So if you’re wondering what’s keeping me so busy these days…
My most important project as of late is working as a project manager for Mark Growden‘s upcoming CD release show at the Cowell Theatre. I’ve put together a program that finds event contributors, then connects them to the SF arts community, using Mark’s show as a platform. It’s pretty neat. I’ve been working with one of the most noted producers in the Bay Area, Will Chase (of Burning Man fame, as well as countless additional huge SF events), as well as Porto Franco Records (Mark’s records label), for this event. Pretty incredible opportunity for my first contracted job since moving to SF.
Mark got home from his tour of the western half of the US on Saturday, and we’ve basically been working non-stop ever since, preparing, planning, researching, promoting, networking…
We can do this at parties too, of course.
Wednesday we headed over to the Tom Kennedy Art Auction. A bit more about the event:
Tom Kennedy passed away April 12, 2009 while body-surfing off Ocean Beach in San Francisco. He left behind a legacy as a pioneering sculptural artist, social agitator and builder of more than 20 art cars. As a founding member of the art car movement, his works of art work evolved into symbols of political protest and peace keeping. Tom envisioned his beloved and most recognized art car, Ripper the Friendly Shark, traveling around the world with a crew called the Friend Patrol. Together they would inspire and support friendship and peace in conflict zones where people perceived as enemies live and work together. The art auction will raise money to send Ripper the Friendly Shark on this mission at least once a year.
Mark was a guest performer for the event. View a video of his performance here.
Thursday was research night. We headed to Mezzanine for the CD release show of Rupa & The April Fishes. It was a fun time, and the bands were great.
I was particularly captivated by the opening band, the California Honeydrops. I found a song from Thursday night on youtube:
Thursday night research conclusion: We have two weeks to find a mime on stilts for the CD release.
Friday was blogger party night. We headed to Violet Blue + Ben‘s for a pre-Halloween shindig. I didn’t take any photos (the only ones were from Scott playing around with my camera), but Scott took plenty to make up for it. View them here.
Saturday was Halloween. I was the Spirit of the South. Gotta represent my homeland and all its beautiful people, y’all.
I spent the evening at Cellspace for the Ace Auto Junkyard Benefit. Ace Auto is a junkyard. It was the fostering grounds for the San Francisco arts scene. I don’t think I’ll ever quite be able to comprehend the level of influence the property has had on SF. Unfortunately, it is being forced to close down and move out after nearly 30 years. So a fundraiser involving ridiculous art and costume and debauchery is only appropriate.
Mark was a guest performer once again. I helped operate some gigantic robots in battle. That was fun. Scott, who was once again also in attendance, posted some additional photos on his blog. You can view them here.
And now it’s time to relax. And by relax I mean blog and plan for another week full of preparing for Mark’s CD Release. If you’re in San Fran, you should go. It’s November 13th at the Cowell Theatre in San Francisco. All of the producers are quite certain it will sell out soon (all 439 seats!), so I’d recommend snatching up some tickets while you can.
If you happen to live elsewhere, I suppose you can listen to him instead. He’ll come to your town eventually. Listen to a track from his newest album here.
This blog comes about two weeks late, but it’s still neat, so I feel like I should post it.
This was a homework assignment. I was to experiment with white balance, and create a project that reflected what I had discovered. Kind of a broad assignment.
I figured that since we obviously weren’t going for technical precision, intentionally messing up our proper white balance, I would abandon photo-realism altogether and shoot everything through reflections. In San Francisco, especially in the Financial District and SOMA, they are a-plenty.
As usual, I wasn’t to photoshop any of the photos I took (even cropping is against the rules). I messed with the colors by creating custom white balance in the camera. It turned out pretty neat. I played with levels on some of them post-homework, but most of them are straight from the camera. What a huge change for me.
To say I’m drained is a bit of an understatement. I’m working on a lot of projects and don’t have much time to breathe. They’re good projects though, I assure you. I will pull it off, I just won’t be sleeping much in the meantime.
Things I’ve done lately:
- Acquired new treats, including a new iMac desktop and Adobe CS4 for $1400 off.
- FINALLY started working with Camera RAW files. They have changed my life. Seriously. I’m going back through and re-editing all of my old photos.
- Went to Pumpkin Fest, but ended up primarily exploring the strange cultish pumpkin farms on the outskirts of the festival instead. Photos to come.
- Started building my portfolio website. This blog is by no means a functioning portfolio, and was never meant to be. I need a way for people to actually access me professionally and see my best work, not only in photography, but all of my other freelance PR/production projects. Hopefully it’ll be up in a few days.
- Watched the Flaming Lips come out of a giant LED screen vagina at Treasure Island Fest.
I haven’t had the time to edit all of my new photos, but in the meantime, here are some shots from the week, taken while frantically running around the financial district trying to finish a shooting assignment.
Like, more-busy-than-I’d-prefer-to-be type of busy. I suppose it’s a good problem to have, if you’re going to have a problem. I’m currently balancing full-time grad school work, full-time photogging, working at a PR firm, and doing some serious freelance PR/production work. I’m basically working on projects from 8 AM to midnight, every day. Needless to say, I feel like I’m spreading myself pretty thin. But that’s fine. I’d rather be busy than bored, any day.
Unfortunately, the blog posting opportunities are lacking. I mean, I could just throw some photos up and post, but I like to have some substantial bit of writing accompanying my posts, if for no other reason than to remember what I did in September of 2009.
So here are some photos that haven’t found their place in any other September posts.
The first set is from a dinner/fundraiser held by my friend Laura #1 (and roommates Ilana and Lisi), for the other roommate Laura #2 (different Laura from the former). Laura #2 is an amazing, strong lady, who happens to be battling cancer. We got a bunch of friends together, cooked and ate an amazing meal, and raised some cash money to help pay for Laura #2′s insanely high medical expenses. It was good times and GOOD food. Lordy lord.
(PC: Jim)
(PC: Jim)
Set 2: Oktoberfest.
After living in Switzerland and having the opportunity to attend THE Oktoberfest, my compadre Tara was elated about the opportunity to go to anything reminiscent of the event, conveniently located in San Francisco. If it has the same name, it has to be similar, right?
Tickets were thirty dollars. That’s not terrible, assuming it’s a day-long festival and you have unlimited access to beer, right?
Well. Things get off to a good start. Tara and I time our commute to arrive at the event at the same time, she coming from Berkeley, I coming from Hayes Valley. I arrive at the venue: Pier 48, in a fairly desolate area of waterfront SOMA, other than a sea of drunks in line to enter the warehouse venue. It’s fine. Tara should be here any minute.
I get a call from Tara. Her friend gave her incorrect directions, and she has found herself on the westernmost side of the city. I am on the easternmost. She is waiting for the train to retrace her tracks and eventually make it to the correct destination. Not a problem. I can just go in and explore the venue and have a beer while I wait for her to arrive. Right?
But she has my ticket. Oops.
Looks like I’ll be wandering the streets of this strange foreign neighborhood for the next hour or so. So that’s what I do.
About half an hour into my walk, I cross paths with some lost French boys. They ask me if I know where the “beer party” is. I tell them that I might as well head that way and they can follow me. We all quickly become bros.
Tara finally arrives, and finds me in line with the Frenchmen. We soon find out that our $30 ticket was valid for zero beers. I’m way into this.
Either way, the night ended up being fun. We met a lot of strangers, made some new temporary friends, and saw some sweet German dance moves. Check San Francisco Oktoberfest off life’s to-do list.
And some more random photos from my random adventures.
So this week’s project was to take 25 photos of complete strangers. Since I did something similar for last week’s “A Day in the Life” project, I wanted to make this set particularly unique. What better way than to do my assignment at the Folsom Street Fair.
I’m particularly proud of this set. I’m not used to shooting people, and it still makes me nervous, but I see myself getting better at it, and I’m excited to share these.
I will warn you now – if you are easily offended by all that is unfamiliar to you, just don’t view this blog. Okay? Okay.
Man, it’s been a long two days. Quite a few great things have happened.
1 – I got 431 visits and 1,131 page views on my blog today. Seriously, WTF. I didn’t even post today, technically. I’m posting this first not because it is remotely the most interesting or important, but I found out approximately 5 minutes ago.
2 – I met MC Hammer last night. I was at the afterparty of a social media conference sponsored by Involver, and Hammer happened to be the keynote speaker. And there he was, at the W Hotel, asking me how I was doing. Apparently a “good, how are you” was enough to provide closure to the conversation for him, and he was off, on his way to probably ask every girl at the bar the same thing. But what a sweet sweet moment we shared.
3 – I started my job at Triple Point PR on Tuesday. My first day consisted largely of learning a bit about our clients (all related to gaming, tech, social media – awesome), and eating Thai food at Osha. I could get used to this. However, I am certainly not getting used to waking up at 7 am as opposed to my previous standard 11 am wake up time. I miss being worthless in the morning already. Oh well, the job wins and it happens to be awesome.
Ok, I’ll stop numbering now.
Anyway. The whole job commencement ended up throwing a bit of a wrench in my photo project schedule. Basically, a schedule that was the product of procrastination, indecisiveness, and bad weather. By starting the job on Tuesday, I was sacrificing the only time I had set aside to complete my weekly assignment – Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Oops.
So about the assignment. I was to create a photo essay portraying “a day in the life of… (insert location here)”.
My brain can work in strange ways, and this can sometimes completely sabotage any creative efforts. In this case, I had so many ideas for locations and narratives, and spent so much time weighing the pros and cons of each, and as time passed I began getting apprehensive of my decreasing time, as well as the thought of my project not living up to the awesomeness of my ideas, and basically worried myself into an unproductive procrastinating rut. It’s really an effective system I’ve got going.
By Sunday, I finally decided to conquer my brain and just go shoot Alamo Square. The view is great, the lighting in the evening is incredible, and it’s always full of characters and dogs and whatnot. It also happens to be a block away from my house. It wasn’t one of the epic narratives I had in mind, but I’m sure I can pull off some neat material. It was warm and sunny all day, perfect for spending my evening in the park. I would ideally have the project done within an hour.
I arrive at the park to a fun surprise – cold, wind, and fog, enshrouding my creative space. Needless to say, nobody was at the park. There were a few exceptions (by the name of Cyndie, Tara, Chris, and Greg), as I happened to invite them, and they were awesome enough to actually show up, despite the terrible conditions. I didn’t end up shooting much of anything… but did enjoy an evening on a blanket with some cheese and crackers and local brews.
So Alamo Square was out. I was basically left with no choice but to shoot where I would be spending the next two days – at work and school. So I chose to do a day in the life of my walk from my work building to my school building… the photos basically range from 1st + Market to Powell + Sutter, with a few random streets inbetween that I happened to wander.
The whole shoot was a bit frantic, and I barely finished sizing and submitting my photos in time. I was actually feeling pretty crappy about the whole project, being so rushed, and barely having time to even look at the photos I took, but now that I have the time to sit down and actually see them, I dig them.
This particular class I’m shooting for is a huge work of discipline for me – you are not allowed to use photoshop AT ALL. You are to submit the photos as they were on your camera. The basic idea is… get it right the first time. Get the levels perfect, get the crop perfect, consider all elements of the shot before you take it. Not so easy when all of your subjects are in motion on the busiest street in the city. But a good challenge for me, nonetheless.
The awesome thing about shooting in the financial district – even if the light is harsh, it is easy to play creatively with it. The light that shoots between the tall buildings forms sort of natural spotlights… so if you ever happen to notice the chick awkwardly standing against a tree on Market pointing her camera patiently at light spots waiting for people to walk under them… that’s me. Say hi.
So yeah. I just tried to take a set of photos illustrating my daily walk from work to class, focusing on the elements I tend to focus on in everyday life – interesting people, interesting lighting, interesting situations.
Ok, time to crash before another long day tomorrow.
I was voluntarily kidnapped on Saturday and taken to a few places I would have never otherwise found, including a random bulb of waterfront land in Berkeley, and a middle school.
I tagged along to this bulb of note with friends Mark and Cherry. It was a bit of a drive, then a bit of a hike. I ended up losing them along the way, as I was too distracted by the surrounding plant life to pay attention to anything else. Eventually I found them, and subsequently found myself in the middle of what appeared to be a waterfront pirate birthday party.
Fast forward. I’m in a middle school on a Saturday night. Also normal?
I am here as a spectator for a juggling and unicycling festival, hosted by Frank Oliver. One of their finale shows happens to take place within this middle school. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but while watching the rehearsals, I found myself quite emotionally invested in the efforts of many young performers who seemed to be debuting their tricks on this stage tonight. Many of them were attempting a new, more difficult trick for the first time, failing over and over in their rehearsal attempts, but sticking with their intent in hopes that for the final performance, they will pull it off that one time.
The show itself was full of surprises and hilarious entertainment. The performers were so creative and talented! I now find myself a fan of juggling and unicycling and all things related.
I finished the night off lurking the middle school grounds with Mark + Alex Kelly, playing around with the lighting.. and here’s what we came up with:
I have recently had the pleasure of experiencing the magic berry.
I suppose the proper name would be “Synsepalum dulcificum.” These berries contain a protein that binds to the taste buds, temporarily causing sour and bitter foods to seem sweeter, thereby allowing you to easily eat foods otherwise inedible…
So that’s what we did. My friend David bought a ten-pack of these berries, in freeze-dried tablet form, and decided to make a night out of it.
The grapefruit, limes, lemons, and whiskey sours all tasted like candy. We plowed through three bowls of citrus in 20 minutes. The tomatoes tasted like… sugary tomatoes. The radishes tasted like nothing. The mustard tasted like raspberry jam. The sour cream tasted like icing. Sour cream + carrots = carrot cake.
It was quite a meal, and we were pleased. However, despite our tongue processing the food differently, our stomachs interpreted the meal exactly how it would have otherwise – eating three bowls of extremely acidic citrus, a jar of mustard and a tub of sour cream. Needless to say, we didn’t feel too great post-meal.
I would totally do this again. Apparently, according to my friend Zack, ham sandwiches are supposed to taste like cake. You can order the berries at www.miraclefruit.co.uk…. just make sure you have a ham sandwich on hand come ingestion time.
I finally went to the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) this week. I have been ecstatic that I live in a city that hosts such epic collections, but, even better – as an Academy of Art student, I get FREE admission. I also have homework assignments that require me going there. Tough life, I know.
I stumbled upon this little gem on the way to the museum. I could hear them blasting Bee Gees through the streets from within my bus as I passed them the first time. Once off the bus, I patiently waited for them to catch up and had a nice brief interaction with the unit. They invited me to hop on, but I told them I had to be on my way. It would have been fun though. I saw them again later that night in my neighborhood.
I met up with my friend Tara at the SFMOMA entrance, and she quickly told me to turn around to see Pierce Brosnan, the biggest crush of my 9th year of life, patiently waiting for his vehicle beside us. Damn. He still looks as good as he did in Dante’s Peak. His driver arrived and swept him away before I could charm him. Next time.
So back to the MOMA. Exhibitions of note:
Sensate – Bodies & Design. A collection of pieces that reflect debates about what bodies are and how they relate to design. I particularly loved Andrew Kudless’s 45-foot cast plaster P_Wall. It just looks like pasty fat rolls. Also reminded me of my 9th year of life (my “butterball” phase, as my dad would kindly refer to it).
