Two days prior to Halloween was Saturday, and thus the truest Halloween as far as adults are concerned. I really gave it my all.
In the early afternoon, Sarah and I drove to Arata’s Pumpkin Farm in Half Moon Bay. I’d been drawn by the online reviews I read about their 2-acre hay bale maze, “the Minotaur’s Labyrinth.” As luck would have it, it had rained for several days before and the farmland, which sat at the bottom of a gentle valley, was a many-acre mud slick.
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I want to talk about the coolest feature of my new Burlingame apartment: the windows. Windows, plural. I have one, two, three, four windows—five if you count the peephole—and feel blessed to once again receive that sweet precious sunlight which was so lacking when I lived in San Francisco. (This lack of sunlight was partially due to the fog and partially due to the fact that my apartment was a converted quasi-subterranean garage which looked out upon a concrete driveway—i.e. my yard—and the underside of the upstairs neighbor’s deck.
Unfortunately, there is one major drawback of my window situation. My building is separated by one car length from the apartment building across the alley and so anyone who draws open their blinds has all the privacy of a zoo animal. Problem is, I tend to forget this fact as I go about the less glamorous moments of my daily routine—the scratching, the picking, the playing my belly like a bongo drum. Only several nights ago I was eating Count Chocula from a tupperware container when one of my ghost marshmallows fell into the faded brown living room carpet. I picked it up, blew off the carpet crud, and instinctively moved the marshmallow toward my open mouth to eat. I halted at the second—the blinds were open! I looked out the window only to find that the man one window over was scrubbing dishes and gazing outward, seemingly at nothing in particular. I wondered whether my neighbor was truly staring off into space or if he had, in fact, been looking at me and suddenly averted his eyes when I glanced his way. To be safe, I decided I must operate under the assumption that he’d witnessed everything and now watched from his periphery to see what I would do with the marshmallow. It is not easy to improvise your way out of such a moment. I’m proud of the gambit I devised. I pulled the marshmallow away from my lips and raised it to eye level, squinting intently. I made a hmmmm face while I rotated the marshmallow for inspection from multiple angles. When at last I felt confident he’d seen me, I nodded to myself—so as to indicate my curiosity had been sated—and threw the marshmallow away. I figure that best case scenario, I fooled my neighbour into thinking I had a visual fascination with the marshmallow, not a desire to put it in my mouth. Worst case scenario, he saw me throw the marshmallow away so at least he thinks I have some discretion in the food I eat off the floor. Still, I can’t complain about my living situation. It could be worse. I could still be living in a one-windowed quasi-subterranean garage. Two months. Two months since I last posted. I’ve got tons of legitimate reasons like travel, family, work, and the start of football season. Life happens, man. But most importantly—to this blog at least—is the fact that I’m leaving my apartment in San Francisco’s Richmond district.
Not to worry, though! I’m only moving to Burlingame, so Window to the Bay will continue to be a Bay Area-themed blog. In fact, in most ways very little about my life will change. I’ll now be living walking distance from Millbrae BART—which, no joke, may actually shorten my travel time to downtown San Francisco (yes, inner-city busses are that slow). My rent will be nearly identical—though in Burlingame that same money buys me a second-story apartment with multiple windows and an extra 200 sq ft, interior ventilation, and a front door that opens to the outdoors instead of my neighbor’s garage. My shitty apartment isn’t the only thing I’m leaving behind, though. And so, I’d like to take this moment to reflect on those things I’ll most miss about living in the Richmond—as well as the crap I’m happy to leave behind. Pokemon GO seems harmless at first, but man is it addictive. What follows below is a summary of my downward trajectory into an all-consuming Pokemon GO habit: The first day of playing Pokemon GO I think the game is boring. I catch two pokemon and say, “hmm. I see how this works.”
