Driving with Gusto: Quick Update from San Francisco

For those of you who emailed me wanting to know where I am at the moment, that would be San Francisco. Yesterday my friend S and I drove up here from Palo Alto nursing brutal little hangovers after a night of Korean BBQ and Korean karaoke with the Knight Journalism Fellows at Stanford. The beginning of our demise was when the owner of the Korean karaoke place heard that these journalism fellows were in the house and was so honored that he sent a complimentary bottle of scotch to our private room. Given that I was the only scotch drinker in the crew and that wasting liquor is completely against my religion, my wildly hungover fate was pretty much sealed. S could have saved herself, but being the devoted friend that she is, agreed to help me finish the bottle (she knows how important my religion is to me) and so suffered the same fate. We nursed coffee and water all the way to the Cliff House overlooking Ocean Beach where we could start nursing alcohol again over lunch. Once we had enough alcohol in our systems to carry on, we did a little driving tour of the city, complete with a trip down Lombard Street, before I dropped her at the train station.

As for today, I spent it walking through Chinatown (stopping to fortify myself with a little dim sum), little Italy, Ghirardelli Square, the Aquatic Park, Fisherman's Wharf and eventually back downtown via the Embarcadero. Late for a date in the Castro right now. My itinerary for the next few days (for those of you who like to know where I am at all times) has me here for one more night, then off to Napa/Sonoma, Mendocino and Eureka before meeting up with a posse of Caymans and Spyders in Portland on Saturday.

Seemed to be a little miscommunication with the woman who ran this "cocktail lounge" in Chinatown when she came outside after seeing me take this picture. Her: "Yes? Yes?" (pointing emphatically at the cocktail that comes with the plastic little girl on top); Me: "No, no"; Her: "Yes? Yes?" Me: "No, really, no." Not totally positive what she was selling, but somehow totally positive that I didn't want to buy it.