B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

San Francisco is Mars, and Mars is Heaven. After weeks (Two? Three? All of them?) of New York being slow broiled by the Heat Wave That Wouldn't End, after the last couple of of months at work being dominated by ninjas, the Finnish, and marine life in increasingly difficult to explain scenarios, I am on vacation. Actual, real, paid vacation, in San Francisco. Which is Mars.

I am in San Francisco with Girl, and in a proper hotel, both of which are oddities when it comes to me and places I don't actually live. Most of me trips as an adult (pseudo or otherwise) have been alone, or en route to meet others, and all of them have involved falling out of a plane and into some one else's car to be whisked away to a sort of soft spot on a friend's floor. The last two times I was in San Francisco the house was that of Benjones, with its long white couches and TiVo full of Myth Busters and other wonders of cable television. This time though, with the house still off the Richmond BART stop and Jones doing the Jigsaw thing in Durham, NC, we're in the Nob Hill/Tenderloin district. I'm not entirely sure what a neighborhood does to earn a moniker like "Tenderloin," but I can't imagine it having much to do with the malls, hotels, bodega/liquor stores, and overpriced eateries dotting the streets. A late night fumble in the dark with word association gives up the vague impression of meat-themed Boy Scouts, spending their weekend outing learning to pitch a tent while cleaning and gutting a holstein at the same time. Paddling down some lazy river with a sort of Indian name in canoes made from T-bone steaks, weaving baskets from lengths of haggis to earn that one last merit badge...

I'm rambling. That'd be the wine.

Vacation! After getting through an unspeakable amount of flying shenanigans at the hands of American Airlines, we've spent the last four days cutting swaths across the city armed with little more than a black book of maps and the barest of understandings of the MUNI transit system. We've seen the Musee Mechanique (a haphazard collection of coin-operated entertainments from bygone eras including fortune tellers, strength testing machines, a Crusin' USA arcade cabinet and a Navy submarine out back), the pirate supply store on Valencia, the Legion of Honor, the Sutro Bath House ruins, and a dozen other spots scattered across town. There's more to say, and pictures to develop, scan, and throw up here, but right now it's late after another day of walking all over, and there's wine to drink and a Girl to curl up against. There are shitty movies to make fun of on the Hotel TV and a micro climate's breeze blowing through the window, and it can all just wait.

posted by chris  # 1:02 AM