So you know that project deal we have with Okaygreat.com? Okay, maybe you don’t. That’s ok. Here’s their rundown of our collaboration, according to their website:
PROJECTS! PRIZES!
JULY 17TH, 2009
Hi, everyone. News time. Our friends Tim Lytvinenko + Helena Price have just embarked on an epic month-long, cross country tour. The awesomeness potential here is through the roof. [www.welldonetour.com]
We’ll be joining forces with Tim + Helena over the next month to bring OK Great readers a weekly PRIZE + a weekly PROJECT. Funnnnn.
For details, read on.
Here’s the skinny:
Every week, we’ll ask readers to call in (remember HELLO OPERATOR?) and suggest a project for Tim and Helena to carry out on the road. You can find some sample ideas here.
The project can be anything! Make a movie. Take a photo series. Go on a scavenger hunt. Write letters to all of your friends. Climb a mountain and plant a flag with your name on it. ANYTHING.
The person whose idea is chosen will receive a mystery prize in the mail from Tim + Helena. -There will be a new project and a new prize every week!
Prize winners and thei suggestions will be announced every Monday and the finished project will be put up every Friday.We can’t wait to hear everyone’s crazy suggestions. Put these two to work!
Toll Free: 866-556-9432
This week’s challenge was dubbed “Six Generations of Mustaches.” The assignment was given to us on Monday, due by Friday.
Here’s the project we submitted. It was made while wandering the downtown bar scene of Omaha, Nebraska.
This was the first time we actually had a deadline to be in a specific city. We knew that no matter where we ended up in the country prior to this, we needed to be in Omaha by the 22nd, as our friends Bowerbirds and Megafaun, two incredible bands based out of our hometown of Raleigh, were playing a show that night. No traffic jams this time… and we actually made it into town a day early!
This left me the entire following day to explore downtown before the show. The area where I spent most of my time could be compared to Raleigh’s warehouse district or downtown Durham… lots of old warehouses and otherwise giant brick buildings that had been renovated but still retained their integrity. The streets were made of brick and most of the streets had giant wooden awnings installed over the sidewalks with flowers planted on top. Way fun. The weather was a little crumby, but still good enough to snap a few shots.
I stumbled upon a random thrifty antique shop in the midst of my exploring… and was greeted twice by a young hipster lady who seemed too inebriated to realize she had started a conversation with me five minutes prior. I carried on the second conversation as if the first never happened. I’m not sure if she ever realized it. Perhaps that’s for the best.
I met back up with Tim and Alyssa, our lovely Omaha host, and we spent some time drinking coffee and browsing record shops (Saddle Creek Records, founded by Conor Oberst, is based out of Omaha… so you can get a lot of their tunes for cheap here).
Next stop: Meeting up with Bowerbirds & Megafaun. They were playing at the Slowdown, the venue owned by Saddle Creek. The venue was nice… very aethetically pleasing and quiet and completely devoid of smoke or grime. Nice change.
The show was great, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, and the show was well-received. We stayed for a bit to catch up with all of them post-showtime, but we were all so exhausted from our own individual tours that we said our goodbyes early and promised to catch up in Denver, when we all reunite.
Omaha day 2 consisted mostly of pizza, beer, and mustaches. Just you wait and see.
The drive to Chicago was… scenic. We were kindly warned by the state of Illinois that upcoming road work would have us in traffic that would make our remaining 80 mile drive take approximately three hours. So we took a little detour through… well we’re not really sure. But it got us to Chicago. We stopped at Target on the way, because I had a $25 gift card. We felt it was appropriate to spend it on things that would be necessary for tour, such as:
- Animal crackers
- Jolly Rancher gummies
- Four packs of grow capsules (in assorted shapes including aquatic animals, farm animals, and dinosaurs)
- Phase 10 deck
- Lisa Frank sticker set.
All of these will be put to use very soon.
After some more driving and about 90 wrong turns (I was driving), we made it to Chicago.
First stop: Sultan’s Market. Tim had been ranting about this place the entire way into the city. Apparently they have the best falafel sandwiches on the planet.
And that they did. Two spicy falafel sandwiches stuffed with cucumber + yogurt + hummus + spicy spice with curry rice to top it off. Good way to start the night.
We spent the next few hours wandering the streets of Wicker Park, and eventually found ourselves in a bar called the Crocodile, that happened to be serving $4 Blue Moon, $4 Dewars, and $4 Jim Beam, all of which comes with FREE PIZZA. We were sold. We ate more food and drank more drinks and wrote more obscenely long to-do lists. Nothing can take us completely away from all of our tour work… not even bourbon and beer and free pizza.
Around midnight, we headed to friend and gracious host Angus’ house, aka “The Whiskey Chest,” for some hangtime. We had full intentions of going out and exploring the city, but next thing I know, we look at the clock and it’s 3:15. I think it’s time to rest.
Day 2.
Angus insisted that we start off our second day in Chicago with a proper meal. So we took a quick walk to the Cornerstone Cafe, a cute little spot nestled in the middle of a gargantuan 5-way intersection. I somehow championed a smoked salmon omelette the size of a football. I was comatose by the time I got back to the abode.
Tim and I split ways for the afternoon, and I wandered around with Angus and Adam until evening, when we all met back up at the bean. Oh, that bean. It really is more marvelous than I could have ever imagined.
We said our goodbyes to Adam and Angus for the evening so we could get some shooting done. We quickly found ourselves distracted by really nice grass in the park, sandwiches, and a free concert at the pavilion at Millennium Park.
Cellos, violins, MacBooks, and beatboxing. The music was absolutely wonderful and I found myself unable to really function other than laying on the grass and letting all of this soak in. People actually live in this place. This type of afternoon is normal and accessible for them. They can do this whenever they want (minus the winter months). I’m still processing it.
So yeah, I’m completely enamored with Chicago. Glad that’s settled. Now moving on in hopes of falling in love with the next city.
Okay, so yeah. I’ve been around and about lately. I would write about 80 pages on the ridiculous amount of adventure I’ve gotten into, but to be honest, I’ve kind of run out of time. Like… I should be running through the streets of Chicago right now, but I’m blogging. That is no bueno. I need to be go collecting stuff to share with you guys! But if I share everything right now, I won’t have time to go fun-collecting. It’s sort of a catch-22.
Anyway, I’ve written a lot about our adventures, but it’s on the phototour site. So if you haven’t clicked on the link that I’m constantly rationing to you, just try it. You’ll like it, I promise.
Since my last post I’ve been back through NC, up into West Virginia, through Indiana, and now we’re in Chicago. I’ll be here for a couple of days, and then we’re headed to Omaha! Woohoooo!
And here are some more rations of photo treats that are from the past few days, that aren’t on the phototour site. Just for you. Enjoy!
According to original tour plan, I should have already passed through Baltimore by now. Well… things have turned out a bit differently.
Here’s a run-down of day one:
Our first stop: Durham. We had a couple of tasks to complete.
1) Meet with rockstar magician superhuman Michael Casey. He had a book to give us, and our task is to deliver it to David Slade of the American Princes in Little Rock, Arkansas.
We hung out in Starbucks for a bit, caught up on life, talked about awesome books/movies/music, and shot some photos, before we went on our way. We are thinking about setting up a Michael Casey Day Parade in Little Rock in his honor. I’ll let you know how that pans out.
So from there we were supposed to go to Baltimore. Slight problem – as we were about to leave, Colossus called and said that their van broke down in Massachusetts and they were not going to make it to Baltimore.
That complicates things.
After some thought, we decided to do something fun – drive to the Atlantic Ocean. This way, the tour will be 100% from coast-to-coast, and we can steal fun things from the east-side coast and place them on the west-side coast.
From here we’ll decide where to go next. We have a few places in mind… all completely and totally different and far from each other. But for now, we’re going to play in the ocean and see what adventures we can get into out here in coastal bumfuck. We’ll keep you posted.
