San Francisco, Day One

SAN FRANCISCO, DAY ONE, PART TWO: AUG. 15
I did not set my alarm before I fell asleep.

I wake up around 11:30 a.m. local time and make coffee in the room while I check my email and answer a call from my brother.

"You're in San Francisco?" he says. "Go to In-N-Out Burger. Pick me up a T-shirt, if you would."

I don't have the heart to tell him I have exactly $20 in the bank and, after the bachelor party, much less than that from the "walking-around money" Sean had given me the night before.

However, I am a fan of "The Big Lebowski," in which the In-N-Out Burger plays a small but significant part. "Oh," I say. "There's an In-N-Out Burger here? Where?"

"Fisherman's Wharf, right outside the aquarium. Well, just down the street, really. You can't miss it."

"Right, then," I say. "I'll see what I can do."

Surprisingly, I'm not jet-lagged; I've chased the sun west and, although I went to bed at 6 a.m. Eastern time, that's only slightly late by my nocturnal standards. After eight and a half hours of sleep and one tiny, crappy, hotel-provided pot of coffee, I've shaken off any hangover and fatigue poisons and am ready to take on a bear. Or at least go out and find some decent frackin' coffee.

With that in mind I shower, shave, get dressed, take the "Privacy Please" sign off my door and head out to hit the streets.

Now, I'm figuring that I'll have the day pretty much on my own: Sean's asked me to call him, but the day before a wedding is, in my experience, pretty full for the bride and groom. Even with the bachelor party out of the way, Sean will still have his hands full getting his family settled in, helping out with the final wedding preparations, going to the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner. In short, while I plan on calling Sean once I find the coffee I so desperately need, I'm not planning on talking to him or seeing him today. All's well and good; I'm a grown-ass man and, with the free-ride BART pass Sean has given me, fully capable of enjoying a new city on my own, for less than $20.

"What, exactly, am I going to do, though?" I'm thinking to myself as I head toward the elevators. "After coffee, what then?"

I turn the corner to the elevator foyer and there, out the window I'd been too wrecked to look through the night before, I see this:

"Holy crap!" I think, "that's the Bay Bridge! And it's, like, mere blocks from here."

I now have a mission (coffee) and an ultimate destination (that bridge); wars have been fought and won on less motivation.

The foyer downstairs has a Starbucks but, c'mon now, I didn't come 2,500 miles for Starbucks, did I? I check the address of the hotel (2nd and Folsom), then head to the right out the front door, paralleling San Francisco Bay. I figure I'll head that direction until my coffee-sense starts tingling, then cut right and roll downhill toward the water.

I walk about a block, turn right pretty much at random and head toward the Bay.

While I'm walking, I start to get pretty warm. See, the whole time I'm out in San Francisco, it's topping 90 degrees back in South Carolina. Weather Underground has informed me that San Francisco won't get over 70 degrees the entire time I'm there. So, not remembering what it's like to walk around in 70-degree weather in the sunshine, I've decked myself out with a T-shirt, a lightweight long-sleeved shirt and a light jacket. By the time I'm a block from the hotel, I'm stuffing the jacket in my backpack and untucking the over-shirt. I keep walking toward the Bay.

My coffee-sense, it turns out, has both failed and succeeded: after a couple blocks I see, directly ahead of me, a Starbucks. I look up and back the way I've come: there's my hotel, replete with a Starbucks in the lobby. Ahead of me, less than a quarter-mile into my walk, is yet another one.

I bow to the inevitable and head in to order a "large coffee, no room for cream, thanks." I'm hoping the barista will get snooty because I don't refer to it as a "Vente," which I imagine would be funny, but no such luck: just more proof that stand-up comics' routines and sit-coms never do come true.

So, recycled java-jacket warmly in hand, I step out of the Starbucks and survey its surroundings. Surprise! It, too, is situated pretty much in the lobby of a hotel. I chuckle, grab a San Francisco Bay Guardian out of one of the freebie racks and sit down to sip some coffee in the shade and take my by-now customary first picture of a photo-jaunt:

Yup, there's my sneaker. It has no idea what kind of workout it is in for.

Once I've read the Guardian enough to know that, while it's a cool newspaper, it's not really designed with visitors in mind, I roll it up, stuff it in my backpack and head for the Bay. I've not gone 20 feet before I see the first "Whoa! That's weird!" thing of my walk.

Down what technically amounts to an alleyway beside the hotel is a bench that looks like this:

Bronze people, so life-like that, until I venture closer, I think they may be performance artists wearing masks and holding still:

The—sculpture? statue? installation?—is called "News," and it's done by someone whose name I fail to write down. I puzzle over the title (the guy's wearing a Navy peacoat, complete with anchor buttons; "Maybe he's going off to war?" I think), then I notice this detail:

For whatever reason, this creeps me out. I almost put my jacket back on; it's become chilly in that alley.

