Laura’s Journal: We eat, drink, and read our way through San Francisco

Matt walks on a low stone wall on a walkway along the San Francisco Bay. He is mostly in silhouette as the sun sets to the left side of the photo, behind the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. — Gotta start with a photo of the classics, am I right?

A transcription of the photographed journal pages can be found at the bottom of this post. I’ve given up on the idea that I’ll ever turn this into a proper blog post, so a slideshow of photos is also included. Joy!

A photo of a handwritten journal page. The title is in blue with all other writing in black. A full transcription of the writing is below.

A photo of a handwritten journal page. An ink sketch of a strawberry is on the middle right of the page. It's an extremely excellent sketch. A full transcription of the writing is below.

A photo of a handwritten journal page. A blue cocktail umbrella with pink and purple flowers has been sketched on the lefthand side. It is a very mediocre sketch. The sketch is labeled, "This is supposed to be a drink umbrella. Y'know.. to protect your drink from the thunderstorm over the pool." A full transcription of the writing is below.

A photo of a handwritten journal page. There are no sketches on this page. It's very sad. A full transcription of the writing is below.

A photo of a handwritten journal page. A stamp from City Lights Bookstore is smack in the middle of the page, making the writing around it confusing to read. A full transcription of the writing is below.

A photo of a handwritten journal page. A cherry has been doodled in the bottom right corner. It is a very red cherry. A full transcription of the writing is below.

At the center of the photo, Laura stands on the left and Matt on the right. The San Francisco Embarcadero stretches out behind the, with a clocktower in the distance. They are both looking at a stone bench, on the left of the photo, which has a bronze octopus hugging its edge. — Matt educates Laura in the finer points of using public art as skateboarder-deterrent.

Laura and Matt sit at a restaurant table, leaning rather awkwardly together. Laura is giving Matt some suspicious side-eye. Her arm is abnormally stretched-out toward the bottom of the photo, because the perspective is a little funky. Behind their table is a bamboo railing, and behind that is a swimming pool. The room is dark with strings of globe-lights overhead. — Poolside table in the Tonga Room wooooo!

A tall, tiki-style mug fills the frame with a wedge of pineapple and pink paper umbrella.

Matt sits behind a drink shaped like a tiki barrel (if that's a thing). A sprig of mint sticks out of the cup.

Cocktails woooo!

A view over the pool showing tables of people seated behind a bamboo railing on the far side. The lighting is dim. A series of pipes in the ceiling are letting a barrage of "rain" down into the pool. — It’s raining in the pool woooo!

Laura and Matt sitting at a table. A new kind of fancy cocktail is in the foreground. A plate of chicken wings and jalapenos is in the middle of the table. Laura is gnawing on a wing while Matt hides behind his tiki-barrel cocktail mug. — Pu pu platter woooo! (Actually, we didn’t get a picture of the pu pu platter because we’re fools. This is the second-round batch of chicken wings.)

Red paper lanterns are strung across the street from building to building. On higher stories of the four-story buildings, long rows of flags are strung across. Signs on the buildings are written mainly in Chinese characters. All the buildings have balconies and fire escapes. — The flags and lanterns strung up in Chinatown were so cool.

This photo looks down the length of a wide, clean alley. The walls of the alley are painted in bright oranges, reds, and other colors with graffiti showing a Chinese in traditional garb, large unreadable letters, and a parade of anime characters. Laura and Matt walk away from the camera down the alley. — All of Chinatown, in fact, was full of incredible art.

A wall is tiled in jewel-red papers decorated with gold highlights. Most depict Chinese characters. Some show cartoon tigers.

A poster for "Lo Ta You in Concert 2022" depicting a Chinese wearing sunglasses, a suit, and entire boatloads of gravitas playing a guitar.

The things you find hanging on walls…

Dustin stands in front of the City Lights Bookstore, looking in through the very large windows at the displays of books inside. — Oh, look! Dustin IS on this trip!

Laura and Matt walk between shelves inside the bookstore. Laura's hand is stretched out as if she wants to pet the books. She does. — Laura tries to pet all the books in the store.

Laura and Matt stand outside the entrance of City Lights Books, leaning toward each other. Laura is holding her hands up to make a heart shape, and is making a dopey "my followers are going to love this" face. Matt appears bemused. — My followers are going to love this!
(You love this, right?)

Laura, with her back to the camera, debates Matt, facing the camera, about the merits of ice cream topping while they stand in a long line in front of the Ghirardelli ice cream shop. It is night but well lit. — In line at Ghirardelli Square with ice cream on the brain.

Matt and Laura sit in a blue vinyl booth with giant ice cream sundaes in front of them. The malt that presumably belongs to the photographer (Dustin) sits in the foreground. Matt is looking doubtfully over at Laura, who appears blissed out but blurry.