For those of you who haven’t heard, I’m moving to San Francisco in about a month to got to grad school. In the beginning of July, I will officially be homeless, pack up the few remaining things I haven’t sold or thrown away, and begin my trek across the US of A.
However, this will be no ordinary trek. I have plans to stop in a few cities on the way through. Approximately 24. I am also planning the biggest photo/video/blog project you could ever fathom.
Accompanying me on my trek is long-time friend Logan Sayles. We met at NCSU’s Design Camp when we were sixteen. We’ve been adventuring together ever since. He’s the one you see in all of the Seattle/Washington blogs. He is the perfect travel mate, and when together, team Helena-Logan can sniff out adventure better than anyone I know. I have a feeling this is going to be epic.
[Photocredit: LoganSayles]
I will be keeping all of you posted on my progress. I am also rallying all of you to help get team Helena-Logan across the US. Whether it be buying prints from me, donating a few bucks, or providing sponsorship in exchange for my PR superstar skills. I hope to create enough buzz around this project to where advertising on this blog will be sufficient compensation and incentive for aiding me in my travels. I am blown away at the amount of traffic my site has already received, so I have a good feeling that this project could turn out to be something great.
All who are interested in making this happen, please email me at helena@queenofthepavement.com.
Stories + photos from my most recent trip to San Francisco.
Kate and I head out bright and early to catch out 6 a.m. flight to Houston, TX. I have no recollection of it, as I passed out immediately once I was seated on the plane. Apparently free breakfast was offered to me. I had no idea.
We arrive in Houston. Our flight is delayed about an hour. No problem. We wander the airport for a while looking for a sufficient breakfast. I decide to purchase a breakfast stromboli. I always hate airport breakfast stromboli, but I always seem to subject myself to it whenever I have the opportunity. Can’t explain it.
Anyway. It’s about time to head to the gate. We arrive, smile at the desk attendant, and take a seat in the waiting area. I casually observe that the area is pretty empty, but we don’t think much of it. We read and play with our cameras for a while. Waiting room is still empty. Kate decides to check in with the desk attendant. Desk attendant freaks out on us. Apparently they had already boarded the gate and closed things up a while ago. And apparently it is not her job to question people that are obviously approaching and waiting on a gate, sitting within a five foot radius of her for the past 10 minutes. We tell her to chill out and let us on the plane. She complies.
Plane ride number two. I pass out again immediately, apparently missing yet another offering of free breakfast.
I wake up a few hours later to warnings that we will be approaching turbulence, perhaps due to the gargantuan storm covering the entire state of California. No biggie. We’ve all handled turbulence before.
Next thing I know, I am barfing into a bag like a damn six year old. People loved it.
We finally land, head to baggage claim to collect our goods, and prepare to leave, when Kate realizes she left her digital camera on the plane. How clever. I decide to sit on the floor in baggage claim while Kate goes to find gate passes to reenter the terminal and rescue her camera.
Camera is retrieved. We get the fuck out of the airport and hop on the train toward the city.
By the time we get off the train at Powell Station, the giant storm had completely cleared. I am famished, and am really craving vegan Asian cuisine, particularly from Golden Era. It’s really the only vegan Asian I’ve ever consumed, but regardless, I’m obsessed with it and have to eat it multiple times when I’m in SF. We head a few blocks toward the Tenderloin to find it.
Not long into the trek Kate’s rolling luggage breaks a wheel, and ceases to roll any further. She drags her giant duffel bag against the concrete for the remaining few blocks until we arrive at the restaurant.
Food is great. We stuff our faces until we are practically useless. However, we decide that it would be productive if we purchased a new bag for Kate as quickly as possible. We leave our belongings at the restaurant, and head out in search of luggage.
Soon enough, we’re back with a fresh new rolling suitcase for Kate. We repack everything casually on the floor of the restaurant, leave Kate’s old suitcase as a gift of sorts, then head on our way back into the financial district to kill time until Dakota gets off work.
Next stop is Blue Bottle Coffee Co. I am absolutely obsessed with their goods. Upon arrival, I receive the news that they are out of the coffee beans used to make my favorite iced coffee, so I end up with a baby iced americano instead.
It’s finally 5:00 and Dakota is off work. We head toward Powell to meet her. I am excited to go through my favorite alley, which is usually covered in randomly strewn orange chairs. I don’t know why, but I just really like orange furniture and concrete combined. Whatever.
Anyway, all that I found in the alley today was this. No iced coffee or orange chairs???? What kind of city is this???
We find Dakota at Powell. Our reunion is interrupted by a strange city dweller who told me I looked exactly like the woman who carried his sperm within her back to England. I quickly informed him that I was not this woman, and we headed on our way to catch up elsewhere.
Onward to the Mission, Dakota’s hood. Her new apartment is so so so great. Right beside Delores park. She was hungry, so we trekked a few blocks to a sushi spot, where we proceeded to stuff our faces yet another time.
So then there’s bi-rite. I had been to their grocery last time I was in SF, but missed out on the whole creamery deal. So I’ve basically been nerding out reading their menus online since last July, and really needed to experience it for myself at this point. We went, tried about 9 flavors total, and I decided that blood orange was the way to go. I was pleased.
Must learn to suppress the stank/primate face when on film and/or in public.
Day 2:
It’s raining again.
Dakota recommended that we head over to Tartine for breakfast. I first learned about Tartine last summer, when I was at some random pot-luck-cookout-half-birthday party in San Fran, and somebody brought some berry pastries from Tartine. I was obsessed from that point forward, and upon learning that the establishment was only a couple of blocks away from Dakota’s, I was set on going.
We were told to get the morning buns. So I did. I perhaps got a little carried away and ordered a ten dollar breakfast sandwich as well. I’m pretty sure it was worth it.
Project #2 was checking out the piers. Most of the projects we had on our to-do list I had already done last time I was here, but they are all worth seeing again, and since this was Kate’s first time in town, it was absolutely necessary.
And so began the jumping pictures.
Then we headed over to Pier 39. It feels like a glorified coastal trip to Busch Gardens.
The rain is intense and our socks are getting wet. But there are sea lions to be seen.
There wasn’t much more to see of the piers, so we headed westward to project #3: Coit Tower.
We didn’t have any plans on going in the tower itself, because it costs money and is generally anticlimactic. We just wanted to explore the hill surrounding the tower itself.
The rain conveniently stopped once we reached the top.
We noticed staircases running down the side of the hill into the woods. No reason not to walk down them.
Everything is so green here. And it’s a different green from the east. Can’t explain it.
We then wandered into the residential area surrounding the tower. Kick ass houses perched on the side of Telegraph Hill. Project #4: finding out how to either live in or have friends who live in these homes.
We continued walking down stairs for another half-hour until we finally hit level concrete. Onward to the next project.
Next stop was Jackson Place Cafe. I used to eat here all the time last summer, because it was in Dakota’s neighborhood and right across the street from her work. They have my favorite coffee ever (blue bottle new orleans iced coffee) and favorite meat ever (prociutto). The cafe is hidden in a little nook full of brick and palm trees and open flame lamps. I love.
Next stop: Haight. Full of hippies, thrifty shopping, and teenagers who pretend to be homeless after school lets out. Before curfview of course.
This was about 4 minutes before an insane hailstorm that left me and Kate completely soaked from the waist down. And broke our umbrellas.
And then we found the Grateful Dead house.
We met up with Dakota after work for dinner in the Mission. I had recently discovered that I wasn’t quite as broke as I thought I was, so I planned to reward myself with a tasty, slightly pricier SF dinner. And maybe a beer.
We decided on Monk’s Kettle. It was only a couple of blocks from Dakota’s, which I liked considering the weather was still crap.
Monk’s was on a wait, so we ended up browsing the surrounding thrifty spots around the block. First stop was Idol, which I vaguely remember exploring last July when Dakota was at work and I was wandering around the city bored.
