elevenIt was noon in the financial district and the dawn of an early spring. Tourists clad in short pants and wrap-around sunglasses stood in orderly lines at the cable car turntable on Market and California. One car had already been turned and, filled with a boatload of anatomically modern humans, began rumbling through the flatlands of the financial district. In its middle cabin, the car was equipped with facing benches and leather straps to hold onto. In the open-air sections there were outward facing benches and vertical, stainless steel handrails. Bold young people gripped those one-handed, leaned back and swung around like monkeys.
Office workers, pale from lives spent under fluorescent light, occupied the concrete ravines between tall buildings. They sat wherever they could, on ben
