San Francisco: talking bout a permanent revolution

From the gold rush to the beat generation to the cyberspace revolution, the changeless thing about San Francisco is that everything seems cutting edge, all the time, says Pico Iyer

Three different monitors were streaming Japanese cartoons as I stepped into San Franciscos Hotel Tomo, the only J-Pop hotel Ive run into in America. A vending machine was selling Gigo Blocks, above some edamame beanbags. I went up to my room and felt as if I were stepping into a comic-book: an entire wall was given over to a giant Japanese manga. The corridors in the hotel were the colour of Opal Fruits, and the desk blotter in my room kept glowing long after Id turned the lights out.

Re-energize yourself with positivity, the hotels website had advised, and as I watched what looked like some Stanford undergraduates, doors flung open, enjoying a computer scientists version of a party in the hallway, I felt so much positivity being re-energized, it almost made me feel a little negative.

I saw murals that suggested, rather aptly, that the place was coming up and falling apart in the same breath

Thee ninth-floor observatory of the De Young Museum allows you to watch clouds veiling and unveiling the city all around