Next stop was the bookstore next door… I also remember exploring this at some point last year. Quiet little spot… I kind of wonder how these places pay rent. The owner had just bought a couple of quiches and offered us a piece when we came in. We politely declined, to the delight of a ratty bearded fellow who continued eating the goods furiously.
I didn’t expect to purchase anything… until I ran across the book of my dreams. A gargantuan book of Philippe Starck’s work. My favorite designer. Ever. He is god to me. I immediately made the purchase and headed back to Monk’s to read it while I wait.
Monk’s was great. Very content-conscious cooking, and the greatest beer list I have EVER seen. The first page was about 50 California brews… and then continued on for another 10 pages or so. I wish I could have had the chance to explore several, but after a giant pretzel, macaroni and cheese, bbq sandwich, fries and curry aioli, I really only had room for one altbier. Then it was coma time.
I still regret not getting the Cali-brewed black currant cider. Next time I suppose.
Day three. Kate and I have a lot to explore before we head to Los Altos Hills for the night. We get up early, eat the remaining halves of our sandwiches from the night before, and head on our way.
Project 1: Tour the Academy of Art Institute’s campus. Kate had signed up for the tour of the university’s fashion design graduate program, and I was just along for the ride.
Then I started filling out a registration card. Noticed they had basically every major I have been interested in the past before deciding on pursuing a relatively uninspiring undergrad degree in public relations.
By the end of the tour, I was meeting with an admissions advisor discussing the application process. I’ll be applying to grad school in SF this week. What the fuck.
[May 09 Update: I applied. I got in. I'm moving to SF in July and starting classes in September.]
Project #2: find dim sum in Chinatown.
We don’t have dim sum in NC. Almost everyone I’ve talked to who moved from the west coast are distraught over this. Last year I managed to find a fantastic spot called Delicious Dim Sum. I am usually highly suspicious of any establishment with a positive description of their product within the name of the establishment itself. But man, this place changed my life. Nobody spoke English, and there was no menu, so I just pointed to random dumplings and the owner charged me two dollars for one of the best lunches I have EVER had. Needless to say, I was ready to revisit Chinatown.
So we arrive at Delicious Dim Sum. It is CLOSED.
NOOO.
I don’t know what to do. Of course there are approx. 342790 other dim sum restaurants in Chinatown, but it is really hard to distinguish from the good ones and the terrible ones.
We decide to make our replacement decision based on proximity. We cross the street and head into House of Dim Sum. We ordered twelve dollars worth of food. Considering my last dim sum meal was two dollars, you can only imagine how much food ended up in front of us.
We eat. We can’t finish. It is pretty terrible.
Dim sum fail 2009.
And then we headed northwest.
Project #3: Take jumping picture at Crissy Fields.
Crissy Fields jumping photo accomplished.
RENTAL CAR TIME!!!
What a pleasant surprise…. we are given a glorious minivan by Enterprise to aid us in our travels.
So I started this habit of jumping recently. I suppose it happened after having the epiphany that I have a lot of good photos of things that thousands of other people have also taken good photos of. The sudden feeling that my photos lacked any sort of novelty led me to the decision to begin jumping. You may have a photo of (insert cliche monument here), but I have a photo of myself jumping in front of it, and, therefore, mine is better. Holler.
On the way back into town to finish up the last of our San Fran projects before plane boarding time.
Project #1: go to Land’s End.
It’s a strange process getting out here. You go to the golf course behind the Legion of Honor, wander until you find a dirt road blocked off by a rusted gate going straight into the woods. Jump the gate. Continue down the dirt road until you find a staircase going further downward into the woods. Take the staircase.
Continue walking down until you are standing on the edge of a cliff. Stop walking.
The wind was out of control. Maybe not that big of a deal. Unless you are standing on double-sided cliffs and could easily fall a hundred-something-feet or so.
Sitting down seemed like the most practical way to take photos. Lessened the risk of falling to our death.
I look like a muppet.
We tried and tried and tried to come up with a good way to do a jumping photo, but we couldn’t come up with a way that eliminated the chance of our cameras and/or us falling off the cliff. So we gave up and decided to climb down to the beach instead.
Land’s end jumping photo sort-of-accomplished.
I had never climbed down to the beach before. Not much sand going on. Mostly unstable rocks ranging between about half a foot and ten feet in diameter.
one of the cliffs we failed to take a jumping photo on.
Next stop: Ocean Beach.
We were running out of time and, frankly, feeling lazy, so we took some photos from the top of the ledge and went on our way.
Next stop: ALAMO SQUAAARE.
(insert Full House theme song here)
Dogs running around everywhere. I want to have a dog. In San Francisco.
LAST JUMPING PHOTO!
Alamo Square Full House jumping photo accomplished. Sort of.
We stumbled upon a shoe garden while searching for a bathroom.
The final meal of the trip was spent back at Tartine. We met up with Dakota for some paninis and baked goods, and sat outside on 18th and made some last-minute friends before it was time to leave.
feeling dirty and tired. saved the best photos for last, obviously.
THE END! More SF photos to come once I’m living there in August!
We head northward to find Calistoga, a tiny town nestled within the Sonoma Valley. Out mapquest directions don’t seem to suffice, so we decide to rely on the navigation service on my phone. We end up on Petrified Forest Road, winding at about five mph to keep from driving off the side of the mountain.
My phone is dying. I have no car charger. The GPS cannot locate us properly and keeps giving us bogus directions. We keep driving on this Petrified Forest Road (a comforting name) while I frantically write down directions from the phone, not sure if they are even correct or not. Thank god for excellent 90′s tunes lightening the mood for the trek.
The phone survived. We made it to the Calistoga Inn. Just in time to head to the bar on the bottom floor. It was DJ REGGAE NIGHT. YES.
We spent a few hours at the bar, eyeing the beautiful Calistoga man sitting alone at the barstool beside us, and bonding with bartender Danny. We promised him we’d come visit again. I’m sure he’ll be there, as he’s been working there for ten years already.
We awake from a good sleep to find complimentary breakfast waiting for us on the bottom floor. We seem to be the only people in the entire hotel. So we obviously feel obligated to eat an obscene amount of food to prevent waste. And we do so.
West coast brunch is different than east coast brunch. West coast has no meat. It’s all granola and fruit and fresh baked goods and fresh orange juice and dank coffee. East coast is usually composed of fat, egg, bacon, fat, ham, fried, chicken biscuit. Which I do enjoy from time to time, I’m not gonna lie. Anyway. West coast rules.
So then we explore Calistoga.
Today’s first project was exploring some wineries around Sonoma Valley. Not Napa. Sonoma is less commercial, it’s quieter, and less expensive. In other words, Sonoma = superior.
First stop: Kaz vineyard.
Kaz vineyard consisted of an odd little gated off house where the owner resides, a tasting barn, and and some patches of vines surrounding the property. They do.. 60 barrels a year? I think?
We kind of felt like we were intruding on such a quaint little piece of property. Especially considering it seemed like we were the only people actually on the property. We decided to explore anyway.
We wandered into a dark barn door and found a cashier’s counter with a sharp, super tan, super raspy old woman staring at us. We say hello. The wine tasting begins.
We go through twelve red wines, and jam out to the Rolling Stones with the raspy one for a while.
We wander outside into the backyard. A clusterfuck of old rusted bits and pieces of everything you can imagine. And lots of old plants. And a cat named Molly, who I hung out with for a while.
The raspy one showed us the Kaz fish pond, with the biggest fish I have ever seen in my life. This puppy was easily as big as Raphael (my mammoth cat, for those of you who don’t know). Apparently they had been abandoned at a foreclosed property, so the Kaz folk adopted them. They were fun.
Kaz winery photo jumping montage. There were too many awesome ones to pick just one.
We said our goodbyes to Molly and Raspy and the fish and headed next door to vineyard #2.
Next stop was Landmark Vineyards, a snazzy little piece of property not two mailboxes down from Kaz.
Once arrived, we met new friend Ryan, who poured wine generously and talked with us about anything and everything while we consumed it.
