My best friend Priya and I always joke that our lives could basically be a weird teen coming-of-age indie film/documentary. And, like any teenager, we just really needed to get out. By “get out,” I mean go anywhere, for a while. Our solution was to drive up to SF and hang out for a couple of days. We’d planned this for weeks. The ride there included a whole lot of binge eating Tapatio-flavored Doritos and belching out Weezer (and other songs from our Spotify playlist, “pri+isa’s super rad road trip.”) Pri and I hung around a downtown on Haight-Ashbury street where there were a lot of vintage clothing, books, and record shops. If you’re a record fiend, you’ve probably heard of Amoeba music, with locations only in Berkeley, San Francisco and Hollywood. We pretty much came for Amoeba (Fred Armisen purchases his records here, so I mean , it was obligatory that we stopped by.) It’s an amazing place. Expect records that range from ones that your parents probably have stuck in the attic somewhere, to ones that have just come out within the last month. Whole ‘lotta Sleater-Kinney, Hall & Oates and Paul Simon. In the corner of the shop, there was a little sectioned-off corner of vintage films. There was an amazing selection, and I kind of went crazy with the Wes Anderson. I didn’t actually end up purchasing records, but I did get The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou- films that I’ve been wanting to see ever since I fell in love with Moonrise Kingdom. Pri got The Black Keys’ Chulahoma, and a $2.99 complete set of BBC’s The Office.
*I’m proud to say I took all of these photos with my camera and iPhone.
Once it started to get dark, we hung around the outside of The Academy of Sciences Museum. We couldn’t actually go inside because it was closed, but we saw this really cool Tumblr-esque mirror/art piece that said: “Your head is a spare part in our factory of perfection.”
After aimlessly wandering around in the dark, we movie hopped at a nearby AMC and by 12 a.m, we finally embarked on the really, really fun stuff. At night especially, pretty much everywhere in SF was sketchy. We’d have to park far away to avoid paying for expensive parking, which meant walking back in the dark in unfamiliar neighborhoods. There was some catcalling, some brief following, but in actuality, it wasn’t too bad. Also, we got lost at pretty much every corner. IDK maybe I’m just super used to sheltered suburban life. But anyways, ever since I finished Twin Peaks over Christmas break, I’ve wanted to go to a diner. When Pri and I found a 24 hr one on Castro street, I was ecstatic. It was called Orphan Andy’s, and it was actually right next to a bar called Twin Peaks. The food and the service were top notch. I don’t know what made the experience more fun: the drunk gay guys belching Frozen’s let it go outside behind us, or the upbeat vibe of the young adults and drag queens who weren’t feeling the night scene and wanted to fulfill their desire of breakfast food at 1:00 in the morning.
Castro street, even at 2:00 in the morning and surrounded by night clubs, was actually the only time and place I personally felt “safe” during the whole day, compared to Haight or the museum. Castro pretty much consisted of sassy gay guys everywhere who were really funny and nice to us; as you can imagine, we didn’t really fit in. We diner hopped to another place called “The Lucky Penny” where we had some good ol’ pie and coffee (another Twin Peaks reference because that show is so, so good.) We did eventually get kicked out because of their “two hour” rule, which I guess is purposeful for warding off vagrants like me and Pri. We endured the immense weight of our eyelids via coffee, and the reminder that we couldn’t fall asleep because we had no where to go.
So here we were. at like 4 in the morning just sitting in the car, when we decided to drive to Golden Gate Park so we could see the sunrise in the morning. We parked and fell asleep for a couple of hours. In the car. Ok if this isn’t slightly ghetto, I don’t know what is. In the morning, we went to Philz coffee, which was nice because it was the only familiar thing the whole trip. I love Philz; I always get the Mint Mojito.
Side note: by the end of this trip, we’d probably ingested 1 gallon of coffee, and went to like 8 different coffee shops all around SF. I actually don’t think I can have coffee again for a while.
We ended our trip by walking around Valencia St., which is basically hipster haven. It, too, had small vintage stores and a lot of cool artwork. Nothing was open since it was like 8:30, but also it wasn’t crowded, which was nice. Our night had been crazy. You’d be surprised by the amount of people who just walk around at 3 in the morning and eat at 24 hr diners.
We made it back safe and alive. I swear, San Francisco is a whole different world.
Next stop: Portland, Oregon. Stay tuned.
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