49 square miles surrounded by reality

I wasn't going to write about San Francisco since I feel like I already told everyone about the trip in person, plus I didn't get many pictures, but I'm at work and tired of looking at Myspace. So, a summary of my trip and the posting of the few pictures I did take sounds like a good way to entertain myself.

Barbara and I flew up on Friday. She had some free drink coupons, so we treated ourselves, and also treated the guy sitting in our row. We ended up talking to him the whole flight...he was an interesting guy. Turned out he was recovering from a disease that had paralyzed him from the neck down for a couple months. Basically, he caught a virus(just a little cold), but his body's defenses malfunctioned and instead of just attacking the bad stuff, it started attacking his central nervous system. One day he had a cold, the next day he noticed he felt kinda stiff and fell twice in the shower. He called 911, by the next day he was completely paralyzed, and ended up spending 2 months in the hospital. Apparently there's only like 1000 cases of this a year, and all you can do is just ride it out.

Anyway, we got to SF, went to the apartment, got changed and headed down to John's Grill for pre-opera cocktails. John's Grill is famous for being a place that Dashiell Hammet hung out at. People say he wrote The Maltese Falcon there since the Sam Spade eats there in the book.
After killing a couple of hours at the bar, we went to Berkeley to see Barb's brother's production of The Sylvan and Oceanic Delights of Posilipo, a fully staged court entertainment that was originally performed in 1620 to celebrate the return to health of His Catholic Majesty, PHILIP III OF AUSTRIA, King of the Spains." It was a pretty cool production. There were dancers, opera singers, and a Renaissance band that included harps, lutes, chitarroni(a crazy looking baroque guitar) and harpsichords.

On Saturday, we went down to Haight St., got some breakfast at the Pork Store Cafe(it's been there since 1916, although it was originally just a butcher shop). After breakfast we wandered around Haight St., and finally made to Ameoba Records where I got 8 CDs for $12.00. I love that store. Saturday night, there were more cocktails, we went to an art opening for Barbara McQueen(it was just a whole bunch of pictures of Steve McQueen), and we finally ended up at a French restaurant where I tried frog legs and escargot. I also randomly ran into a couple of people that i know from Oklahoma....Wes from Edmond in the morning at Anthropologie and Matt from film school while walking down the street near the art opening. I am once again reminded of what a small world it is.

Sunday was full of more SF sight. We met Jimmy's boss for brunch, then went to Fisherman's Wharf, looked across the bay to Alcatrez, saw the sea lions lounging on Pier 39, tried to take pictures of the Golden Gate bridge surrounded in fog, went to The Buena Vista to have some of their famed Irish Coffee(they serve up to 2000 coffees a day!), rode the cable car from one end to the other, went to North Beach for some amazing Italian food, and finally wrapped up the night with some wine on Barbara and Jimmy's balcony.

That pretty much wraps up the trip. Barb and I flew home on Monday morning. I had a lot of fun, and have decided that I really like San Francisco. It almost reminds of another country. I'll definitely go back sometime.