Jumping attempt #1: Jump off the ledge for superheight. Extremely painful and nearly impossible. We gave up quickly.
New friend Ryan ended up really enjoying our company. He didn’t charge us for any of the wine, and put together a map of things to do and see before we left Sonoma. We said our goodbyes and headed onward to finish exploring before heading back to SF to catch our plane home.
First stop: Juanita Juanita.
Seemingly shady little taco shack on an old, slightly obscure Sonoma highway. Ryan said it would be a well-worthy place to grab a bite before we headed back to the city. We complied.
We decided to share a jerk chicken dish of sorts. We were presented with what looked like a rather round burrito. Perhaps because there was an ENTIRE chicken nestled inside of it. Yes, bones and all.. the whole thing. It was AMAZING. Well done, Juanita Juanita.
It only made sense to involve finger mustaches in a taco shack jumping photo.
Juanita Juanita washroom.
So continued our trek through the offroads of Sonoma Valley.
We noticed a gigantic hill in the distance (not this one…. the one of mention was too way big to fit into my camera lens). Nestled at the bottom was a… raceway? We were intrigued. Couldn’t think of a reason not to try and get on the property. So we headed to the gate.
A security guard was waiting for us. We didn’t have much of a plan set up.. so we simply explained that we noticed this hill and racetrack and wanted to know if she’d let us on the property to take pictures. We also mentioned we were from the South at some point, thinking that would somehow logically function as grounds for admission to a raceway. She actually complied. We headed onward and began our trek up the hill.
We arrive close to the top. As far as they’ll allow us to go at least. And what greater thing to be waiting for us than…. a giant hill COVERED IN SHEEP. Glorious.
High-altitude sheep covered hill jumping photo accomplished.
And then it was back to San Francisco for some last minute projects before plane-boarding time.
Stop 2: Some amazing beach. Can’t remember the name, but I remember that it bore some sort of phonetic resemblance to pinot grigio.
So we started hiking.
Random Pacific Ocean cliffside jump.
Even higher more dangerous Pacific Ocean cliffside jump.
I was examining this fantastic truck in the beach parking lot, when I noticed a man approaching that looked like he should be the owner. His name was Pat. We became friends immediately and we talked about his truck for a while. Apparently he built the entire thing himself. He then asked me on a date, immediately apologized for being old, and drove off. Farewell Pat.
We stopped at a couple of beaches on the way back north, and made some friends.
Next stop: HALF MOON BAY! It’s a little town about 45 mins south of San Francisco. I had been told to go there, and so had Kate, so we naturally had to comply.
Half Moon Bay jump.
We were told to dine at Half Moon Bay Brewing Co., so we did so. We couldn’t decide on a beer, so we ended up trying all ten brews simultaneously.
We split a lunch sandwich to make up for our hefty beer purchase. Kate neglected to drink her share of the beverages because she was driving, so I really had no choice but to consume them myself. Hello lunchtime drunktime.
Back into the mini. Heading northbound.
Kate has a bit of a fear of driving on bridges. Needless to say, the experience was quite exhilarating for her. I’m pretty glad she didn’t go into a panic seizure.
We have a bit of a habit of pulling over at every single vista point along highway 1.
Just not enough room for a proper jumping picture. We settled for a normal one.
We found monks. Tried to take a picture. Received the death stare. Please. Lighten up, monks.
We noticed a road across the highway heading up a giant hill. We decided we had to figure out how to get there. Not much later, we were jumping at the top of the Marin Headlands. I had been told to go here a year ago, but never quite figured out where it was. Good to finally figure it out accidentally.
Next stop: Sausalito. Cute little bayside town across from SF.
You are witnessing a McDonald’s photoshoot. Like… a model, posing with a McDonald’s bag and cup. For a McDonald’s advertisement. Glorious. Keep your eyes out for it.
Sausalito jump.
Next stop: Miur Woods. We wanted to see the redwoods.
Miur Woods jump.
Coolest trunk I have ever seen in my life. I would have taken it if I could.
Bear statues everywhere. I felt like I was in New Bern.
Next project: In-N-Out Burger.
I have had plans to go to In-N-Out burger ever since Tucker Max told me to in 2007. I kept missing the opportunities whenever they presented themselves over the past couple of years. Obviously it was on the to-do list for this trip.
Not 30 seconds after getting back on the road, we see one on the side of the highway. How convenient. We frantically pull over to see what this burger is really all about.
I don’t even really like burgers. I have probably have had MAYBE four fast food burgers in my entire life. They just don’t particularly appeal to me. But man, this burger was good. I’m a fan for life.
Day four of NYC. Possibly one of the best days of my life. Mikey (new friend who I met at Arrowbar last night) invited me to brunch with his friends, as well as George and Larry, so around noon I headed down to the subway to catch a train to Williamsburg, only a couple of stops away. I walk down to the platform to see my train pulling away. Awesome. After about 15 minutes another train comes and I arrive at Harefield Road in Williamsburg.
I’m 15 minutes late. I walk into Harefield to find Mikey and Greg (who I have known for less than 12 hours at this point), and three other people who I have never met. George and Larry are nowhere to be found. I’m basically eating brunch with five people I don’t know. I’m up for the challenge though, and settle right in to begin getting acquainted with my dining mates.
First mistake – by arriving late, I lost our table, because the restaurant refused to seat Mikey & co. until the last of the party arrived. I take a seat by the bar. I’m immediately chastised by the waitress for being in the way of the service station. I adjust my seat to allow her access. The owner approaches me and says I need to sit by the wall because I’m blocking traffic. I felt like I was being sent to time out. Off to a great start.
Once we are seated, brunch was fantastic. I quickly bonded with my co-diners, including another former Raleigh-ite who now is living in Buffalo getting a PhD in archaeology. I also managed to get a kickass eggs benedict w/ smoked salmon AND one of the tastiest bloody marys I’ve ever consumed… for only 12 dollars. Apparently it is a standard New York brunch to include a free breakfast beverage with the entrée you select. I think it was the moment I learned this that I decided I need to move to New York.
After brunch was consumed, me and my new compadres said our goodbyes until the day I happen to run into them in NY again.
I am solo at this point… Erika is in Manhattan with a friend from Yale, George and Larry and Jaclyn are MIA, and Hannah is at work… so I figure this is a good time to wander around NYC alone for a while. I decide to take a subway down toward China Town and Little Italy. It ends up taking much longer than expected, because I managed to spend 30 minutes on the subway platform watching three N trains go by when I finally realized it was actually the N I needed to take. I walk out into China Town only to immediately receive a call from Hannah telling me she was off work and wanted to hang. I take a look around for literally about a minute, decide the tourist crowd was way too dense to get any legitimate exploring done, and hop right back on the subway to Grand Central Station.
Almost as awesome as New York brunches is the obscenely large architecture that New York hosts. I’ve been obsessed with architecture since I was about 8 years old, and have a particular liking for oversizeed structures, whether it be Philippe Starck’s surrealist oversized furniture, or unnecessarily large spaces or high ceilings. I probably get more butterflies from good architecture and high ceilings than I’ve ever gotten or will get from any relationship. That’s normal right?
Anyway, Grand Central was doin it for me. As much of a tourist cliché as it is, that main structure is fucking awesome. I spent a few minutes just sitting on the stairs in architectural ecstasy, spent another few talking to a homeless man about how he danced with Madonna in a club in Chicago, then met Hannah on the street to go do more exploring.
We ended up sitting in Bryant Park for a couple of hours, just drinking coffee and catching up on life. I’m so glad I had the chance to do this, since I hadn’t had the chance to really catch up with her since she moved in July, and I had been so busy exploring the city on the trip thus far.
I soon receive a phone call from Erika saying she and Yale friend are hanging out and were on their way to the Museum of Sex if we wanted to join.
Friend Sam told me that this museum was quite an interesting spectacle and I should check it out, so I had placed it on my to-do list. I was not exactly sure what the museum has in store… whether it was sex-ed or the art of sex or just a glorified porn shop. Hannah and I catch a subway and meet Erika and Yale friend by the museum. Hannah says her goodbyes to go meet some friends in the East Village for Oktoberfest, and Erika, Yale and I head inside.
