San Francisco Day 4 (Jan 17 2005)

My last full day in SF was not hugely eventful, but a pleasant wind-down. I got a late start on my only two tasks for the day: getting a “3” tattooed on the back of my neck and hitting up the Chrome store for a new courier bag.

Task one was accomplished at the Haight location of the venerable Cold Steel body mod empire. My “design” – or more accurately, a print out of the numeral in my desired font, Priori Sans by Emigre – set, the artist worked quickly, curt but pleasant. He was slightly surprised to find that I enjoy being tattooed; I’m no masochist, I just like that particular sensation. It was done all too soon, and I rode an endorphin high to SOMA, the Chrome store, and a lovely simple black bag just for me.

The rest of my final day doesn’t warrant relating, but a scene from my flight back was ripped straight from a sitcom, or maybe a lad mag:

We all dread being seated on a plane for many an hour next to some terrible passenger: a screaming child with bowels more irritable than its parents’, a drunken Texas oil mogul, a morbidly obese Shakira fan with open-air headphones. As the plane filled up around me my three-seater row left two seats beckoning to the cruelty of fate. I sat in tense anticipation of assuredly reprehensible company. And then, like angels from some aging pornographer’s vision of heaven, two nubile blonde European exchange students, seventeen if they were a day, cooed their excuse-me’s and took the seats next to me. Of course, gentleman that I am (read: “in lieu of darker assumptions about international statutory laws”), nothing more risque than me placing one of their coats in the overhead bin occurred. I couldn’t help but smile at the comic quality of it all until I lost myself in reading all the way back to my cold, dark DC.