Stitch on 28/8/2007 at 04:07

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STITCHTTAKE: DAY ONE (Thursday)

After ten minutes of dry rolling hills from which upon high resemble massive alien brains, my plane touched ground in San Francisco around 1:30 PM. I turned on my cell once alerted by the captain that we were no longer in the cell-related-plane-explosions danger zone, and found a text from RBJ proclaiming, "welcome to San Fran motherfucker"

We're doing it.

The airport brought back a flood of memories, as it was not only the San Francisco airport but it was the airport of my childhood, the departure point for any adventure taken up until eighth grade when we boarded my mother's minivan and moved to the land of snow and hotdish. She told me kids word corduroy pants in Minnesota. I believed her.

The airport more or less set the tone for the entire weekend. I had forgotten this airport even existed and here it fucking was, realer and smaller than my dusty archived memories admitted. And dear god there were a lot of asians, it was like math class in there. I had also forgotten how rough the move to white-as-hell Minnesota had been on my adopted Korean sisters.

BART, oh god BART, so much shabbier than I remember. I used to sit and chat with my little kid friends as my mom took us into the city from neighboring Fremont. And the freaks, how could I have forgotten the utter freaks in San Francisco? An effeminate fat man with a face tattoo, black cape, and Lord of the Cock Rings t-shirt huffed and puffed next to me, escorting his grandmother who knows where. When I got off BART the nightmarish tiled station housed a bent-over Chinese woman Yoko Ono-ing into a microphone and selling tapes. Welcome to San Francisco.

Upon climbing to the main street, the first thing I noticed was that streets were rather horribly labeled. The second thing was that there appeared to be no real rhyme or reason to when people crossed busy streets.

After gawking a bit, I located my hotel and discovered that my room was about the size of a fat man's coffin(1). I wasn't there to ponder the value of $180 a night, however, so I grabbed my maps and hit the street in search of Union Square(2) first and the cafe Shug was supposedly carousing at second.

When I arrived at said cafe I realized I had no real idea what these guys look like. Sure I'd seen pictures, but myspace angles can be deceptive, just ask anyone who has ever experienced internet dating. Finally two dudes in fuckoff yellow shirts passed by, and after a bit of a mutual sizing up we approached and THANK GOD IT WAS SHUG AND SCOTS.

Then along came an RBJ.

We immediately sought out a happy hour to get the ball rolling right, and chose to eat and drink at an Italian place Shug scoped out one day en route to sunburn. A drink or two later all internet weirdness evaporated and we gelled into a relaxed group of friends(3).

"You accents are different on the internet," I said.

Somewhere in the vicinity of $170 poorer we stumbled out of the bar and met up with Dave, who suffered my immediate image resizing joke with good humor. It was the first image resizing joke of the weekend but it would not be the last.

From then on it was a full on pub crawl, with me as the relentless taskmaster permitting no more than one drink before whipping us on in search of increasingly dodgier bars. Although this period of activity packs perhaps the most story potential it is alas the murkiest of the day, so you're largely going to have to rely on Scots to fill you in. Much alcohol was consumed, much frank discussion transpired, many gay jokes were made, and there was much fist pumping amidst declarations that "we're doin' it!"

We finally wound up at some shoebox club on the recommendation of a bartender at one of our previous pitstops, and eventually lost the foreigners to liquor and jetlag. RBJ and I somehow wound up back at a bar we had hit up earlier and capped the night off with yet more drinking. Just before bartime we swayed out of there in the hope that our hotels were downhill.

RBJ hopped into a cab leaving me to fend for myself, which would not have been that big of a deal except for the fact that I was completely obliterated. After stumbling around the city for a bit I was assisted back into the vicinity of my hotel by a homeless man, at which point I went in the wrong direction. Another homeless man came to my aid and kindly walked me back to my hotel door directly, at which point I crawled upstairs, located my hotel room, and passed the fuck out.

Thursday down, up tomorrow: free $25 breakfasts, Chinatown, and TTLG royalty.

Photographic Appendix:

1.
(http://picasaweb.google.com/wstitch/20070817SanFrancisco/photo#5100802895268653874) http://lh4.google.com/wstitch/RsmxNUHFqzI/AAAAAAAAA1c/gG2h_IrYypo/s400/P1000633.JPG


2.
(http://picasaweb.google.com/wstitch/20070817SanFrancisco/photo#5100802976873032546) http://lh3.google.com/wstitch/RsmxSEHFq2I/AAAAAAAAA10/2IvLN7lZG8E/s400/P1000638.JPG

3.
(http://picasaweb.google.com/wstitch/20070817SanFrancisco/photo#5100803152966691762) http://lh4.google.com/wstitch/RsmxcUHFq7I/AAAAAAAAA2g/wBOF8u4mC7g/s400/P1000643.JPG

Scots Taffer on 28/8/2007 at 04:20

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It was I who had the hard-on for the appropriately named Nob Hill. I'd been expressing my desire to scale one of the mountainous streets since my arrival in the very hilly city. Plus, I have the "We're Doin It!" photos pre and post ascent. :D <-- needs to be a :stitch: already

Nice write-up, Stitch. I'm getting around to Man Fran Part II: Man Harder complete with the beginning of my photographs tonight.

David on 28/8/2007 at 09:15

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Oh no worries there, I'm just figuring out how this shit works.
Not surprisingly it is real easy :p

Stitch on 28/8/2007 at 17:04

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Deleted scene:

On the plane ride to San Fran I sat next to a college student en route to school in Honolulu. He was reading a book, and after a minute or two he pulled out a leather pouch and emptied half a dozen small, colored stones onto his seat tray. He'd pick one up, study it, and then flip to a corresponding page in his book. After a minute of this he put the rock down and repeated the process with a different one.

It was at this point that I noticed the book was titled <U>Love Is in the Earth: A Kaleidoscope of Crystals</U>.

His reading material two hours later? Al Gore's <U>The Assault on Reason</U>.

David on 28/8/2007 at 18:31

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http://www.ttlg.com/dave/sanfran/1.jpg
First pic on my first full day. I'd wandered up one of the really steep hills and nearly had a heart attack. Who builds a place like this? Lunatics.

http://www.ttlg.com/dave/sanfran/2.jpg
Chinatown!

http://www.ttlg.com/dave/sanfran/3.jpg
The clocktower, not far from Fisherman's Wharf. (That's a lie, it's about a mile or so from Pier 39)

http://www.ttlg.com/dave/sanfran/4.jpg
And one of San Fran's famous cable cars. The queues for these were at least 400 people long by 10am.

http://www.ttlg.com/dave/sanfran/5.jpg
The first pic of the crew (minus RBJ) before the Saturdayers turned up.

http://www.ttlg.com/dave/sanfran/6.jpg
And another!

http://www.ttlg.com/dave/sanfran/7.jpg
The forums..... I mean rowdy sea lions.

http://www.ttlg.com/dave/sanfran/8.jpg
GBM and Scots get it on hand-style, and my nipples are being tweaked!