I twist the knife merely to help.
Oct. 17th, 2008 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariSaturday, August 9th - San Francisco, Day Two
Armed with a map of the 49 Mile Drive we headed into town, specifcially Golden Gate Park and the Haight-Ashbury area to meet up with some friends already in the area.
Somewhere in the Haight-Ashbury area
We met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gentle_gamer, who I'd met before in Texas, and changelingjane, who I'd never met before but I'm all for meeting new people, at some Indian place whose name escapes me. We just kinda found it walking around (c'mon forgive me - It's been three months already!) We had a good dinner and talked for a REALLY long time, about anything and everything. Catching up, as it were.
After lunch, we walked around the Haight Ashbury area and tow things really struck me - one was how busy it was and how "compact" it was. It was like having a whole area of Austin squinched down to a two or three block area. Groceries, movie theaters, houses piled on top, restaurants, everything just crammed in every little space possible.
And it was BUSY. Roads and sidewalks crammed with people, people who all had their own vibe they were following, and no one cared. I know I felt like an outsider when I saw people who just "popped out" at me as being Very Different, and no one else gave a damn. As much as I like to think I'm a Live and Let Live type, I do have a kind of...Threshold of Normalcy. You can go past it all you like with me, and while I won't mind it, I'll notice it. Here, lots of people went past that line, no one but me cared. And in the end, I didn't, I just noticed it. In fact, I really really liked that people expressed themselves however they wanted. And frankly, it kinda called to me.
More on that later.
On our way out, we got a gander at Golden Gate park, and even the park seemed "compressed" but lovely, considering how busy the town was. It was a nice place to stop, relax, stretch out. Yeah, it's only onbe block long (and about a mile wide) and all the trees seem as crammed as the houses...but you can relax.
Leaving the Golden Gate park area, Emily and I kinda ran the 49 mile drive kinda fast, cause we wanted to get as much as we could into the drive at once. Plus, we didn't know the area, so we definately wanted to have time in case we got lost. Sadly, this meant we drove BY a lot of things, without actually SEEING a lot of things. But what we did see was nice.
The fog lifts from the Haight Ashbury area.
We dorve the scenic drive till we began to climb up the Twin Peaks area of San Francisco, which are two incredibly high hills in the pinninsula. Trying to get a good picture of the city below...well...I kinda climbed out of the window of the pickup as Emily drive. The we made a hard left turn, and I got the feeling of being flung out into San Francisco far far below.
Thankfully that didn't happen, but if you're wondering why I've been kinda timid about heights recently, between this, the Grand Canyon, and Grouse Mountain...well...it's been a tough couple of months. :)
I did get this for my efforts though:
Sorry it's crooked - I was desperately trying to not fly over the cliff. :)
We continued onto the Castro district, and while we didn't go INTO the Castro district (just along Dolores, between Castro and Mission) I fely kinda dissapointed. Maybe it's because I hit Vancouver during pride, but San Francisco's gay area kinda left me underwhelmed. I wasn't expecting constant showtunes or biker dykes or anything, but it sure didn't seem as visible as Davie Villiage. Ah, well. We didn't actually explore the area like we did with Davie Villiage (I'd so love to live there), so maybe I just missed out.
San Francisco doesn't like standard drives. Especially Big Old Pickups With Standard Drives. The hills near castro were so steep , we actually got stuck on one of the hills because we couldn't shift betwen the clutch and the gas fast enough.
It took some clutch grinding but we managed to slowly make our way over to the South Beach and Embarcadero area.
The Bay Bridge
We skittered up the Embarcadero, and jumped off the route, cause...Emily and I had a mission. :) After orbiting a few times, and a little searching, we found 945 Battery Street, the home of Linden Labs, also known as the creators of Second Life.
It's cliche, yes, but very poignany. :)
We'd planned this for sometime, and after finding a free meter, we shoved about $400 for ten minutes of time and getting three cameras all on timers ready, we posed a million times to get this one shot. If you get it, you get it. If you don't, you don't. :D
::grins::
Sadly they weren't open (they're supposedly very friendly to in-world residents who visit) but just being there was fun enough. :)
We made our way back to the scenic drive, heading into downtown then Japantown, which was subtly understated (odd considering the Nihonmachi Street Fair was in full stride), compared to Chinatown, which we'd hit after Union Square.
At Union Square, though, I got hit with a familiar sight. The Alamo Drafthouse's Rolling Road Show and it's inflatable movie screen had planted itself right in Union Square to show a movie! It was like the Drafthouse popped itself over to San Fran to say goodbye...I really need to open a franchise here in Seattle.
