I come to conclude that I can be quite lazy, more than I like to admit, but things do eventually get done. A long-delayed task is the "Tales of San Francisco (cont.)" episode. Since the last post, I've been to Heidelberg (twice), Madrid and then Lisbon and it's night-scene hood called "Santos". I won't be going into the how and why for now, I'll just resume where I left last time and get that story done.
Couchsurfing can be a marvelous thing, it can be enjoyed from different perspectives, as a host, a guest, someone meeting people or a site contributor - it's an organization driven by voluntarism after all. Being a guest requires a different kind of efforts than as a host. Lessons learned as one can be applied as the other - take dish washing for example, I can't think of anyone actually enjoying that chore! As a host, it's just lovely when guests have the initiative to get that done for me after dinner. As a guest, it's a no brainer and it takes max 15mins if there's really a lot to clean. In a scale of 1-10, I would rate cooking at 10 and dish-washing at 7-8. Comparing the hassle, dish washing has the best effort/reward ratio! One important detail is to RINSE the dishes, I hate to see my dishes put to dry with foam on them... yuck!!!
Yes, in SF, I did the dishes and we all had dinner at my hosts' place.
So, the first night, with me totally jet-lagged and my muscles hurting from the excellent United Airlines ride on coach - after this one experience, I don't recommend that company to anyone - we went out for some drinks and enjoy local bars & beers. In the Heights, Magnolia (beer experts) and Trax, the gay bar were the first boozing up spots.
Next day, after some more hours of sleep behind me, I was ready to face the city. I met up with Jeanne who drove me around and we spent the afternoon checking out China Town (and discovered the deliciousness in portk buns), Sutro Baths, the GG Bridge and even had the chance to try a slurpy (slurpee?) and enjoy a paralyzing brain freeze. Well, that was a day well spent in company of really cool people. We ended up at a CS meeting which according to the habitués was one of the best and busiest.This was also the coffee revelation day. J, my host, gave me the local tip, where to get the best coffee. From that day on, Phil'z Coffee was my morning pitstop. The night ended up with Jeanne and her friends at night to check Revolution (live Jazz bar) and the Makeout Bar. Revolution has a cool social feature, a single toilet. Standing in the queue is a great oportunity to start some small (very brief indeed) talk.
The following was a rainy day and Yuri's night. The California Academy of Sciences (CalAcademy) organizes once a week an evening for grown-ups only. Meaning, you need to be 21 and still get a Nightlife ticket if you want to enjoy a museum of natural sciences with a theme (Yuri Gagarin's birthday this time), live DJs and a bar! This kind of museum is usually the place for children, spending a day there is not that easy when all those high-pitched voices decide to scream, yell and party. That night was not less quieter, it was just so much fun, everybody happy and boozed up, checking out animals, celebrating the lizard's wall climbing prowesses, the albino aligator and other wildlife samples. We finished up at Jay's place and had the best cheese toasts.
Herzog & DeMeuron are famous swiss architects. Their contribution to the city is the deYoung modern art museum, just across CalAcademy. The building is EFFIN' fantastic, it has a freely accessible tower with a great view over the city, too bad the exhibits were... oh well, not as good as I expected - the YSL was unfortunately gone by then:(The night was celebrated with a nice veggie dinner at my hosts'. I brought some recipes and proposed the excellent mango-ginger-tofu. It just happens that my recipe, taken from a webpage was the exact copy of one inside S' (the other host) vegetarian recipe book. It was a fab dinner, crowned by a cleansing shot of delicious bavarian Schnapps!
I was alone in the city for 2 afternoons I think, I dedicated 3 tasks to one of them: find an electronics store to compare netbook prices, find a certain coffee shop (bluebottle) and visit SFMOMA. I only managed to get the 3rd one done and wow... was that one cool museum. Like any other modern art museum, the building caused some controversy when it was built but now it is just well integrated and easy to spot. The first exhibit was ironically about the graphic designs for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Too bad the pictures I took sucked but the pieces, as few as they were, had quite an impressive quality considering the period (for me, everything before 2000 is old). Needless to say that I had a great time at the SFMOMA and spent a lot of time walking with my eyes wide open, enjoying the quality of the building and its exhibits.
Easter Sunday, a children's day spent with grown-ups. I heard that there are more dogs than children in the city. I am not sure if the gay population has anything to do with it. What matters is that grown-ups having fun is equally enjoyable. The Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence celebrated that day their 30th Birthday. Like for the past years, Hunky Jesus is one of the events at their Easter day spent on Dolores Park. Several blokes (or even chicks) dress up as Jesus and go on stage to announce themselves. The winner was Brokeback Jesus, an announcement welcomed with applause from the happy crowd. There were concerts, the sisters, drag queens dressed up as nuns, walked around talking to people and collecting money for the cause.
Facebook played a role at the end of the event. I had announced my trip to SF on my FB Wall and a couple of CSers I had met in Berlin at Susi's would join us at Dolores tomeet up. It was a win-win situation, they saw an event they never heard of and Y and I went to the BYOBWR (Bring Your Own Big Wheel Race). Imagine grown-ups on little 3- or 4-wheel carts riding full speed down a very curvy slope, Vermont St (even curvier than Lombard St).
This was another day alone in the city, that I ended at Grace Cathedral. An intriguing building with lots of interesting single elements, the Virgin Mary vitral, an AIDS Memorial piece by Keith Haring.The night was spent in lovely Marin County, up north of SF after the GG-Bridge. Dan and Jeanne were so nice to take me back to the city after we missed the last bus which we did not even see drive past.
It has been a long time since I posted about a travel. I do hope to be able to report about NYC and Montréal this year still. I'll do my best to prepare myself and have enough cash to finance it. The last 2 travels and my first DSLR, the fab-fab Nikon (pronounced Knee-khon and not Neye-kon, like Nike) D90 kind of used up my travel fund:P
live long and travel a lot,
n.-