Back in the sun I continue downhill. I can now smell and see the Bay. The street that fronts it is, surprise to me, The Embarcadero. There's a broad concrete pedestrian frontage running along the Bay. It is full of people. I go ahead and call Sean, getting, as expected, his voicemail. Then I start snapping pictures.

Why is there a giant, strung bow shooting an arrow into the ground down by San Francisco Bay? Your guess is as good as mine. I even look for a plaque explaining it; if there is one, I don't find it. But, it's definitely neat.

The Bay Bridge, plus a sailboat.

One bird, two different angles.

Same bird, same bridge but, this time, together! It's like chocolate and peanut butter, no?

After getting these shots, I wander toward the bridge; however, it looks like not much is happening that way and like the majority of traffic—carrying cameras and wearing shorts, baseball hats and T-shirts (at least two of the three articles of clothing generally proclaiming, loudly, that the wearers aren't from San Francisco)—is headed in the opposite direction. Being not-entirely brain-dead (yet), I figure Fisherman's Wharf is that way, which means the In-N-Out Burger, and the only truly Californian cuisine I'll be able to afford on my limited budget, is within walking distance. So, I spin around and plan a leisurely stroll toward an inevitable dinner. Along the way, I snap a couple more shots:

Sculptures(? Statues? Installations?) of sea-life draped across a concrete sitting-wall.

The single most bedraggled pigeon I've ever seen.

A mountain rising out of the water, through the clouds.

Sailboats.

Palm trees, buildings constructed on extremely steep hills and the San Francisco Port Authority.

A tree which is in the running for "Single Coolest Tree I've Ever Seen" (plus non-Photoshopped lens flare!).

Alcatraz!

(Overheard: An older guy standing near me with his wife, both of them looking out at Alcatraz, says to her, "I'd always heard it looked like a ship and, by God! it does!" I've never heard this but, staring at it for a couple minutes, I silently agree with him.)

At one point, while I am wandering along, gawking at stuff, I sit down for a couple minutes and call my dad. See, my dad and I didn't talk at all for close to 10 years but, eventually, we patched things up. I remember that he'd told me he'd been to San Francisco and that he'd loved it. So, I start thinking about him and, since I'd already talked to my brother (who'd also told me how much he loved San Francisco), I figure I'll give Dad a call and let him know where I am. We have a good talk and…well, I dunno; it's good to be happy in a strange place and have someone to call and talk to about it. Maybe it's weird, but I think it's pretty cool.

Right around this time I hit Fisherman's Wharf, in all its touristy glory. I've tromped about two and a half miles and haven't eaten anything since the steak at The Salt House the night before. Needless to say, I am starving.

So, I push my way through the throng of out-of-town humanity, past steaming bread-bowls of clam chowder and strangely expensive seafood (seriously, man, the ocean's right there!) and, of course, a Hooters, until I find the In-N-Out Burger, which is, while crowded, not ridiculously so; and the line is moving fast.

Not knowing any of the super-special lingo that will get you things not on the menu, I stick with a basic double cheeseburger combo and get it to go. After a brief wait, I have my grub. I head back to the earlier referenced super-cool tree to eat:

And, naturally, I record the moment for posterity. (Extra-special dork alert: I saved the bag!)

Once I finish eating, it's past 5 p.m. and I figure I should start heading back to the hotel. I'm a good portion of the way there when I get a text from Sean: Pizza at Tomasso's. After we figure out where I am (Pier 9) and where it is (Broadway and Kearny), I realize it's only six blocks; I can walk it. And I do.

But it's six blocks uphill; one of the famous, San Francisco hills that can climb 100 to 200 feet over the course of two blocks. Which it does.

By the time I get to Tomasso's, I'm actually hungry again, which is good, because Tomasso's makes the best pizza in San Francisco.

I'm not the only friend of Sean's at Tomasso's; there's also the bride-to-be, Kelly, whom I've never met; Mark, the best man, whom I met in Milwaukee when Sean and I were both living there and became reacquainted with at the bachelor party, and his girlfriend, Christie, whom I've never met; a woman named Heidi and her beau, George, both of whom I've never met; and a woman named Eva, whom I've never met, but who's tall, lovely, blond, wearing a Stewart and Colbert for President T-shirt and is, I find out within the first two minutes of joining the table, decidedly single.

I shake hands all around, squeeze into my seat next to Eva and sigh inwardly to myself, knowing that I will, at best, go home in a light-blue funk slightly disappointed—because either Eva will not be as smart, funny and independent as my initial impression suggests, or she will be those things and I will simply sputter and flounder and fail to make any impression whatsoever—or, at worst, I will get drunk and just end up flat-out making a damn fool of myself. I've been in this situation before; these are the only two options.

But, you know, I've had a really good day, and this is a happy occasion, and if I know that I'm liable to be a bit lonely and rough on myself for being a dumbass at the end of the night, I can just let it go and wait until the end of the night to sweat about it. So I do exactly that.

