Wet Wide Spot

Friday:

It’s 36 degrees outside with thick icy looking rain falling down as I drive into work this morning. I am listening to the new Sandra Bernhard album, “I love being me, don’t you?”

She’s singing about San Francisco. “…make sure you wear some flowers in your hair….”

What a week. I was in this training class most of the week with all these young NYU graduates that have rather high opinions of themselves. My limited self-esteem has been crushed. I am old, fat, and stupid. I knew I was old and fat, but I didn’t really know how stupid I was till this week. How depressing. I have got to get out of this rainy depressing city. What is an old fat stupid boy to do? Hmmm…go to San Francisco for the weekend? On Virgin America? Well OK!

Monday:

I did not wear a flower in my hair, but I had a great time and now I am sad. Every time I come home from San Francisco, Seattle just seems like a wide spot in the road. I feel that way this morning. What am amazing city. So dense, so much street life, so much warmer. I know most people would laugh at the idea of San Francisco being warm, but it’s a good 15 degrees warmer down there than this place. Also, it’s warmish in the people sense. People are just way friendlier down there. And prettier. And the food…the food…the food! I had some of the best food of my entire life this weekend. Let’s recap shall we?

Friday:

6:30 AM: Go to work.

11:00 AM: Leave work, go home, pack.

12:00 PM: Go pick up Mark and Lynnette.

12:03 PM: Arrive at Sea-Tac and check in with Virgin America.

12:05 PM: Go through security, find place to start drinking

12:07 PM: $12 corking fee at a wine bar that sells bottles of wine?!?!! Screw you! We’ll go get martinis and French fries down in shiny new Concourse A.

12:30 PM: Have now had third martinis and am feeling a little woozy but am enjoying the French fries!

1:31 PM: Am now drunk and have to wait 3 hours for flight to San Francisco. Did we get here too early?

3:31 PM: Virgin America is pretty. Mood lighting and pink headphones.

3:32 PM: Oh fuck. This is still coach. Tiny, tiny seats. Vile woman in front of me reclines her seat so she can sleep. Her chair is 3 inches from my face.

3:33 PM – 4:33 PM: Watch reruns of 30 Rock via live satellite stream of New York television station while continually applying large gobs of spit to the exposed coat sleeve of vile woman in front of me.

4:34 PM: Can’t make no more spit so I start taking the straw that is sitting in my vodka on the rocks and applying a small stream of Stoli to the exposed coat sleeve of vile woman in front of me.

5:34 PM: Plane lands. Watch look of horror on vile woman’s face as she put on her coat.

5:45 PM: Pick up bags, find driver, dive into rush hour traffic heading north on Highway 101.

OK, I can’t keep doing this time check thing. Making me crazy.

Traffic is a little bit bad has as we head into the city. We’re staying at the Hotel Triton, which is an old favorite of mine. I am a little sad to see that the Beetlejuice decor been replaced with some sort of Hippy vibe thing. The rooms are tiny but cheap and the location is perfect. Right next to Chinatown and Union Square.

After we check in and drop off our bags we head to a wine bar next store. Seems to be a post-work crowd of 20-somethings. Nice to see gay boys making out on the couch.

I have some Albariño from California (who knew?!?!?) which surprisingly does not suck. I note that every song they are playing here is on my iPod. This make me feel really cool and hip. We order some cheese and duck foie gras. The foie gras is really, really good. Unfortunately I post this on Facebook. Soon the animal rights people start sending me hate posts. I reply back that the duck was a Republican and this seems to shut them down.

Back to the hotel for a shower and a change of clothes and we are off to dinner at Aziza. We walk through Union Square to go get a cab. There is an ice skating rink. What a real city this is. Our taxi driver is fast. Very fast. Scarily fast.

Aziza. Wow. Where do I begin? Magic cocktails of muddled pomegranate, lavender, sugar snap peas. An amuse-bouche of salmon row, then a bottle of incredibly crisp Grüner, then some weird bean curd in pretty bowl, then squid with fennel in broth, salsify with mushrooms, and spreads of chili, yogurt, and roasted eggplant, and more Grüner. Then a duck egg in Moroccan bbq sauce and potato foam, then duck confit rolls with a magic brown onion reduction, then more Grüner, then branzino in shellfish sauce, raw pigeon with blueberry and horseradish, and green faro with scallops. Dessert is a bit of a blur but I think it was quince sorbet and chocolate ganache and mint something. It’s after midnight when we stumble outside. The hostess runs out into the street and whistles down a cab for us. I did not know it at the time, but this place has a Michelin star. It should. I cannot think of a better meal in my whole life. Really. Wow.

