What can I say? It's been amazing. Utterly impossible not to fall in love with this city - it is charm and bewitchment personified. 'Twill be hard to leave. I've become very comfortable with and in my environs, this rental apartment has been fantastic, the people I've met - waiters, shopkeepers, Woody the nudist - have been really nice, the gayboys overall have been a hoot, and the sights are truly eye-popping, and sort of non-stop. I'ts almost a case when you're here of what I can only term as "beauty overload" - you get to a point where you sort of can't take in any more beauty. I'm not kidding. It's the exact same way both Maryann and I felt when we visited the area 10 or 11 yrs ago, and went to places like Half Moon Bay over on the coast, and Muir Woods for the redwoods. There's just a crazy amount of natural gorgeousness here, the landscapes, the flowers and foliage, the houses, the hills, the bridges, the ocean ... and it can almost be overwhelming. Not at all a bad thing.
My first week here the weather was unseasonably warm at about low to mid 70's every day, and this second week it's much more like normal SF temps, ie low to mid 60's. Mild, breezy to windy, pleasant. There has been exactly one - one! - cloud covered day in all this time. And not a drop of rain in my whole time here.
Tomorrow I catch a 1pm flight north to Seattle, where I'll be til June 2nd. I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to do any of this. Sort of can't believe I did it.
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Yesterday I visited a place Maryann has been raving about to me for years - an Oakland neighborhood called Rockridge - and it didn't disappoint, in fact, I was pleasantly surprised to find that on top of the area looking and feeling so "Cambridge-y", the side streets off the main road, College Ave., contained the loveliest and densest collection of Mission and Craftsman style homes I've seen since visiting the "Bungalow Heaven" neighborhood in Pasadena, which is saying a lot.
Before leaving I checked online for transit info - how any of us travelled in the pre-interets age is beyond me - headed up Castro street and descended the same stairs I ascended the day I arrived - have not been back on the subway since then - added a few bucks to my Clipper card (somehow it said I was in arrears to the tune of six bucks) - and was whisked downtown to the Embarcardero station. (Btw I wanted to mention something that escaped my notice the first day here - the flooring on the subway platform here is made of frickin marble. Marble! )
I was a little nervous about where to go to catch the BART (that's Bay Area Rapid Transit - which is like the commuter rail in Boston), but no matter - at the end of the platform was a sign. Could not have been easier - walked down the stairs and a BART train was right there - actually had to hurry towards it, and somehow managed to take the correct line outbound to Oakland.
This train was virtually empty, clean, and very very comfy, with big thick cushy seats.
Those are my feet on the way back - the little bag contains this book:
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It's interesting to note that even by this point - ie the very first thing I did yesterday morning, I was already semi-beat. I'd had to stand for part of the ride from Castro down to Embarcadero, and was looking around the whole time, scanning for empty seats like an old lady, and leapt on it the minute one popped up. This is a bit concerning, as I need to be able to roam around in Seattle and did not want to start out my trip there at a deficit, but that is what's happened. It's why today is an in-day.
Okay, sort of. After calling up my electric company, car insurance and cable to get the dollar amounts, I'm up to date on paying all of my bills. I also called my electrician and left a message, since my tenant, in response to me asking yesterday how things were and if there were any issues, said that, oh ya, his side doorbell gets stuck and it smells of smoke until he hits it again, and that this maybe should be looked into soon. Damn - it's the reason I left with him, the names and phone numbers of all of my workman - plumber, electrician, furnace guy - for the house, with specific instructions to call them if anything arose while I was away. Now the kid's on the road - he travels a week at a time for his work, and I don't know if the electrician will need to get into his side of the house in order to address this. If he'd simply called him while he was there, the issue would probably be dealt with by now.
Sigh. I like to pretend when I'm away from home that I'm not a landlord - something almost inevitably always seems to happen.
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So, back to this morning. After packing and sorting my stuff, doing the wash, and paying bills - thank you, forever, Dian, for turning me onto online banking - I walked the half block to the post office, carrying with me two large bags full of paper shopping bags from the grocery store, books purchased in LA and here, mags, flyers, magnets, and the three mugs I bought at the Golden Gate Bridge gift shop, and managed to pack it all pretty well, shove it into a single medium sized box, stuffing a crumpled up newspaper and the papers bags around it all, and get it mailed off to my house, the slowest possible way. The woman gave me three options: $98, $44, and $22 - the latter to arrive in 8-10 days, so, perfect. Seriously, what a deal to not have to carry around all that crap with me, in what for some reason is already a heavy suitcase.
I then could help myself not and kept going til I hit Castro Street, intending to simply visit the Bank of America ATM rather than pay the 3 bucks I'm charged elsewhere, and then of course, once on Castro, I found myself walking up the block, then had to go and eat at The Dancing Pig, again, where I had pulled pork and chicken sliders, and my glorious banana cream cheesecake. Hee!
Oh, wanted to mention that on my way there, two 8th graders - an Asian girl, and a cute blonde boy - approaching, asking if I wanted to buy a raffle ticket for their school, and the charity work they do for the poor over in the Mission District, which is the neighborhood immediately east of here. I said sure, and asked them about their school, which it turns out is called the Friends School, and is run by Quakers, and is situated in an old Levi's factory.
I said, so you guys don't believe in war, right? And she said no, we don't believe in any kind of violence, and we also don't believe in voting. I asked what she meant, while filling out the raffle ticket, and she said they do some sort of group decision making at the school. I think they do vote in elections, just not inside their school, or something.
She also said the charity work they do involves poor people and people without health insurance. Always compelling and a bit pathetic to hear the latter, seeing as the rest of the world has universal health coverage, etc etc., and also, because I'm now in that group.
The raffle is for an Ipad 3. If I win, given my experience with my own brief and very frustrating ownership of an Ipad, I'll give it to the freaking school.
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After lunch I headed across the street to Best In Show - a doggie shop, and bought this dog chew thing:
Hee hee, it's so cute !! And of course has the rainblow flag motif. They do love their dogs in Castro.
I also took this photo, which is maybe one of my favorites I've taken here:
I've been intrigued by this rainbow version of a mirror ball thing ever since I arrived, and almost forgot to get a snapshot. It sits above the doorway to some real estate business and spins and flaps about in the wind and reflects the sunlight. Totally love it and want one for my house, dangit.
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Okay, so yesterday.
Upon arrival at the Rockridge stop - which I believe was 5 full stops from SF - a ride which takes you under the bay and goes quite fast - maybe a total of 20 minutes - I descended the elevated/outside platform and on the adjacent escalator was a college aged-girl hoisting a bike over her shoulder. At the bottom of the stairs was this:
Just a sea of freaking bikes. I guess there's an art college in the area, but also, given the good California weather, I'm betting a lot of these are local residents', who bike to the train station in the morning, rather than take the car. Pretty cool. Not something we would have the option of doing in Boston in winter.
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So the neighborhood itself was really neat, with loads of little shops and two great little indie bookstores - two, on this same street. The first, below, is is Pegasus Books. The second, Diesel Books.
First though, I had lunch at a place called Crepevine - turkey with red onion and stuffing, toasted, with a salad and fries. Very dee-lish. There was an outdoor cafe which was packed by the time I left at around 2 or so.
Overall, the town was a lot of fun - lots of unique shops and cafes, nothing too boutique-y, super pretty architecture surrounding you on very dense, tight little side streets, a big comfortable train station nearby, and just minutes into San Fran. Not bad.
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