San Francisco--The Hills, Thrills and Hunnid Dolla Bills Tour: Day One
Action Items
1. Early Flight
2. Drop Bags @ Fairmont
3. Explore
4. Cake
5. Meet up with M and Mr. C.
6. Dinner, drinks, call it an early night.
1. Early Flight
Sometime during all my preparation for this trip, I decided I wouldn't sleep the night before my 7:30 a.m. flight, I'd sleep on the plane.
Ha bloody ha ha ha.
Tuesday night, around midnight, before departure, I decided I needed to repack my bag, clean my apartment, restyle my hair and take a long leisurely bath. Unfortunately, I'd decided the week before that Super Shuttle would be unreliable and show up late again, so when I made my reservation I pretended my flight left an hour earlier than it did. Which meant my shuttle was scheduled to arrive around 3:30 in the morning. Which, in case you hadn't noticed, was a mere 3.5 hours from the time I decided to complete the aforementioned tasks.
I repacked, did some dishes and took a bath. As I was preparing to add a little bounce to my coif, though, my cell rang. Super Shuttle. Waiting for me downstairs. I check my clock. It is 3:07.
"You're here already?!" I squeak. I was planning on another 45 minutes, at least. Shit.
I tear around my apartment, gathering up last minute "necessities," and fly out the door.
Only to get downstairs and discover that they are also picking up a passenger at the hotel next door. Which means we sit for another twenty minutes. Around the time we finally pull away, I become half-convinced I left my curling iron on. A series of horrid fantasies run through my head, and even though I am certain I never even got the chance to plug the thing in, in fact checked it to be sure on the way out, I imagine I'll return to find my building a pile of smoldering ash. It should say something about my state of mind and feelings about my life lately that I decide against calling anyone to check. I mean, I did double-check it, you know. Um.
I get to the airport more than two hours early, before the ticket agents even set up. Sit around until I can check in, then spend the next few hours lurching from gate to gate as Delta changes the departure gate three times.
When I finally board the packed plane, I do the little open-mouthed head-bobbing sleep dance for a while and wake to find we are still on the bloody runway. Open-mouthed head-bob some more. Wake again to find we are in the air, and have only been so for maybe an hour. Repeat until three hours into flight, then wake up, unable to sleep any more, listen to music until landing. In San Francisco, it is 10:45 a.m.
2. Drop Bags @ Fairmont
I take BART from the airport to the Embarcadero stop, then switch to a Muni bus. I hop off a block down the hill from the hotel and hike up. By the time ascent is complete, my lungs are buring.
I walk into the Fairmont and have a little freak-out. Now, we have stayed in some lovely hotels during past adventures, but the Fairmont takes the cake. Grand entrance, marble and gilding and plush carpets and luxurious chaises. Gorgeous. I kept expecting someone to pop out in a tiara and demand my fealty. (Eventually, this would be M. Sans tiara and demands, but we did talk about getting her one.) The hotel is in M's name this trip, and she and Mr. C., who were on the same flight out of Chicago, won't get in until dinner time. It is, roughly, noon. Which means no nappietimes for me. So I check my bag and set off to procure eats and get my bearings.
3. Explore
On the way up the hill in that Muni bus, I noticed Chinatown was just a hopskip from the hotel. And since the rumbles in my tum-tum were approaching measurability on the Richter scale (it was, after, about 3 p.m. NYC time, and my last eats had been at about 5 a.m.), I began the billy-goat shuffle back down those crazy hills to get my grub on. I ended up at the Joy Hing Noodle House (943 Stockton), where I got what seemed like a 3 lb. order of really good beef chow fun for...drumroll...
$5.
:-D
I heart SF.
Then I set off, noodles in tow, to find a nice park to eat in and pick up M's birthday cake.
4. Cake.
I took a cab to Citizen Cake (399 Grove St.) and picked up the chocolatey masterpiece, then set off to eat my noodles and maybe find M's friend and Irish-bartending-computer-geek extraordinaire, IB, so I could maybe stick her cake in his fridge.
I call his last know bartending location and ask for him by name. The lady on the phone says she doesn't know if he works there. Shady. Very shady. I decide to walk up there and pop in, just in case she thought I was, I dunno, trying to serve him paternity papers or something.
I stop and eat my noodles in front of the public library, and feel vaguely obscene, as I am sitting there eating 3 lbs. of noodles and holding a $50 birthday cake in front of what must be 3/16ths of the city's homeless population.
