I decided to head out a day or two before the class started so I'd have some time to fuck around in the city. I also opted to stay a couple of days afterward. I loathe flying, so if I have to travel I like to make sure it's worth the trouble. I did not, however, realize that the last couple of days that I had scheduled there were the kick off of Pride Week. Also, perhaps coincidentally, a large number of SF native friends decided to vacate the city for the weekend.
I left Hilo on Friday night, and stopped for an evening in Honolulu. A good friend of mine had just broken up with her boyfriend earlier in the week, and required a session of commiseration drinks at our favorite bar: the Hideaway. Another good friend, and member of my legal defense team, joined us for a few cocktails as well (He also kindly gave me a lift to the airport the next morning).
Hideaway Ms. PacMan
At this point I'd like to mention that was terrible about taking photos on this trip. At any rate, Anderson dropped me at the united terminal the next morning. Although work paid for my tickets (Incidentally, tickets to SF that cost almost $1k - seriously people, WTF?) I used a bunch of my miles to bump myself up to first class, so the trip over was pretty enjoyable. I sat next to a dude who was just returning from a few months in the Marshall Islands. He was working on building a resort there, as a hobby project (!!). Nice, dude.
Having arrived in SF full of gin and tonic, my next task was to get to my hotel. I'd gone through a list of places on the training center's web site, and ended up picking the Hotel Diva. It was...interesting. It's part of a series of "personality" hotels, each with it's own theme. After the sterile box I stayed in when I went on my last work trip to Japan, I thought I'd stay somewhere with character. Also, it had free wireless. My "welcome pack" contained things like a Harlequin Romance novel sampler book, a women's razor, and a sample of some kind of K-Y product (but strangely no condoms - go figure).
After I checked in, I called around to see what people were up to. I ended up going for a quick cocktail with a couple of friends of mine, Kathy and Bianca. I consider both of them to be Hawaii people, although Bianca has moved permanently to SF. Kathy is up in the city organizing and promoting her project Girlfest, and now seems to be seriously contemplating a permanent move. We went to a bar called Molotov's in lower Haight that I've been curious about for some time. Turns out it's a pretty cool punk rock bar - for Hawaii people it's like a cross between Anna's and the Hideaway.
The next morning, I hooked up with another Hawaii-expat, my good friend Chad. We went on an amusing mission to go and find him a guitar, as he has been wanting to learn to play for a while. Our plan is to do guitar lessons over iChatAV over the next few months/years/whatever - more on that as we see how well that turns out. He ended up picking up a rather serviceable Epiphone Dot from guitar center. Thankfully, I managed to talk him into getting a right handed model. I managed to walk out with minimal financial damage - I only picked up a pair of Sony MDR-7506 headphones. Afterwards, he took me back to his "hood" in the inner Richmond district where I finally met his girlfriend of six or so years, Sarah. We had a nice dimsum lunch, followed by a trek into the Mission district to meet up with some other friends at Zeitgeist, something of a second home for a number of my Mission-dwelling friends (Lamont, Cook, I'm looking at you).
So Monday rolls around, and it's time to head off to class. I ended up cabbing it the first couple of days (Monday, I had not planned my route around the giant SF hills, Tuesday I overslept a bit), but I walked it for the most part. The class was held by a third party training firm, located in the financial district. I won't bore you with the details, but I think about 3/5 of the days may actually prove useful to me. The instructor was pretty cool, and the location of the training center gave me lots of lunch options. I managed to catch lunch a couple of times with Ben, another member of my legal defense team, as well as having a groovy lunch with Miss Bianca. I also got to visit the SF branch of Taylor's Automatic Refresher (in the Ferry Building), possibly the best burger joint in the known universe. Here's a couple of photos from the walk:
Ben in his native habitat
Let's see. Monday night I think I went out with Kathy and Bianca again - we headed to a fairly unremarkable bar somewhere near the inner Richmond district (2010 edit: It was the Rocket Room), and I got my ass handed to me playing pool. Tuesday night, I decided to have a bit of a rest, so I grabbed some Indian takeaway from a nearby Pakwan, and hid in my hotel room watching movies all night. Wednesday, I had some of the best food I have ever encountered at Burma Superstar! We had a rather large party (seven people), so it took us a geologic age to get a table. The place is fantastic, but they don't take reservations, and it's roughly the size of a large walk-in closet. Still the wait was completely worth it.