I was surprised to find that I was actually allowed to take photographs. Last time I was in an art museum was last fall in NYC, and they certainly weren’t having anything to do with my camera use over there. I suppose that, thanks to cell phone cameras, museums have finally retreated in the photo war.
I have discovered that photographing glass boxes is a convenient way of photographing people that don’t want to be photographed. Until these people notice I’ve taken 20 photos of the same box and become suspicious.
As far as my approach to photographing the rest of the museum… I work keeping in mind that at least 37290 people have photos of the pieces in these displays. I can either take some generally uninspiring photos trying to duplicate what is displayed, or I can try to make something unique out of what I’m supplied with… basically incorporating the piece and its environment to make something completely new. I’ve been trying to use this approach to most things I find in the city these days.
(Yeah, this is one of those replicas, but I loved it too much not to include.)
Okay, if you have the opportunity, go see the Richard Avedon exhibit. Jesus effing christ. His portraiture is incredible.
Seriously, this photo scares the shit out of me. Avedon’s portrait of dance teacher/killer Joe Piro. The portrait is perfect.
The rest of the museum was a bit anticlimactic at this point.
Once finished up at the museum, I headed back home to find a little art party in the yard, consisting of Cyndie, Maia, and Martha. Everyone’s preparing for the giant annual art party my house throws every fall. Glad my social debut happens to be as one of the hosts.
News in Helena’s life:
- I am finally employed! After spending countless hours wandering around the city, handing resumes out at bars, scanning Craigslist incessantly, dealing with sheisty scammers, etc etc, my patience actually paid off. I will be working with Triple Point PR, a firm that builds campaigns for clients in the gaming, technology, and social media industries. How freaking perfect for me can a job get. I am elated.
- I am still absolutely enamored with grad school. I still can’t believe my homework, studying, and projects all have to do with photography. Can this be real?
- I GOT A NEW LENS!!!!! A Canon 85mm 1.8 fixed focus lens. It is taking some getting used to (I have to stand REALLY far from everything, so it doesn’t work in all situations), but it sure is beautiful.
- I still need a hair cut.
- I went to the San Francisco Symphony on Wednesday. It made my heart hurt. I am having serious nostalgia for the times when my life revolved around the world of classical music… and I am strongly considering buying a piano to start playing again. Or just looking for free ones on craigslist and hoping they aren’t total crap.
- I finally found a bed, and put a down payment on it. I’ll be getting it next weekend. No more bed pad!!!!
Ok, here are some photos from the week.
This is my wonderful yard. I find it hard to be productive here, as the sunlight just makes me want to nap. But I try.
This is our yard cat. He hates most people, but we get along just fine.
This is my favorite alley. It is conveniently located two blocks from my school bulding, and leads to my precious Blue Bottle Coffee.
So yesterday marked the birthday of my friend and neighbor Mark Growden. Mark happens to share a backyard with me, making this easily the most convenient gathering I’ve attended thus far in San Francisco. The yard was abound with wonderful, interesting people. I spent the afternoon reveling in the general human awesomeness surrounding me, and snapped a few shots in the process, as a birthday gift-of-sorts.
A few fun facts about Mark – He’s an internationally-acclaimed composer, director, and multi-instrumentalist performer. He has toured the US many times, playing venues including the Fillmore and Great American Music Hall in SF and Tonic and The Knitting Factory in New York. He has composed award-winning scores for films, dance and theatre productions. Long story short, the guy is talented. I’ve spent many hours discussing tour stories, music PR/marketing, and classical music with him (I’m a classically trained pianist, by the way), and we’ve quickly become bros.
You can read more about Mark and listen to tracks from his newest album on his website – www.markgrowden.org.
Anyway, here are some photos from the backyard.
Another fact worth noting – His backing band (pictured with him at the top) also happens to be the backing band of Tom Waits. Fun facts indeed.
I’ve had the following photos stuck on my camera for a week now, as I accidentally left my camera charger + extra battery at my old abode. I finally retrieved it, and my photos are finally free. I’ve actually spent the entire day either editing or taking photos, and I’ve loved every freaking minute of it. I’ll take that as evidence that this whole photography MFA will work out just fine for me.
Anyway.
Last weekend, my roommate Cyndie and I went adventuring in the Mission to look for art and coffee and perhaps some mexican breakfast potatoes. We found all three.
Our first stop was a series of in-house art shows by Home Is Something I Carry With Me, a San Francisco-based art collective that has been one of the grant recipients from Southern Exposure. I’m quickly getting used to the amount of art I have public access to at any given time. I could visit a different art show every day and still not put a dent in the SF arts scene.
Additional stops on our trek included Triple Base Gallery, Philz Coffee, multiple alleyways and storefront windows. This place is serious eye candy. Slightly grimy burrito-flavored candy.
And to top off my trek, on the final walk home, I see this. Total camouflage parking awesomeness. My day can’t be more complete.
Man, it feels good to be blogging again. I took another 357920 photos today, and will be posting them tomorrow. Hooray!
So I’ve moved twice already here in San Fran… keeping up the typical transience of my life.
My first SF abode was a sublet that I made quickly and frantically over craigslist from Phoenix, AZ. I would occupy the mystery room with mystery roommates from Aug. 15 until Sept. 6th, or earlier, depending on when I found my new place. Somewhat risky, getting a place you’ve never seen with people you’ve never knew, but I needed a place, and this place is what came my way.
And it ended up gloriously. My room was gigantic, with a large comfy bed, and speakers I could hook my ipod up to. That was basically all I needed. It was also nestled in the very middle of the Mission… so I had a wide array of restaurants and bars and coffee shops and taquerias at my disposal. My roomies for the time were Lindsay from Sacramento, and Alex and Noah, the cutest freaking couple I’ve met in a while. Noah recently moved here from Seattle to be with his lady. She’s been in the house for a couple of years now… the house veteran. I actually didn’t see much of any of them for the first week I was there… Alex and Noah were house-sitting and Lindsay is the busiest person on earth. But then we all found each other and it was great. Jon-Marc, who owns the room I subleased, also came back for the weekend and lived on the couch, making it a full house, but he is incredibly awesome and I’m glad I could pay some of his rent for him this month.
This is a giant photo of Noah.
This is my San Carlos kitchen. I’m not actually sure who took these photos, but they were on my camera.
Then came moving time. My permanent abode was found. A beautiful purple victorian sitting a block from Alamo Square (you know, from Full House and stuff). Hardwoods, REALLY high ceilings, gigantic living area AND yard with trees and grass… I still can’t believe I’m living here. Anyway, I managed to pack all of my stuff into a taxi (a large one) and do it all in one trip and $20. It was certainly my first taxi move, and also the taxi driver’s. It was a bonding experience.
So now I begin to build my nest. I’m feeling particularly nesty right now, which is ironic, because I can’t afford to do anything at the moment, including purchasing furniture. So I’m sleeping on my lovely bedpad (best thing you could ever bring on a cross-country tour, FYI) and waiting to unpack the rest of my things until I have things to actually unpack my stuff into.
In other news… I start grad school tomorrow. How’s that for some crazy shit. More on that when I have a better idea of what on earth I’m getting myself into.
I keep finding myself crossing paths with Raleigh folk in this new city of mine. I feel like a good many alumni of NCSU’s College of Design either migrate to New York or San Francisco… and I don’t blame them, as they’re both meccas of design and technology. It’s basically the same reason I moved here.
There are so many great Raleigh folk here!
There’s Dakota, my travel buddy who quickly transplanted to San Fran not long after I met her, to design for Dwell Magazine. I stayed with her in SF for a good bit last summer, and spent my days exploring and generally pretending I lived there while she worked. I had no idea I’d be living here a year later.
There’s Laura, who I met through some folks last summer. She did her time in Raleigh before I ever arrived. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see her again, but since I moved here I’ve been seeing a lot of her.
There’s Tara, who just moved here a couple of weeks ago. She originally took a job in Honduras, and should still be working there, but ended up in the middle of a revolution and had to come back to America. So now she’s in Berkeley.
There’s Scott, who has spent his past year around and about the world, living in South America for a while, then biking across the country, ending here in San Fran.
Scott’s birthday was a few days ago, so I met up with him and Tara in the park and celebrated. It was a Friday night and the park was full of people. I can’t imagine that happening in Raleigh. Moore’s Square on a Friday night, anyone? No takers?
We all still can’t believe we’re hanging out in California… or that we live here.
The next night, I headed to Berkeley to re-join Tara, as well as FIVE other Raleigh-alumni, for dinner. I met three of them for the first time that night, but the other two, Kelly-Murdoch Kitt and Nik Shah, just took a lengthy drive across the country, with Kelly ending things here to finally live with her fiance, and Nik continuing down to San Diego for a design job.
I was about an hour late arriving, as I am still figuring out the BART system. I had never been to Berkeley before, but figured it was simple. It’s a straight shot on the BART. At the first station, I was being impatient while waiting for the direct train, so I hopped on another one and figured I’d just wait in Oakland for the correct one. So that’s what I did. Twenty minutes of waiting in Oakland later, I decide to check the schedule, as I did not see my train scheduled to arrive anytime soon. Upon investigation, I notice that my train stopped running at 7:00. It’s 7:23.
I call Tara and ask her how the hell she gets back to Berkeley at night. She explains to me that I have to connect at the main Oakland station. So I hop back on the next train, after letting many pass me by, connect in Oakland, and finally make it to Berkeley. I should mention I also got off at the wrong stop and then lost on the way home. Impressive.
We ate Malaysian food at Kelly’s recommendation (she spent last summer here and knows what’s awesome), and it was off the chain. I tried to make everyone take a jumping picture at the end, but we were all full and uncoordinated, so we just settled on a regular off-center crooked group photo.
I had a visit from two of my college best friends, Laura and Andrew, visiting from Houston and Sacramento, respectively. They were my next stop for the night. I’ve been third wheel on their dates for FOUR years now, and I was excited to get back to it for a night. We started things off at Flour + Water, and ended things up back in Dolores Park once again. We reminisced and told stories and drank tequila until 3:30 AM, when some drunk guys who had been screaming into the darkness about how they hated every single one of us began to fight each other and a few random people in close proximity to them. We felt it was wise to leave before they wanted to involve us.
I’ve noticed that, in somehow meeting tons of people here who happen to be from Raleigh (they had already moved away before I ever made it to Raleigh), NC folk seem to stick together. But not necessarily in a “we’re settling on each other for a convenient friend group” kind of way. More of a… “we all moved on to pursue our careers or a more fulfilling life experience, and we all also happen to be from North Carolina” thing. It’s this automatic bond, knowing the ins and outs of southern culture, all of its pros, cons, quirks and distinct differences from the west coast. We know what grits are (I just met a guy from Greensboro at the bar last night and we spent 10 minutes discussing this). We know that there is a difference between having a BBQ, grilling out, cooking out, and having Cookout. We remember the days when we could smile and wave at strangers on the street without them thinking we’re either coming on to them or that we’re just crazy. We all miss porches. We understand people they they say “fixin’ to” (“what? what are you fixing?”) and “put it up” (“up where?” “just… put it up!”). I could go on. But we all adore the west coast and are so happy to finally live out our potential in our lives and our careers. I think it’s pretty neat, personally.
The following post = a collection of random stories I managed to scribble down since moving to California about the joys and perils of car ownership.
So begins the process of selling the tourmobile. It was my intent to have a sale lined up, or at least an array of test drives scheduled, as soon as I arrived in San Francisco, but tour was a bit distracting, and I didn’t end up even posting a for-sale ad until after I had arrived.
The interest was surprising. I had phone call after phone call. This was a challenge for me, as I have a small phobia of answering numbers I don’t know… I had to overcome this quickly.
The whole car-selling process took a couple of agonizing weeks, but here are some days of note.
Car-detailing/lost-in-Japantown Day:
The car was looking a bit messy after living in it for six weeks. So, it was car detailing time. I found what appeared to be a reputable spot through Yelp, and scheduled an appointment. I googled the address, and it seemed to be relatively easy to find, on a busy street in Japantown.
As I’m driving to the appointment, I realize I forgot to bring directions. My appointment is in 3 minutes.
I finally find the building. I am 10 minutes late. I get a phone call from the detail man, wondering if I’m lost. I confirm this. He explains that I have to go into the parking deck, and lists off a few more directions that I can’t quite understand.
I enter the parking deck. His explanation made it sound like I would find the entrance to his shop in this deck. So, I’m looking for a sign or a door or a storefront, or something….
I drive down to the very bottom level of the underground deck. Nestled in a corner is what appears to be my detail shop. A bookshelf with supplies, a desk, a lamp, some hoses and a small plastic banner attached to the wall, occupying a 12-foot square in the corner of the parking deck. Nothing more. No building, no storefront, no structure whatsoever. Just a bookshelf and some hoses. Not quite what I expected. They tell me to come back in 2 hours, and suggest I go upstairs to check out the mall above.
I take the elevator to the mall level. The doors open, and I find myself in the middle of what appears to be some sort of festival. Everyone is dressed as some sort of anime character or schoolgirl or prostitute. I am one of the few people not in costume, and everyone is glaring at me as if I am the strangest person here.
I’m feeling a bit out of place. Some quick investigating tells me I’m in the middle of an annual Japanese rock festival. Fantastic. I grab a coffee at the nearby coffee shop within the mall, nestled in line between an obese white girl in a scanty pink milkmaid-esque dress and striped thigh-high stockings, and a pasty teenage guy in a large black trenchcoat with anime patches sewn on it, wearing pigtails and glitter on his face. This is going to be an interesting two hours.
I soon enough realized that I forgot my checkbook, and had to take the bus all the way home and get it, then bus all the way back (which happened to be a strange boat-shaped convertible muni bus.. the day just keeps getting weirder), and by that time, my car was ready. I still regret not bringing my camera back with me. Oh well, uncomfortable two-hour wait averted.
Test-Drive-Turned-Speed-Date Day:
With posting Craigslist ads comes much Craigslist attention. With posting your phone number on your car-for-sale ad comes many, many phone calls, not all of which are completely relevant to the car sale itself. Some people just want to talk.
And that’s apparently how I began my relationship with Bruce.
(I changed his name as to not perturb him if he finds this, and I do so reluctantly, as he has one of the most ridiculous names ever and it compliments the plot quite well.)
Bruce and I first exchange words on a Tuesday morning. He explains to me that he is interested in my car, and goes through much unnecessary detail explaining why. Unnecessary information noted. Great. I’d love to schedule an appointment for you to see it. Okay, great.
But Bruce is not done. The call quickly turns into what appears to be a phone-date, where I am being interviewed about my life and why I’m here and where I came from and what I’m studying and etc and etc. I provide minimal information but still attempt to sound charming, as I am trying to sell this car and would like to appeal to a sympathetic buyer, in hopes that they could offer me full price. I try as quickly as possible to turn the conversation back to the car, and finally manage to set up a test drive appointment… for an hour later.
