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.
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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): |