One of the things I always make it a point to do when in SF is to hit the SFMOMA. I decided to meet yet another Hawaii-expat friend of mine, Elizabeth, and take in their evening show on Thursday. The main exhibit was "Matisse: Painter as Sculptor", not really my bag - but they had a pretty groovy photo show going on as well. The top floor was still fucking closed, which really bummed me out. You'd think they would have had time to set something new up since September. After the museum visit, I got a quick tour of Elizabeth's office at the Greenbelt Alliance, where she's managed to move up to being the communications director. We finished out the evening with a schmancy dinner at Two.
On Friday, I hung out with Chad again. Although I'm unsure where I met this dude, we've know each other for at least a decade and a half. In all that time I had never met his little brother. I had even been developing the notion that Mark was some kind of a fictional character - he turned out to be really amusing. Much like a mini-chad, who had decided to become a financial planner.
Chad had some kind of technical meltdown at work, so I had some time to dick around. I ended up grabbing some drinks at the Grand Cafe while waiting for him:
Wall'o'booze
He eventually showed up with Mark and Sarah in tow. By this point, it was quite late, so we decided to grab dinner at Home. We followed this up with some cocktails a few doors down at Lucky 13's. Good stuff, but I think I may have done myself some permanent damage trying to keep up with Mark.
Which brings us to Saturday, my last full day in the city. I mentioned earlier that this was the kick off to pride weekend, which had the result of increasing the rate that I was paying at the hotel by 150%. Rather than spend the extra cash, I decided to take Elizabeth up on her offer and crash at her place in the Mission (see? mission people.). I managed to haul my hung-over ass and huge bag over to her place with little incident, although I must tell you - getting my bag up the three elevator-less floors up to her place was a little rough. Elizabeth was off hiking somewhere in the north, so I took off on foot with the intention of going to upper Haight for a bit of shopping. On the way I stopped for some groovy Peruvian food (I think I will be dreaming of the truffle mac and cheese for months), and picked up a trombone mouthpiece at what's apparently the last brass shop in SF.
I managed to get my fat ass up to the Haight eventually, but found that I really had no consumer impluse left. (I must be going through something.) I hooked up with Chad again, and we did a bit of walking around Union Square. It's interesting how much more fun that area is when you have someone to hang out with. We picked Elizabeth up that evening, and went out for Indian Pizza. Interesting way to get your vinaloo fix. After dinner, Chad was tired and I was freezing (I hadn't planned on being out that long, and had a thin-ass jacket) so he dropped us back to Elizabeth's place. We agreed that were were going to head out for "one drink" which ended up being us closing out the Makeout Room, a bar that was an almost exact twin of a bar that I had once been to in Hollywood. Wierd. Good music though - lots of ragga, hip hop, etc.
A phone call from Elizabeth's husband got us up terribly early the next morning, and so we ventured out in search of breakfast. We ended up at the strangely named "Weird Fish", for a nice breakfast and comically large mimosas. Elizabeth then suggested that we go for a walk, to which I agreed. At this point, you might subsitute the word walk for the term death march. Somehow our walk didn't end until we got to the top of Bernal Heights. I'm glad we did it, but man, I was tired by the time we got back to her place.
Elizabeth in her crib
Which pretty much brings me to end of my trip. Chad was kind enough to give me a lift to the airport, and I had a nice, uneventful first-class trek back to Hawaii-nei. I'm kind of bummed that I didn't get to see and hang out with more of my bay area people, but I guess that's life - I'm sure it won't be too long before I'm back there again.
Things I learned on this trip:
1. Record stores don't really hold much interest for me anymore.
2. SF has really, really, good food (I knew this already, but it's nice to be reminded)
3. Pride week is a pain in the ass.
4. Staying in Union Square sucks.
5. T-Mobile is the worst cell provider in SF (2010 Update: This title now belongs to AT&T)
6. Google maps of SF should have a topographical overlay. (2010 Update: Someone was listening!)
7. Lots of Solaris stuff.
8. I like Hawaii, a lot.
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