Next thing I know, I’m on the way to Oakland. For the first time, I’m a bit uneasy about meeting up for test drive time. Previous appointments haven’t bothered me thus far, but I could tell that Bruce was very excited to meet me. It’s as if we’ve been building up to this moment for months.
Bruce, just as I expected, was a bit seedy looking, and a good 20-30 years my senior. This is obviously meant to be.
So the test drive began. I attempted to fill as much possible conversation time with car jargon, but, being Helena, I only had enough to say about the car to fill up.. say, a normal-length test drive, like 10 minutes or so. Ten minutes up, and Bruce was certainly not ready to end this test drive. He gets on the highway. Great. I’m going to die today.
Twenty minutes later, after hearing every detail of his life, his past, his aspirations, his passions, his fears… he pulls back into the parking deck. I have survived the unintended craigslist car date. I’m ready to end this quickly.
I begin to say my goodbyes. Bruce doesn’t want things to end. He asks me if I have time to eat lunch and “talk about life and stuff.” I tell him I have some appointments in the city that I must make sure I get back in time for, but look forward to hearing from him.
…about the car. I meant about the car.
I get a phone call a few days later. It’s Bruce. He wants to check on how my car sale is going and whether I still have it.
Yes! Perhaps he has decided that he wants to buy it! I tell him that I’ve been showing it, but yes I do still have it if he is interested in purchasing it.
Apparently Bruce is not particularly interested in the car, and has been looking at another one which he really likes. Bruce asks me if I’m showing the car in the East Bay at any point tomorrow.
Yes! Yes I am… maybe Bruce is interested in the car after all. Maybe.
But no. Bruce tells me that I should come down for a day in Oakland. We can get some lunch, get some drinks, just have a “fun lazy day.”
Right. I tell him I don’t think I’ll be having the time to do that.
Bruce never called back. Craigslist romance averted.
My-Car-Is-Stolen Day:
I am on my way to retrieve my car from the corner of 22nd and Capp, where I had parked it the previous night. I’m quite excited about the fact that I have an appointment to potentially sell my car lined up for the afternoon. The last day of car ownership is a beautiful day.
I arrive at the spot where I thought I had parked the tourmobile. It is not there.
I take a look around. I see no tourmobile. I am certain I parked it here. I look at the nearby parking signs. They read: “Street Cleaning 8am Mon Wed Fri.”
You are kidding me. It’s Friday morning and I was stupid enough to park my car in a street cleaning zone. My effing car is towed. I’m going to have to pay $375 to get it back, and somehow have all of this done by my car appointment this afternoon.
I am devastated. I call the number for the San Francisco towing database to see where my car is. After giving them all of my information, they tell me they don’t have my car.
But… you do. My car is not where it was parked. You towed it. It was street cleaning day.
They explain to me that they would have not towed my car in that area for any reason, and that they do not have my car, and that I need to call the police and file a stolen vehicle report.
But… my car can’t be stolen. They don’t have a key. That wouldn’t happen to me.
They explain to me that this happens all the time in San Francisco and I need to go ahead and call the police and report it as stolen.
Uh. Holy shit.
My car is stolen. The tourmobile is gone. This can’t be true.
I enter panic mode. I frantically search 22nd, 21st, and 20th streets in hopes that maybe I parked it on a different street than I thought, but I recognized all of the scenery of 22nd quite clearly. I definitely parked it here, and it is no longer here.
I call the police. I am incoherent with panic and grief.
“M-muhhhy carrrwh has beeun stooohhhhuuugghhhlllleeennnn”
“I have no idea what you just said. You are going to have to calm down and talk clearly ma’am.”
I sort of calm down and explain to them the situation. They tell me to go home, and they’ll meet me at my address to fill out the police report. I hurry home.
I wait patiently for a while. No cops are showing. I try to occupy myself in my house, devoid of wireless internet, nothing to do but call my family and a couple of friends and cry about my stolen car. FIVE hours later, they arrive. I give them all of my information and they are on their way in minutes. This is not a good day.
My-Car-Is-Actually-Not-Stolen Day:
Fast-forward two days later. I have come to terms with the fact that the car is gone, and am almost completely content with it. I have insurance that will likely cover the entire cost, I haven’t had to wake up early and move my car, I haven’t had to worry about parking tickets or towing. I don’t have to try and sell my car anymore. This isn’t so bad after all.
I’m walking down 22nd with Dakota, and we pass Capp. I explain that this is where the car was stolen. Dakota asks me if I looked everywhere for it. I tell her I spent at least an hour going up and down these streets and surrounding blocks. As I’m explaining this, I look over and see what looks just like my car. I think about the irony of someone parking a car exactly like mine in the same intersection where mine was stolen. I look closer. It… is my car. Parked 30 feet from where I thought it was. I had looked all over 22nd, and in my state of panic, apparently overlooked the cars parked on Capp.
I am sometimes astounded at my capacity for doing incredibly stupid shit.
I’m trying to wrap my brain around this. It’s like mourning the death of someone and then finding out they never actually died by running into them on the street. Certainly a much less severe version of that, but still really hard to process.
Well, first things first – call the police. Tell them that the car was never actually stolen. Yeah. It’s exactly where I left it. Yeah, I didn’t see it. Yes, I looked. Yes, I can meet the cops here at the car. Thanks.
The cops actually arrive right away. I can tell they are trying to suppress their amusement. But after messing up my report and having to call me back twice to fill out forms they forgot about, we parted ways with an equal level of shame.
The cop did warn me that there is a possibility that I will get pulled over at gunpoint if I drive the car over the next few hours, as the system sometimes takes a while to update. So me and Dakota take the car and go to Target.
We never got pulled over at gunpoint, which, now that it’s blogging time, is almost a little disappointing. Oh well. Maybe one day.
There are more stories. Stories about more crazy potential buyers, car shops that made up $2000 worth of fake internal damages when others gave me clean diagnostic evaluations, chasing off more tow trucks, getting $400 worth of parking tickets in a week…. but this blog is getting lengthy. I’ll end things here. Hooray for this crazy, hilarious, ironic week being over!
After a particularly long drive, thanks to my accidental detour through some random southern California cities, we arrive in San Francisco. At 5:30 AM…. most awkward arrival time yet, especially when I have to wake my new roommate up in my new San Francisco house, neither of which I have seen or met, to move my stuff in. She was awesome though, especially considering the strange timing.
I now live in San Francisco. Holy mother of god.
Adjusting to your completely new hometown isn’t so bad when you are surrounded by former-hometown-folk to keep you occupied. Tim is here for another week or so, and my friend Brandom happened to fly in on the same night we arrived.
So began adventures with Brandom.
We started things off at Boogaloos, who I have already deemed my favorite brunch in San Francisco. Not that I have come remotely close to trying 10% of the brunch spots in San Francisco, but I AM obsessed with Mexican food and eggs in combination right now and they do a damn good job at providing me with it. We split a temple-o-spuds and a polenta + eggs plate. The day is a win already.
I decide that it will be best to drive Brandom to all of my favorite places in San Francisco, as I am not adjusted to the walkability of the city yet (aka I am lazy) and I figure that if I keep the car moving, I will reduce the number of parking tickets I’ll inevitably acquire. So… first stop: Twin Peaks.
Twin Peaks is the biggest hill in SF. You can see everything. You just have to make sure it’s a clear day, because 80% of the time it’s foggy and you can’t see two feet in front of you. Today we can see!
I wanted to take a jumping photo but it was so windy we thought we may die just standing up. So we took some normal photos and went on our way.
Next stop: Crissy Fields. Fun park and beach with a nice view of the Golden Gate. I’ve taken many a photo here before, so it’s fun to see how they end up changing every time I come back.
I wanted to drive Brandom around the west side of the Peninsula, where the road lines the hills and you see nothing but water below you, but we got lost and ended up at the Harold & Maude graveyard. This happens to be one of if not Brandom’s very favorite movie, so he freaked out and demanded we go in and take photos. And so we did.
By this time, the day had passed and we were tired. And so ended adventure day with Brandom.
Fast forward.
With Brandom and Tim both leaving the next day, I decided it was necessary to take everyone to Land’s End.
Land’s End is this somewhat secret location that a lot of SF folk seem to know of, but have no idea how to find. And somehow I managed to find it last year, by following really vague directions given to me by my SF veteran compadre Nick.
Basically, you take several disjointed bus rides to the Legion of Honor parking lot, wander through a golf course directly behind the property, hope you take the right path until you see another path going into the woods blocked off by a gate, walk around the gate, continue until you see a staircase, walk down the staircase until you reach a dirt path, walk up the dirt path until you can’t walk anymore, because you are standing on the edge of a cliff where the ocean meets the bay.
So me, Tim, Dakota, Brandom and Lewis found the cliffs once again. It was pretty foggy and overcast, which at first we thought would be a huge visibility problem, but it ended up being quite cool actually. The fog rested on top of the hills and actually rested on top of the Golden Gate, leaving a clear hole underneath it that you could see through. Brandom described it as a hole out of purgatory. If purgatory were an awesome oceanfront array of cliffs and giant rocks and waves.
I said my byes to Brandom, then went out for one last night of welldonetour-dom with Tim and company. My fellow road warrior is off to Raleigh tomorrow. Our 2009 phototour adventure has come to an end.
I would have some sort of profound synopsis for you here, but I really haven’t had any time to process all of the ridiculous incredible things that have happened to my life in the past six weeks. Maybe I’ll have have my brain reassembled by then.
All I can say now, is that tour made me grow in so many ways, as a PR professional, as a photographer, as a planner and a thinker and a friend and a person. I don’t think I’ll have a grasp on the amount I’ve learned through this for quite a while, but know for sure that I am definitely a different, better person leaving this tour. I got to spend my summer with some of the most wonderful people I’ve met in years. I love Bowerbirds and Megafaun and Tim and Sarah oh so dearly and can’t wait to see them again, and I’m going to stop typing now before I get emotional in the middle of this coffee shop.
After what could possibly be the best tour weekend ever, we reluctantly say goodbye to Shaun & Margaret and depart for our next destination – San Francisco. I was particularly excited about this stop, as this is where I will be living for the next three years. It’ll be nice to catch a show in my new hometown.
As many of our drives do, we had some choices as to what route to take. We could take the scenic 101 down the coast (Shaun demanded we do this at least for the Oregon stretch), or the more efficient HWY 5 route. Having slept in a bit too late, as per usual, we were logically forced to choose route 5. It was a 9-hour vs. 13-hour decision, and we had to get into town by the time that Bowerbirds + Megafaun took the stage at Cafe du Nord. We were barely going to make it.
Well, what do you know. More traffic. That + my fairly poor ability to take proper exits turned our proposed 9-hour drive into a 12-hour drive after all. Needless to say, we missed the show. Fantastic.
We did make it in time to have a beer with my dear friend Dakota, who was housing us for the night. As I’ve said in previous posts, after any drive longer than 10 hours, no matter how tired you are, all you want to do is go out, have a beer, and do something social, as you have spent your entire day sitting in the same car seat looking at the same highway. So we stopped by 500 Club, had a beer or two, then headed back to Dakota’s to crash.
The next couple of days were a swift kick in the hind for me. As previously stated, this tour was also a process of moving me and my life to San Francisco. Upon arrival to the city, I realized that I had spent so much time focused on tour that I had put several important projects on the backburner, such as finding somewhere to live, or finding a job. Both quite important.
So I took a small hiatus to hide out and figure out my new San Fran life, while Tim went off and explored the city and caught up with friends.
Things that make San Fran different from North Carolina:
- It’s colder here. Like, way colder. Between 60 and 75 most of the time. I had already discovered this last summer, but while packing for tour, I had only included clothes that were appropriate for summertime in the rest of the country. Basically, I have a few long-sleeved shirts to rotate until the rest of my “winter” clothes are shipped over. I also have no jacket. However, I am very excited about finally being able to wear boots and scarves every day of the year.
- You can be a foodie for cheap. Local/organic seems to be the baseline for food standards here, when in NC, it seems to be the exception. I have also recently realized that I have an obsession with eggs and Mexican food eaten in combination. Cannot-function-without-it obsessed. I blame Boogaloos.
- Beautiful hills, cliffs, ocean sunsets, blah blah beautiful scenery blah gorgeous awesome stuff to climb and look at etc. You can expect plenty of photos of all of this in the next three years (the time that I will be living here).
- You can’t have a car in this damn city. You just can’t. Unless you have a garage and you never ever let your car out of it.
It did not take long for me to become intimately acquainted with San Francisco parking law enforcement.
I was sitting at Dakota’s, bumming her wireless internet while she was at work. I hear a bit of streetside commotion directly outside her living window. I pay it no mind. However, after a few minutes, I become curious. It seems to be coming from exactly where I parked my car. I casually glance out the window.
There’s my car. A tow truck has attached itself to it.
Panic. I run outside. Tow man is trying to break into my car door. I vomit apologies and frantic pleas to let my car go. He ignores me.
I notice a road cop not car from me, viewing the situation musingly. I run up to him.
“I AM SO SORRY I AM NOT FROM HERE I DIDNT KNOW CAN I PLEASE HAVE MY CAR BACK I HAVE MY KEYS I CAN TAKE IT RIGHT NOW”
“You have your keys on you? Right now?”
“YES THEY ARE RIGHT INSIDE THE DOOR”
“If you go inside and get your keys, and get back out here before he breaks into your car, you can have your car back.”
(I run inside and grab keys)
By the time I get back out, I see the road cop talking to the tow guy, ideally about how he should let my car go. I take no chances. I jump in my car, still fully attached to the tow truck. I roll the window down and continue to plea from within my vehicle.
Apparently this worked. The tow guy slowly and reluctantly unhooked all of the intricacies lacing our vehicles together, and went on his way, leaving me in my car, still hyperventilating, still in a state of severe but reducing panic. I park it a block away and head back to Dakota’s with my brand new $73 parking ticket (another distinct difference between San Fran and NC… give me a $12 Raleigh ticket any day).
Fast forward to lunch a couple of days later. Tim and I are faced with a big decision: end tour here? or continue on to Arizona?
We had planned for San Francisco to be the last stop of tour. But, seeing as we missed the show, we were feeling like there needed to be some better sort of closure for this tour. We also knew that Megafaun wanted us to come down to do some more projects with them. We also knew we had places to stay and lots of fun things to do. I also liked the idea of not having to park in San Francisco for a while.
So we discuss the pros and cons over this at lunch, and by the time we pay, we have made a decision. We are going to Arizona. Why the heck not. We pack our things and are on the road a few minutes later. 11 hours til Phoenix!
Hey folks. I am writing to you from a charging kiosk in the Atlanta airport. It’s 6:38 a.m. I just ate half of a disgusting overpriced airport breakfast, a nice little reminder that vacation time is over. I have an hour and a half before my second flight leaves, so I thought I’d divulge everything that happened in my final two days in San Francisco.
Wednesday was my final full day in San Fran, so I had to fit in as many to-do’s as possible before sun down. Of course, I don’t wake up until 1 in the afternoon. I take a few minutes to draft up a quick plan for my day, then headed off to pursue my objectives.