Exhibit one: Animal sex. I can’t get into too much detail without blushing or just grossing myself out, but I learned more sexytime facts than I could ever fathom existed within the animal kingdom. Obviously things I’ve always wanted to know. I mean… it was educational. I’m now a walking animal sex fact vault. I saw enough animal penises in one hour to last me several lifetimes. Egh.
Exhibit two: The history of sex in film. This spanned everything from mainstream film to pornography. Again, I saw enough human penises to last me several lifetimes. We had the privilege of walking through the exhibit with a large group of high schoolers, who were going apeshit crazy over this stuff. I feel like I’m in the twilight zone.
Exhibit three was a variety of really strange sexual instruments and inventions and whatnot. I really just can’t bring myself to get into detail. You’re just going to have to go to NY and see for yourself.
Erika and Yale and I left feeling… cultured. Definitely the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in a while.
Immediately next to the museum was yet another thing on my to-do list… my friend Brian had told me to check out the Gershwin, a surrealist hotel that looks much like something Philppe Starck (my favorite designer of all time… he is god to me) would build. The Gershwin is covered in bright-reddish magenta brick with several giant illuminated horns protruding several feet out over the street. You’re just going to have to look at my pictures. I made Erika and Yale go inside with me, where we stood in the lobby awkwardly while I snapped some photos, then we went on our way.
Yale had to go, so we said our goodbyes and headed back to the subway for destination #3: Harlem.
Eli, a friend of ours from college, moved to Harlem after graduation for Teach for America. He ended up quitting the program, but still lives in Harlem and loves it. He wanted to grab dinner with us, so we hopped a subway and next thing we know, we are on the streets of Harlem. There are people everywhere. We are the only white ones. We have to find 127th street. We walk fast and try to look as tough as we can for two dressed-up white girls. On our way down the street, we receive a call from Eli, telling us that he had to run down to Manhattan to drop off a key, and would be back in 15 minutes tops.
So. We are in the middle of Harlem. With nowhere to go. People are staring. We are feeling a little out of place and in slight fear of our lives. We decide to find a well-lit public place to hide out until Eli gets back into town. What better place than Popeye’s fried fucking chicken. Erika and I split a two-piece dinner, sit down, and eat cautiously, as we still feel great fear for our personal safety. 20 minutes pass. Eli calls to tell us that he still isn’t on his way back yet, and might be a while. Great. The window to our death continues to open further.
We decide to go find the Apollo. We end up wandering down Martin Luther Kind Blvd, still walking fast, still trying to look badass. Not working. I really want to take photos, but Erika won’t let me pull out my camera. Probably for the best. We end up finding an H&M and wander around until Eli finally meets us. Apparently he ran into George and Larry on the train. NYC may not be that big after all.
Walking back down MLK Blvd., Eli suggests that instead of cooking dinner, we check out a particular soul-food buffer on the next block. We comply. The buffet is crowded and smells like the south. There is every traditionally southern dish you can fathom. I get even more fried chicken, wings, green beans, potatoes, mac and cheese, cabbage, stuffing, all of that tasty southern shit. AND banana pudding. We are still looking painfully out of place, so we head to Eli’s apartment to dine on his rooftop.
There are few things I love more than rooftops. Other than the skyline at night. That’s nice too. But to have both, with fried chicken and banana pudding abound, is just a sensory overload. I’m in hood heaven. We sit on the roof, eat our southern goods, and discuss life, books, politics, etc etc… though I spend half of that time running around trying to take photos. I need to relax.
I have more plans for the night ahead of me. I am supposed to meet my friends Mark and Greg for a night out in Manhattan. I arrange to meet them at Mark’s house. Several factors make my trip somewhat complicated:
My phone’s dead.
I’m in the middle of fucking west Harlem.
Mark lives on the lower east side.
I am relatively far from the lower east side.
The only direct subway routes are now running local, since it’s after 9pm.
So… I don’t have a direct way to get to Mark’s. And I told him I’d be there by ten.
I use Erika’s phone to tell them we’re on our way, and we say our goodbyes to Eli. We decide the best thing to do is to take a bus down MLK blvd. to the 6 station, then take the 6 approximately 100 blocks south down to Mark’s hood.
Sounds easy. We hop on the bus. Oh so painfully out of place. I have my map out, trying to figure out what stop would be most conducive to finding the subway as quickly as possible.
A slight complication with the Harlem bus system – they have absolutely no indicator of where you are or what stop you are approaching. Most buses in the city have appeared to have either an electronic marquee indicating what street you are approaching, or the bus driver at least announces what stop you are approaching. Apparently you’re just supposed to know your shit in Harlem, and if you don’t, then you probably shouldn’t be there. Glad I got the memo.
I notice we are approaching Park Street. I think that’s our stop. Erika and I run off to find no subway in sight. We wander around the block for a minute, I almost get run over, we consult two dudes standing on the street for directions, they give us blatantly incorrect ones, so we proceed to wander until we run into the 6. Thank the fucking lord.
Longest subway ride to date: Park & 125th to Park & 27th. Unfortunately most of the subway crazies dwell during the daylight hours, so our entertainment was limited. We finally arrive at 27th. Mark’s at 27th and 3rd. We arrive not much later.
Mark and Greg are both NC natives. Greg attended NC State a few years ago, and is now an established artist with galleries in NYC. He also teaches at Pratt Art Institute. Mark went to UNC and Texas and is now working in the financial district of Manhattan.
Mark’s a lucky mother fucker. His apartment is in an amazing location and is not a piece of shit. At all. He says he pays about double what he used to pay in Brooklyn, but it was worth it to him. I can see it. We talked about foreign things (Mark = German, Greg = Polish, Erika = Spanish, I = Norwegian) and drank some Red Stripe, then headed on our way to a party at Astor Place.
Apparently this party is located in an 8th floor Manhattan penthouse, hosted by some real estate guru who recently purchased a couple of Greg’s works from his gallery. Guru is hosting a birthday party for Ruby, his friend/ladyfriend/lover, who owns a ridiculously unnecessary doggie accessory company: Bowhaus NYC. Greg had forgotten to RSVP, but still felt inclined to show up. With three friends.
The party was fun. We pretended we were established NYC somethings, met some interesting people, some not-so-interesting. I frequently took it upon myself to assume the role of bartender. I remember opening at least four bottles of champagne. I’ve decided that in regard to liquids, expensive things always taste better.
By the end of the party, we are sloppy. I was bonding with DJ Devymetal over the abundance raging male slutbags in society, and Erika was speaking in Ebonics. We look out onto the street below to see the giant rotating cube sculpture that so many tourist folk enjoy spinning in their spare time. At this moment, we see that some guy has actually managed to climb the sculpture and is actually riding the cube. He is staring up at our window, a good 100 feet up. We wave. He is flicking us off. Glorious.
The party has thinned out significantly. We say our goodbyes, Ruby thanks Greg for “bringing your friends and drinking our booze,” and we head on our way. We spend a significant amount of time trying to spin and mount the cube. Minimal success. Mark and Greg want to go dancing at Beauty Bar. I am more than willing to participate.
The dance floor is open this time. So we dance. I vaguely remember creating a dance to accommodate for my obscenely large purse… and performing a ridiculously overexaggerated dance routine behind the back of a random guy (we dubbed him “Seal”) who was trying to talk to Erika. I guess you just had to be there.
A guy approaches me and offers to buy me a drink. I politely decline. He talks for a while and actually turns out to be an interesting person, so I allow him to purchase a greyhound for me. Erika grabs it out of his hand as he tries to pass it to me, drinks half of it, then hands it to me. Thanks woman.
More dancing, more greyhounds. Eventually Mark and Greg pry me away from the bar because it’s 4:15 in the morning (last call is at 4 in NY).