Transcription:

Saturday, May 7, 2022

SAN FRANCISCO: VARIOUS EXCELLENT LANDMARKS

Golden Gate NRA is a sprawling park that covers good swathes of San Francisco’s north and west shorelines. When I was researching places to visit while staying here, I wrote lots of things on a list: the Presidio! Sutro Baths! The Bridge! Alcatraz! I started did not realize, until trying to collect my stamps, that they are all parts of the single NRA.

We are in San Francisco to help Friend Matt with the last of his moving arrangements (and by “help,” mostly mean moral support, though we’ve also moved around a few boxes). As part of our duties, I’ve also considered it necessary to make sure Matt gets some fresh air and coffee from time to time. To that end, we’ve insisted he show us his favorite places for meals and people-watching.

Saturday mornings, a glorious farmers’ market takes place at Ferry Plaza, along the Embarcadero, a short walk from Matt’s soon-to-be-former residence. We come from the land of short-seasoned and desperately limited farmers’ markets, so I felt nearly drunk on the seemingly endless rows of stalls selling brilliantly fresh and shockingly local produce. (Sorry-not-sorry for all the adverbs. It was a superlative kind of market.) Being as we were soon to lose access to refridgeration, we restrained ourselves and didn’t buy a thousand plump strawberries, but I got a little fat from all the ones I ate with my eyes anyway.

Saturday evening, following advice Matt had waited in line an hour just to get on Friday night, we got in line at the Fairmont Hotel’s Tonga Room at 4:15, in order to get first dibs (well, fourth dibs, it turns out) on a table when they opened at 5:00. The ploy was successful, and so 47 minutes later we found ourselves seated at a poolside table with a two-hour limit and a thunderstorm crackling artificially and delightfully overhead. The mai tais and pu pu platter arrived just about before the first storm fizzled and well before anyone jumped into the pool and incurred the $1000 fine.

The Tonga Room is a wacky place with a fabulous vibe. Opened in 1945, oozing with exotic kitsch, it was designated a “historic resource” in 2010, which still wasn’t going to be quite enough to save it from demolition, though a swelling of local devotees and a visit from Anthony Bourdain eventually did the trick, and now the line stretches out the door every night.

We savored our wildly expensive drinks and ordered a second round of chicken wings, deemed to be the winning contestants from the pupu platter, and made our waiter nervous as we soaked up exactly 119 minutes of our two-hour time limit.

When we spilled back onto the street, the world remained disconcertingly bathed in daylight, which was hard to fathom after spending two hours in the dark South Pacific. We stumbled our way down the hill, avoiding any cable car collisions. We rambled around Chinatown for awhile before finding ourselves spit out in front of City Lights Books, an institution and all around gorgeous bookstore.

I prowled around the shelves in many, many rooms, wanting to see and touch and and smell all the books. What is it about places where books crowd together that makes them so special? Something to do with the infinite possibilities of story, maybe? Dustin told me I had to buy a book.

“But they’re all full-price!” I protested. Buying things on sale is a habit that I learned from my mother, but which I’ve been known to take to unreasonable extremes.

“You deserve a full-price book,” Dustin assured me. Doubtful but now obliged by an irresistible outside influence, I continued to prowl. How could I possibly choose the right book? Which book should be deemed of being the full-price-worthy book??

I wound up with two full-priced books, in fact (oh! the hedonistic splurge!): The Overstory, by Richard Powers, which I’ve been looking for for awhile, and a signed copy of Lemony Snicket’s Poison for Breakfast, which was too charming to resist. Dozens of other tempting books were petted and released back into the wild.

I was the last person in line to check out, having been shooed out of the stacks by an employee who clearly no longer feels the magic of working in this place.

Our last stop of the evening (only partially because we had an hour left to kill before the rates on the parking meters [outside Matt’s house] became reasonable again) (no seriously) was Ghirardelli Square. I have fond memories of visiting as a child when Grandma Shirley would come on her one outing of the summer with us to hit Nordstrom’s and someplace a little-too-fancy-for-kids for lunch. A giant ice cream sundae was our reward for playing along with the rest. Mom had even given me some treat money for this trip, specifically earmarked for this. Also: Matt had never been before!

The line was long but moved fast. I got the feeling they’re accustomed to moving great hoards. Matt and I got salted caramel sundaes (Matt’s dairy-free, but it’s not about the ice cream so that’s okay) and Dustin got a vanilla malt (because he didn’t realize it’s not about the ice cream). We did our best, but those sundaes were enormous and decadent and eventually defeated us. We headed back to Matt’s place for contemplation and lots of digestion.

Thither & Yon

(adventures & wanderings)