unrepeatable's san francisco review

3.26.2006

pursuit of happiness

the trouble with being new and relatively alone in the city is that you are often left to your own devices. now some would view this as the opportunity of a lifetime. a chance to look inward and get in touch with themselves without anyone or anything to hamper their personal growth. a chance to ask themselves what do you really want to do? and actually do it. to seek out what makes them happy, to pursue bliss. join a club. go to concerts. read books. hike. what do i want to do today? would be a question that brings a smile to their faces, a swagger to their step. they leap out of bed singing their song of What Do I Want To Do TODAY?! filled with possibilities and mad fiddlers. a few pirouettes and (hopefully) a shower later they'd be out the door and skipping down the street all too eager to great The Best Day Yet.

i, however, am not one of those people.

my morning song is not one of joy so much. if it is at all jaunty, it is only because the casio keyboard in my head is stuck on samba. my song mostly just urges me to go to bathroom. it does not ring forth the possibilities of the day, it does make me wish i could unplug that damn mind-casio. stop the samba. please. stop it. i can't figure out what makes me happy, what my bliss is, with that damn synthesized crap going around and around and around in my skull. it is mind numbing. it it any wonder i have no idea what to do with my day?

so i stumble out of the house (7 hours later) fueled by the guilt of missing out on one of those gorgeous days where the houses sparkle on the hillsides and the breeze rustles through the trees and the sun is warm on your face, still not sure of what will make me happy, what will bring me bliss. i don't know. i don't know. i don't even know where to start looking. and then my wandering takes me by a coffee shop, and suddenly i remember what my bliss is and will always be. good thing i live in a city where espresso flows like water.


city hall sake

friday night my coworker invited me to tag along to Mayor Newsom's Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Japantown and the 39th annual Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival, which was at city hall. being a sucker for all things cultural and free, i accepted the invitation. i hadn't been to city hall (i lived in LA for 5 years and never went to city hall there, in fact, i don't think i've ever been to any city's hall...) so i was excited to not only get my japanese culture on, but some SF sightseeing in too.

the reception was in the rotunda. which is quite lovely. even in computer. there were many boring speaches from those in charge and those affiliated with those in charge. but the host was missing, newsom couldn't attend his very own celebration so he video taped a message for the masses. it's almost like being there.

inbetween the speeches where performances by the most adorable school children you could possibly imagine (tiny kimonos and thick glasses with pigtails, boys in short pants with bowl cuts-- i died from cuteness), the most stoic of dancers, and the winner of all popularity contests, the SF Taiko Dojo. taiko drums are always a crowd pleaser, but especially so when followed by free sake and the ceremonial breaking of the sake cask.

after the sake (which was oh-so-yummy. go takara sake) we went into the light court where they served us yummy bento boxes filled with delicious japanese food stuffs like sushi and gyoza. coworker and i were high on japanese culture (and still hungry) so we decided what better way to cap off the evening than to go to japantown for dinner. we wandered the halls of the kintetsu mall looking for something to strike our fancy. we found it. but i think the sake hit me a bit harder than i realized as i have no recollection of the name. but the spicy tuna hand rolls were heaven wrapped in seaweed.

and of course all this would be much more interesting with pictures, but i left my camera at work.

3.25.2006

nice buns

this morning i decided to venture up the hill to a coffee shop i'd heard good things about. as i turned out of my building, i heard the strained conversation of two joggers behind me. i moved left to get out of their way and they ran past discussing some unfortunate office incident. this would be a wholly unremarkable experience except that they were both jogging with bread. one had two loaves of wheat. the other, two packages of english muffins.



this picture has nothing to do with the joggers. but isn't my neighborhood lovely? minus the power lines, of course...

3.22.2006

old meets new

as i've been trapped in my cage (aka at work) and not been able to go out and gather any interesting san francisco stories for you all, i will refer you to this. you can pretend it happened to me and did not at all come from some stranger via sfist.com.

3.18.2006

paparazzi

one of the many things i miss about LA are the vast number of celebrity sightings i had. sure, "philip seymour hoffman" totally rides my muni and "samuel l jackson" ordered coffee ahead of me the other day at madeline's, but no actual real celebs. or so i thought. turns out san francisco is a very small town, wander the streets enough and you are bound to run into a somebody sometime.

for example, the other day at nordstrom i saw the san francisco twins. this was very exciting as i had only seen pictures and never believed i would really get to see them in the wild.



then today i got a twofer. first, frank chu at, where else, but the anti-war protest.



and second, the ever effervescent jamie hyneman who was not at the protest (to my knowledge), but was wearing his beret and puffy jacket as he made what i assume to be a large withdrawal at that wells fargo atm on 24th street.


3.17.2006

hot

oh, man, are you hot. with your fleece and your cords and your o-so-sporty sunglasses in the dark subway. with your hair just so and your shoes just right. hot. just look at you, hanging from the overhead handrail like the coolest monkey on the muni. hot. there is no other word. just... hot.

oh, and your fly is down.

3.08.2006

sweet dreams are made of this

instead of going to the bathroom to brush my teeth i remained in my chair and started thinking about how all the buildings are connected here and how you could go from one to the next to the next and that someone down the street could climb on their roof, scramble over a few others and end up outside my window. if they just stood outside the window, and i happened to open the blinds for some reason, i would stare right into their crazy yellowed bloodshot wall-eyes. it would be creepy. i'd probably scream. or, more likely, do one of those silent back away things, letting the blinds clank closed as i stumble slowly backwards, gasping for words. but then, as the oxygen returned to my brain, i'd wonder if i'd scared him off or not. because i don't hear anything and i should have heard him scamper away, but i hear nothing. and who knows, maybe it was just my imagination anyway, right? maybe there was no one outside my window at all. so i'd have open the blinds again to check and of course he's still be standing there and for some reason lightening would strike at that moment. and i'm not sure what would happen next because if this was a movie, they would cut away to the teenagers having sex down by the lake.