This city is perfect for me. The weather is amazing (from my perspective), at a general temperature between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. If it gets really warm here, it will cool down to a nice temperature within a couple days as the sweet sweet mysterious fog blankets the city in its cotton candy goodness. The air is fresh (well maybe just fresher than Vegas). The people are generally sustainable. The shops are independent. You get my point. It's something that I continually find myself in love with.
In no particular order, I thought you might like to know what is going on in my life. Why do I forget to call people back now, when I never really did that in Las Vegas? Here are my reasons and I apologize profusely if you have been a victim of this forgetfulness.
Couchsurfing - After my experiences couchsurfing in Jerusalem and Cairo, I found a new love for the gift of couchsurfing. If you are unaware what this activity is, it has nothing to do with tides. It is a site that connects hosts (or people that will allow other people that they do not know to stay on their couch for free) to surfers (or people that are looking to travel to meet new people and experience cities from a local's perspective – and yes maybe stay on a couch for free). So far I have had surfers from Sweden, Canada, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Japan, Denmark, and even the United States. It is an amazing thing to exchange culture or just plain friendship on such a simplistic level.
Rock climbing at Consumnes – For any of y'all that know me even the slightest amount, you'd know that I'm not the most athletic of individuals. I'm fine with that scenic painting, even though I wish I was a better candidate for 'Greek God of the Year'. Well, I've decided that I'm never going to let that hold me back from trying my best at athletic activities. Let's give you a visual. Imagine all 160-something pounds of Jon Losey muscle working at pulling himself up a cliff. Not that ridiculous right? Do you remember the one-handed push-ups during Cyndi Lauper covers? Then imagine that he has wimpy pseudo-legs and has to use his howitzer-like arms to climb up the face of a rock. Even howitzers can't exude that much energy! Ok. So maybe the Cyndi Lauper days are over, but I really enjoyed rock climbing and will continue to mooch off of my roommate Libby and her excitement for the sport.
Opera at AT&T park – YES! What could fit me better than sitting on a picnic blanket drinking alcohol and swooning to the vocal stylings of Lucia di Lammermoor? Add the fact that it was in a baseball stadium and I was in the front row on the grass and ... it was free. Okay, it was simulcast on to a HD screen that was filming it at the San Francisco Opera House and the sound was dubbing a tad bit off, but whatev.
Man-fest Destiny Boston – So this has nothing to do with San Francisco, but I count it as one of those generic love clichés about absence making the heart grow fonder. It is always great when friends meet up, especially in a foreign city. Our goal going into this trip was to calm down on the gayness a small amount. We failed miserably. In fact, Lowell and I are apparently a couple. Not to mention that even Bryan was classified as a probable homosexual. I must've been wearing a scarf or something like that. *shrugs* Also, a couple quick notes, 1) don't talk to Bostonians about dogs in bathtubs, it ruins parties 2) No means no, please don't' sleep in my sleeping bag and/or drag me across the room for sexy time.
Public Open Spaces – I went around San Francisco one day with Vogel and we played city sleuth wandering around buildings downtown and in SOMA looking for public open spaces. It is a law in San Francisco that any new building that is of a certain size needs to have an area dedicated as a public open space. These gardens are veiled in secrecy. Through a combination of secret handshakes, back-alley shank-ings, and scratching of heads, we were able to sleuth our way through the city and locate some of these hidden gems.
The Saloon – Since I've moved here, I've grown fonder of this thing called dancing. Now mind you that having any thoughts about skills that you might assume I have in this endeavor would do two things. They would make an ass out of you AND most importantly they would make an ass out of me. So let's cut to the chase and say I'm shit at it. But more importantly, my favorite place to dance is this dive Blues bar in North Beach called the Saloon. It is said to be the oldest bar in San Francisco. Generally, I will be the only one under 50 dancing, but that makes it all the more enticing for me. I have never EVER had that much fun dancing in my life. If you come to San Francisco and you want to put on your jiving jumpers, let a brotha know.
Japantown – The cleaner, more organized Chinatown in San Francisco, Japantown is a great place to go to enjoy some of Japan's finer things. First off it has crazy-amazing photobooths, sushi boats, karaoke, and cherry blossoms in April. But most importantly, they sell toilet add-ons with a bidet. If you believe in magic, well I hope you do.
