San Francisco Day 1 (Jan 14 2005)

I meant to go the other way, hop the Atlantic and spend a few days in London and Paris. But events conspired and my nerves tired and I took the first vacation opportunity that presented itself: free digs on the floor of Phil’s room in the place he shares with a couple of girls in Castro. An uneventful early morning flight had me crawling up the enormous hill his place is perched on, dragging my suitcase and pale East Coast self against conspiring gravity and real actual West Coast Sunlight™. I dropped things off, threw some water on my face, and a moderately frenetic vacation began.

After lunch at a crepery (all the rage there) we went shoe hunting in the formerly hippy-drenched Haight, now home to endless hipster boutiques. With the Puma Mostros on my feet literally falling apart at the seams the expedition was both necessary and a fine excuse to weave in and out of the myriad shops. I instantly remembered how damnably friendly and human (humane?) people are out West. The sort of stores that would be staffed here in DC by beautiful, vapid people who look down their nose at you I instead found staffed by beautiful, vapid people eager to help me with my purchases. Despite the sunny help I was fruitless, but that hardly mattered.

We worked our way across the Haight, down into the yuppie paradise of Hayes Valley (like Georgetown, but, uh, in San Fran), and through the Mission as the day wore on. An early evening bite in a edgy-and-hip-for-1994 sushi place left me musing on how far culture has come and a touch miffed at the prices versus quality of the place (though I had no complaints about my ozeki nigori, save that it was served in a martini glass). The evening found us in a tiny community theater taking in Scot Nery’s cooking-show-on-wack-dope Crash Course, whose holiday theme was making gingerbread crackhouses. Resoundingly funny, and all the sweeter for gingerbread handouts.

I had a late dinner of gnocchi in a rabbit tomato sauce at a fresh Italian-ish place in Castro before turning in.