Objective 1: Lunch and coffee in Little Italy. At Petite Deli and Graffeo Roasting company, to be exact. Zack (friend from cookout and recent twin peaks/museum trespassing outing) had recommended Petite Deli as a good place to grab a sandwich in Little Italy, and I happened to receive a Facebook message that morning from a Raleigh friend Sean informing me that the mysterious coffee that he uses to entertain guests is actually from Graffeo Roasting Company, which happens to be located directly across the street form Petite Deli.
I arrive walk into the Deli. I’m not gonna lie, it didn’t look that impressive. I walked back out to think about my decision, and went to grab a cup of Graffeo in the meantime. Graffeo doesn’t actually sell their coffee in any other form than by the pound, but the café right beside them uses their beans, so I went next store and ordered a cup. The lady working at the counter asks me if I’d like half and half for my coffee. I say that’d be nice. Lady proceeds to pour the most obscene amount of cream I have ever seen into my coffee. It was truly a cream-colored cup of iced coffee. I was a bit frightened, but I took it anyway and actually enjoyed my cup of Graffeo-flavored cream.
I headed back to the Deli. I just wasn’t sure, but I figured I’d trust Zack’s judgment. I see Yelp “people love us” awards on the window, so it must be legit. The lady at the counter is extremely friendly. I ask her what people love here. She tells me the turkey/avocado/lettuce/spouts/cranberry is popular. I say I’ll take it.
So I mean, it was good. But it was good in a… I could easily make this at home kind of way. And it wasn’t remotely Italian (which is half my fault for my order). Sorry Zack… I’ll leave Petite Deli to the patrons.
When did I become such a food snob? I’m really starting to sound like a pompous asshole.
So I catch bus 30 and head toward my next objective: finding the Golden Gate Bridge and adjacent land by the name of Crissy Fields. Nick told me that Crissy Fields is a good grassy potential picnic spot with a great view of the bridge. It’s not long til I end up in a grassy potential picnic spot with a great view of the bridge… I’m pretty sure it was this Crissy Fields. There was a nice little beach, full of windsurfers, dogs, and naked babies running rampant. I had the pleasure of watching a dog take a shit on a kid’s sandcastle. I sat for a while, people-watched and snapped some shots, then decided it was time to head on to find bus 29 that would take me down the west side of the city.
Ok, so I’m a mapper. I really enjoy maps, and have spent many hours of this trip learning the map of San Francisco to get around quickly. I rely on two sets – a giant book with detailed segmented maps of the city, full of businesses and essentials and restaurant locations. The other set is a bus route map I tore out of one of Dakota’s tourist booklets. I stumble upon a complication – The book doesn’t include a map of the most northwest corner of the city (where I happened to be), and the bus route map drew the western 2/3 of the city so completely out of scale that it was actually a third of the size of the eastern third. If that makes any sense. 4 miles of Western San Fran took up 2 inches of the map, and 2 miles of Eastern San Fran took up 4 inches. Basically, the area where I happened to be dwelling was completely out of scale and missing about 90% of the streets I happened to be on or looking for. And the roads seemed a lot more complicated and windy here. I distracted myself from my confusion by walking around the Exploratorium for 30 minutes or so, and then decided it was time to actually find my bus. I ended up lost and wandering through Presidio Park, because I knew that bus 29 drove through a certain road through it. I just had no idea how to find that road, because I happened to be walking down roads that were not identified on my map.
An hour later, I find a stop for bus 29. Fabulous. It arrives not much later, and takes me on a pretty fantastic bus ride. How many bus rides have you been on that have a view of the Pacific Ocean? Yeah, go ride bus 29. If you ever happen to be on the northwestern side of San Francisco.
I was headed to objective #3 – Land’s End. And I guess Objective 2.5 was the Legion of Honor, because it was on the way. The Legion of Honor appears to be another art museum… the receptionist at Urgent Care told me I should go. Anyway, I caught another bus and was the lone person dropped off in the Legion parking lot. It was closed. That’s okay though, because Land’s End was supposed to be near. Land’s End was also recommended to me by friend Nick. He described it as “spot on Golden Gate where the ocean meets the bay. Giant cliffs with trail at top.” That’s pretty much all I was working with. My map tells me it’s through the woods northwest of the Legion, so I just start walking in that general direction behind the building. I end up wandering through a golf course, taking several wrong trails until I notice a side road that leads much deeper into the woods. I go for it. The road eventually leads to a few trails, one of which that lead to a staircase that led straight down the side of the hill. I headed down the stairs and found myself standing at the edge of a cliff looking 150 feet down upon the Pacific Ocean, and the bay, and the GG Bridge, and more cliffs and more rocks and more waves. I think I found Land’s End. It was epic. I rolled around in the dirt and peered over as many cliff edges as I could and took a ton of pictures until I eventually received a call from Dakota asking me where I was. I told her I was sitting on a cliff on the ocean and she told me she wanted German food. I was feeling pretty hungry myself, and I was itching to try this German place she spoke so highly of, so I brushed the sand off my pants and headed back to the Legion, where I caught the bus back south, this time with the company of a completely batshit crazy woman on board who was having quite the intense conversation with herself for the duration of the ride.
I told Dakota that I’d probably be able to make it within the hour. I had to go between three buses to get to Hayes, and I still had two buses to go. My second bus stop happened to be right beside Ocean Beach, which is the beach that lines the western side of the city. I figure now’s basically my only chance to hang out on a Pacific beach, so I go walk around for a while and enjoy my last (and only) sunset over the ocean. Then I get cold and decide it’s time to go find the bus.
First bus arrives, I drive from 49th to 6th, where I get off to wait for my last bus that should take me right to the restaurant. I wait. And wait. And wait. I tell Dakota it should be any minute before the bus arrives, as she and Brian are already at the restaurant waiting. 30 minutes later, still no bus. Actually, no, there is a bus, because I saw it approach me, then stop at 7th, and sit there, where it had been sitting for 15 minutes. A guy approaches my stop and asks me if I know when the bus is coming, and I tell him I’ve been waiting for about 30 mins, so it can’t be long. He then explains to me that at 7th, the bus driver takes a ten minute break every night, which usually turns into a much longer break. Fantastic.
Finally, the bus driver is ready to do his job, and comes to pick us up. By the end of the bus ride, I have bonded with new friend John, who invited me to a promotion at some bar that night.. Skylark or something. I forget. I’m sure it would have been fun or interesting, but I knew there’d be no way I’d ever make it out there. I told him I’d run into him soon.
Dakota and Brian are still waiting for me when I arrive. Apparently you can’t be seated until the whole party is present, but it didn’t take long after I arrived to squeeze into a long wooden table that shared with an old gay couple. This place is seriously German. The menu is in German, with English subheadings describing the dishes. I order a cured pork chop with sauerkraut and potatoes. I don’t normally enjoy pork chops, but I felt this had potential. And at $16, it was the cheapest thing on the menu. Sure enough, this pork chop trumped all preconceived assumptions that all pork chops were chewtoys. Probably the best chop I’ll ever have.
You guys may be growing tired of me describing every foodstuff as “the best I’ve ever had” …..but seriously. Food is that good here. I have seriously eaten at least 10 of the 20 best meals I’ve ever had in my life in the past two weeks.
Me and Dakota had to celebrate such a fantastic meal by buying even more ice cream at the corner store on the way home, which we enjoyed while watching Project Runway on YouTube before passing out. I was totally zonked, despite only being up since 1. It was a hella day.
So come Thursday, I’ve really done and seen almost everything I came here to see, as far as recommendations go. The only things I hadn’t done were 1) find and eat Chinese Dim Sum, 2) go to the Japanese Tea Gardens, 3) get Kane a present from Haight, and 4) eat a burrito in the Mission. Those were my objectives for the day. Drew called and made me get up at 11, so I had 11 hours to pack, bathe, and accomplish my tasks before I was to be boarding a plane home.
I was soon on my way to find Dim Sum. This objective was actually recommended to me by a table I waited on at Blue Martini not long before I left. I learned they were from the west coast and immediately prodded them for information about San Fran, which they gladly gave. They explained to me that Dim Sum was a form of Chinese grub that consisted of tiny dumplings and other little nuggets that were served a la carte. Extremely tasty and inexpensive. Apparently these girls have looked all over NC for dim sum and haven’t had much luck, so I apparently had to try it before I left. I consulted Yelp for guidance and learned that some of the best reviewed Dim Sum in the city was from a little hole in the wall on the north side of Chinatown, by the name of Delicious Dim Sum. Usually anything with “delicious” in the name is bad news, but apparently this place was legit.
I made another friend on the bus. We actually became friends at the bus stop. I’ve had a lot of fun talking to random people lately, because it totally wouldn’t fly in Raleigh. In San Francisco, everybody is a transplant, so everybody’s been the new kid, so everybody’s much more up to meeting the random stranger. In Raleigh, everybody has had the same friends for 20 years and doesn’t want any more. F the new kids. Anyway, his name was Bruno, and he moved to SF from England four years ago. We ended up bonding so quickly that I accidentally got off the bus five stops late, and had to walk almost as long to find my destination as I would if I didn’t take the bus at all.
So I arrive at Delicious Dim Sum. Everything is in Chinese. There is no English menu. The one woman working behind the counter does not seem to speak much English. I begin to explain to her that I’ve never been to get dim sum before and didn’t know what to get, but sensing that she had no idea what I was talking about.. I asked.. “what’s good?” She nodded and pointed to one set of dumplings, then another set. I tell her I’ll take three of the first set, and two of the other. It came to a whopping total of $2.50. Another common indicator of a meal that is about to be completely sketchy. But I take my little dumplings to go and head on my way.
My objectives switched a little bit and I ended up in Haight Ashbury looking for a good gift for Kane. He’s a picky little bitch, so I had already spend a couple of days looking for things for him, then freaking out and going home to ponder it. I found what I was looking for at Giant Robot, the super cool store of books and clothing and posters and toys and trinkets. On to objective #3.
I head towards Golden Gate Park to find a nice sunny place to eat my dim sum. The Japanese Tea Gardens are actually located in GG Park, so this was convenient, and I was starving at this point. I sat down in a clearing and tried my first little piece of dim sum.
Ok. Forget everything I’ve said about every other meal in San Francisco. This $2.50 meal was the best meal I’ve had in the city. Period. Dim Sum is the best culinary item mankind has ever contributed to society. I am still blown away. If I had not been all the way on the other side of town, I would have immediately gone back and ordered approximately 20 more pieces, but the five would have to suffice. I am still not over it.
I wander through GG Park until I see Japanese architecture, and wander inside. I have found the gardens. I pay four dollars and enter a quaint little parallel universe where everything is small and Asian and extremely green. A bunch of people are sitting around having tea, and the name indicates you should do, but I don’t really care for tea or spending money on things I don’t care for, so I refrained. I wandered around the gardens for an hour or so, then headed on my way.
I stopped by the SF Botanical Gardens on my way out of the park, which was somewhat disappointing, considering most of the plants were dead. I spent about five minutes there and quickly found a bus to take me back to the eastern side of Haight.
I look at my clock, and it’s only 3:00. I don’t have to meet up for burrito’s until 6:30. I totally could have slept til 1 again. Oh well. I stop in at Coffee to the People, a little café that cookout host/new SF friend Erik recommended to me, and sit and pitter til about 5:30, when I catch my final bus towards objective 4: burrito time.
Zack had recommended that we go to the Taqueria Cancun at Mission & 26th as opposed to the one at Mission and 19th, so I take a bus to 26th to wait for Dakota and Brian. I arrive. There is definitely no Taqueria Cancun at 26th. I seem to be standing in centro of the Hispanic ghetto, surrounded by a variety of thugs and foreclosed businesses. I call Dakota to inform her of the lack of restaurant. She says there is one at Mission and 19th that we can go to instead (this is actually the one that my other SF friends recommended), but Brian is on his bike headed to 24th and his phone was dead. So I was to wait patiently on the corner until he arrived, then I was to lead him back to 19th. Young clean white chick standing on the corner in the ghetto. You could say the public was confused.
I’m getting slightly worried about getting back to the house on time to pick up my luggage and make it back to the train. After 15 minutes or so, Dakota sends me a text telling me she somehow got up with Brian through a friend and he was headed to 19th. So I quickly head over to the bus stop and eventually I see Brian in front of a real existing Taquerina Cancun.
I spent a $4.99 on what I think was (take a guess) the best burrito I’ve ever had. It’s hard to beat Carburritos or Flaming Amy’s, but this was pretty awesome. Me and Brian were almost done by the time Dakota arrived. She rolfed down her burrito, and by this time it was 7:30 and I had to be on my way.
I said my final goodbyes to Brian, and Dakota and I hopped the bart and a bus back home. By this time, it was almost 9. I had planned to be on a bart heading toward the airport at 8. Not good. As I am packing up my stuff, Dakota yells from her bedroom that the internet says the next bus is arriving on Hyde in five minutes. I grab my stuff, say a quick goodbye to Dakota, and run a couple of blocks to my stop, where I barely catch the bus to the station. It’s the same driver that dropped me off at Dakota’s 5 minutes earlier. He commended me on my swift return. Once at the station, I run downstairs, run my bart ticket for the last time, and get down to the train platform less than 30 seconds before the train arrives. Thank god.. that would have cost me another 15 minutes that I didn’t have.
I arrive at the airport at 9:45. My flight leaves at 10:25. This should be interesting.
The airport process actually went super smoothly. I made it through security in no time (they didn’t even notice the water bottle in my purse), and my gate was the first one past security. I was safe and sound on the redeye within minutes.
So that’s my trip. Hope you enjoyed it.
Here are some thoughts I wrote down randomly while sitting in a coffee shop in Haight for two hours.
- San Francisco is a city of translplants. Explains why everyone is so open to meeting people… they were all new kids at some point…
- At the same time, I’ve only met one person in 16 days that was raised in SF and stayed forever.
- I am going to be a transplant soon. I got a taste of it. I am scared shitless.
- I was a consistent transplant through college… changes of scenery are refreshing and constructive, but I also learned that it is not necessary nor wise to change something good just to see change. No regrets, but… I’m in no hurry to change things right now. I’ve been all over the place for three years now. I crave SOME stability.
- What I love most about San Francisco is that I haven’t conquered it. As I sit here after 16 days of constant discovery, I’m satisfied. That’s not necessarily a good thing. I never feel satisfied. I just am starting to realize that this city is just as conquerable as Raleigh. It’s all mental. I have not conquered Raleigh. I am not even legally allowed to explore and conquer all of Raleigh. I had my giant to-do list here, and spend all my time tackling it because I was on a time budget. I have a giant to-do list for Raleigh. I’ve had one. I just got comfortable and stopped trying new things. And when that list finally feels complete, there is always the rest of the Triangle.
- My Raleigh changes every year. Or few months. This year’s Raleigh is totally different from last year’s. I’m not sick of it yet, and I realize how much of a hypocrite I can be when I call Raleigh small or conquerable when I’m not even close to seeing everything or meeting everyone. And I am happier with my Raleigh than I’ve ever been, and there is no good reason to leave it behind right now. I have plenty of time for change, and I need to stop being in such a hurry and really enjoy the set of circumstances in front of me at the moment. I think this year will be the best one yet.
I could elaborate on this, but I am so sick of writing.