Biking to work – San Francisco has done a lot to change my view point on energy consumption, and as a result of that, and the fact that my commute is about 2 hours a day; I have grown fond of biking to the train station and then riding the train to work. It gives me a good amount of time to read interesting books and just plain think. Plus all the food and alcohol I consume here is not helping me in keeping my girlish figure. I currently am only doing it 1 or 2 days a week, but I guess one step forward is a good step.
Cabbie Experience coming back from North Beach – Just recently I had the best cab ride ever! So there we were leaving a bar in North Beach as I gently frolicked over to a cab that would take Jordan and a couchsurfer from the Netherlands back to our neck of the woods. The first thing I heard from the cabbie as I sauntered into the cab was, "that guy just called you a fag", as he gestured to a car right next to his (it was an understandably questionable saunter). The cab driver then proceeded to take us on our merry way, as he offered us 3 ice cold tall cans that he seemed to have pulled out of his jacket. As we all sloshed down this situational Nirvana of beer, he decided to us show us pictures of his sketchy girlfriend and one picture of him in the middle of a group of models, which invariably improved his standing with every party within the vehicle. As the suckling of beer continued, he asked us if we'd like to jump the slope on Gough, to which we all dutifully replied, "Hell Yes!" As he accelerated two lights before the slope, we all exchanged looks of glee. A frothy ice-cold molten volcano of beer spewed from each of our beers as we suddenly flew into the air. The amount of laughter and happiness that ensued still brings a smile to my face.
Alamo Square Movie Night – As if the "Full House" park being right next to my house wasn't enough, they've started to do movie nights where they bring a big projector into the park and neighbors will come and lie in the park and watch movies. A slight benefit to the layout is that you have the hill-ridden lit up city in the background. We've seen Back to the Future and local Independent movies there. Libby has this tiny little Ikea couch that we carried up to the park last time, which turned out to be a perfect complement to Irish coffee and cookies. Who knew?
Luxor Girl – When I was traveling in Egypt recently, a girl asked me to take a picture of her in front of the Tutankhamen tomb in Luxor. We both split up from that point only to run into each other at the Sheraton Luxor's pool (I snuck in on my last day to get some rays before I returned back to the States.) I was heading down to take a Sunset ride in a Felucca (small sail boat) on the Nile so I decided to invite her along. After the Sun had set we walked to the center of the city to smoke sheesha (hookah) and talk until I had to leave to the Airport. It was one of those truly great traveling experiences where you connect with someone amid all the babble. We ended up staying in touch and she recently visited San Francisco.
BYOBW – This acronym stands for "Bring Your Own Big Wheel" and is a yearly race where hundreds of people careen down the extremely steep curvy hills (this year was Valencia and in years prior it was Lombard St.) in San Francisco. Libby and I really wanted to partake in this activity, but we were stupid and didn't realize that all the big wheels in the city would be sold out. However, watching this amazing debacle proved to be just as fun. You saw people from all walks of life dressed in full ridiculous regalia. It was Halloween on wheels. My favorite groups were the Jamaican Bob Sled team (made out of plastic trash cans), the "Pedal Files", and the guy that took a picture of this thong under his skirt instead of taking our picture in front of the event sign.
Kenny Garrett at Fillmore Jazz – A good group of friends accompanied me to an amazing Jazz concert at Yoshi's. This place is a premier jazz venue that just happens to serve sushi. I got mighty drunk and rocked the hell out. You should've seen the grin on my face.
Whiskey and Beer – You'd be surprised, but I actually quite enjoy beer and whiskey now. It had to happen sooner or later. My preference seems to move towards dark beers and whiskey on the rocks.
Bay to Breakers – What had started as a genial and plain old marathon has, in typical SF fashion, turned into one of the largest parties of the year. Of course the people that start the marathon are serious about it and compete for record time, but as the thousands turn into tens of thousands, the crowd moves from runners to joggers to walkers to just plain stumblers. Highlights of this years Bay to Breakers include keg-shopping-carts, the spawning salmon (people that run the race upstream), 8 port-a-potties with 8 people peeing inside and 8 people peeing on the back of them, four girls backs-to-the-tree on each side of the tree squatting and peeing in the middle of the park, and finally all the naked runners.
