Thursday, October 1, 2009

A trip to SF

Me and Christy went down to San Francisco last Wednesday for an extra long weekend. The principle reason was that an old friend of Christy’s from England was getting married to an American girl and we were invited to the wedding. Hey, any excuse to go to a city like SF is cool with me, and getting to see old friends we haven’t seen in a while makes it that much sweeter.

Basically me and Christy tried our usual thing of putting our faith in Priceline’s name your price option. Unfortunately we did it about 3 days before we had to leave and got shut out. Thankfully Mike Newland came up big and got us a discount at the Fairmont in SF. The hotel was absolutely ridiculous. The day we showed up Governor Arnie was actually there doing some press conference or something. I never saw him but I saw his army of security guards. Our hotel was also located on Nob Hill, in the middle of the city. Which is cool for scenic views and seeing everything, but a bit of a bummer when it comes to walking back up to the hotel. Seriously, the hills and that city are ridiculous.

On the first day we spent most of it walking around. Mostly the usual spots. Looked at a lot of cool buildings and stuff and also saw where the gonz gap used to be. Me and my bro went there when we were in our teens and basically all we did the entire time was get our parents to drive us to famous skate spots. The embarcadero, hubba hideout and the gonz were the obvious first ones to go to. This time around I was sort of surprised to see how skate proof the entire city had become. Another weird thing I noticed, for a city that was essentially a mecca of graffiti ten years ago, there wasn’t much at all. Most of the stuff I saw was legal stuff. Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of AWR and MSK stuff, I even saw a giant peice, but I don’t know, wall productions and stuff never really get me all that psyched.

So yeah, went around the pier, the embarcadero, saw those awesome sea lions that hang out on the docks, looked out at the rock but didn’t bother with a tour or anything. We met up with Will in the Haight Ashbury area. Checked out Amoeba records and a few other shops, to be honest I’m a bit surprised we didn’t take any pictures. I was probably afraid some dirty hippy might stink up the camera. Seriously though, I was a little surprised hippies still hang out there, it’s not exactly a beacon of co-ops and freaky stores anymore. I mean there’s a few of them but there’s also a ton of boutiques and yuppie stores too. Than again, why would hippies do anything logical in the first place right? Man I hate hippies.

At the end of the day we met up with a bunch of the dudes and went to a Giants game. We sat in the bleachers right in front of that giant Coke bottle that Barry Bonds used to hit dingers over. All in all it was a cold night but it’s a pretty cool place to watch the game. After that we headed to the Tonga room inside the basement of the Fairmont. It’s basically like a Trader Vic’s type of bar. The coolest thing was it had the band perform on a boat in the middle of a fake lagoon. And it rained indoors. Pretty hilarious.

The next day was sort of more of the same. Walked around to the Mission first. During which a few really weird things happened. To anyone that has never been to SF, the city is really patchy. And by that I mean you might go 3 blocks of a nice neighborhood, then out of nowhere you’ll be walking through the middle of cracksville. Walking around this day, it just kept happening. We’d go to an area that we’d heard good things about, get there and be totally confused as to why we were recommended to visit such a shit hole, then go a block further and come across something cool. On our way down, through union square we had one gentlemen come up behind Christy and pretend to slap her butt, as he walked away we noticed he had a switch blade in his other hand. Just dangling it, no big whoop. So first we walked to the Mission (Mexican) neighborhood. Once again, after a parade of crack heads we turned off and found some cool shops and stuff. From there it was to the Castro (Gay) neighborhood. And then we too Market street back to the middle of union square and eventually our own hotel where we hung out in the back garden a bit. It was a sweet day, me and Christy are pretty stoked on walking around a city and SF is a pretty good walking city, like I said though, pretty surprised at the lack of graffiti and skaters

The next day was the wedding. It was a small ceremony at what was an old military chapel. For the reception we went across the Golden Gate Bridge to Mill Valley. The reception was at a golf course and was a wicked time. Lots of boozing and dancing specifically, which is usually good signs for any sort of Wedding, unfortunately when you go too far with both it can lead to trouble, which in this case turned out to be me and Christy falling on each other and Christy broke her toe. Hey no one said partying awesome was easy right?

Peace out SF. Not only were you an awesome host, but you were also witness to one of the best passes I’ve ever seen Brett Favre throw. Go Vikes!

4 comments:

Ben Meers said...

peace signs in every photo...

that hotel looks amazing.

BM said...

I hope Bret Favre got AIDS when he was there.

they should just tell all the hippies that there's a Ginsberg/Leary poetry jam down at the pier and feed them to the fat sea lions.

Anonymous said...

are you not allowed to tell jokes or be funny since you live out west now?

Simon B said...

ha. yeah this blog is a bit dry. sort of on purpose though. I've had a few jokes I've made find their way to aunts and grandparents in Holland who thought I was being serious instead of sarcastic.

Dutch people are missing the necessary genes to decipher sarcasm. Oh shit, if they read that they might think I'm serious.