What I did on My San Francisco Vacation, Vol I

We had an early flight on Sunday morning. I wanted so much to give my apartment a good cleaning before I left, but after every attempt I just looked at the piling clothes, paperwork, mail, dishes etc and just continued looking. I don't know what's wrong with me and cleaning. Even now I'm blogging when I could be cleaning. I guess it just doesn't bother me that much. And also I rarely have guests.

Anyway, I stayed home the night before to clean but didn't clean but it still took me hours to pack (moments unnecessarily stretched and interspersed into hours, that is) and I went to sleep after three and had to wake at 5. Slept through my alarm and Dawn's phone call woke me up at 5:15. Got ready and my ex picked us up (what a sweet ex, right? He's watching my dog while I'm gone, too!) and took us to Midway. We try to go to a bar in the airport. Eventhough it's 7 in the morning, we want bloody marys because we're on ATA. That's what we call vacation. "When you're on ATA, you're on vacation." Plus we flew ATA. But anyway and alas, the bars don't open until 10:30 on regular days and even later on Sundays (who said we have separation of church and state, anyway). Our flight's on time and it's all good. We sleep on and off on the plane and of course we have bloody marys there. They're tasty and help us to try and sleep a little more.

We dine at a Cheesecake Factory in Downtown SF for lunch the first day. It has a great view of the downtown skyline. I'm starved but am only able to eat a couple bites of my sandwich. For some reason, flying does that to me.

Then it's time to go to Alcatraz. We arrive to the embarcadero and walk around a little, as we're early. Nothing too great to see there, but there's a fricking sourdough museum, if you can believe that. I still don't believe it.

Alcatraz is beautiful and smaller (the main cell house, really) than I would have guessed. The cells are so small. Certainly jail should be a detriment to crime, but it isn't for some reason. That's what the statistics say, anyway. From inside the cells you have a beautiful view of San Francisco and people sailing their boats in the bay and it must've been really sad to watch life pass those prisoners by.

We took the audio tour which is probably the best thing to do. Just walking around the building would've been pretty boring, I'm gonna have to guess. Mostly because it just didn't have any life left in it of its own. The audio really helped capture some feeling that I think would've been truly lacking. There were even sound effects. Reminded me of Oz. So if you go to SF, book a trip to Alcatraz early because I hear there's often a waiting list. Make sure you also wear a sweatshirt cuz the ferry to the island is pretty chillie.

After Alcatraz, we met up with my friend Dave, for whom I was watching his dog while in town. He happened to be going out of town the same week I was coming in. Together, the 6 of us went across the Golden Gate Bridge into an area called Tiberon, near Sausalito. They say the people with money live around there. From the outdoor seating at the restaurant, we could see the San Francisco skyline across the bay. We were blessed with a clear night. We all drank margaritas and had a good time.

Monday Dawn and I went shopping in the Haight. I thought of a slogan for the Haight street chamber of commerce marketing campaign (if such an animal exists): "Be a Haighter." Isn't it cute?

Dawn and I spent about 3 hours in Amoeba, which is a new and used record/cd/dvd store. I bought the following 22 CDs:

• Kinski : Be Gentle With The Warm Turtle
• Liars : W.F.O.G.W.T.B.O.O.O
• Suit of Lights : self-titled
• Seam : The Pace Is Glacial
• Pedal Steel Transmission : The Angel of the Squared Circle
• Joan of Arc : Live in Chicago, 1999
• SuperSystem : Always Never Again
• The Wolfgang Press : Queer
• 31 Knots : Talk Like Blood
• Make Believe : Shock of Being
• Olympic Death Squad : Self-Titled
• Various Artists : San Francisco Song Cycle Vol I
• Marianne Faithful : A Collection of Her Best Recordings
• Siouxsie and the Banshees : A Kiss In The Dreamhouse
• The Afghan Whigs : Historectomy
• Slint : Spiderland
• Ex-Boyfriends : Dear John
• James : Self-Titled
• Medicine : The Mechanical Forces of Love
• The Specials : Self-Titled
• MC 900 Foot Jesus : Welcome To My Dream
• Nine Inch Nails : With Teeth

On this day we also did other shopping around the Haight but I don't think I bought anything else.

Tuesday night I met up with the lovely and talented Jax, whom I met on Myspace in the super fun WOW! group. Jax has an x in her name because she's a minx. I've just decided that. Anyway, Trannyshack was tons of fun. There was one really really cute beardy boy who would not look at me all night until right when I was leaving, when he decided to blatantly smile at me which made me sorta want to punch him, but I didn't. Grrr.

The also lovely and talented Jackie Beat, from beautiful and sunny Los Angeles, performed. She had the stage the whole night and that was fine with me cuz she was a riot. Sort of a Weird Al Yankovic of drag queens, if'n you get my drift (I've taken up using the word "if'n" lately; I like it a little better than regular old "if").

OK, that's all on San Francisco, for now. Stay tuned. I just bought a fancy-dancy new camera so I expect I'll be blogging more. Well, hope.