san francisco

dear diary,

on saturday we drove to san francisco, where we stayed for three days crashing at calvin’s brother, marshall’s place. thanks marshall! obviously, we hardly even scratched the surface of sf, but we did make some observations, which were highly informative, and yet not entirely humorless. here’s the areas we crisscrossed:

the financial district/chinatown/north beach triangle was on our agenda first. as soon as we popped out of the bart station, we started wondering why they call chicago the windy city. sf wind speeds were brutal, and in june a cool 65 degrees with 20 mph breeze was not very summerlike. we hoped that the second day the sun would come out, but this was entirely wrong. there’s something crazy about how the clouds keep hanging above sf, and if you move away from the city center, it clears out almost instantly.



however, this didn’t seem to prevent locals from getting drunk around 5pm on the streets, listening to jazz in washington park (while getting drunk) and hanging out more and getting more drunk (did i already mention that?)




ride the bridge (golden gate) – sounds like a good idea, right? well, it wasn’t. we rented two bikes from a rental place that advertised itself with the above line. as they explained, the ride is flat and nice. here's what we thought: those people are insane! while taking your money, they somehow forget to mention the brutal 40 mph wind that hits you from the pacific. the only reason we didn’t take off was that our hands were frozen solid to the bikes (which, by the way, were in awful condition.)





our votes go for the mission/castro/haight parts of the city. mission is very diverse, but mostly latin. we tried a restaurant we pulled from our guidebook, and fortunately, they were dead on: their food is amazing. we had fried tacos, which rewrote our previous experiences with mexican food. jummy!




but the hilly area between mission and golden gate park is also a post-hippy neighborhood, with everything that this includes. incredible graffiti everywhere, funny looking folks on the streets, great bars with 40-or-so beers on tap, pot-smoking venues for medical purposes only etc.





the old 60s-generation blocks (where the famous decade of love started) have become pretty commercial, but there’s hope: as the expensive boutiques take over, the cool bars just move down a hill.