Dundee's Travels: Meet me in San Francisco

After a mere five months of being an $8 train ride away from one of America's most unique cities, I finally made it into San Francisco for a long weekend. The occasion, of course, was Valentine's Day, and my girlfriend Bryanne flew in from Columbus.

Saturday night we went to a dinner theatre, Teatro Zinzanni. My friend Nadir is the drummer and was able to score us tickets at the "Producer's Bar". We sat next to a facial surgeon from Las Vegas, who was one of the acrobat's boyfriends (her name, appropriately enough, was Tatianna). After the show, we were able to meet several of the cast back stage. Anyway, I'm sure Bryanne will have some (compromising) photos from the show.

During the day on Sunday, we headed over to the Mission District to grab lunch, and check out a few shops that drove Bryanne wild. This is one of the areas of town that hasn't been completely gentrified, yet. If you're not familiar with this word, it's more or less what happens when gay people move into an old part of town.

First, it starts out as a part of town where only meth addicts and artists (who can tell the difference?) can afford to live. Then, coffee shops show up because meth addicts can't pawn espresso machines, and the artists are too poor to take a cab uptown to get a latte. This officially begins the revolution---property values begin to rise, more trendy shops start to pop up (where else do gay people and artists shop?), and eventually the meth addicts can't afford their rent any longer. Ultimately a Whole Foods store opens up, thus completing the process. Of course, the gays and artists are long sense gone, and all that are left are guilty white people, who complain that the same process is happening in another part of the city. This ostensibly leads to white people pushing for laws that prevent property owners from charging their tenants market value for their apartments, which stalls the process and creates a situation advantageous for the meth addicts. (For more info, see here.)

There was still a bit of time before dinner (which Bryanne was in charge of), so we caught a cab over to Haight/Ashbury, for to see the epicenter of marijuana culture in America.

(Bryanne has some better pictures.)

After a bit of marveling at the uses of hemp, we got back to the hotel room for a quick shower and change of wardrobe for dinner,at McCormick and Kuleto's. I had monkfish stuffed with chorrizo, in a chimichurri sauce. It was wonderful. Even better was this (according to Wikipedia):

According to Seafood Watch, monkfish is currently on the list of fish that American consumers who are sustainability minded should avoid.

I guess that made it taste even better. I won't go into detail about what "sustainability minded" even means (what a fucking joke).

Although the weather was mostly uncooperative, we did manage to get a bit of sightseeing in on Monday afternoon.

I was able to get a pretty decent deal on a hotel room on the Embarcadero, the street which runs down the eastern edge of the city, along the bay. The expensive rooms in the hotel looked out across the bay, onto the Bay Bridge, and the Ferry Building:

After a lunch by the bay, we caught a trolley back down to Fisherman's Wharf, where we had been the night before. We walked along the piers, where a solid commercial fishing industry still seems to thrive.

We walked down the waterfront, past shops that were more or less generic, and people who were more or less copies of people whom I had seen before in Baltimore, or Galveston, or New York. Of course, not every shop was a Hooters or a Vietnamese woman selling sunglasses---Bryanne and I found a nice bakery where we enjoyed some fresh sourdough bread and a cappuccino.

The sun began to sink, clouds started to gather again, and we headed back to the trolley stop. As we walked down the waterfront, past street vendors selling fried calamari and hot, boiled crabs, I couldn't quite help myself...