I look around at all the lovely museums in the area and think, "This is lovely, I could live here."
Then I walk up to IB's sometime-bar, OSB (800 Larkin Street, @ corner of O'Farrell and Larkin). Holy shit, the Tenderloin. Holy shit, dodgydodgydodgy during daylight.** I cruise on by OSB and decide I'm taking my ass right back up to Nob Hill, thanksverymuch. Check the cake with my other bag at the hotel and set off to shop.
Powel Street and Union Square.
Tiffany & Co., Saks, Macy's. Urban, DSW, Sephora. Yippee.
5. Meet up with M and C.
M and Mr. C. call around 6. They're on their way. When they arrive, we drop our stuff off in the rooms and set off for drinks.
First stop: Tonga Room, the kitschy tiki restaurant in the Fairmont.
The drinks have a lot of lemon and orange juice, the sprinklers, simulating a light tropical rain or what-the-fuck-ever, go off in the middle of the floor--er, the pool, because that's what the place used to be, the Fairmont's indoor pool--and a top-40 cover band comes floating into the middle on a bloody barge. We only stayed for a round.
I didn't spend $70 getting my hair done to have it rained on indoors, bitches.
After, we headed back to the rooms to regroup and try to find an Indian restaurant M liked from her time in the city, only, she cannot remember the name. She thinks it is called Bombay Club. We ask the concierge. He looks it up, tries out a few places with similar names. Nope, not them. M goes, "I think it's in a little alley, called something like Bombay Club, Bombay..." and the concierge pauses.
"You might be thinking of Le Colonial." He says.
"That's it!" She exclaims.
"Oh yeah, you were real close," he deadpans.
Anyway, we go to Le Colonial (20 Cosmo Pl.), and it is not only lovelysexyromantic, all tricked out in low light with a Southeast Asian colonial theme, it also serves the best drinks we have during the entire trip. The signature drink, the Colonial--vodka, soda, guava juice--and the emerald Buddha--vodka, mint and citrus juice--are standouts. We also order their appetizer sampler. It is tasty, though not outstanding. No matter. The eye candy more than satisfies. Even early on a Wednesday night, the bar has a good number of multi-culti cuties and a mean DJ team who spin some, if I recall correctly--old school R&B and hippety hoppet. Or something.
We take off in pursuit of some Irish boy or another M knows from back in the day and, failing to find him, track her buddy IB down at one of his gigs at the Blackthorn.
Actually, first we grab some Indo/Pak fast food from a joint called the Naan N' Curry, which is suitably strongly flavored for the kind of fools who stumble in hours after they should have had a proper meal but decided to have a little drinky first. *cough*Us*cough* And then we go to Blackthorn Tavern (834 Irving).
Oh, how to put it... We shut that place down. IB is fun as heck, but he's working, so we drink, shoot some pool (horribly) with a few East coast Irish-American transplants (close, but not quite the Irish boys M and I had been seeking) and wait for IB to close. M has to beat the boys off with a stick. It is a glory to behold. No wonder she's determined to move back to this place.
Oh, did I mention that area allegedly has a higher concentration of Irish folks outside, I dunno, Belfast or something, than any city anywhere else in the world ever?!?! That might be an exaggeration, but it sure as hell seems like it. And I'm from Boston.
After closing, we talk some trash and I try to give IB an irritating nickname, since that's what I'm good at. After a few tries (I liked Ib-diddy, IB-nasty, and Mr. B the best), he gets suitably irritated and barks, "Don't try to tangle with an Irishman in an Irish bar!" Or something like that, I dunno, he's Irish, he could have been saying anything. Kidding. He is adorable, I loves him, and that's pretty much what he said. I think I might have stopped for 12 seconds or so. Then I came up with something else. Eh. Whatevers. 'Round 3 in the a.m. he locks up and we all hop into a cab and speed back to the hotel after dropping IB off at some party.
Then we put on our jammies and pass out, M and C proclaiming all the while that they are really going to get up in time for a 10K fun run that starts at 8 later in the morning.
Again: Whaaaaatevers.
That was, you might have guessed, the end of Day One. Looking back on it, that wasn't so very bad at all! Why, if I stopped here, that would seem downright tame!
Too bad there're three more days to cover.
*hanging head in shame*
**So of course my actual visit to OSB is after midnight with M. It was great. But you'll read all about that later.
*Some names have been changed to protect the extremely interesting.
