When I started to tell people I was moving to San Francisco, they invariably wanted to know why I felt like picking up all my junk and sending it across the country. I didn’t have much of a reason I could articulate, except that I had visited and really liked it. That visit came to an end a year ago this weekend, and here I am, in a falling-apart-apartment just outside of San Francisco. And now that I’m starting to think of this place as home, I’m getting more excited by the day to spend more time exactly where I am.
In the last month and a half, I have a whole slew of reasons to live here. The weather, the food, the people, the scenery, the weather, the lack of snow and humidity, the weather…I could go on and on. We’ve just had so much to do here, so many things to see, and the “to-do” list of activities keeps getting longer.
This weekend was jam-packed full of NorCal fun. Saturday, Brian got a gig playing background music at the Noe (“no-ee”, not “no”) Valley Farmer’s Market. Going over the bridge to get into the city, the fog was the worst I’d seen it so far, but cleared up the second the bridge ended. We zipped into Noe Valley and found some parking at the top of a steep hill (are there any other kind here?). This was a neighborhood that I hadn’t explored yet, so I was pleased to fly solo, to be free to touch every single dress in every single store I went into (which I did). I found this cute little number for a whopping $11 (original price tag read $135):
In and out of stores I went, happily trying on hats and looking at the soles of shoes until it was time to find Brian again. I sat in the sunshine reading my book until he was done, then sampled a billion different kinds of almonds at the market (flavored almonds are huge here). We had to head home after that, because the lovely Colleen was coming over for dinner. If you remember, she’s the incredibly patient and generous high school friend of Ma and Pa Bergeron who put us up when we moved here. Our dead-ringer-for-Axl-Rose building manager, Joel, was in our apartment when we got home, tearing apart our ceiling after the epic leak that took out my Book Nook. During his little demolition derby, he noticed the ceiling in the lobby, directly below our kitchen, was dripping water (ah glorious antique plumbing). At this point, we’re waist-deep in lasagna dishes with company coming, plaster chunks all over our apartment, with stacks of books all over the place. And now we can’t do dishes (still can’t, apparently. Our lobby has abut 6 buckets full of gray water scattered across it). We powered through, sent Joel upstairs with a plate and had a great time with Colleen. It’s rare to spend time with friends of your parents without your parents there, you know?
Sunday we had plans. Big, Lunar New Year plans. Unfortunately, apparently nothing happens on the actual Lunar New Year in SF’s Chinatown, all the fun stuff goes down either before or after, so we were just left to wander in and out of the shops selling Mao trading cards and coolie hats (not such a bad way to spend a few hours, especially if you’re into swords). The day had started out rather foggy but cleared right up after some coffee/pastry extravaganza in North Beach.
After my nerves wore to a fray from all the Chinese firecrackers, we headed over to Hayes Valley for some mid-afternoon relaxing in Alamo Square. This has become one of my favorite spots in the city, with a 360-degree view of San Francisco. It had warmed up to about 70 degrees, so we pulled a blanket out of the trunk and got totally drunk on sunshine. After about an hour, we stumbled down to the Beanbag Cafe, on Divisadero for an early supper. We’d overheard some chatter about a city-wide pillowfight down on the Embarcadero later on, so after we finished our delightful meal, we drove down to the piers to kill some time before that shit went down.
There’s only so much time you can spend dodging baby carriages, so we were glad when 5:30 rolled around so we could head over to the Ferry Bulding area for the pillow fight. We weren’t sure what to expect, it being a public affair without pajamas or basements or scary movies on pause in the background. Turns out, arena pillow fighting is pretty much exactly what you’d expect:
All in all, lots of fun, good company, great weather. Come visit me soon, friends!