Final thought: My birthday is in 13 days. Hope you’re ready.
Okay.. that’s really it. I hope you enjoyed (or read) these, and you can expect some more next time I’m on the road.
So I think I’ve been here long enough to make some retrospective observations. At this point I’ve roughly categorized my trip into three segments – the first being a giant onslaught of people and neighborhoods, when I saw a million new things a day and personally met 30-some people within the first few days…. Second category being a sort of lazy phase where I solidified my routine of waking up at noon every morning, and doing a little bit of half-assed adventuring until Dakota got off work, restricting most of my adventuring to the evening hours…. Third category being when I woke up and realized I only have a few days left in the city and a ton of unchecked things on my to-do list, and started trying to cram several weeks’ worth of adventuring into four days. Category 3 commenced on Monday.
I woke up at noon, as usual, set on the fact that I was going to see a lot that day. I didn’t really have a set plan yet, but I consulted my giant list of to-do’s and recommendations from SF natives/alumni, and started to form a few quasi-plans. Dakota’s phone was almost dead, so I headed downtown to bring her charger to work. It was a good excuse to get me out of the house.
At that point, I had decided that I was just going to go explore the Mission a little deeper… but immediately changed my mind and decided that I was going to find an awesome meal in Little Italy. I had Yelped Little Italy a few days earlier, and found a potentially amazing deli that had really great reviews from patrons. I had since forgot the name and location, but set out to find it anyway.
Walking down Broadway from Sansome on the way to Little Italy is interesting. I passed the Green Tortoise Hostel, which is the same company I stay with in Seattle, which was exciting. Other than that, porn shops and strip clubs. Everywhere.
Little Italy is cute. And genuinely Italian, which is refreshing. Lots of saucy men who love speaking their love language to tourist women. For some reason it just doesn’t seem as skeezy when it’s spoken in Italian. I attempted some Italian small-talk with some folks on the street, and quickly realized I forgot everything I learned in three semesters of learning that damn language. Basically, I remember “ciao,” “bene,” and “grazie.” Luckily, the three of those can be used individually to create three different one-word sentences. Full Italian conversation complete.
I saw lots of tasty looking establishments, but kept holding off in hopes that I would somehow find this mysterious deli whose name I did not remember. I walked until I reached Washington Park, snapped some shots of the sky, which was ridiculously blue (a nice contrast to the almost constant overcast weather we’ve had lately), then headed back towards Dakota’s work. I soon realized I had arrived back on Dakota’s block, and had exited Little Italy with no success. So I just headed back to Jackson Place Café (the first café I found in the city, tuckered in an alleyway across the street from Dakota’s office… I can’t stop going) and got yet another prociutto sandwich and an iced Americano. This time I realized why their coffee is so freaking good – it’s made with Blue Bottle coffee beans. I may have to look into shipping some of these beans back to Raleigh. And probably buying a coffee maker.
My second plan for the day was to explore North Beach and the Fisherman’s Wharf, and the piers on the way. I soon find myself at Pier 7, and continue strolling down the waterfront. On the way, I notice a pretty epic tower on a hill to my left, and decide that I am going to climb to the top of it before the day is over. I eventually reach Pier 39, which seems like quite a tourist trap. I wander in to explore. I feel like I am in a carnival. Everything smells like fair food (fair as in the noun, not the adjective)… funnel cakes, hot dogs. Whatever. Lots of touristy memorabilia for sale. The majority of the public seems enthralled with what seems to be a Pirate doing standup oriented for the average pre-pubescent schoolchild. His name is Jack Spareribs. I walk on.
Then I find where the real action is – SEA LIONS. Oh yeah. They are flopping around on the docks and people are loving it. I can’t lie… I was pretty into it. I took about 90 photos, and just stood enthralled for a while… eventually I had to pull myself away. They are just so damn cute. Stinky, dirty, and cranky… but cute nonetheless.
I left Pier 39 to see what lie beyond, and found even denser crowds packed around a stoic silver-painted man, and a steel-drumming duo accompanied by an overweight African woman shaking and flailing to the beat… on stilts. I think I’ve had enough of the Wharf.
So I move on to my next objective – finding that tower. I head toward a residential area that appears to be leading towards the giant hill. I don’t have much of a strategy other than… walk up the street that appears the steepest. I ended up at quite a few dead ends, but they were dead ends with perfect views of the waterfront, so I didn’t mind much. Soon enough, I caught sight of the tower only a block or so away. Concrete eventually led to a path that led to stairs that led to a scenic parking lot that led to more stairs that led to what was the Coit Tower. Okay, this was on my recommended to-do list, check that one off. I headed inside, paid $4.50 for my one adult ticket, then took an elevator to the top. I kind of wish there was a more bad-ass method for getting up.. like scaling the side or walking up 30 flights of stairs.. but I guess I was pretty spent by that point so I didn’t mind the break on my legs. The top had good views, but it was so confined, and the windows to peep through were so tiny, that it ended up being pretty anticlimactic. Finding the tower itself was actually the best part. I snapped a few shots, then headed back down the elevator into the parking lot.
I didn’t really have a plan from here. Three objectives complete. I saw a staircase on the other side of the hill that seemed to go down into a wooded area, so I decided to explore it. Staircase led to dirt paths, which led to more dirt paths, which led to the edge of the hill that was a little too steep for me to fuck with. So I sat around in the woods for a while, then decided to find my way back towards downtown.
A few dead ends later, I was heading down some random street in North Beach which seemed to be going toward Nob Hill. I passed Golden Boy pizza, which was on my recommended list, but didn’t stop to eat. I soon found myself at a bus stop that headed homeward, and quickly took the opportunity to stop moving.
Once home, I got a message from Dakota to meet her in the Mission. We had a date. Our friend Zack, who we met at the cookout my first weekend in town, had offered to take us out to dinner at an eclectic little spot called Delfina, on 18th and Guerrero. Italian/American/French-inspired cuisine, big emphasis on fresh ingredients and innovative food combinations. Sounds like my cup of tea.
On the way to dinner, I pass Delores Park, and see a phenomenon I could have never fathomed – bike polo. Really. Like… polo. On bicycles. How awkward and amazing!
We all meet up at Delfina at 9:30. We split a bottle of sauvignon, a sheep ricotta w/ zucchini, bitter greens with pancetta and walnuts, strawberry farm short ribs with gouda polenta, rabbit something or another, salmon something or another, and some sort of puff pastries filled with espresso gelato. Jesus Christ it was awesome.
As we were finishing up, we were discussing things I must do before I leave, and Zack brought up the fact that Twin Peaks is one of, if not the, best view of the city. So I say, “well, we should go.” Zack says, “right now?” I say, “Why not?”
So Zack bikes home to grab his car, while me and Dakota head to Amnesia to grab a drink and wait. Oh how I love this bar. Yet again playing eastern-european-inspired-americana-bluegrass as I walk in the door. We order a couple of their cocktails, all made with koju, a Korean vodka that seems pretty popular in the city. Before we know it, Zack has arrived with his chariot. We head out, but have one extra stop before we head to Twin Peaks – we have to go pick up his friend Andrew, who is visiting from Santa Cruz, and who has apparently been drinking alone at Zeitgeist for four hours after his friends left town. Andrew is tall (6’8″ to be exact), drunk, and hilarious. Oh my god. He is one of the funniest people I have met in a long time. And I don’t think it was because he was drunk. He made it to my favorites list quickly.
So we are driving straight up windy roads that should eventually lead us to Twin Peaks. We quickly become enshrouded in fog. We get to the top. We can’t see five feet in front of us. So… you can imagine the view. Just fog. We could vaguely see the few lone cars in the parking lot with couples in the backseats. Not much later, a police car came by with a spotlight and said cars were eliminated pretty quickly. So we hung out on the edge of the highest point in the city, but saw nothing. We decided to drive somewhere of a slightly lower altitude and maybe catch a view underneath the fog.
We arrive at some museum, whose name will remain unsaid (simply because I don’t recall what it was). The property was sitting on the edge of a cliff and seemed to have a pretty good view. Unfortunately, the gate to the property was locked. Good for us, we are traveling with primate-like men who can scale fences and unlock doors from the inside. So began our scenic trespassing tour.
I wish I had some sort of scandalous story for you, but no cops came, the dogs were not sent for us. We just wandered around forbidden museum property and enjoyed a fairly good view. We eventually tired of being bad asses and headed back on our way.
Zack invited us to drink expensive fancy beers at his place, but it was getting late, and we were ready for bed. So we said our goodbyes to Zack and Andrew, and made it into bed by 3:00 a.m. Long Monday, but productive Monday.
Today I figured I’d stick to the whole trend of finding tall things with good views. I had been told by my compadre Nick that Bernal Hill in fact had the best view of the city (I believe “fuck Coit Tower” were his exact words), so that was objective #1. Find Bernal Hill and climb it.
Objective #1 eventually because objective #2, because I was hungry and wanted a tasty breakfast bagel at 4 p.m. I remembered Yelping a little shop called L’s café in the mission, that had highly recommended breakfast bagels. I set after it.
A fun fact about the mission – once you go east of Mission Street, things get ghetto quick. You are in the Hispanic hood. Apparently there are two pretty prominent Hispanic gangs who roam these streets, who wage war against each other every ten years or so. Word on the street is now is another ten-year point, and apparently homicide rates in this area are higher than they’ve ever been. But apparently, if you’re not Hispanic, and you are not in a gang, you’re golden.
Well, I’m about six blocks deep into the Mexican ghetto. I usually enjoy my walks, and I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the saucy whistles or having my ears blasted by souped-up civics blasting Hispanic rap jams, or constantly having to watch my step in order to avoid stepping on herds of Mexican babies, but after a few blocks of it you really just want to get to your destination. And finally I stumbled upon my little gem of L’s café.
It was super cute. There was a mix of clean-cut white kids and clean-cut Hispanics sitting at tables, nerding out on their laptops. I approach a nice lady at the counter with an amputated arm. I ask if they still serve breakfast bagels. Yes they do. Thank god.
Soon I was rolfing down an everything bagel with prociutto (I’m hooked), egg, cream cheese, lettuce, and avocado. I took a minute to write some notes down in my trusty new Moleskine book, then headed out to find this hill.
I soon exited the depths of the mexi-hood into the outskirts of the more docile Hispanic community. Not much later, I was in Bernal Heights, huffing up steep streets in hopes that they would lead me to the base of the hill, which was now clearly in sight. I finally reach the base of the hill, which only leads to steep dirt-paths, which only lead to more steep dirt-paths. Lots of hiking and huffing and I am FINALLY to the top of the damn hill. The hill kind of looks like it’s from the Lion King or something. Totally bare except for a couple of trees at the top. It’s pretty epic.
I spend about an hour on top of that thing, talking and texting, writing in my little book, taking pictures, talking to dogs, and walking around aimlessly. Eventually I get cold and decide it’s time to go. I forgot that I get slightly nervous with extreme heights, but only when I’m walking downhill…. So I take the concrete road down instead of hiking back down the paths. Much easier.
The next hour or so is just me wandering aimlessly around the Mission, deciding to go to certain recommended spots, then changing my mind right before I get there. I was basically on my way to nothing for about 10 blocks. I stopped for some juice at a smoothie place and ordered a ginger beer. What I received was the most spicy potent concoction I have ever attempted to consume. And I can handle spicy. I had to throw it away after only a few sips. My mouth burned for ten minutes afterward. Maybe it was some sort of sick joke on the girl that ordered a drink ten minutes before closing time.
Eventually I made it to Objective #3, Delores Park. My specific instructions from Nick were to “drink beer in Delores Park,” but I only had lemonade and blackberries. I hope that will suffice. So I sat and people-watched and wrote more thoughts for a couple of hours. A couple of young guys next to me were discussing how they were going to break into the music scene (best of luck. I listened to a guy behind me leave a long, painfully awkward voicemail to a girl named Aly (not his wife), realize that he didn’t actually leave the voicemail, then call back and articulate the exact same voicemail message, word-for-word, equally long and awkward. Another guy was trying to sell shots of Jameson for a dollar.
Eventually the time comes for me to leave, and I meet Dakota on the J heading inbound. We stop in a coffee shop on market so she can interview for yet another potential apartment. Apparently the guy she was interviewing with went to the same elementary school as her in Utah. Hopefully that’ll be enough of a bonding point to land her a sweet place to stay.
We are tired and cold, so we head home and I order some cheese ravioli from Victor’s pizza, delivered to the door. I am finally eating garlic again… it’s been a little hard to integrate it into my diet after barfing garlic fries for an afternoon. So hooray for that.
Tomorrow is my last full day in the city!! I may panic. Too much to do. I think tomorrow I’m going to finish exploring the north side of the city, and hopefully it won’t be foggy so I can actually SEE the Golden Gate bridge before I leave. I don’t know. My objectives don’t really take shape until right before I do them, so who knows what I’ll end up getting into. Hopefully something ridiculous.
I feel like cramming so much ridiculous adventure into such a short period of time is really messing with my head. Everything is starting to mesh together, and I’m having trouble remembering what happened yesterday vs. last week. I’m hoping things will come back to me as I write.
So yesterday, I awoke at noon (as usual) to Dakota’s requests for me to choose a place to eat. So I consult Yelp.com for help.
Let me give you a run down on Yelp. It’s this giant database of things to do and eat and drink… It started in San Fran, but has since diffused to many major cities in the country. It’s built by people going to the site and rating/reviewing anything from restaurants to doctors. It’s extremely useful and I kind of want to start a Yelp revolution in Raleigh. Wish me luck.
I spent way too much time looking for a lunch spot, because there are approx 9000 restaurants just in the Nob Hill/Financial District, but settled on a highly-rated and reviewed sandwich spot called Birley’s Sandwiches, in the Embarcadero Center, which is where Market Street dead-ends into the piers.
On the way, I stop to get a snack and change for the bus at the corner store by Dakota’s. The clerk asks me if I can vote in California. I tell him I regretfully cannot. He proceeds to explain to me that the California legislature is well on its way to passing a law that will name a large sewage plant after George Bush… affectionately nicknamed “George Bush’s Shit.” I don’t think that was an amendment on the bill though. He was pretty stoked about it.
Here’s more on it – http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25735046/
As usual, I approach my bus stop to see the back of my bus #1, driving away. So I decide to walk for a bit, assuming that it would be a while before the next one comes. But no, not even half a block of walking later, the second bus #1 drives past me. Did the driver really think it was practical to drive only a block behind the first bus driving his exact route? So I wait from that point forward, and ten minutes later catch a bus and meet Dakota close to Embarcadero.
Birley’s was okay, I’m not going to rave about it. However, we did go at 3:00 when they were almost out of everything, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. We ate outside in the open concrete of the Embarcadero center… it’s really foreign to me to see how a city can go from urban to palm trees and water in just a block… but then again, I’ve never been to a city on an island either. Well, peninsula, but you get my point.