Mark really wants to break into his work building. Apparently it’s one of the taller buildings around this part of town, and has an amazing view of surrounding Manhattan. I’m down. We all head into his building. Trying to act sober. Failing. I have no clue how we convinced the security guards to let us up, but after we all show him our ID’s he printed us four tickets to get us through the elevator security gates. We were in.
I remember wandering the hallways of this random building, spending a lot of time near the windows (the view definitely was worth it)… I also remember exploring the CEO’s kitchen and stealing a random photograph out of a crate, which still sits in my laptop bag. Erika is speaking several languages simultaneously at this point. A hodgepodge of French, Spanish, English, and Ebonics. Nobody understands her but nobody really cares at this point.
Basically the rest of the night is composed of running around Manhattan until about 6 in the morning. Pass out hard. Successful completion of the best day of my life.
Day 3 was long and began much like the last… tasty morning lemonades as the local coffee/video store and wandering around the desolate warehouse wasteland. I had the privilege of watching a very strange dispute between a barista and what appeared to be his friend/ladyfriend/some chick outside of the shop… something along the lines of him giving her money for the “last fucking time” (we deduced it was drug related) + about 200 more profane words and lots of subdued yelling (as if nobody would notice is you yelled at a slightly softer-than-normal level). I learned some valuable facts about the city, including the fact that tennis shoes hanging from power lines are usually indicative of drug deal sites. Sweet. The fun things about this neighborhood is, despite the fact that I frequently see shoes hanging from power lines, they are usually decorated with flowers and other fun things. If you’re going to make a crack deal, you might as well make it pleasing to the eye.
Mission #1 of the day was to find a camera store and fix Erika’s mysteriously broken camera. We hop on the subway toward the lower east side. Arrive at camera store #1. Camera tech informs us that Erika’s shutter is in fact broken and if we’d like to give them our camera and pay 84 dollars, they should have it back to us within a few days. No thanks. We ask if they know of any other camera stores around town that sell used cameras, in hopes that Erika could find a cheap bit to get her through the weekend. He directs us to B&H camera on the opposite side of Manhattan.
The subways were particularly fun this morning. We saw a variety of fun things, including an albino black (not literally, obviously, because he was albino) guy who would not stop looking at me through his sunglasses, and a Latino man in a top hat with a gigantic red velvet object which appeared to be a carriage/stroller adorned with gold fringe and a red velvet top to protect the privacy of whatever it contained inside.
We arrive in the neighborhood of our destination. I immediately notice there are Hasidic Jews everywhere. Fully adorned in hats and matching outfits and beards and curls. Hm. We find B&H soon after. We approach the front door. Sign says “B&H is closed at 2:00 on Friday for the holiday.” We check our watch. It is 2:27. We hate our life.
Generally pissed off and hungry, we head back to the east side in hopes of finding sustenance. Wandering around isn’t doing us much help, so we consult our trusty travel guide for help. We notice a pizza place described as “supposedly Paul McCartney’s favorite pizza in New York.” We decide to trust Paul and check it out.
Mimi’s pizza is a meager little pizza spot. Traditional NY pizza. No frills. Erika and I logically decide that, instead of ordering an individual slice or two, it makes more sense to order garlic bread and a large pizza (that specifies on the menu “serves 4″), because it is only a dollar more than the small pizza. Sometimes I question our decision making skills. We barely finished half of our food, but felt obligated to take the rest to-go. I stuff a pizza box into my purse (which is big enough to hold a pizza box) and we go on our way.
Not far away is the Leo Castelli gallery, which Erika had thought to house some of her uncle’s artwork. We arrive at a gorgeous old building, buzz ourselves in, walk up a few flights of stairs until we see a door dubbed “Castelli.” We knock. A young trendy art receptionist lets us in.
As we browse the gallery (which had taken Erika’s uncle’s work out of rotation before we got there), I am feeling strange. My head is spinning, the floor feels like it is swaying under me. I might faint. I mention my symptoms to Erika. She says she is feeling the exact same thing. We both stumble around the gallery for a bit longer, mutually decide that the building is moving and that we need to get on solid ground. We were fucked up. Apparently after consuming a hallucinogenic pizza. How nice. Maybe that’s why the guy gave us a discount.
Next stop is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, situated in the northeast side of Central Park. Erika and I wander in and hope that we don’t faint in an exhibit. The floors are still moving. Despite the circumstances, the Met was absolutely gorgeous. After exploring the majority of the interior, we take an elevator to the roof out of curiosity. We end up in a rooftop gallery party with a full bar and a gorgeous view of central park and the inside Manhattan skyline at sunset. I can’t figure out how we’ve gotten so lucky with sunset locations so far. We hang out for a bit, abstaining from ordering the 12 dollar 2-ounce martinis or the 8-dollar Coronas, and eventually head out once the sun goes below the buildings.
Hannah is off work, and meets us outside the Met. Erika and I are desperately craving liquid and nutritious snacks… anything so this tainted pizza is not the only thing in our system. We stop by a fruit stand and stock up for the trip to Nobu, a sushi place friend Sam had recommended to me, where we had decided to check out for dinner.
Nobu was by far the most high-profile restaurant we had visited on our trip. Luckily there had been some cancellations so we were given a table immediately. Other tables in the room included Howard Stern and some sort of high-profile hip-hop elite table, hats and bling and models included. The server asks us what we’d like to drink. Erika orders a cucumber martini. Hannah orders a water. The server asks me if I’d like a drink? I say “same.” Apparently he interpreted my “same” not as the same water, but as the same martini Erika had ordered. I soon receive my 16 dollar never-ordered cucumber martini. The server recommends that we order a couple of cold dishes and hot dishes to split among the three of us, then finish up with sushi. Estimated cost is $150 per person. HA. We tell him we’ll just stick with sushi. I ordered the chef’s sushi dinner, which was the best deal at 34 dollars. It was well worth it. The total tab not fun, but worth it. You’ve gotta ball out at least once in New York, right?
Hannah parts ways to go catch up on sleep, so Erika and I head back down to the lower east side to meet George and Larry at Café Blu. They have just arrived from a bar down the street, which happens to be the same bar that friend Wiley said I HAD to go to. It is McSorley’s Old Ale House, established in 1854, and generally unchanged from the time of opening. You walk in, sit down. The bartender asks, “light or dark.” You specify your preference. The bartender puts two mugs of beer down in front of you. You drink. When you are done, you either receive two more of you are told to leave. All about efficiency. I make them walk me back to McSorley’s so I can at least walk in the door, then we hop on the Subway back over to the East Village.
We are meeting some friends of theirs at Arrowbar, a dark loud basement hole on Avenue A. One friend, Mikey, is a previous Raleigh native who now does graphic design web work for major music labels in NY. Mikey’s friend Greg is a Bostonite who is heavily involved in film. The two actually met when Mikey was touring with Sleater-Kinney and Greg was directing a Sleater-Kinney documentary. Later on, another friend of George’s arrived, a guy named Dave, who the Avett Bros. stole from Raleigh to be their full-time photographer. He is currently stationed in NYC for the next 8 months, but spends most of his time traveling around the world doing shoots. Lucky bastard. Also arriving at the bar was our buddy Eli, NCSU alum who had transplanted to Harlem to do Teach for America in the Bronx. He eventually quit the program and now does campaign work in the meantime. We spent enough time to do some catching up with everybody, and when Eli was ready to head back, we followed.
We stopped in a Belgian fry shop on the way to the subway because Eli couldn’t resist $1 ice cream cones. We ended up talking to the chick at the counter for a minute, and discovered that she was from Winston-Salem. She seemed excited that we were fellow NC natives, but she seem too drugged out to really carry on a competent conversation for much longer, so I received my fries and we went on our way.
We said our goodbyes to Eli, and made it back to Brooklyn nice and early by 1:30 a.m. so I could catch up on some sleep. Tomorrow’s the last full day in NY, so we have to make the most of it.
