boy in September of 1956 with my dad and mom and younger sister, we stayed in the Marine Memorial Hotel which is down a few blocks from where I am staying this evening. I was 7 years old at the time and our family was on our way back to Honolulu as my dad had just been transferred back to Pearl Harbor as the Special Services Officer and Varsity Basketball Coach for the Submarine Force Pacific (SubPac).

We were in San Francisco for a few days before we were to catch a USNS ship (Morton, an old troop transport) for a 5 day voyage to Honolulu. My mom and dad were anxious to take my sister and I to a place which was their favorite San Francisco restaurant during and after WWII, David's Delicatessen. We walked to David's from our hotel, walked in, and looked at the menu. My sister (who was 4 years old at the time) and I wanted hot dogs and hot dogs were not on the menu, so we walked out. We stood outside David's as my parents tried to figure out where we should go to eat. A man then rushed out of the restaurant, ran over to my dad, who was in uniform (he was a young Warrant Officer), and forced a five dollar bill into my dad's hand and said..."buy the kids something to eat." I remember being amazed because in 1956, $5 is a lot of money, especially to a 7 year old.