We actually missed Chinatown thanks to some creative street signing and closures, so I only got a shot of the Chinatown gates from about three blocks away:
Chinatown Gates
But we managed to find our way back, and with one turn, suddenly, we stopped being in San Francisco, we were in HONG KONG:
Chinatown
We got lost in Chinatown, which isn't hard to do at all, and ended up somehow back in the downtown area. Through it all, I'd kinda missed out on the Transamerica tower. I'd rally wanted to see that since we studied it and the World Trade Center in drafting class. I can't look at the WTC in person anymore, but I COULD still see the TRansamerica tower. But we simply couldn't find it. Then suddenly, on our way back to Chinatown, we made a turn and....
...poof, there it is.
MAde my day, it did. We coudln't go in, or stick around, as light was fading, but at least I got to see it once. Which is more than I can say about the WTC.
We scooted by the Coit Tower on our way to Fisherman's Wharf. And considering hwo steep the hill was and how hard we'd pushed the pickup on all the hills in the area, we decided it was probably best to skip it. An dI thought Bellefonte was steep:
That's a STEEEEEP angle.
We drove across the Fisherman's Wharf area, trying to at least make our way to the Golden Gate Bridge as quickly as possible before sunset, and in our haste almost got ON the Golden Gate bridge. Oops. A last minute exit save by Emily got us to Baker Beach, and the end of our 42 mile drive (minus 10 miles since we decided this was where we had to end it). IT was totally worth it.
We'd actually parked some ways away before I took that picture, and when we found this was abetter vantage point, Emily went back to the pickup to drive it over. Sitting there, on the cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Gate bridge, with everything that I'd just seen buzzing through my head, the people, the attitude, the town, the events, the sights, the parks, I thought to myself "I could live here. It wouldn't be easy, but I could live here."
I was really mulling it over in my head the five minutes I was alone on that cliffside. Just me and the sunset. We could stop here. If Gwen was okay with it, I could stay with her till I got my own place, maybe even get a job where I could afford to live in the city itself. I really thought, at that exact moment, this was where I was gonna end the trip. And just stay. I don't even feel that way about Seattle. Although I do for Vancouver....
And that's when Emily driving up in the pickup, came into view. And I remembered...I wasn't leaving Austin and Texas for ME. I was moving for HER. And I couldn't stay here in San Francsico for ME. I had to get to Canada, for HER. Cause she's worth it. Totally worth it.
I took one last look at San Francisco, and headed back to Gwen's.
Armed with a map of the 49 Mile Drive we headed into town, specifcially Golden Gate Park and the Haight-Ashbury area to meet up with some friends already in the area.
Somewhere in the Haight-Ashbury area
We met up with
gentle_gamer, who I'd met before in Texas, and changelingjane, who I'd never met before but I'm all for meeting new people, at some Indian place whose name escapes me. We just kinda found it walking around (c'mon forgive me - It's been three months already!) We had a good dinner and talked for a REALLY long time, about anything and everything. Catching up, as it were.After lunch, we walked around the Haight Ashbury area and tow things really struck me - one was how busy it was and how "compact" it was. It was like having a whole area of Austin squinched down to a two or three block area. Groceries, movie theaters, houses piled on top, restaurants, everything just crammed in every little space possible.
And it was BUSY. Roads and sidewalks crammed with people, people who all had their own vibe they were following, and no one cared. I know I felt like an outsider when I saw people who just "popped out" at me as being Very Different, and no one else gave a damn. As much as I like to think I'm a Live and Let Live type, I do have a kind of...Threshold of Normalcy. You can go past it all you like with me, and while I won't mind it, I'll notice it. Here, lots of people went past that line, no one but me cared. And in the end, I didn't, I just noticed it. In fact, I really really liked that people expressed themselves however they wanted. And frankly, it kinda called to me.
More on that later.
On our way out, we got a gander at Golden Gate park, and even the park seemed "compressed" but lovely, considering how busy the town was. It was a nice place to stop, relax, stretch out. Yeah, it's only onbe block long (and about a mile wide) and all the trees seem as crammed as the houses...but you can relax.
Leaving the Golden Gate park area, Emily and I kinda ran the 49 mile drive kinda fast, cause we wanted to get as much as we could into the drive at once. Plus, we didn't know the area, so we definately wanted to have time in case we got lost. Sadly, this meant we drove BY a lot of things, without actually SEEING a lot of things. But what we did see was nice.
The fog lifts from the Haight Ashbury area.
We dorve the scenic drive till we began to climb up the Twin Peaks area of San Francisco, which are two incredibly high hills in the pinninsula. Trying to get a good picture of the city below...well...I kinda climbed out of the window of the pickup as Emily drive. The we made a hard left turn, and I got the feeling of being flung out into San Francisco far far below.