I wanted to find some coffee to wash the taste of mayonnaise out of my mouth (I forget how much I hate mayonnaise until I randomly decide to re-incorporate it into my diet). Dakota tells me about Blue Bottle Coffee Company, a supposedly fantastic coffee spot that she and Duggan discovered soon after her initial move in to SF. We headed in that direction, passing through a side street that I immediately became obsessed with. It was lined with aesthetically appealing buildings with a couple of little restaurants and cafes, and sporadically strewn about the concrete were these little modern bright-orange chairs, arranged in little clusters, with the random chair sitting alone here and there, distant from the others. I know my description of this alley does not really give you an accurate idea at all, but you can go look in my pictures because I snapped one before I left. I have a strange obsession with bright-orange modern furniture (specifically) in unlikely places… another good example is the SAM Sculpture Park in Seattle…
So we made it to Blue Bottle. I took out my camera to snap a shot of the shop’s sign, and quickly noticed a peculiar situation… a white dove, completely mutilated, placed neatly at the bottom of the sign. It was weird. I am really curious as to how it got there. Some sort of bad trick or just a bad omen. I don’t know. But the coffee was great. And the building was beautiful. We were going to get a giant pot of a certain kind of special coffee that Dakota described to me but I’ve since forgotten, but apparently they were out of coffee beans…? Hmm. Dakota settled on a cappuccino. I asked the barista what the best kind of iced coffee they served was, and he said that luckily the best one was the only one they had in stock. It was the BEST glass of iced coffee I’ve ever had in my life. It makes any Raleigh coffee taste like puddle water. I’m still not over it.
Dakota had a 5:00 house tour scheduled in lower Castro, so we hopped the J-train and headed that way. I’ve never ridden the J past Church and 16th, but once you pass 18th, it’s the most awesome ride ever. The views are amazing! Seriously, if you want a good tour of good-looking San Fran for $1.25, take the J muni. (PS – the J muni is a train designed to drive underground and function as a bus aboveground.)
We eventually arrive at our destination. Now, I’ve been to Castro, but the furthest south I’d been was 18th street. We were on 24th. Let me just say this is the cutest fucking neighborhood I have seen yet, and I would live here in a heartbeat. Everything is well-kept and green, there are trees and flowers everywhere, and everything has a sense of character and community. It was great. I have now changed my mind on where I am choosing for Dakota to live.
The apartment we toured was newly renovated, with hardwoods, reasonably high ceilings, and a back porch with a good view. I’m sold. Too bad that doesn’t matter. I do hope that Dakota moves somewhere around there though, because if not, I’m just going to spend every subsequent SF visit in this neighborhood and she will just have to come find me.
After the tour, we stop in a fun store full of toys, things to write with, things to write on, trinkets, and dogs. Dogs were everywhere. Me and Dakota spent most of our time playing with the dogs, and by playing I mean incessantly touching them hoping for a reaction while they laid on the ground unimpressed. They were still cute though. I bought a Moleskine book (just a blank leatherbound book… I picked one w/ gridded paper), because there have been way too many times on this trip where I wished I had a little book to write things down in before I forgot them.
We finally left that fantastic little neighborhood and headed home to be worthless for a while. Dakota bought tickets for us to attend The Dark Knight at 11:15, so we had a couple of hours to spend relaxing.
We decided to get dinner delivered, because we were lazy. I consulted Yelp, and stumbled upon a Sushi Rapture (another stupid name for a sushi place in my humble opinion), rated best sushi of 2005. I don’t know what happened post-2005, but I figure it’s still well worth a shot… not to mention it’s only a few blocks away. So we order a few rolls and before we know it, $50 of sushi is delivered to our door. I’m not used to paying an obscene amount of money like that on any food item, but THIS WAS SO WORTH IT. It was the best sushi I’ve ever had. In my life. I kind of wish we had taken the time to walk the couple of blocks and actually see the restaurant that produced these tasty goods, but eating the best sushi dinner of all time in the comfort of our living room with wet hair and no makeup will suffice.
We eventually made it to the theatre downtown with 30 minutes to spare before the movie started. Unfortunately, the line was already out the door. The seats were almost completely full by the time we got in, and we sat third row. We prepared ourselves for a headache. The movie was amazing, but I’m not going to get into that because all of you can see it in Raleigh. Random thought – I wonder if humanity will ever get corrupt to the point where the movie industry will kill off their own actors and exploit their mysterious deaths to rake in profits at the box office. It’s obvious what benefits the exploitation of celebrity death can bring. Ohh humanity.
It was past 2 a.m. by the time the movie got out, so there wasn’t much else to do but go home. Brian was originally planning on having a sleepover at Dakota’s, but he changed his mind and headed over to #1 national climbing star friend Natascha’s instead. So Dakota and I headed back toward Nob Hill, accidentally walking down Pine during a time when you should absolutely not be walking down Pine. It was completely overrun with crowds of crackheads who all seemed to be waiting for something… what you have to wait for on a desolate street at 2:30 in the morning, I’m not sure. But after a couple of blocks of that, we quickly walked a block over to ensure our survival. We were home passed out not long afterward.
So I need to take a minute to explain to you that I am usually a pretty bad sleeper. I never really go into deep sleep, so I end up dreaming extremely vivid crazy dreams for hours and hours and hours every night, and usually wake up remembering them all. It’s actually really fun, but I always wake up exhausted. But ever since I came to SF, I have been having really bad dreams that last all night and morning, until I forcefully wake myself up because I just don’t feel like dealing with them anymore. Not like nightmares… just really unpleasant and uncomfortable situations. Like… a few days ago I dreamed I was giving a house tour of a really complex multi-story house with an open center that was interwoven with staircases between multiple floors. When all levels of the house were completely full of people, the center of the house ended up collapsing, then the rest of the house ended up catching fire. It was not fun. Or on Friday night I dreamed I watched a guy fall onto the concrete and break his face open, and I had to take him to the emergency room. It sucked. Or I’m stuck in situations with the very people I want to see or interact with the least. Just random shitty situations I don’t want to be in.
Anyway, I was supposed to go house-hunting with Dakota on Saturday morning. I guess as my Friday night dreams progressed, I entered a dream where I remember Dakota waking me up to go house-hunting. I get up, get ready to go, and am walking to the bus with Dakota, but I am overwhelmingly tired, so I tell Dakota that it would probably be best for me to go back and go to bed for a few hours. So she lets me go, and I get back to her house, get back into my PJ’s, and go to bed. I wake up again at noon, call Dakota to ask her about me getting up and almost going with her that morning, and she tells me that it definitely never happened and I was completely zonked when she left.
Dakota told me to meet me at Church and 16th, so I hopped on the J-muni and headed that way. Not long after I get on, I see a scrawny guy, probably shorter than me… he kind of looked like an awkward recently post-pubescent kid, but he was probably older than me (everybody is). There was a girl with headphones in sitting two seats down from me… he stops in front of her and waves. She takes her headphones out and he bends down to ask her –
Scrawny guy – “What’s your name?”
Girl – “Do I know you?”
Scrawny guy – “Not yet.”
Girl – “Do you need something?”
Scrawny guy – “You can get to know me.”
Girl – “no thanks…” (Puts headphones back on).
Defeated Scrawny walks away. Peace is restored.
Minutes pass by, more people fill in the seats around me.
Scrawny returns and sits down right across from headphones girl and myself. In my peripherals I notice he is stealing glances at us approximately once every three seconds.
In my peripherals I now notice him waving at me. Great. I’m sloppy seconds to headphones girl. I pretend not to notice, in hopes that he will give that up quick.
Next thing I know, Scrawny is waving his hand furiously a foot in front of my face. I guess I have no chance but to acknowledge the fact that this is happening. I look at him. He is staring ravenously with a grin on his face. Pretty fucking creepy.
Scrawny guy – “Hi.”
Me: – “Hi.”
Scawny guy – “What’s your name?”
Me – “I’m Helena.”
Scrawny guy – “Are you from here?”
Me – “Nope.”
Scrawny guy – “Where then?”
Me – “I’m from North Carolina.”
Scrawny guy – “Ohhh, well I’m from Los Angeles, but I moved here blah blah blahblah…”
[He tells me about his life for a while… note – this conversation is being listened to by my entire half of the traincar at this point. People are amused.]
Scrawny guy – “So are you married?”
Me – “No.”
Scrawny guy – “Single?”
Me: – “No.”
Scrawny guy – “Do you think your man would let me pay him $1,000,000 to take you away? Because I could do that. Because I am in the middle of fighting a civil suit and I’m waiting on $308 million dollars. The cops think they can beat the shit out of anyone… blah blah”
[The other men surrounding me in the train car are losing patience with this dude and begin to get involved. It begins with snide comments and retorts to his game-spitting, which then escalates into blatant shit-talking to the scrawny one.]
Despite the fact that I am pretending not to hear him anymore, Scrawny proceeds to tell me about how he can actually get a girl anytime he wants, because he’s a DJ, and the girls usually fight over him whenever he does a show, but those are not the girls he wants, because they only want him because he’s a DJ, and blah, blah blah blah. The conversation is moreso between him and the 3 guys talking shit to him than between him and me at this point. I’m okay with that.
Finally at Church and 16th. I tell Scrawny guy that it was a pleasure meeting him, and I must be on my way. He is screaming his Myspace address to me letter by letter as I walk out the doors.
One of the guys who was sitting nearby, and who talked most of the shit talked to Scrawny guy, comes up to me after we get off the muni, apologizes for Scrawny’s actions, and explains to me that people aren’t actually like that in San Francisco. Apparently LA people are a different breed.
I soon run into Dakota, and we hop the N over to Haight to meet John Knox, another one of Dakota’s friends. I had never met John Knox (I actually know another John Knox from Raleigh, but I later found out it was the wrong John Knox), but apparently he is a design graduate from State who later met the love of his life in Australia (who happens to be extremely wealthy) and the two of them moved to SF and bought a fabulous apartment, where John has lived since February or so. Brian met us on the way to Giant Robot, the store in which we were to meet John. Giant Robot was another kickass store full of designer books, t-shirts and trinkets and toys. We soaked it in for about 30 minutes until John arrived, then headed down Haight in search of food. We are all extremely indecisive about where to dine, but eventually settled on People’s Café, where we all ended up getting Boca Burgers anyway.
Afterward, we went shopping (I looked). Haight is a street FULL of amazing shops, whether it be designer or thrift, clothes or shoes or accessories, books, toys, records… whatever. This street is unreal. We sifted through stores for a couple of hours, then decided it was extremely cold and time to go home. We said our goodbyes to John, and hopped the N back to Nob Hill.
Dakota and I decided that we were going to be classy ladies and drink champagne indoors for the night. So we headed to the liquor store and bought two bottles of champagne, peach schnapps, and OJ, and proceeded to make bellinis, mimosas, fizzy navels, and fuzzy navels (when we ran out of champagne). Apparently I put all of my photos on facebook and had a long online conversation with Sarah Tyndall. I guess there are worse things that could have happened on a Saturday night in downtown SF. Me and Dakota had a lovely and intense champagne-induced heart to heart, then passed out by 1:00. We are ragers.
Today we were going to get up early enough in time to eat breakfast at The Pork Store, which supposedly has some of the best breakfast in San Fran… but we didn’t. We ended up walking a couple of blocks down the street to a place called Nook, in what was actually a really cute part of Nob Hill. They were out of basically everything we wanted, so we both got granola and fruit and yogurt and mealed outside on the street. It was pretty good, but way overpriced. Or maybe Helio’s just spoils me by serving the exact same thing at half the price. Who knows.
Dakota was supposed to meet a girl who she had discussed living with who was flying up to SF for the day to look at houses. I was planning to join, but it was 59 degrees outside, and I forgot to pack a jacket, and I was extremely tired, so I was lame and stayed home and napped for another 4 hours. I woke up in time to meet Dakota for yet another dinner at Golden Era, where I picked up some fantastic paper propaganda concerning the teachings of the Supreme Master (whose photo I just noticed is hanging on the wall as you enter the restaurant). It is a little strange, all of it. I’m wondering what the employees have to endure as far as obeying the good word of the Supreme Master. Whatever… their food is good so I’m going to keep going.
The rest of our night has consisted of doing laundry across the streets with our laptops and pints of ice cream. We accidentally forgot to check what time the Laundromat closed, and the owner came by to lock the doors while we were still in the middle of our laundry-doing. She decided to keep it open 30 extra minutes for us, so we luckily made it home with dry clothes.
I only have four more days here. I am almost in a panic. I have so much I still have to do and see, and I’m running out of time. So.. I’m going to stop sleeping in until noon (I say that now..) and start cramming in as much as I can before I head out. I’m not gonna lie though… as much as I love this place, I am missing Raleigh and a few people who reside within it, so getting back will be nice. Hopefully the next few emails will be packed of super fun exciting things, and less rambling from me. I’ll keep you posted.
I’ll preface this with an apology for the fact that my emails keep getting longer and longer. I don’t mean to do it… I just keep getting caught up in more and more random things to write stories about.
So begins day one of week two. I woke up just in time to meet Dakota at Posh Bagel during her lunch break. I’m kind of a bagel snob, thanks to Carolina Bagel, the bagel making masters of New Bern, NC, but these bagels were legit. Not those tiny hard little ring-nuggets that Breugger’s tries to call bagels. I meant to order the “sub club,” which was just turkey, cheese, and avocado, but instead accidentally ordered the “sub supreme,” which ended up being a massive pile of a variety of meats, condiments, and vegetables that in my opinion are not bagel-appropriate, like pickles and banana peppers. Actually, nothing on that bagel was what I would deem bagel-appropriate, except for the turkey. I picked a bunch of the crap out, tried to eat it anyway, but couldn’t finish. I ate part of Dakota’s bagel instead. Hope she didn’t mind.
We soon parted ways, and I set off to catch the bus back up the hill, because my leg is hurting mighty bad, mighty early. I get to the bus stop just in time to see my bus driving away. So I instead decide that this is a good time to find a Walgreen’s to spend some of the money that finally found its way onto my bank account. Dakota said there was one on almost every corner, so I was bound to run into one on the way home. I even tried a route I didn’t normally take in hopes that I’d more likely find one. I get almost to Dakota’s and realize that I haven’t seen any yet. I figure it would be a good time to consult my map guide, fully equipped with a list of Walgreen’s and locations, that’s been sitting in my purse the entire time. Apparently I passed about five stores on the way, but just wasn’t on the right block. I end up wandering around for another 30 minutes and eventually find one almost where I started looking in the first place. I buy some shampoo, chapstick, altoids, (all totally necessary) and some Motrin for my leg, then haul another 15 minutes back home. It all ended up being a good little afternoon workout.
On the way home, I passed the west-coast Cup-A-Joe and who did I meet eyes with through the window but the very guy who tried (and failed) to take me home from The Lodge on Friday night. Seriously, this town is getting smaller by the minute. I walked on without much hesitation.
Brian (Dakota’s high school compadre who lives in Oakland who went to Santa Cruz with us.. just a refresher) had plans for us for the evening. He climbs professionally, and wanted to take us to Mission Cliffs, a climbing gym in the Mission (if you couldn’t deduce that) for the night. We catch a train down and meet him around 7:21… 21 minutes late, but who’s counting.
Mission Cliffs is huge. I have never seen a climbing gym like this in my life. I’ve only seen one other one actually, but I feel like it’s okay to make a generalization like this because this gym was enormous. I also got confirmation from Brian that this was one of the biggest climbing gyms in the… state? Country? Something like that.