1. Early Flight
2. Drop Bags @ Fairmont
3. Explore
4. Cake
5. Meet up with M and Mr. C.
6. Dinner, drinks, call it an early night.
1. Early Flight
Sometime during all my preparation for this trip, I decided I wouldn't sleep the night before my 7:30 a.m. flight, I'd sleep on the plane.
Ha bloody ha ha ha.
Tuesday night, around midnight, before departure, I decided I needed to repack my bag, clean my apartment, restyle my hair and take a long leisurely bath. Unfortunately, I'd decided the week before that Super Shuttle would be unreliable and show up late again, so when I made my reservation I pretended my flight left an hour earlier than it did. Which meant my shuttle was scheduled to arrive around 3:30 in the morning. Which, in case you hadn't noticed, was a mere 3.5 hours from the time I decided to complete the aforementioned tasks.
I repacked, did some dishes and took a bath. As I was preparing to add a little bounce to my coif, though, my cell rang. Super Shuttle. Waiting for me downstairs. I check my clock. It is 3:07.
"You're here already?!" I squeak. I was planning on another 45 minutes, at least. Shit.
I tear around my apartment, gathering up last minute "necessities," and fly out the door.
Only to get downstairs and discover that they are also picking up a passenger at the hotel next door. Which means we sit for another twenty minutes. Around the time we finally pull away, I become half-convinced I left my curling iron on. A series of horrid fantasies run through my head, and even though I am certain I never even got the chance to plug the thing in, in fact checked it to be sure on the way out, I imagine I'll return to find my building a pile of smoldering ash. It should say something about my state of mind and feelings about my life lately that I decide against calling anyone to check. I mean, I did double-check it, you know. Um.
I get to the airport more than two hours early, before the ticket agents even set up. Sit around until I can check in, then spend the next few hours lurching from gate to gate as Delta changes the departure gate three times.
When I finally board the packed plane, I do the little open-mouthed head-bobbing sleep dance for a while and wake to find we are still on the bloody runway. Open-mouthed head-bob some more. Wake again to find we are in the air, and have only been so for maybe an hour. Repeat until three hours into flight, then wake up, unable to sleep any more, listen to music until landing. In San Francisco, it is 10:45 a.m.
2. Drop Bags @ Fairmont
I take BART from the airport to the Embarcadero stop, then switch to a Muni bus. I hop off a block down the hill from the hotel and hike up. By the time ascent is complete, my lungs are buring.
I walk into the Fairmont and have a little freak-out. Now, we have stayed in some lovely hotels during past adventures, but the Fairmont takes the cake. Grand entrance, marble and gilding and plush carpets and luxurious chaises. Gorgeous. I kept expecting someone to pop out in a tiara and demand my fealty. (Eventually, this would be M. Sans tiara and demands, but we did talk about getting her one.) The hotel is in M's name this trip, and she and Mr. C., who were on the same flight out of Chicago, won't get in until dinner time. It is, roughly, noon. Which means no nappietimes for me. So I check my bag and set off to procure eats and get my bearings.
3. Explore
On the way up the hill in that Muni bus, I noticed Chinatown was just a hopskip from the hotel. And since the rumbles in my tum-tum were approaching measurability on the Richter scale (it was, after, about 3 p.m. NYC time, and my last eats had been at about 5 a.m.), I began the billy-goat shuffle back down those crazy hills to get my grub on. I ended up at the Joy Hing Noodle House (943 Stockton), where I got what seemed like a 3 lb. order of really good beef chow fun for...drumroll...
$5.
:-D
I heart SF.
Then I set off, noodles in tow, to find a nice park to eat in and pick up M's birthday cake.
4. Cake.
I took a cab to Citizen Cake (399 Grove St.) and picked up the chocolatey masterpiece, then set off to eat my noodles and maybe find M's friend and Irish-bartending-computer-geek extraordinaire, IB, so I could maybe stick her cake in his fridge.
I call his last know bartending location and ask for him by name. The lady on the phone says she doesn't know if he works there. Shady. Very shady. I decide to walk up there and pop in, just in case she thought I was, I dunno, trying to serve him paternity papers or something.
I stop and eat my noodles in front of the public library, and feel vaguely obscene, as I am sitting there eating 3 lbs. of noodles and holding a $50 birthday cake in front of what must be 3/16ths of the city's homeless population.
I look around at all the lovely museums in the area and think, "This is lovely, I could live here."