Thankfully that didn't happen, but if you're wondering why I've been kinda timid about heights recently, between this, the Grand Canyon, and Grouse Mountain...well...it's been a tough couple of months. :)
I did get this for my efforts though:
Sorry it's crooked - I was desperately trying to not fly over the cliff. :)
We continued onto the Castro district, and while we didn't go INTO the Castro district (just along Dolores, between Castro and Mission) I fely kinda dissapointed. Maybe it's because I hit Vancouver during pride, but San Francisco's gay area kinda left me underwhelmed. I wasn't expecting constant showtunes or biker dykes or anything, but it sure didn't seem as visible as Davie Villiage. Ah, well. We didn't actually explore the area like we did with Davie Villiage (I'd so love to live there), so maybe I just missed out.
San Francisco doesn't like standard drives. Especially Big Old Pickups With Standard Drives. The hills near castro were so steep , we actually got stuck on one of the hills because we couldn't shift betwen the clutch and the gas fast enough.
It took some clutch grinding but we managed to slowly make our way over to the South Beach and Embarcadero area.
The Bay Bridge
We skittered up the Embarcadero, and jumped off the route, cause...Emily and I had a mission. :) After orbiting a few times, and a little searching, we found 945 Battery Street, the home of Linden Labs, also known as the creators of Second Life.
It's cliche, yes, but very poignany. :)
We'd planned this for sometime, and after finding a free meter, we shoved about $400 for ten minutes of time and getting three cameras all on timers ready, we posed a million times to get this one shot. If you get it, you get it. If you don't, you don't. :D
::grins::
Sadly they weren't open (they're supposedly very friendly to in-world residents who visit) but just being there was fun enough. :)
We made our way back to the scenic drive, heading into downtown then Japantown, which was subtly understated (odd considering the Nihonmachi Street Fair was in full stride), compared to Chinatown, which we'd hit after Union Square.
At Union Square, though, I got hit with a familiar sight. The Alamo Drafthouse's Rolling Road Show and it's inflatable movie screen had planted itself right in Union Square to show a movie! It was like the Drafthouse popped itself over to San Fran to say goodbye...I really need to open a franchise here in Seattle.
We actually missed Chinatown thanks to some creative street signing and closures, so I only got a shot of the Chinatown gates from about three blocks away:
Chinatown Gates
But we managed to find our way back, and with one turn, suddenly, we stopped being in San Francisco, we were in HONG KONG:
Chinatown
We got lost in Chinatown, which isn't hard to do at all, and ended up somehow back in the downtown area. Through it all, I'd kinda missed out on the Transamerica tower. I'd rally wanted to see that since we studied it and the World Trade Center in drafting class. I can't look at the WTC in person anymore, but I COULD still see the TRansamerica tower. But we simply couldn't find it. Then suddenly, on our way back to Chinatown, we made a turn and....
...poof, there it is.
MAde my day, it did. We coudln't go in, or stick around, as light was fading, but at least I got to see it once. Which is more than I can say about the WTC.
We scooted by the Coit Tower on our way to Fisherman's Wharf. And considering hwo steep the hill was and how hard we'd pushed the pickup on all the hills in the area, we decided it was probably best to skip it. An dI thought Bellefonte was steep:
That's a STEEEEEP angle.
We drove across the Fisherman's Wharf area, trying to at least make our way to the Golden Gate Bridge as quickly as possible before sunset, and in our haste almost got ON the Golden Gate bridge. Oops. A last minute exit save by Emily got us to Baker Beach, and the end of our 42 mile drive (minus 10 miles since we decided this was where we had to end it). IT was totally worth it.
We'd actually parked some ways away before I took that picture, and when we found this was abetter vantage point, Emily went back to the pickup to drive it over. Sitting there, on the cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Gate bridge, with everything that I'd just seen buzzing through my head, the people, the attitude, the town, the events, the sights, the parks, I thought to myself "I could live here. It wouldn't be easy, but I could live here."
I was really mulling it over in my head the five minutes I was alone on that cliffside. Just me and the sunset. We could stop here. If Gwen was okay with it, I could stay with her till I got my own place, maybe even get a job where I could afford to live in the city itself. I really thought, at that exact moment, this was where I was gonna end the trip. And just stay. I don't even feel that way about Seattle. Although I do for Vancouver....
And that's when Emily driving up in the pickup, came into view. And I remembered...I wasn't leaving Austin and Texas for ME. I was moving for HER. And I couldn't stay here in San Francsico for ME. I had to get to Canada, for HER. Cause she's worth it. Totally worth it.
I took one last look at San Francisco, and headed back to Gwen's.