Erika and I get the day started early by my standards. I was painfully exhausted and would have loved to sleep through the afternoon, but Erika keeps me in line and makes me be productive. First stop was a coffee shop not far from Hannah’s place… a half-coffee-shop/half-video-store actually. Full of pretentious NY hipsters. Best lemonade ever. I am soon am on my way to Manhattan with a giant lemonade.
I really like the walk to the subway from Hannah’s. There is nothing really but desolate warehouses with the occasional old Latino man or young hipster walking the streets. No cars driving or parked. It makes me feel like I’m in a movie where all of mankind has been exterminated and only these few indie kids and old Latino men and I remain. The endless graffiti is really the only sign that life has actually existed here.
Our main goal of the day is to eat amazing food. Luckily, I have some handy people guides around who give me good recommendations. Friend Stacy told me about a spot called Red Bamboo. Veg/vegan asian/soulfood fusion spot. We were looking forward to it.
Once on the subway, we realize that we haven’t written down the addresses of any places we wanted to visit for the day, including the restaurant we were currently on the way to. Excellent.
4th street rang a bell with both of us. We head toward the west side of Manhattan hoping we are right. We wandered around 4th unsuccessfully for quite a while until we finally stumbled upon our destination at 120 4th street. Yay. The lunch specials we selected were ridiculous. I had dumpings, a bowl of “chicken” noodle soup (two bowls actually… I’m not sure why they kept bringing me more) and a teryaki “chicken” salad. Erika had a ridiculously oversized “lunch” portion of bamboo curry “chicken” and potatoes and rice and vegetables. IT WAS SO AMAZING. AND LESS THAN TEN DOLLARS. Thank you Stacy for changing my life.
We continue to wander around Manhattan without much of a plan, especially considering that we left all of our potential destination addresses at home. The only thing that really caught our eye was a thrift store we explored for a bit. At this point, Erika and I looked at each other and came to the consensus that we didn’t really like what we had seen of Manhattan so far. Overall lack of aesthetics and character. (Don’t worry, this would change eventually.) However, we did see a few fun things on the street:
A gargantuan great dane taking a gargantuan piss right in the middle of a busy sidewalk. He didn’t squat or raise his leg. He was just standing there peeing on his feet in the middle of people traffic, looking at me like he was doing nothing wrong and I should not be judging him. His owner has the same look. This must be normal.
A father and daughter casually walking down the street. Father looks normal. Daughter is wearing a glittery pink shirt and a werewolf mask. Normal?
We then stumble upon a nice coffee shop on 2nd and 7th called Café Blu, where I made friends with the Brazilian barista who had recently moved from Europe. I then received a call from a friend Larry telling me he was wandering around Manhattan and I invited him to come explore with us. So Larry meets us at Café Blu, then we head on our way for more aimless city wandering.
We begin riding buses somewhat aimlessly until we end up near ground zero. We end up paying significantly more attention to a graveyard adjacent to the site.
At 5:00, we decide that we need to go to Wall Street to see the distraught faces of everybody getting off work, and maybe catch some Stock Exchange gossip. We ideally wanted to participate in happy hours in the bars of the financial district with these people. We found no bars, but we did see a lot of miserable men in tailored suits with Ipods. We also saw a police dog take a shit on the front steps of the New York Stock Exchange. Precious. People clapped.
We wander around the financial district until we stumble upon the waterfront. The sun is setting. I recall another recommendation by friend Mark to “ride the Staten Island ferry at sunset.” I inform Erika and Larry that we must find the Staten Island ferry immediately. Ten minutes later, we are boarding.
This ferry ride was SO WORTH IT. The sunset was perfect and the views of Manhattan and Brooklyn were amazing. I have been having dreams about taking pictures of sunsets lately (I had one the night before, actually), so it was nice to finally have the chance to take care of this. We were tempted to hang out on Staten Island for a bit and perhaps run into the Wu Tang Clan but we ended up taking the ferry straight back.
So that was basically the climax of good times with Erika and Larry. We immediately got lost in the financial district thereafter. Erika’s camera had stopped working on the ferry, and we were all hungry and cranky. After an hour or so we managed to find where we needed to go (we had apparently been walking circles around it) and headed back to Brooklyn to meet friends George and Jaclyn, who had traveled with Larry up to NYC for the weekend and wanted to go out.
George and Larry disappeared to go repark their car, so Erika, Jaclyn and I met up with Hannah and wandered around Williamsburg looking for sustenance. Jaclyn wanted to take us to a German restaurant her friend had recommended, but we couldn’t find it anywhere, and ended up wandering into a Korean BBQ restaurant. Again, one of the best dinners I have ever had. None of us were completely sure what we were eating, but it was all unbelievably good. I love city food.
We ended up meeting George and Larry back at the Charleston in Williamsburg (the place with the beer/free pizza special). I was abstaining from drinking because… well basically… I have gone out so much in the past two months that A) I have spent all of my semester college loans on alcohol when I’m blackout, and B) my body is physically rejecting alcohol at this point. I can’t drink cocktails anymore. I gag at my first sip of alcohol. Anyway. I ended up drinking a couple of bud lights (which I normally despise anyway, but I wasn’t gagging and they were free).
Stop 2 was Beauty Bar in East Village. I had on my to-do list to “go dancing at Beauty Bar,” so I was quite adamant about going. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the back dance floor was closed (they must only do it on weekends) but the bar itself was everything I dreamed it to be. Beauty Bar exists in several major cities around the country. I walked past the one in San Fran but never actually went in. The name is legit. You can get a manicure and a cocktail for ten dollars. Hairdryers and glitter everywhere. But to sum it up, it’s one of the signature hipster clubs in the US. I was painfully tired at this point, so I am pretty sure I was not much more fun than your standard vegetable… but I enjoyed watching everyone else get sloppy. Jaclyn eventually had to go meet her friend Lauren in Brooklyn so Hannah, Erika and I ended up taking the subway with her back to our hood to crash.
Apparently Larry and George got so wasted that they took a cab at 5 a.m., forgot to specify where it should take them, and ended up walking almost entirely across Manhattan in the wrong direction before finally making their way back to Times Square. I’m proud of you guys.
Hey people. It’s me. Writing from out of state again. I haven’t had any time to write thus far because I leave the house in the morning and don’t return until between 1 and 4 the next morning, so writing time is limited. But I came home nice and early at approximately 1:12 this morning to get started on writing my trusty travel log. So… enjoy.
Facts to preface: I am in NYC. I am traveling with my friend Erika. I am staying with my friend Hannah, who recently graduated from state and now lives in Brooklyn.
I really don’t have high expectations for air travel. I’m usually blessed with a variety of delays, gate changes, paid overnight stays in shoddy hotels with adjoined Latino dance clubs… you name it. Upon checking in, we are greeted with news that our plane will be delayed approximately an hour and a half. At this point I wouldn’t have minded getting stuck in security, encased in those quarantined glass cubes of ridicule they usually stick me in for reasons they cannot disclose. It would have given me something to do. But we made it through smoothly and were at our gate just in time to sit and do nothing for two and a half hours. We were somewhat entertained by the Indy’s crossword puzzle and a guy whose name I cannot recall… a previous acquaintance of Erika’s.
Around 9:00, we arrive at La Guardia Airport. Let me take a moment now and mention that I have planned almost nothing in regard to this trip. I knew that I had a guaranteed place to stay every night, and that was apparently enough security for me to completely disregard any further planning. So once Erika and I arrived at the airport, we had absolutely no idea where to go from there. We knew we were headed to Brooklyn, and the Erika’s-acquaintance-guy, who I shall refer to from this point forward as Guy, was also headed to Brooklyn, so we decided to try and follow his vague print-out directions until we get somewhat close to our destination and feel that we can wing it.
The first step was to take the M60 bus. It arrives as we come to this consensus. Awesome. It only takes change. Two dollars in quarters. We have no quarters. We watch the bus leave.
