There’s a lot more to write about my trip, all the reasons I didn’t want to come back home, but I want to get all the materialistic stuff out of my system first. You’ve been warned.
Something about traipsing up and down all those hills makes it really hard to gawk at people like you can in New York, but I still really like San Francisco. Even if its buses do have ridiculously slippery seats that ensure you slide into some homeless man’s lap every time said buses come to an abrupt stop. And they always stop abruptly, and there is always a homeless man, with arms wide open, ready to catch you. In fact, on my last trip to the city, when I went up sans escort, one such man pressed his phone number, written on a piece of brown paper torn from a grocery bag, into my hand as he left the bus. Ahem.
Still, is there another place in the world with people that are so genuinely, almost creepily, friendly? I daresay, there is not.
And the shopping. I should not have spent any money on this trip, which was solely intended for business networking, enlightenment, and edification - all three of which, I am happy to report, were attained. [Can you attain "business networking"? Probably not, but let's just roll with it.]
But so were a pair of super-classy gray suede heels and a freaking sweet wrap sweater that I have had my eye on for two years (count ‘em). I finally broke down and bought the latter because it is inherently ridiculous and more than a little embarrassing to fetishize a sweater. As for the former, I have no excuse except they were really pretty. I also bought a pashmina (it hurts just to type this word) on the street, which I probably won’t wear again because I saw a super-hippie wearing the same one the next day, and if it makes me look half as ridiculous as it did her, that’s $15 that would have been better spent if I had thrown it right in the trash.
Of course, some of this shopping was to compensate for the fact that I had forgotten that San Francisco is a cold, windy place, particularly in February, and also that I had packed for the trip after taking my cold medicine, which rendered me totally incapable of packing things that were weather- or occasion-appropriate anyway.
And some of this is just that I’ve been living in the West Valley for too long, exiled in chain-store, mall-dominated shopping purgatory. I would probably argue now that San Francisco has the best-edited clothing stores of the top three U.S. shopping cities (NY, LA, SF, obviously), especially when it comes to shoes. Everywhere I turned, beautiful shoes. And there was a store in Hayes Valley with clothes that were so great, I actually considered, for one very brief moment, buying a super-plain top with a price tag in the triple digits because it was so cheap in comparison to the rest of the store, and I just wanted a memento. Like walking into Prada and buying a key fob. I slunk out with a business card instead.
Also: fantastic food, even in the ‘burbs. Especially in the burbs, especially for breakfast. Although, when it comes to the city I know I’ll never eat clam chowder at Fisherman’s Wharf again (and will never again go to Fisherman’s Wharf, if I can help it), and eating just one custard bombolini (bombolino, aka fantastical Italian donut) from the pretentious coffee place at Ferry Plaza is quite enough.
One final plebeian thought: maybe it’s because San Francisco doesn’t have the super-late bar culture of New York, but every place we tried to go for dinner at 6 pm on a Saturday turned us away, one with a wait of 2 hours. Either the city’s foodie scene thrives on the early-bird special or there’s some serious over-population going on. It could also be that San Francisco’s hipsters, unlike New York’s, subsist on more than a diet comprised solely of coke and PBR. ‘Tis a mystery.
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