Let me
just say, for those who don’t know me as well as others, that San Francisco is
by far my favorite city in the states. To be fair, I haven’t been to Portland
or Seattle yet, but I fell in love with SF my very first day there, years ago,
when a colleague directed me towards Haight Ashbury, the area where the hippies
hung out in the 60’s. The neighborhood is not swarming with hippies anymore,
but there’s a fantastic charm to it that has somehow managed to survive the
gentrification of the rest of the country. Walking down Haight Street, you’ll
encounter a plethora of organic cafés, quirky dive bars, independent record
stores, head shops and vintage clothes stores. It’s not uncommon to walk by a
shop smelling of patchouli or nag champa. The trendy hang out here, but also
the grungy and homeless. I just love it.
There
are other parts of the city that I love as well, some I discovered on that
first trip (North Beach) and some I just discovered on this trip (Oakland), and
I have yet to be swayed to want to live here when I’m done with my highway
adventures. This trip was by far the most amount of time I’ve spent in SF
without being on a trial and having to work all day every day. The
first week I wanted to do some familiar things, hit up my favorite places that
I haven’t been to in so long.
We partied in the Mission, which despite everyone
telling me it is the “coolest” place to hang out in the city, I just don’t get
it. The bars are just ok, I haven’t had any amazing food there, and the people
are all stuck up. I keep going back because I’m determined to see what everyone
else sees, but it looks like there’s a good chance I’m just not cool enough for
the Mission. I know, it seems hard to believe!
In
North Beach, the Italian district of SF, we ate a meal at Café BaoNecci that couldn’t help but take us back to Lucca, a
quaint little walled city in Italy that Sam and I just fell in love with. We
went to my favorite bars in SF, 15
Romolo, which is tucked away in an alley and makes some of the best
creative cocktails I’ve ever had, and Vesuvio,
where Jack Kerouac and his beatnik buddies used to hang out.
On
Sunday we checked out the Treasure Island Flea Market. Despite its name, the
island is pretty crappy, but the flea market is awesome! Besides a vast array
of treasures waiting to be discovered, they had about ten food trucks to choose
from in a grassy field with an amazing view of the SF skyline. One of the
coolest arts we saw at Burning Man, an enormous woman made out of wire,
apparently lives here when not at the burn. And Sam bought me two more additions
to my festie wardrobe – a faerie skirt made out of scraps of old ties and a
black velvet cloak. Win! Had Singapore noodles at my favorite Chinese food
place, R&G Lounge, and called it
a weekend.
That Tuesday
night my good friend and colleague, Craig Veconi, showed us some of the more
inconspicuous bars in the Haight, which was apparently his old stomping
grounds. We went to Magnolia, Zam Zam, Kezar,
which might have been my favorite, and Finnegan’s,
an Irish Pub. All served to further convince me that this is probably the
neighborhood I want to live in.
I’m
sure other stuff happened that week, but since I apparently didn’t check into
anything on FourSquare, I can’t remember what we did until that next Saturday,
which kicked off probably the best week I’ve had since we’ve been on the road.
That particular Saturday, without going into every detail, we attempted to
attend this show that didn’t work out, met this person, then that person,
followed the lead of anyone who had a good idea of where to go, and ended up at
this tiny dive bar/venue, where this guys’ friends’ band was playing. They were
called the Lotus Moons, and were so
much better than I was expecting! Imagine the Beatles at the beginning, if you
were to see them raw in a grungy dive bar. That’s pretty much what they sounded
like. After the show we ended up spending the whole night making friends with a
fantastic crew of artists and musicians who could not start raving about their
home in Oakland, the town that’s just across the Bay Bridge from SF. The idea of possibly living in Oakland has become a whole thing, which I will elaborate on tomorrow.
Sorry for the long-winded-ness... some of this is just for me to remember places I've been for next time, or for the next time you come here. I also wish I had pictures, but my iPhone camera sucks. Until next time!
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