We go inside to look for a change machine. There is one located immediately inside. Awesome. It happens to be broken. There are no other change machines in this terminal. The pretzel stand lady refuses to exchange our dollars for quarters. We quickly develop quite a distaste for this airport. Erika and I decide to grab some free maps from the wall stand and study them while brainstorming ways to get the hell out of the terminal.
Guy comes back from wandering outside with a heaping handful of quarters. I’m not sure how he got them, but I will forever love him for it. We wait, and wait, and wait… and the next M60 finally arrives. We have ample quarter supply. We are admitted graciously.
The M60 was a wild ride. It felt like an old roller coaster, minus the safety harnesses plus an overload of obese Latinos and blacks, each with an individual Ipod blasting hip hop tune of choice. Welcome to New York.
We are not exactly sure where to get off, and the bus is in no way announcing what stop is which, so Guy tells us at one point that he thinks we should get off. So we do. Luckily, it happens to be at the train station specified on his list of directions. We have succeeded. With a bit of help from Hannah, we manage to navigate the train system, parting ways with Guy midway, down to Brooklyn within an hour and a half.
Hannah’s neighborhood is a bit of a twilight zone to me. Urban area full of warehouses, yet not a soul to be seen. It was really surreal to me. Soon enough, we see Hannah in the distance and make it to her place.
Hannah lives in a renovated warehouse loft. It is one of the coolest apartments I have ever seen. It’s one huge room, not a square room, but a very random geometric shape, with hardwoods and a gigantic window spanning the back wall. The room is full of random handmade built-ins… a giant wine-rack, a multitude of storage, platforms to separate space, and two loft beds on opposite sides of the apt. IT IS SO BAD ASS. Hannah immediately took us up to the rooftop of the building, which also happens to host an unreal view of Manhattan. I am seething with jealousy. In a good way.
Erika and I were absolutely starving at this point, so Hannah recommends we head to Williamsburg (which was described to me by friend Mark as “Raleigh, Jr.”), to the Charleston, a bar with the most ridiculously awesome special I have ever heard: buy one draft beer, receive unlimited pizza. It sounded like a godsend to me at this point.
We arrive in Williamsburg. Dear god. To describe it… take the Raleigh indie-scene (yes I called it that) and multiply it exponentially. Beards and plaid everywhere. I have truly never seen so many bikes in my life. It was a giant neighborhood composed almost entirely of 20-somethings. I really can’t believe it.
The bar was cool. Dark, loud. We order our beers, and receive our pizza. We rolf it down with haste. Still hungry. I go back to the bar and ask for pizza refills. The bitch tells me that we each have to order another draft to receive our pizzas. Hannah informs me that this has never been the case, and in fact on the weekends there are literally piles of pizza on the bar that customers are to grab themselves after ordering their first qualifying draft. F that. I make the girls finish my beer and we head out into Williamsburg in search of further sustenance.
We pass a 24-hour bagel shop. Bagels sound nice. We quickly realize that the man at the counter is not the most English-savvy, first after Erika asks him if “egg bagels” mean “standard egg bagel… or fried egg on a bagel” and the man replies “yeah yeah egg on a bagel,” which we realize is incorrect upon receiving an egg bagel devoid of fried egg. Hannah orders a chocolate chip muffin. The man asks, “how many?” Hannah replies, “just one.” The man hands her two chocolate chip cookies. I personally thought my breakfast everything egg bagel was off the chain. We take our bagels and cookies and catch the subway back to Hannah’s to crash relatively early. Big day ahead.
That’s just night 1. So much more to come soon.
love, hp
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.
Greetings from Cincinnati. It is 11:17. We were supposed to be in Raleigh at 4:34. What do you know.
I woke up at 4am this morning to my phone alarm making a ruckus (this is the first time it’s actually worked – I missed quite a few classes and a final exam before I decided to just stop trying it). I accidentally flung it down on to the bottom bunk, which contained Logan. 2 minutes later.. still going off. I hear the rest of our roommates rustling (our room sleeps 8). I hear Logan fumbling around for it. I feel like an asshole. Finally, I hear him turn it off and slam it on the window sill.
Me and Dakota pack up our stuff in the dark, then sneak out to the lounge, steal some fruit from the kitchen, check out, and head on our way to the 4:37 am airport shuttle that leaves from 2nd and Pike.
We arrive at the airport. No delays so far. Me and Dakota qualify for additional screening, of course. An hour later, we are thoroughly violated, approved, and sent on our way. We fly to Cincinnati with no complications.
Our flight is supposed to leave at 3:00. I should be home with ample time to be ready for my 6pm shift at Blue Martini. The flight gets delayed until 3:40. Then until 4:45. They realize they’ve overbooked the flight. We are asked if we’d be willing to take the 7:30 flight instead. We don’t say anything. They offer us a $400 credit. We accept.
Now it’s 11:25, and we are hoping to catch our flight within the next 30 minutes. If not, me and D will enjoy our second honeymoon in a shoddy hotel.
YES! Our aircraft has landed and we are boarding. My travel logs are done, thank god. Hope you guys enjoyed them.
It’s our last day in Seattle. There is a lot left on our to-do list, since one of our days was taken up with camera/doctor hunts. I wake up and find Julian in a white astronaut suit and Logan in some sort of bright yellow plastic overall ensemble. I don’t ask questions and start packing.
Amy (Julian’s girlfriend) wants to take us to an art gallery in town to show us a particular artist, who makes pottery out of preserved fish. Sort of morbid, sort of awesome. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. I would have bought one, except I can’t think of a good place in the house for a dark brown fishskin vase covered in preserved fish heads, and I didn’t have 800 dollars on me.
We head to Haggen, the grocery store where Julian has been working graveyard shifts, pick up some breakfast (Tim’s wasabi potato chips and a cranberry-grapefruit vitamin water for me… two fantastic things that you won’t see unless you head west), and head back to Seattle.
Our first stop is Ballard district, which is in northern Seattle. It seems to be a trendy little spot in the city. I spent a day here this summer when I was on tour, and I’ve been obsessed ever since. Amy’s dad owns a coffee shop in the area, so we headed over to see him. He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. He gave us free coffee and ice cream… I had a scoop of honey-lavender. It’s probably the only time I will taste something lavender-flavored in my life, but it was AMAZING. I wish I could get it shipped to my house, but I doubt ice cream is mail-friendly.
Our second stop is downtown Ballard, which is where I spent most of my time on our tour-stop. We find Amy’s favorite place for pho (a Vietnamese noodle dish that you should all go eat now if you haven’t already), which is down the street, then head back to the hostel.
Amy’s in the fine arts program at WWU, and her class is heading to Seattle because every first Thursday, museums and galleries in Seattle have free admission. We decide to crash their field trip and tag along. We head straight to the Seattle Art Museum. It was great. I tried to take pictures, but security was all over the place so I only snagged two.
Then it was further south to explore more galleries. They were all amazing, but me and Dakota were absolutely pooped. We had to be up at 4 the next morning to catch our plane, and we knew we couldn’t stay up much longer. We also knew that we absolutely had to eat sushi at Sushi Land on Queen Anne’s Hill before we left, so me, D, and Logan said goodbye to Amy, and caught a bus northbound to Sushi Land.
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If I had to pick anywhere to eat sushi, it would be sushi land. Me and Logan discovered it last year roaming around Queen Anne, and we’ve been hooked ever since. It serves its sushi on a conveyor belt, on plates that range in price from $1 to $3 dollars. It’s ridiculously cheap, and still tastes good. There is no wait, and you don’t have to tip a server, because you just grab the plates as they pass in front of you. It’s perfect. We stuff our faces and head back to the hostel.
Logan parts ways with us to meet up with Amy and co. in Ballard (he’s not flying out until next Tuesday, so he can sleep in tomorrow), and we just nerd around on the internet in the hostel lounge until midnight or so, then crash for a little nap until our 4:00 alarm. So ends our adventures in Seattle, but not necessarily our spring break, assuming we’ll get stuck in the airport for a few more days. We’ll see what happens.