The second day I’m in the bathroom for a long time and think to myself, “might as well give it another try, I’m not going anywhere for a while.” (I’d accidentally eaten a full Serrano pepper the night before. It’d been an unfortunate end to my excursion into Ethiopian food.) Day four I wander into Golden Gate Park to play pickleball. There are so many pokemon! Like my phone is just lighting up and as I walk through the park, and, well, it turns out I’m not the only one playing. I meet some other players, drink some beer, and catch pokemon. It’s actually quite nice. The sixth day I walk a friend’s dog named Dorbis (name changed to protect the identity of the dog while still conveying said dog’s goofy-ass nature). We head to a local swim club that is, by no coincidence, also a Pokestop I suspect of harboring rare pokemon. The walk to the swim club involves a ten minute trek along a narrow creek bed. On the way I come across a group of six elementary school girls coming from the swim club. They want to pet Dorbis. While they do so I notice they are playing Pokemon GO. “Do any of you know where the Staryu is?” I ask. “I’ve been seeing it on my tracking map for several minutes, but I don’t seem to be getting any closer.” Several of the girls get very shy. One of them says, “no, we looked all around the way you’re going. But we didn’t see any Staryus.” This weekend I head to Monterey to scuba dive with my girlfriend and her brother. When we aren’t diving we’re playing Pokemon GO. At the restaurant. At the hookah bar. In the car. The entire four-hour San Francisco-Monterey roundtrip. The Uber rides to and from the bars. Sunday afternoon we are crawling through traffic on the ride home when we notice that the guy driving the sports car next to us is playing pokemon GO. My girlfriend’s brother rolls down the windows. My girlfriend connects her phone to the car’s speaker system and plays the Pokemon theme song very loudly. The driver seems disturbed, like he’s worrying to himself “is it reasonable to believe these people are sending me a message?” The other night I go to John Leguizamo’s one-man show and scheme ways to play Pokemon GO in the theater. (In all fairness, this was only partially because I wanted to play the game. Mostly I wanted to use the AR view to make a Zubat perch on John Leguizamo’s head). I seriously consider watching the show from the lobby once I see there is an active lure module. Tonight I will be going to dinner at the Park Chalet (which I previously wrote about here) for the sole reason that I understand it’s lousy with pokemon and a magnet for other trainers and, thus, lure modules. It seems I’m a lot of time and effort on a game I can’t even decide if I like. For my birthday last week I told Sarah we would go beer tasting at the Park Chalet brewery in Golden Gate Park. This was very unusual for me; normally I refuse to make my own birthday plans. That’s the job of my loved ones: discern my deepest wants and make them birthday wishes come true.
I’d brought Sarah to the Park Chalet several weeks prior—our first time—while researching an article on the park for 7x7. I bought her appetizers and a margarita to bribe her into being my photographer for the day, (food and booze are valued currencies to that girl). That’s when I saw that the Park Chalet’s draught selection is comprised of original house brews. Tempted though I was, I made the wise decision to keep my head clear for the task at hand that day, (i.e. I allowed myself but one beer), and vowed to return and drink them all another day. Here are my notes from my birthday beer sampler ($13): June 19th is Father’s Day and if you have a father with a spring birthday, such as I do, you burned through your list of gift ideas with last month’s coffee mug. Your fears will be doubly aggravated if your father is hard to buy presents for, such as my father is. (When you ask my father what he wants he rarely answers and then, when he opens your gift, he stares at it in silent consternation like it were a letter telling of a death in the family). The good news? There’s a simple solution: booze. He’ll actually use it and it’s the most effective, time-saving way to bond. In fact, one evening of libation is roughly equal to an entire camping weekend. With that in mind, I suggest Diplomatico’s Reserva Exclusiva gift pack. Here’s 4 reasons why: 1. It comes in a fancy box. Have you tried wrapping a bottle? I haven’t because I just stick any present I give in a bag that says “Merry Christmas.” I imagine it’s hard though. 2. It includes sipping glasses for two. Romantic! The glasses curve outward at one shot’s worth, which I think is supposed to aerate the rum, but also helps you keep tally. 3. It’s delicious. Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva is a Venezuelan sipping rum. When drunk straight, it’s honey and molasses flavor coats the tongue and lingers long after you swallow. Adding some ice or a little water will mellow the rum and thin out the syrupy texture while making the flavor a little crisper, a little less sweet. I suppose you could also add it to some mixer—but do you really want to give your father another reason to denigrate your masculinity? 4. It’s a winner. It’s won numerous awards including this year’s Double Gold Medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. That kind of award will make your father much happier than a Pinewood Derby trophy with a post-it reading “#1 Dad” stuck over the original plaque. (Sorry about that one, Pops). This Father’s Day be sure to toast the man who raised you. And after years of giving him reasons to drink, give him one more. Children are weak of mind and susceptible to flashy gimmicks, this is a fact. This is how places like Chuck E. Cheese are able to dupe them into perceiving their series of shitty attractions as a day of wondrous novelty when taken as a whole. The sugar-rattled tykes zip from plaything to plaything, never slowing down enough to notice that the pizza sucks, the coin-to-ticket exchange rate is criminal, and the ball pit is a hotbed of pink eye.