Brian quickly introduces us to his climbing friends, Ben, Natascha, and Rich. Natascha was recently the #1 climber in the nation. Kind of a big deal. I can’t wait for her to see me awkwardly flailing halfway up the training wall.
Ok, there really is no training wall. But climbing walls do have “trails” that are composed of color-coded knubs and rated from 5.01 to 5.13 according on difficulty. You must stick to the same color knubs as you climb… using another colored knub on the way up is kind of cheating (that didn’t stop me from doing it). So Brian harnessed us up and led us over to 5.05 to get us started.
We climbed for an hour or so. We rocked some trails, and completely forfeited others after ten feet or so. I can totally see why half of the dudes in the gym had Pop-eye arms, because your forearms ending feel like pudding after the first trail. I freaking loved it… to the point where I think I’m gonna Google some climbing gyms in the triangle when I get home. Anybody interested in joining, holler at me.
At one point, when Dakota was doing a climb, I looked over and noticed a girl that looked and sounded a lot like Lisi (the girl who came to the Lodge with us, and later invited us to the half-birthday cookout). That’s because it was Lisi. City’s getting even smaller. I ran over to her after she finished her climb and caught up for a minute. She explained that you really do end up running into people you know everywhere… people’s circles intertwine pretty frequently and like-minded people end up going to the same places. I guess that is true for everywhere, but I just convinced myself that this city was so overwhelmingly large and unfamiliar that I wouldn’t end up crossing paths with acquaintances after only a week or so.
After we got sick of climbing, Dakota, Brian, new climbing friends Ben, Natascha, Rich and I headed out to find some grub in the Mission. I bonded with Ben and Rich on the way.. particularly Rich, who is Hungarian but born in Michigan. We spent a good deal of the walk to dinner trading foreign-parent stories and talking about whether we will end up moving to our homelands one day.
We ended up once again at Frjtz (a different one than the one we went to last time). This time I tried wasabi mayo and orange-ginger mayo with my ration of frjtz. Mayo usually creeps me the fuck out, but love wasabi and oranges and ginger, so I just manned up and ordered it anyway. A kind Samaritan decided to leave a puddle of water in the seat that ended up sitting in, and I did not realize it until I had a giant wet spot on my bottom. I enjoyed watching the public speculate on what got me excited enough to pee myself. I got a lemon-butter-sugar crepe to go, but ended up eating it before we left because it smelled so good.
Dakota and I said our goodbyes to Brian and new climbing friends, and headed home to crash. Dakota’s roommate, her boyfriend, and another friend were having a raging trifecta party in the living room that consisted of a bottle of wine and documentaries on the 12-inch television. We decided to be nerds and sit online in the solitude of Dakota’s bedroom instead. We passed out soon afterward.
I awake this morning to find half a bottle of wine, an untaken vodka shot in a medicine cap, and a bottle of wart ointment sitting on the living room table. Looks like things got pretty crazy.
My mission for today was to find an urgent care and figure out what the heck is wrong with my leg. It’s getting ridiculous. I spent the morning Googling and phoning urgent care centers around the city. The process was pretty frustrating, as most medical centers that displayed themselves as “urgent care centers” online were not in fact urgent care centers. False marketing? And several others wouldn’t take insurance. They would give you paperwork for your insurance company to reimburse you, but I personally don’t feel like paying $300 for a doctor to just look at my ankle, especially considering I just got money to survive with. So the only reasonable option seemed like heading to the UCSF campus, near Golden Gate Park on the west side of the city. I glanced at some bus/train routes, then took a break to meet Dakota for a slice of pizza on her lunch break. After lunch, I decided that I’d head to the train station and piece together some routes and eventually make it to UCSF. Almost to the station, I realize my damn phone is out of batteries. Again. Despite charging for the entire night. So I instead catch a bus back up to Dakota’s, where I hook my phone back up to the charger and take a shower, so I at least feel like my trip home had a purpose. Finally, at 4:00, I’m ready to go find UCSF. I figure out my bus routes, which are fairly easy, and I catch my first bus downtown.
Now on to find my second bus, numero 71, which should be easy, since it just runs down Market. Well, as I’m studying the bus map, I look up to see 71 at the bus stop 50 feet in front of me. I scurry towards it. It drives away as I come within ten feet of it. Fantastic. At least I know which stop it comes to now.
So I wait, and wait, and wait for the next one. I notice a man approaching the bus stop, and as he walks past me, he stops directly in front of me, turns his face to me, smirks seductively, then walks a few feet past me and proceeds to stare intently at me for several minutes. Might I add that this man is 5’2″, cracked-out, and toothless. A perfect Flava-Flav replica. I am flattered. His bus finally comes. As he passes me to board, he grabs my elbow, stares deeply into my eyes, and utters a slurred gargle that could be most closely interpreted as the word “baby.” He then boards the bus to leave me forever.
But wait. No, he feels that there is still a chance that he could still make this work. The bus is still sitting there. He moves to the giant window in front of where I stand and starts pounding on it. I try to stare as intently as I can at anything and everything other than the window. Noticing that his attempts at getting my attention are futile, he begins trying to poke his hands out of the tiny ventilation windows above the large main window, in hopes that I would notice, and perhaps reach my arms up and meet him for one last touch before we are separated forever. Finally, the bus cranks up and drives away, with my tiny toothless lover’s hands still flailing for me. So sad.
A few minutes later, 71 arrives, and I am finally on my way to the west side. It was a nice little ride over, through Haight and Ashebury, and I spent most of it scoping out thrift stores and restaurants from the window. Unfortunately, once we began to pass Golden Gate Park, I got slightly confused and soon realized that the bus had passed my stop several blocks earlier. I knew that the bus would eventually loop around and take me back by my stop, but at the time I decided it would be best to hop off and walk. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. It’s like 50 degrees outside (seriously), and I made the awesome decision of wearing shorts and a short-sleeved jacket… not to mention the urgent care was several blocks south of 2nd street, and I was at 9th. By the time I made it to urgent care, my limbs were numb and my hair was windblown into a lovely nest atop my head. I looked good.
Once I actually arrived, the process was quite painless. Of course, I left my insurance information in NC, which I seem to always do when I travel and happen to end up in a hospital, but I got it faxed over, set up a 7:00 appointment, and went and found a Starbucks to sit in while I waited.
Finally my turn. I end up talking to the nurse for 20 minutes during my vital sign check-up about things to do in the city and places she wants to visit on the east coast. We can’t stop talking, and once back in the waiting room, the other receptionist politely separates us and tells me to take a seat. Finally, it’s doctor time. As I expected, she didn’t do much more than make my describe my symptoms in detail and fondle my legs for a minute, then give the diagnosis: tendonitis in the right foot, and sprain of the left ankle. She offers to write me some prescriptions, but tells me that I can basically get the same effect from quadrupling the standard dose of Motrin IB. I thank her and tell her I’ll stick with the Motrin, then head on my way. So basically, I achieved basically what I wanted to out of my day-long trip to the doctor… instead of bitching incessantly about what might be wrong with me, I can now simply bitch about what is actually wrong. A day well spent.
Well, my day just wouldn’t end, as much as I wanted it to. I headed back up 2nd to catch the 71 back to Powell and Market, where Dakota and Brian were waiting for me. Simple enough. I am almost to the bus stop.. I see it in the distance. I then see what else but my precious number 71 rolling past me. Seriously? Whatever, I’ll just catch the next one.
The great thing about the bus system here is the fact that busses are equipped with GPS locators so bus stops can electronically calculate their exact distance, to the minute. Well, it’s great when you see that your bus is close. The next 71 was scheduled to come in 51 minutes. Fuck that. I decide that I’m going to walk east until I find another bus route that takes me somewhat close to Powell and Market. I pop in a few Motrin and begin the trek.
Easier said than done. I freeze over quickly, and my bus map indicates that there are basically no other bus routes around this area. But I trek on, and about an hour later (glad I saved so much time with that decision), I’m on bus 31, which drops me off nicely at Powell and Market.
I meet Dakota and Brian at the mall, and we head back to Golden Era for some tasty Asian veg because we just can’t get enough. While we were there, we noticed something that we hadn’t seen the first time we ate there: the overwhelming amount of strange propaganda on the tables. Where do I begin. Well, it was an advertisement for Supreme Master television. Apparently this is a cable channel with 24-hour continuous programming designed to uplift the spirit. It is basically a channel designed to show you the path to divinity (it does indicate that vegetarianism is the path to God.. good to know). Supreme Master was also playing on the television screen in the restaurant. The writing was in Chinese, but we deduced that it was showing us what foods would lead us to god, as well as sharing fun facts like the fact that the polar ice caps were going to melt by summer 2008 (I didn’t realize summer 2008 was still approaching). I suggest you take a gander at their website: suprememastertv.com. It’ll change your life. Me and Dakota are full to the brim, but we still made room to buy a couple of pints of ice cream on the way home.
So that’s where we are now, vegging on our pints, as I sit and ice my leg with a bag of boneless chicken breasts. Tomorrow is going to be so much better! Thank god.
Okay, on a completely separate note, I just made the realization that I’m not coming home on Wednesday. For some reason I convinced myself that the 25th was a Wednesday? I’ve had that lined up in my head for a month or two now. I don’t come home until Friday. I’m an idiot. So… to the several people that think I’ll be home on Wednesday, and the one who thinks that he’s picking me up from the airport on Wednesday… sorry about that. See you next Friday?
Okay, so the last couple of days have been slightly unproductive for a number of reasons:
1) I’m recovering from all of the things we did this weekend.
2) Dakota works til about 6:00 every day.
3) I managed to injure my shin pretty badly somehow… I really didn’t do anything to it (but most of you know that I have a knack for acquiring injuries with little effort, like breaking ribs when coughing), but I remember exactly when I did that nothing to it – I was about to step off the curb to cross Sutter between 5th and 6th in the Lower Richmond District last Thursday, and felt something go completely wrong, not when my foot hit the ground, but when my leg was in mid-air before it made contact with the ground. When I felt it I knew it was going to fuck me up for a while. I thought it was just a muscle cramp and it would be better within a day or so, but it just keeps getting worse, and worse, and worse and worse. If I were in Raleigh, I would have driven myself over to Urgent Care by now, but I’m not, so… I’m not. I have a pretty high pain tolerance, and I am having a pretty hard time moving around, but I am still walking several miles a day… basically, to get to the point, I’m trying to bring the quantity of walking from about 8 hours a day to about 3 hours a day, and that is best done by staying inside and pittering around until Dakota gets off of work.
4) I’m broke. The money that was supposed to be transferred into my account to get me through this trip somehow got mailed, by my bank, to my home address in New Bern. My mom discovered this when she returned home from Norway on Monday and found a sum of money in the mail. How that happened, we will never know, but I have had $0.00 in my account since Saturday. I’ve had to live meagerly, and Dakota has assumed the role of mother/wife and has paid for me to survive. But obviously, when Dakota’s not around, I can’t do much.
So yesterday I slept all day. It was nice. My day at home finally allowed me the time to get to know Dakota’s roommate, who is always out when we are in, and vice versa. She is tiny and spunky and fun, and I talked to her for about an hour. I’ve deduced that in every conversation I have with people, there is an undertone of persuasion to get me to move out here. Every freaking conversation turns that that. It happened all night on Saturday, and it even happened a few times today with people I just met. Dakota’s roommate was pretty blunt with the persuading though, and told me that I should move out here immediately when I graduate.
I had one goal for the day: go eat the best Asian food in San Francisco. I was guided by my friend Nick to try Golden Era, which was a vegetarian spot not far from Union Square, which is not far from Dakota’s.
Let me go ahead and clarify that eating vegetarian and vegan is a completely different ballgame in San Francisco than in Raleigh, or North Carolina in general. By the way, I’m not vegetarian or vegan either. I just like good food. And San Francisco has vegetarian and vegan restaurants that are off the chain. And it’s healthy. And it’s not like you have to eat only vegetables. They truly prepare meals that when you eat them, you completely forget that they don’t have meat. They just make meaty-tasting things that well.
So I went to meet Dakota downtown after work, and we found Golden Era in a slightly sketchy part of town (I think it was in the Tenderloin. I just love saying that name.). I got vermicelli with five-spiced tofu, and cucumbers and peanuts and cilantro and shallots and bean sprouts and lettuce. IT WAS AMAZING. It was one of the best noodle meals I have ever had. In my life. And I didn’t feel like death afterwards, which is what usually happens after I rolf down a giant bowl of noodles. Dakota got soy “chicken” with broccoli. Soy chicken amazes me. How the heck do they make it look and even feel like chicken? I like it better than real chicken, but real chicken bores me anyway.
After that, we stopped at Cup a Joe (the west coast version) so I could spend my last four dollars in my wallet on a fucking white mocha. It seemed like a great idea at the time. I wanted an iced one, she gave me a hot one. Awesome. I go to sit at a table on the sidewalk while Dakota gets some gelato. I get approached my a homeless dude who wants some cash money. I told him that I seriously just spent my last four dollars on a white mocha. He then wants to borrow my phone so he can call his friends and tell them where he is. I have my phone out and I’m texting, so I’m kind of stuck. I just say “noo… I’m sorry…” Now here is where San Fran homeless folk are different from Raleigh folk – they use logic. They don’t just take a phony answer and say thanks and walk away. They argue that shit. So he says, “why can’t I use your phone? It’s right there in your hand. You’re using it.” All I can say is… “Iiiii’m from North Carolina and I can’t make long distance calls and I’m sorry.” He stands there for a minute and just looks me over. He is getting frustrated. Damn these men of logic. He argues with me for a minute, and finally I just stop responding, and Dakota finally comes out, and the homeless man of logic goes away. The barista that fucked up my drink accidentally gave Dakota an extra dollar, so Dakota gave it to me. So charitable. Thanks motherwife.
Today was slightly more productive. I woke up fairly early to a text from my brother that said he couldn’t get my money to the bank on time and that he was sorry. Awesome. Another day with $0.00. I was beginning to regret the purchase of that hot, but should have been iced, white mocha.
Dakota was at a meeting at her boss’s house that day, and wanted to meet somewhere around The Mission or Castro at 5:30 or 6 or so. So I pittered around the house most of the day, working on my resume, tagging photos on myspace, being otherwise completely worthless, until I looked at my laptop and noticed it was 5:22. I was going to be pretty late for my meeting with Dakota, considering it’ll take about 45 minutes to get down to Castro. So I pack up my things in a hurry, haul ass down to Market street station, and open my phone to give Dakota a quick call double-checking that I should take the train down that way. I look at the time. It’s only 2:55. My laptop is on east coast time. I’m an idiot. So I could either walk 20 minutes back uphill to Dakota’s just to be worthless for another couple of hours, or go ahead down and explore thift stores in Castro and the Mission for a few hours until Dakota is free. So I take the dollar that Dakota gave me the night before, bought a train ticket, and head down to the Mission to wander around with my remaining 24 cents.