Saturday:

Do you know that wonderful Julie Delpy movie, Two Days in Paris? Of course you do. Remember when the American guy is lost in Paris and he goes into Burger King and this fairy talks to him for a while and then the fairy blows up the bathroom? Well, on Saturday morning I was on the elevator at the Hotel Triton when a guy got on who looked just like the fairy in the movie. He turned around and looked at me and said, “Do you want some gum?” I said no thanks and got off at the lobby. When I turned around the fairy was gone. Nothing got blown up though.

We walk down to Market Street and then down to the Ferry Building. This was not the grand cathedral to locally grown sustainable food last time I was here. It was just a ferry terminal. Now it’s filled with wine and cheese and bacon and gorgeous people with well-behaved children. I have some really good lox with fennel fronds on bread with goat cheese and a roasted beet salad. We wonder around for a while and then it’s time for lunch at the Slanted Door. I start with a yummy Negroni and then we share some rice cakes in an amazing fish sauce, some crispy rolls in a lettuce wrap, a papaya salad, and some cellophane noodles with crab. This was all great food and the service was outstanding.

We are batting 1000 with the restaurants so far.

After lunch we wander up to North Beach and the City Lights Bookstore, then through Chinatown. On the street we hear some man arguing with a woman about why gravity is just a theory and he does not believe in it. That makes me take a step back for a moment. Normally when I encounter some lunatic who thinks that Evolution is just a theory I point them to Electricity and Gravity as examples of other “theories”. Clearly this man is a right wing Christian fundamentalist who is upset that he is going to have to vote for Mitt Romney. I wish Gravity really was just a theory so people like this would just float away.

Anyway, time for a quick disco nap and then we take another speedy taxi to the Top Of the Mark, the bar on top of the Mark Hopkins hotel. I am a little hesitant as this is kind of touristy and I am worried it will be schlocky, but the drinks are good and the views are amazing. It’s really hard to describe just how beautiful San Francisco is.

Dinner tonight is at a place in The Mission called Locanda. It’s supposed to be Roman food. It’s packed when we get there so we have drinks at the bar. This is the third restaurant with amazing cocktails. That is about where the goodness ends. We are seated at what we think will be a nice table in the corner. There is a painting of a giant hand crushing the life out of some little birds. This does not bode well. We are under a speaker that is blaring angry, hateful rap music really, really loud. Our waitress appears. Blond, nice, totally inexperienced. She doesn’t tell us what they are out of so of course that is what we try to order. The music is so loud and vile that I barely remember what we ate. The pasta was OK I guess, the sauces a little better, but the waitress’s timing was bad and there was blood pouring out of my ears due to my eardrums shattering. This was really an awful experience. I would never go back there and would encourage both readers of my blog to avoid this place as all costs. Afterwards we stand out in the rain and wait and wait for a taxi. I wonder if my hearing will ever return. I start to cry but then I remember the amazing meal I had the night before.

Sunday:

We are up by 9:00. We check out and leave our bags at the hotel and take another speedy taxi back to The Mission of brunch at The Universal Café where I have a pomegranate belini, good coffee, pumpkin French toast, and some homemade sausage. Soon this place is packed and there is a line out the door. This place is fine, perhaps not worthy of the fantastic reviews it gets, but then again maybe I am just not a brunch person. You should be in your twenties and have expensive designer glasses on to do brunch. I feel totally uncool sitting there. Old, fat, stupid, without glasses. Soon we are waiting out in the rain for a taxi again. I am not sure I like The Mission so much.

We taxi over the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and wait in the rain for it to open. There is a long line. Lynnette disappears for a long time in search of a bathroom and Mark gets upset. I leave them alone and go look at art. I have been to this museum a couple of times before but I didn’t remember that the permanent collection was so good.

We need to go back to the hotel to get our bags so we have lunch at a little French place next door. I have oaky chardonnay and butter for lunch.

Finally we are back at the airport and we get an upgrade to First Class on the way home so there is no need for me to get spit on anyone’s coat sleeve. I am reading the New York Times on the way home and I see that Anthony Bourdain says, “Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.” Then he says, “You’d have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food….” I may be old, fat, and stupid, but at least I know where to go to eat. 

.