In this way, kid is a lot like being shitty drunk. Both share impulsiveness, the singular pursuit of fun, and a feeling that everything is totally awesome. This explains the popularity of places like grownup play places like Dave & Buster’s, i.e. Chuck E. Cheese’s and cheap liquor. For many adults the overpriced food and children’s games are a small price to pay for the opportunity to publicly rebuff such shackles of adulthood as indoor voices, sportsmanship, drinking in moderation, and financial responsibility. In late 2014 Plank, an adult entertainment center of a different breed, opened in Jack London Square. one which fit the new Downtown Oakland renaissance culture. Plank promises a more highbrow experience than a Dave & Buster’s with its slogan “Beer Garden, Bowling, Bocce” and its concurrence with the Downtown Oakland renaissance. I twice visited Plank—once in late 2015 and then again last weekend—to see if it truly is the playground for discerning adults it appears to be. Here’s what I found: Four years ago I thought ramen was cardboard one microwaved and poured MSG on until it becomes edible. Don’t get me wrong, I ate it all the time, (and still do when my girlfriend leaves for the weekend). Then, while living in Japan, Sarah and I discovered a ramen shack dubbed “Juso Ramen.” No one knew the restaurant’s real name—reading Japanese is really hard, guys—but Juso was the neighborhood and Juso Ramen served the best bowl of ramen in Juso. Maybe all of Osaka.
Sarah loved Juso Ramen’s creamy pork broth. I loved their marbled pork belly. But what really set a bowl of Juso Ramen apart was how much garlic they used. Just an absurd amount. After eating there, my pee and nipples would smell like Garlic for the next 24 hours. My nipples! I hadn’t even known that was a thing. Since returning to the Bay, Sarah and I have roamed the Richmond searching for a ramen shop to fill the noodle-shaped hole in our stomachs, but none fit style and caliber of our Juso Ramen. Then we found Hawker Eats—an Asian-fusion izakaya and ramen shop brought to you by Judy Chen and Kevin Chen, formerly of the Richmond restaurant Kaiju. In September I wrote about Red Lantern, a pan-Asian restaurant and my first sushi-love in San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood. So my heart was understandably broken when Red Lantern closed last month. But what the Sushi Gods take with one hand they give with the other. And what they gave was Sushi Delight.
“If you haven’t been to the Beat Museum... you don’t know Jack”. So read the sign at the North Beach Beat Museum as I arrived for the 94th birthday celebration of the late Jack Kerouac.
I found an eclectic group cozying into the upstairs of the ramshackle boutique. Even among a crowd of two dozen, there were lit geeks, musicians, activists, students, and hippies--both original and modern--all mingling, as if they all knew each other. “Welcome, it’s great to see you all,” announced owner Jerry Cimino, “I recognize most of you.” Apparently they did all know each other. I decided to remain on the periphery of the crowd, perusing the collection of Beat artifacts and paraphernalia: Jack Kerouac’s flannel jacket, Allen Ginsberg’s organ--the musical variety, the 1949 Hudson used in the 2012 adaptation of On the Road, and oh so many Beat-authored books, letters, and artwork from the entire pantheon of San Francisco Beat boys, big and small. |