THE SUNDAY F

Frisco bound? Don't leave your sweater at home

By William Endicott

Los Angeles Times

SAN FRANCISCO By late afternoon here this time of year, the fog usually is rolling in and the wind is whipping from the Pacific.

A number of tourist are always caught unaware, having arrived believing, mistakenly, that they would be basking in traditional California sunshine.

"Cable cars are great, but the weather could be better," Mick Black of Portsmouth, England, said, a comment echoed by a score of others.

"Nice place, but where is the heat?" wondered Frances Rosenberger of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Claudia Mitchell of Bel Air, Md., asked the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau, "Do you pay extra for sun?"

In short, summer in everybody's favorite city can be not the most pleasant of seasons.

Weather notwithstanding, however, San Francisco right now is bursting at the seams with tourists.

The tourist industry, which last year brought in a record 3,066,000 visitors who spent $764 million, apparently is heading for an even greater boom this year.

The city's reputation obviously has survived unsullied despite reports of a high crime rate, dirty streets, kinky homosexual goings-on and an aging, gaping hole near the foot of Market St. where a convention center was promised years ago.

Hotel rooms are at a premium in fact, they are almost impossible to find. Restaurants are jammed. Cable car lines stretch far up Powell St. The tour buses and limousines parked around Union Square are doing a land-office business.

The reasons for the boom appear to be twofold cut-rate air fares for both domestic and foreign travelers and the weak U.S. dollar.

The favorable exchange rate on the dollar, according to tourist sources here, has made it much more

practical and attractive for foreigners to visit the U.S. while, at the same time, making foreign travel less attractive to Americans, who find that their dollar buys less and less aboard.

"We have people who in the past always went to Europe and never were west of the Rockies now seeing San Francisco for the first time," Jerry Adams, president of the San Francisco Hotel Association, said.

"This is the best travel bargain in the world. In spite of what we think are rising costs for hotel rooms, it is nothing compared to Europe. And we're seeing an even greater influx of Japanese tourists because of the greater buying power of the yen."

Unlike visitors to other California cities, out-of-towners seem to come here just for the city itself and not artificial attractions such as amusement parks and movie studio tours.

This is not to say, however, that San Francisco does not have its certified main attractions the cable cars, Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Wharf, Coit Tower, Chinatown, Lombard St.'s crooked block and Alcatraz.

And there is plenty of free entertainment, albeit of meager quality, from the street musicians, jugglers and mimes who gather daily at Ghiradelli Square or at Powell and Market, where the cable cars make their turns.

Standing near the back of the cable car line the other day prepared for a 30-minute wait were Jason and

Charleston regatta

CHARLESTON, W. Va. This city's eighth annual Sternwheel Regatta Festival is being held now through Labor Day.

At 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 3, an expected 13 sternwheeler boats will begin their downriver race.

Meanwhile, festivities are to include musical entertainment, magicshows, hot-air balloon flights, watersports competitions, a street fair.

Barbara Katz of Natick, Mass., near Boston.

"We've come all the way from Massachusetts to ride 'em," Jason Katz said of the romantic little cars. "We just got off BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). We're anxious to see

both ends of the spectrum. Plus, it's going to Chinatown, which is where we want to go."

Barbara Katz was shivering.

"It's much colder than we anticipated," she said. "I just wish I had brought some warmer clothes."