I walk around for an hour or so, from Castro to the Mission then back to Castro, and then realize I came very ill-prepared. I forgot to eat before I left, so I was completely famished at this point, and my phone was almost out of batteries, so there was a good chance I wouldn’t be reachable by the time Dakota got off. I remembered that I had $4.99 of overdraft protection left on my card, so I used 3 dollars of it to buy a snack and some vitamin water. So that took care of that problem. I shot Dakota a warning text telling her where I’d meet her if my phone died, then started wandering down 16th back towards the Mission looking for somewhere to sit, because my shin was hurting pretty bad. I found a nice bench wrapped around a tree in front of someone’s house, and sat down to eat my snack and relax for about 30 minutes. Then the owners of that house came home, and awkwardly hung out in the front yard that basically contained the bench that I was sitting on. One of the guys in the group came and sat down next to me on the bench. None of this would be awkward if they had actually said something to me, which I would have welcomed, but none of them did. So I sat on the bench in their front yard awkwardly for another 15 minutes or so and then continued on my way.
Not long after, Dakota called and we met up on Market and Castro. I needed sustenance, so we set out to find some sushi. The first place we stumbled upon was a place called “Crazy Sushi” in the Mission, and we ate an obscene amount of food. I will note that most sushi places have ridiculously cheesy names here. I feel like on the east coast sushi places have simple, Asian-sounding names… like Musashi’s, or Kanki, or Osaka, or whatever… which is probably cheesy-sounding to people here, but here, everything is named “Sushi Rock,” or “Sushi Groove,” or “Sushi to Die For.” And they seem much more commercial and chain-like. I know I can’t make that generalization for all sushi places in SF, since I’ve only run across a few, but it’s just different here. And cheesy.
After dinner, we walked about 20 minutes southeast to a townhouse that Dakota had set up a meeting to look at and potentially move into. These are always fun because you never really know what you’re getting into, other than what that was told to you on craigslist. In this case, it was 9-5ers by day, rockers on the weekends. You never really know what ages you’ll end up getting, but these sound reasonable. A large grey-haired dude, late 30′s or early 40′s, dressed in a black hoodie with a bandana on his head, lets us in and takes us upstairs. He totally wasn’t as scary as I make him sound… he was a super nice guy. We then meet other roommate, total indie rock chick, 30′s maybe, born in Africa, lived all over the world but mainly NYC, black hair with grey swoopy bangs. She was really cool too. The place was awesome, really spacious, hardwoods, 12-foot ceilings, sunroom, living room with tons of character… if you can’t tell, I’m getting pretty involved in this house search, as if I was moving or something. We stay and get to know these folks for a while, which is always slightly awkward, because you know you are sizing each other up but want to pretend you’re not by layering it with cordial surface conversation… but I approved of them and the house. I guess it’s really up to Dakota though. We then said our goodbyes and caught a train back to the Financial District.
We were craving Jamba Juice, so we set out on Market in hopes of finding one. As we are walking down the street, I noticed an old man, looking slightly angry, a little confused, and completely intoxicated, staggering towards me. I veer about 4 feet to the left in order to avoid his path, because he is moving pretty erratically. I think I’m in the clear. He is looking at me. Next thing I know, in slow motion, I see his body barreling towards me. I know this is going to be interesting. He then bodyslams me, knocks me almost into the wall, then barrels off and sprawls onto his back on the ground, looking up at everyone as if he had just woken up from some dream and had no recollection of what happened or where he currently was. Everyone in the street is standing around a little confused. Dakota was walking a few feet ahead of me so she missed the whole thing. A few people around try to help him up, but he is just looking up from the ground at everyone angrily as if we shouldn’t dare come near him. I stand there for a minute, feeling slightly obligated to do something, since I was the one he picked to bodyslam, but then decided to walk away instead. Maybe I’m an asshole. But I still can’t figure out if he did it on purpose, because he was looking right at me as he was coming for me, or if je just went instantly comatose and his body felt naturally inclined to barrel into me. It’s kind of funny now that I think about it.
So that’s our night. Tomorrow we’ve been invited to rock climb in Oakland with friend Brian, but there is also potential for seeing our cookout friends from Saturday again.. they were supposed to be doing something tomorrow and mentioned it to us. So I guess we’ll see. One week down, one week to go.
I feel like a lot has happened in the past 24 hours. Especially considering I woke up close to 1:00 today (yeah, that’s 4:00 Raleigh time). It’s all kind of a blur at this point (from sheer quantity of activity, not intoxication), but I’ll try and piece it all back together.
Last night was fun. When Dakota got off work, we met up and headed straight to the Mission to meet Raleigh friends Ryan and Adrienne for some grub.
Ok. San Francisco is composed of many hoods/boroughs/divisions, such as the Financial District (extremely corporate, malls, banks, tall buildings, sharply dressed people in a hurry), Chinatown (self-explanatory… a block away from where I’m staying), North Beach (I haven’t been yet.. but I hear it’s beachy), The Tenderloin (my personal favorite of the names… supposedly the only really sketchy place to walk at night, and the corners usually smell like pee), or The Mission, among others.
The Mission is the sort of indie-kid district… full of bad ass restaurants, cafes, and shops, all with massive amounts of character… sort of on the same level as the Raleigh Times or Lily’s Pizza or Father&Son, multiplied a few hundred of times with some added variety. The people are.. the kind of people you’d see at the previously mentioned establishments. But better. And crazier. And more fun to look at.
Dakota and I arrived in The Mission much earlier than our friends, so we stopped in at the “Mission Whole Foods” (not of the Whole Foods supermarket chain) and bought some snacks. My slight obsession with trying vitamin-water competitors led me to purchasing a beverage called “Hint.” It was supposed to have just a “hint” of grapefruit and mango flavor… sounded tasty. It was truly that. It didn’t taste like shit. It smelled nice, but I ended up feeling like I was consuming soap or something.. not that I’ve consumed much soap, but it’s a product that can smell fabulous but its taste does not represent that smell whatsoever. That’s how this drink was. Disappointment. Moving on.
Ryan and Adrienne finally arrived, along with additional friends Laura and ____ (insert Laura’s roommate’s name here). We originally intended to eat at this vegan restaurant called Herbivore… supposedly amazing to the point where you would completely forget you were eating vegan. But then there was an hour wait, so we ended up eating at an Indian restaurant down the street instead. Laura’s roommate decided to stop in and purchase a beverage on the way and bring it into the restaurant to enjoy during dinner (which you can do legally here). West coast beverages are interesting. Laura’s roommate purchased a Budweiser Clamato. This beverage consists of Budweiser beer, tainted with flavors of clam and tomato. That’s fucking disgusting. But we passed it around the table (I sniffed it but refrained from trying it), and those who tried it said it tasted exactly like they expected. Clammy tomato beer.
Anyway, dinner was tasty, and upon completion we headed down to a little bar called Amnesia. When I hear the name “Amnesia,” all I can envision is the newest hottest premier dance club in Greenville NC gladly accepting ages 18 and up for a sweet light show and a good grind to shitty radio hip hop. This bar, on the other hand, was amazing. I wish I could have taken a picture to accurately represent how awesome this place was. It was a teeny dark little room, with high vaulted ceilings, red velvet everywhere (but not in a skeezy pornographic kind of way), the only light coming from crazy billowing hanging lampshades with red light bulbs. One bartender, but nobody was impatient or in a hurry. There was a stage at the back of the room with an fantastic band consisting of an upright base, acoustic guitar, mandolin, accordion, saxophone, clarinet, flute, and I think I saw a bassoon at one point. They played a fusion of traditional eastern European and bluegrass, with lots of negative chord progressions and polka and waltz rhythms. They were seriously talented. I was almost comatose at this point, considering I had gone to bed at 2:00 a.m. the night before, woken up at 4:00 a.m. to go to the airport, and at this point was still awake at 1:00 a.m. Raleigh time… and full of Indian food. I was basically nonfunctional and could not speak, let alone hold a meaningful conversation, with anyone, but I could listen to that band. And so I did until they finished their third encore. As much as I knew I would have loved that bar in a less vegetative state, I knew that my fun ended when the band did, so I reluctantly asked Dakota to take me to my bed. So we said our goodbyes, took the train back to our hood, and walked up several of the steepest hills of all time until we were safely in bed, all before midnight.
So I slept in until about 1:00 today (or 4, however you want to look at it), but I’m okay with that. I figure that sleeping in actually saves me money because that automatically eliminates one meal/cup of coffee I would have otherwise purchased. And Dakota works until 5 every day so I’d kind of rather stay up late with her anyway.
Ryan calls and tells me Adrienne has left him alone as well, so we decide to meet up in Castro, a district slightly left of the Mission. By the way, the Mission is about a 30-or 45-minute walk/train/busride/walk from where I stay. That’s not bad when you are with somebody who lives in San Francisco, but once you’re alone, you realize that you don’t know shit about the city and have no idea how to get from one point to another. I had a vague memory of what train/bus we took to get to the Mission the night before was, and knew that Castro was relatively close to where that bus would drop me off. So I got on the J-train/bus, and waited patiently with my map until about 20 minutes later when I felt like I was as close to Castro as I was gonna get. I ended up being only a block away from Ryan. I was quite proud of myself.
We grabbed a sandwich and coffee at a neat little café called Urban Bread, then headed deeper into Castro. Castro seems to be the predominantly gay district of San Francisco. At least that’s what I deduced by the huge quantity of rainbow flags and overwhelmingly gay sexual innuendos encoded in restaurant and business names. If I were gay, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave. It was awesome.
Ryan and I took a bus over to the Lower Richmond district, which is right above Golden Gate Park. Adrienne was interviewing for grad school at Berkeley and was going to meet us around these parts. We ended up in what appeared to be Japantown… best smelling part of San Francisco thus far. We ended up in an amazing book/trinket shop/gallery where we met up with Adrienne, then we headed down the street to another book store where we vegged out for a while. I can’t wait until I can afford to buy a lot of fun books again.. and I’m not necessarily talking about those wordy kinds.. more like the giant journals compiled by artists and photographers… they’re much more cost-efficient than buying art, and it’s more recreational. That’s how I feel anyway. So today’s book browsing was basically a giant tease. I’ll come back and buy some next time I’m in San Fran.
We stopped in a coffee shop because Adrienne had to pee. I got a carrot-apple-ginger juice, because it sounded good at the time, and ended up with a lukewarm frothy orange puree that was pretty difficult to drink. It was nice looking though… I think I took more photos of it than sips. Adrienne then left us, without ever peeing, to meet up with her boyfriend who had just flown in from Alaska (he was there on vacation), so me and Ryan left to meet Dakota in Haight and Ashebury (another really cool district with lots of fun shopping and restaurants and bars and lots of character).
By this point, I was famished and about to eat my city map. We at first decided that we’d choose dinner based on proximity, which I was totally down for, so we strolled down Haight, and several blocks later, decided that we were instead going to choose dinner based on quality and were going to pick our destination carefully. Dakota told us about a German restaurant that had provided what was the best meal she had had in years, so we hopped on a bus and headed to it.
It’s about 9:00 at this point. The German restaurant is emitting the best smells I’ve ever smelled in my life. There is a 30-minute wait. Ryan can’t hold out any longer. We decide to walk down the street and scope out other options.
We soon run across Frjtz, which Dakota had recently described to me as the best fry place of all time. So we do it. This place served giant cones of fries with about 20 different sauces to choose from, like pesto mayo, thai chili ketchup, chipotle remoulade, strawberry honey mustard, red pepper mayo……… those were the ones we got anyway (the strawberry honey mustard was donated to us for free). I’m a pretty big fan of dip/all things that can be dipped, so I really liked what I was getting into. This place also served really awesome crepes. We all got a crepe and fries, which ended up being a shitload of food. I ate about two bites of my crepe, then focused on dipping and consuming my fries. I’ll eat the crepe for lunch tomorrow.
We thought about going out tonight, but decided that since tomorrow is our big go-out adventure night, we would save money and any further abuse on our feet (I made the mistake of not wearing socks with my boots today, so I am a complete gimp at this point and my body hates me) by just heading home and nerding out on the internet and Nintendo. I think it was a great decision.
Tomorrow Dakota has a half-day at work, so the adventure will start right when I wake up. Ryan and Adrienne leave for Portland on Saturday, so we will have to see them off properly. I should have good stories to tell you soon.
Greetings from San Francisco. Most of you are probably used to receiving my incessant posts when I travel, but for those of you who are reading these for the first time: I write incessantly when I travel.
I am in San Francisco because:
- Last time I flew with Delta airlines, they butchered my flights so badly that Dakota and I left RDU with two $400 – - Delta credits to use as we please.
- Dakota and I subsequently planned a massive west coast trip involving both Seattle and San Francisco. For free.
- Then Dakota went and got a job designing for the best magazine of all time (Dwell), based out of San Francisco. – So she moved there. Travel plans got a bit complicated.
- So we both cancelled our tickets and I simply rerouted my flights to live with her in San Fran for two weeks instead.
Other reasons include:
- I am slightly obsessed with the west coast.
- California is one of the few states I’ve never been to.
- I heard San Francisco was bad ass, so I wanted to explore it.
For once, my flights went smoothly (though Delta did overbook one of my flights and offered me yet another $400 Delta credit to catch a later flight, and after some mental debate, I declined and got on my plane). After 7 hours of awkwardly painful napping using my digital camera wrapped in my purse as a pillow, I arrived in SF at 10:30 a.m.
Oddly enough, some friends of mine from Raleigh also happened to be flying from Raleigh to San Fran this morning through a different airline, so we all met up with Dakota at the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station, and rode the train into town. Dakota and I parted ways with our compadres and headed to her place.
Initial observations about San Francisco:
- Buildings are taller than I expected. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but I was surprised.
- The half-block-spanning four-story Forever 21 I encountered upon exiting the BART station. Is this really necessary?
- Overwhelming bro to girl ratio. Bros everywhere.
- Fitness Walking class did not prepare me for these hills. Little reminders of my total lack of athleticism.
Dakota’s place is cute. It’s right next to Chinatown, and only a few blocks from the bay. Rent is ridiculous here. I only saw her place for a second, because Dakota had to go to work, so we walked a few blocks to Dwell headquarters, where we then parted ways and I left to explore the city until 5:00 when we were to meet back up again.
So began my quest for wireless internet. I walked, and walked, and walked, and continued finding coffee shops either without wireless or who charged or required a sprint account. Who would think wireless would be so hard to find in this town? Dakota, through extensive googling, found that a certain Chaat Café in the financial district offered free wireless, if I was willing to walk the extra few miles. So I did, after a quick stop at Jamba Juice. Juice seemed like a good idea at the time. But a couple of miles and 16 oz. of pureed fruit later, I felt like death and was ready to yak and/or pass out on the sidewalk.
I finally stumbled upon the café, and found Chaat to be not much of a café but rather an obscure Indian restaurant whose staff seemed somewhat offended by my request to steal their wireless signal. So after a quick google search, I was on my way to find wireless elsewhere. Six hours of searching, and I am finally here at Tully’s coffee enjoying a free signal. I don’t really mind the fact that I spent the entire day wandering the city, because I needed to do that anyway. Dakota just got off work, and we will soon be off to explore dinner & drinks around the city with our other compares. We’ll see how it goes.
