I sit here in Border's books and Music cafe, 2nd floor, on the corner
of Powell and Post, next to the window, facing north (parallel to
post). I have paid the T-mobile capitalist pig scum their 9.99 single
day toll to access the intenet. I play their game for now but one day
these infidels will pay for their bourgeois ways! Soon our forces
will smash the capitalist apparatus of the sneering haughty plutocracy
and the glorious fibres and radio spectrum will once more be in the
hands of the workers (vive la republic!) but today I must pay their
toll. I must curtsey when they walk by and give way. My outward
appearance shall remain obsequious but I will keep the embers of
hatred and fury smoldering in my breast until that fateful day.
Citizeness Amelia and I have been here in fog city for the holiday
weekend. Like good members of the (future) republic, the citizeness
and I made our way from Holy Cross to Saint Francis via the bus, the
train and the underground, eschewing that decadent capitalist mode of
locomotion the automobile. Arriving around 10pm, walked from the
underground terminal to The Mosser
The Mosser, is located on 4th street, between Market and Mission, not
far from Union Square, the Moscone and Yerba Buena park. The Mosser
has both rooms with private baths and rooms with shared baths. While
frugal, the hotel was clean and well maintained.
On the lookout for an omen as to how our luck this holiday would run,
one presented itself as soon as I came up the stairs from the BART
station. Not half a block from our hotel was a Walgreen's drugstore!
Without even checking though my luggage, you may assume as fact the
proposition that I have forgotten some essential accoutrement de
toilette. Having a drugstore so close to my hotel, especially when
they are so difficult to find in San Francisco, was as blunt a harbinger of good luck as I could ask
for.
While such flowery verbiage and bad prose as you find above is my
idiom, this citizen finds himself severely taxed when called upon to
express thought in languages other than C, C++, Python or Perl.
Consequently I shall resort to a more economical mode of expression
for the remainder of this entry.
Restaurants
Breakfast
- Mel's Drive-In. 833 Mission St. We had breakfast here. What
can I say -- we were desparate; bad food, sub par service.
- Max's On the Square. 398 Geary St. Better service than Mel's
(not saying much here) and better food but not worth repeating.
- Les Joulins Jazz Bistro. 44 Ellis St. We ate here on Monday. We
had walked by on other days and it was never busy. Hallelujah!
Finally some good breakfast. When asked, the Turkish lady who served
us explained that the circular object hung above the door was there to
ward off evil (the 'evil eye'?). Yet again we asked for a side of
crispy bacon. This time our request was granted; the bacon
was cooked to crispy perfection! We each had omelets which came with
home fries (seasoned with chili powder?) and toast. The service was
somewhat european (i.e. slow) but we were not in a hurry.
Even if we had been in a hurry, it would have been difficult to be
ungrateful after the gastronomic breakfasts of torture we had been
subjected to the previous days.
Dinner
- Foreign Cinema.
The food and service were
excellent. The chocolate torte we had for desert was not particularly
good. Next to our outside table was one of those old drive-in movie
sound box poles. You remember these, you take the box off of
the pole and hang it inside your car on the window ... we put the box
on our table and turned the volume up to the maximum as the restaurant
was packed and noisy. Sound we listened to was synchronized with the
moving picture, Talk to
Her, projected on the brick wall.
- North Beach Restaurant. 1512 Stockton St. We ate here on Sunday
the 4th. excellent food and service. The tiramisu and chocolate
torte desserts were delicious.
Miscellaneous
After dinner sunday, we walked down to Pier 39 to watch the
fireworks. It was quite amusing to see the seething mass of tourists
like ourselves defeated by the legendary San Francisco fog; We got to
hear loud BOOMs and see the fog glow white and red but that was the
extent of pyrotechnic splendor
Grothar allowed us to experience.
On Saturday we went to the
Legion of Honor Museum and
saw the Art Deco exhibition, along with the regular
exhibition. Highlights from the Art Deco exhibition were:
- a 2 minute movie showing a vivacious and scantily clad Josphine
Baker dancing and acting silly.
- Dresses.
Among the regular exhibit, I quite liked the 17th century dutch
paintings showing game and other still life.
Well, that is all for now. Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite!
P.S. I would proof read this post more but I am so frustrated by wrestling with some formatting issues that I must put aside this travail lest I hurl my laptop out second floor window of this strong hold of corporate blandness and give away my seditious intent!
