Leaving My Heart in San Francisco

Don't dare me to do it, because I will. It only takes one Jewish girl. I only touched down in San Francisco about 4 hours ago but it took about 30 minutes to realize why I gushed about San Francisco in this blog post last March. It's 65 degrees, sunny, and I walked around the ballpark, down by the piers, and I'm currently sipping a cold Anchor Steam, looking out at water, watching the sailboats, and blogging. This is how Don Francisco, founder of this great city, would have wanted it. Don Francisco was the founder of San Francisco, wasn't he?

Sabado GiGANTE!

Anyway, apparently I've stumbled upon what will be an excellent weekend weatherwise and activity-wise with various parties, a Mets/Giants game on Friday, and Bay to Breakers coming up this Sunday. I guess my timing is impeccable. There's a lot of San Francisco I haven't seen since when I was here last it was only for a few days. Typical me, my first objective is to find a place with cheap and excellent beef pho, which is basically a Vietnamese noodle soup (not that I won't be in Vietnam in less than a month), but that's how I roll. So I did some research and I said what the hell, it's a gorgeous day, so I'm going to find me some pho, and I set off. And all along my walk I'm thinking to myself, how is pho that's going to be this good going to be this cheap. Oh, because it's in the middle of the ghetto, that's how. In San Francisco even the gangbangers look nice and friendly but even I know when to turn the around in the exact opposite direction and walk as fast as I can, and pull my sleeves down so as to cover my watch, which reminds me of the stories my grandmother used to tell me when she ventured way uptown by herself to buy me and my cousins Olaf's (apologies for the gratuituous dude torso shots). I still have a pair of maroon and grey Olaf's at home somewhere. Anyway I guess I'll have to wait for fifty cent pho with a side of malaria in a few weeks.

Last weekend was my first weekend back in New York City since Thanksgiving, and it was a great weekend. More than any other weekend in the city it made me realize that I need a blackberry. Not that I'm soooo popular, because I'm not, but in Ann Arbor it was like on a Tuesday there was literally only one place we were going to go and if we weren't going there we weren't going anywhere. Not so in New York. It's a digital age and I am still analog. I read something like that on a t-shirt in Paragon. And speaking of Paragon, I'm compiling "gear" for my SE Asia mission, and so far I know I need underwear, and that's about it. I think I have the basics covered, but if someone reads this and has any recommendations for something outside the box that was helpful to them while traveling please drop a note or comment or whatever. Thank you in advance for that.

So what's on tap for tomorrow you ask. You didn't ask, but I'm telling you anyway. Two words...fish tacos. I want fish and I want tacos and if the two can be combined all the better. Don Francisco and I will catch you all later.