wow, we made it to halfway. the goal is to hit 50 brand new bars in SF this year and we’ve now been to 25 before june is over. damn, we’re good. if only we could do this for a living….

anyways, this bar was pretty cool. the drinks are good and people can play boardgames etc. there’s this small room just big enough for 6 or 7 people in the middle of the bar. inside, we were surrounded by different games, old books, Mr.Potatohead, etc. and being in there almost felt like we were just hanging out in some kid’s room in a cabin. we just hung out, drank, and tested each other on random trivial pursuit questions. definitely a very comfortable bar to be in.

John Barleycorn Pub is on 1415 Larkin Street in San Francisco

My friend called me up andsaid to meet him here to go drinking in the tenderloin. i came out expecting a gritty, seedy, divey bar on a dirty street that smelled like urine. hopping out of the taxi, i looked around and realized that this part of the “tender nob” was much more “nob” than “tender". the bar was decorated extremely elaborately with fancy stained glass windows, dark polished dark wood counters, and lots of other interesting decor including the most enormous bellows i’ve seen in a long time (ok, actually, it’s the *only* bellows i’ve seen in a long time). this would be a great place to have dinner (i hear the food rocks) and then keep drinking afterwards, but since we weren’t eating, and the beer selection was a bit limited, we took off after a little while.

O’Reilly’s Holy Grail is at 1233 Polk St in San Francisco

with a name like the red room, it’s fairly obvious what the theme of this bar is gonna be. the real question, is just how far they will go with the theme. just paint the walls red? have the seating be red too? well, here they really went all the way with it. everything in the whole place is red from the floor to the tables to the seating and even the small speakers that hang from the ceiling are red. the entryway to the bar has two walls made out of red translucent bottles which is a pretty cool effect. the drinks here were pretty good too and they had a bomb passionfruit mojito.

The Red Room is at 827 Sutter Street in San Francisco

my dad’s birthday is on june 18th and so it’s always just a few days away form being on father’s day. this year, both were on the same day. my brother and i got my dad a Razr cellphone which he was really excited about. my dad can be pretty hard to shop for and we never really know what he might want, so it was cool to see that he really enjoyed our gift and spent the day trying to figure out how to use the various features and taking pictures of stuff.

we went to the flower conservatory in golden gate park which was pretty cool. so many crazy different kinds of plants. this one species of flower actually really looked like some kind of alien space creature. i haven’t really taken many photos recently, so i snapped a bunch while i was there.

Here are the rest of my flower conservatory photos.

after the park, we checked out Canvas cafe which my mom was totally blown away by. they have this really cool art exhibit there now where someone hung 20,000 pieces of orange paper from the ceiling and it looks like you are fully being showered by tons of autumn leaves. really cool. i showed my new apartment to my parents from the outside, and was really tempted to go inside (the door is unlocked), but decided i didnt want the landlord to start hating me before i even moved in.

after driving back to the southbay, we went out to a dinner at Scott’s seafood restaurant which was pretty mediocre. here’s a photo of my dad and uncle weraing some really dorky bibs!

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Lucid is a really slick looking lounge that is divided into two floors. the main floor is all polished and nice looking, and the downstairs is all brick. when we were there, there was some really cool artwork on both levels. downstairs you could either dance to whatever dj was playing, or there was a sitting area where it was quiet enough to be able to talk and yet still hear the music really well. that was pretty cool since in most places, either the music is so quiet that it becomes background noise, or it’s at a million decibels and you couldnt carry on a conversation if you tried. given how nice this place looked, i expected drinks to cost a fortune, but they didnt. a lot of reviews for this place said that the bartenders were super rude and cold, but when i was there, they smiled a lot, served us quickly, and were overall friendly.

Lucid is at 580 Sutter Street in San Francisco

At the very top of Nob Hill is the Mark Hopkins Hotel, and the at the top of the hotel is the Top of the Mark. seeing as the hotel is 19 stories tall, and Nob Hill is pretty tall to begin with, the views from up there are phenomenal. there are small tables lining the huge windows where you can sit and take it all in. you can even sit on the windowsills which makes the view even more thrilling. actually, when i first saw some woman sprawled out on the windowsill, i thought “damn dude, some people are fucking wasted!"… but it turns out that this is perfectly acceptable behavior up there.

the atmosphere is pretty upscale (as is predictable when you see limos hanging out in front) and it had it’s fair share of snooty people. some guy in a tuxedo threw a hissy fit when he wasn’t allowed to sit at a table, even though it was clearly marked reserved for someone else. our waiter also, gave me the vibe like he was a bit above serving people like our group. but, it looked like at least some of the crowd was not all stuffy. the place had a huge drink selection, 100 different martini drinks. pretty much every conceivable combination of alcohols is on the martini list. the drinks are a bit pricey at 10$ a pop, but they were pretty strong. supposedly there is a 10$ cover charge after 9pm, but we somehow didnt have to pay. phew!

this definitely isn’t the kind of place i could see myself hanging out at often, but it was really cool to try it out and enjoy the views. really, this is what the new year’s resolution is all about… trying places that i wouldn’t normally have tried.

Top of the Mark is at 1 Nob Hill in San Francisco

It’s amazing how time flies. when i first returned from my trip, i planned to moved up to san francisco as soon as i started earning some money. it seems like that was just a little while ago, but i finally realized that i’ve been back for a little over 6 months now. it was time to finally get a move on.

Caryn and i started looking through craigslist for a place in SF. choosing a place wasn’t easy. i was very picky about what neighborhood we’d be living in. i wanted to live in a neighborhood that was fun and where i would have reastaurants, bars, and excitement right outside my front door. i wanted to feel like i was living right in the middle of the city, and not just be surrounded by residential housing. Pretty much, i was limiting my search to the Mission, Hayes Valley, and the panhandle.

getting a good place in one of these areas wasn’t easy. houses pretty much came in one of two flavors: expensive or craphole. then there was the tiny handful of places that were within our budget and were actually nice looking. each time we showed up to one of these, there would be like 30 other people waiting to see them. apparently everybody likes to move during the summer, and competition was fierce. one landlord we talked to said he got *50* calls the very first day that he put his ad on craigslist. another told us that his phone has been ringing off the hook for a week straight with enquiries. we talked to this one girl who was also looking for a place to live… she had already been looking for 5 weeks with no success. she had even tried to bribe one landlord by offering to pay $200 more per month for a place, but was still turned down. wow. so this was what we were competing against. was that why we had been turned down for each place that we applied at?? were we supposed to be bribing people?? ugh.

so, things were looking grim. would we be able to find a place we liked? would we ever be able to park our cars again? how could we compete againgst all the others? would the landlords be ok with our very mediocre credit scores? after 3 weeks of this, i was getting more and more discouraged.

and then, finally, we got a place! after discussing the many negative marks on my credit report, the landlord finally said yes. i am finally gonna move up to SF. SWEET!! i am so fucking excited! the place is on the corner of Gough and Market, which is pretty much exactly where i wanted to end up. just 5 blocks from the Mission and 5 blocks from Hayes vlalley (it’s in a new neighborhood called DecoGhetto by some). it’s super central, and also just a block away from the freeway which will make our commutes much nicer. it’s a tiny one bedroom place in an apartment building, but it has hardwood floors, lots of tall windows, and looks really nice on the inside. i dont know how we’ll fit everything in this place, but i love it anyways. not only that, but for a little bit extra, we’re getting 2 parking spots inside the building.

so, now i’m just counting down the days to move in. our official move-in date is july 1st, but if the place is ready before then, we might move earlier. it’s been almost 2 years since i’ve lived in SF… and now i’m finally coming home!

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