And I'm having a great time. These are great people—Kelly is perfect for Sean, more perfect than any woman I've ever seen him with; Sean positively dotes on Kelly: the love between the two of them is palpable, but not in that annoying, overly self-conscious and ultra-exclusive way so many, obviously doomed, couples adopt; Heidi has an English degree, like I do, and George is personable even though, he admits, he doesn't know anybody, just like I don't; and Mark's always polite and charming and attentive. It's a great group of folks, and I'm happy to be included, even though I suspect, in all likelihood, I'll never see any of them again after this weekend.

So, things go great. We finish dinner and hike down to a bar called Spec's, right across the street from Vesuvius and City Lights. I see a Jack Kerouac impersonator. We order Anchor Steam:

And we drink lots of it:

And three more people whose names I forget show up; it's a party. And, like with any party, a sort of conversational Brownian motion sets in and, at any given point, people are talking to a random, variable number of other people: usually more than two but less than all.

And, yeah, at certain moments, Eva and I are talking primarily to each other. There are things about me she clearly doesn't like—I'm smoking (yes, yes, I know—please don't give me a hard time about it), I eat meat, I prefer the satirical movie version of "Starship Troopers" to the deadly earnest book, I'm somewhat snaggle-toothed—but she knows what the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is, and I'm carrying a towel (it lives in my backpack—what can I say?); and she likes playing Fluxx and I, inconveniently, took my Fluxx deck out of my backpack so I wouldn't lose it while roaming around San Francisco; and when I offhandedly quote Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns and Money" to Sean, she finishes the lyric….

By this point, we've all moved over to Vesuvius again, and we're all crammed into a table in a corner, practically sitting in each others' laps, waiting for another table to open up. We're all pretty drunk, but we're giddy-drunk, and Eva and I seem to be talking primarily to each other. It's nothing intense, but we're laughing at each others' jokes and making eye-contact attentively while the other speaks. It's cool, and I'm realizing that I like this woman, quite a bit. She is tall and pretty, ferociously intelligent and unswervingly independent, well-educated and ambitious. Sure, she lives in Seattle and I live in South Carolina, but it's not about possibilities, not even short-term ones. Every moment I speak to her reinforces how great the right-here-and-now feels; how wonderful it is to be attracted to someone.

The Olympics is on the bar's TV and, when some British woman athlete swims some bajillion-lap race and finishes so far ahead of the moving, superimposed world-record line that she has enough time to get out of the pool, scoot to the concession stand, buy a cheeseburger, eat it and get back into the pool to await all the other competitors coming in well-behind that magical moving line, our whole table goes bananas. Naturally, we talk about that for awhile, and a couple of Australian guys, figuring we must be British, come up and introduce themselves. Sean, who always loves meeting new people, invites them to join us. Right about this time, the table next to us empties out and we amorphously overflow into it, annexing it as well as our original table. I take advantage of the motion and commotion to excuse myself, head down to the restroom, then duck out for a smoke. When I come back, Eva's sitting on one of the Australian guys' laps. She's got her arm draped over his shoulders. He's talking about how big his cock is.

"Okay," I think, "I was right: It's disappointment time. I've obviously misread this situation: I haven't made the impression I thought I was making. I need to get out of here before I make a damn fool out of myself."

And, you know, I try, I really do. I barely miss a beat before I slide into a seat next to Sean and start seriously working on finishing my beer. I grimace in a friendly manner and introduce myself and speak when spoken to and, at the earliest polite opportunity, inform Sean that I'm beat and I'm going to split. The Australian guy Eva's sitting on figures out that Sean and Kelly are getting married the next day and goes down to buy them some champagne: This is my cue. I collect my backpack and announce good-bye, see you all tomorrow, to the group. Then Eva reaches out to give me a hug.

I'm not going to go into specifics because it's not important: as Eva leans in for the hug, I have my opportunity to act like a damn fool. And, because I am a damn fool, I take it. It starts with an attempted kiss and ends with me laying some weak-sauce, Puritan, Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" shit on her.

Then the champagne shows up.

Because I've already made a fool of myself, I decide to extemporize a toast to the bride and groom that starts cliche and limps to a finish. Then I all but run out of there.

On my way out, I bump into Mark, who'd driven his girlfriend home and come back out of their house to find his car had been towed and who's spent the last two hours or so trying to free his car and make his way back to the bar. I tell him I'm in the mood to walk and am headed back to my hotel. He gets me oriented and I stalk off, seething with a fool's own righteous indignation.

Once I hit the lobby, I head straight to the hotel bar, only to find out it closed at midnight. So I stomp over to the convenience store across the street, spend a good chunk of the further "walking-around money" Sean had given me at Tomasso's on a pastrami sandwich and two oil-cans of Foster's Special Bitter (because, you know, I still have a sense of humor), then sit in the hotel courtyard smoking and trying to write an angry screed to post here.

You know something? I can't do it. None of it rings true. And I can't even finish the first can of beer.

So I head up to my room, toss the unopened can on ice, turn off all the lights and lie there staring at the ceiling a bit before I finally fall asleep.