Then I walk up to IB's sometime-bar, OSB (800 Larkin Street, @ corner of O'Farrell and Larkin). Holy shit, the Tenderloin. Holy shit, dodgydodgydodgy during daylight.** I cruise on by OSB and decide I'm taking my ass right back up to Nob Hill, thanksverymuch. Check the cake with my other bag at the hotel and set off to shop.
Powel Street and Union Square.
Tiffany & Co., Saks, Macy's. Urban, DSW, Sephora. Yippee.
5. Meet up with M and C.
M and Mr. C. call around 6. They're on their way. When they arrive, we drop our stuff off in the rooms and set off for drinks.
First stop: Tonga Room, the kitschy tiki restaurant in the Fairmont.
The drinks have a lot of lemon and orange juice, the sprinklers, simulating a light tropical rain or what-the-fuck-ever, go off in the middle of the floor--er, the pool, because that's what the place used to be, the Fairmont's indoor pool--and a top-40 cover band comes floating into the middle on a bloody barge. We only stayed for a round.
I didn't spend $70 getting my hair done to have it rained on indoors, bitches.
After, we headed back to the rooms to regroup and try to find an Indian restaurant M liked from her time in the city, only, she cannot remember the name. She thinks it is called Bombay Club. We ask the concierge. He looks it up, tries out a few places with similar names. Nope, not them. M goes, "I think it's in a little alley, called something like Bombay Club, Bombay..." and the concierge pauses.
"You might be thinking of Le Colonial." He says.
"That's it!" She exclaims.
"Oh yeah, you were real close," he deadpans.
Anyway, we go to Le Colonial (20 Cosmo Pl.), and it is not only lovelysexyromantic, all tricked out in low light with a Southeast Asian colonial theme, it also serves the best drinks we have during the entire trip. The signature drink, the Colonial--vodka, soda, guava juice--and the emerald Buddha--vodka, mint and citrus juice--are standouts. We also order their appetizer sampler. It is tasty, though not outstanding. No matter. The eye candy more than satisfies. Even early on a Wednesday night, the bar has a good number of multi-culti cuties and a mean DJ team who spin some, if I recall correctly--old school R&B and hippety hoppet. Or something.
We take off in pursuit of some Irish boy or another M knows from back in the day and, failing to find him, track her buddy IB down at one of his gigs at the Blackthorn.
Actually, first we grab some Indo/Pak fast food from a joint called the Naan N' Curry, which is suitably strongly flavored for the kind of fools who stumble in hours after they should have had a proper meal but decided to have a little drinky first. *cough*Us*cough* And then we go to Blackthorn Tavern (834 Irving).
Oh, how to put it... We shut that place down. IB is fun as heck, but he's working, so we drink, shoot some pool (horribly) with a few East coast Irish-American transplants (close, but not quite the Irish boys M and I had been seeking) and wait for IB to close. M has to beat the boys off with a stick. It is a glory to behold. No wonder she's determined to move back to this place.
Oh, did I mention that area allegedly has a higher concentration of Irish folks outside, I dunno, Belfast or something, than any city anywhere else in the world ever?!?! That might be an exaggeration, but it sure as hell seems like it. And I'm from Boston.
After closing, we talk some trash and I try to give IB an irritating nickname, since that's what I'm good at. After a few tries (I liked Ib-diddy, IB-nasty, and Mr. B the best), he gets suitably irritated and barks, "Don't try to tangle with an Irishman in an Irish bar!" Or something like that, I dunno, he's Irish, he could have been saying anything. Kidding. He is adorable, I loves him, and that's pretty much what he said. I think I might have stopped for 12 seconds or so. Then I came up with something else. Eh. Whatevers. 'Round 3 in the a.m. he locks up and we all hop into a cab and speed back to the hotel after dropping IB off at some party.
Then we put on our jammies and pass out, M and C proclaiming all the while that they are really going to get up in time for a 10K fun run that starts at 8 later in the morning.
Again: Whaaaaatevers.
That was, you might have guessed, the end of Day One. Looking back on it, that wasn't so very bad at all! Why, if I stopped here, that would seem downright tame!
Too bad there're three more days to cover.
*hanging head in shame*
**So of course my actual visit to OSB is after midnight with M. It was great. But you'll read all about that later.
*Some names have been changed to protect the extremely interesting.
posted by Sid at 10:54 AM
2 Comments:
Haaaaaaaaaaaah! *wheezing and crying in laughter* Is funny cuz it's true! Can't wait to see how in hell you recollect the rest of the trip to end all trips. . . .
Damn, your memory is good!
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