San Fran

Let me just say that there are few things more disappointing than bad Pad Thai. I admit that being addicted to Thai Tom's unbelievably wonderful Pad Thai is more or less a guarantee of being disappointed elsewhere but man, what a disgustingly mushy, weird flavored mess Pad Thai can be. Really, who prepares Thai food with absolutely no spiciness? They didn't ask how many stars I wanted, but I didn't know that meant there would be no spice at all! Crap! Blech. (and it's not like I went to Thai food in Ashland, OR or anything, this is San Fran! Huge asian pop. What the hell?)

With that off my chest I can tell you about my stay in S.F. Last night was everything I wanted this trip to be: I drove into town with no clue about what I was going to do, found a cheap motel within two blocks, booked a room (quite a comfortable one actually) and bought tickets for a concert that same night that I could walk to. Totally random and off the cuff, and it worked out beautifully. It was a pretty steep hike up and over Pacific Heights, but my hiking experience this week served me well!

This is The Coup playing at the Fillmore. The Fillmore is a massively historic concert venue, the birthplace of the Grateful Dead, and I was thrilled to get to see a show there. I've read about it in tons of books and stories and it didn't disappoint. Really nice people that worked there too, the girl at the Will Call window had noticed that I was from Seattle from my order form, asked if I had ever been there before and gave me the whole rundown of the place. It looked pretty rough from the outside, but it was really cool inside with hundreds of concert posters from the last forty plus years on every wall.

The Coup was a great show, by far the best Hip Hop show I have seen yet. These guys had so much more going on than the Hip Hop acts I've seen before with a lead and bass guitar, full drums, hammond organ, two singers and Pam the Funkstress (center of above pic). Pam was a fantastic DJ, scratching up a storm, occaisionally using her enormous breast on the turntable instead of her finger. And for all of you ladies who can't play a musical instrument with your boobs, maybe you should just think about that.

Today I went on a huge trek through the city, from the Presidio, up over Russian hill to the top of the famous Lombard St. curvy, steepest road in America, down the other side to the North Beach neighborhood, up Telegraph Hill and to the top of Coit Tower (where I took the photo at the top of this page), back down the hill and through Chinatown to Cafe Zoetrope pictured just above. This building was so cool looking I just had to go in for a drink, even though it looked like a spendy place. As it turns out, this building is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and has tons of cool memorablia on the walls. Including the picture below of Mr. Coppola taking advantage of one of Thailands main tourist attractions.



They also had a fabulous single malt Scotch, the Macallan 12. Which, I wanted to add, is a wonderful thing to order. I got visible respect in two potentially awkward bars by ordering a single malt scotch. The first was last night at Liz's Boom Boom room; I went in because I could hear live music playing inside and it was the only dive-y looking place on a whole street of trendy hipster joints. It was a little more hard-core than I had really bargained for, with a pretty serious looking jazz quartet and kind of a tough looking, older crowd. The bartender was hot, but in that tatooed, torn stockings, anarchistic bartender chick way that is always intimidating. At Cafe Zoetrope the place was white linen and crystal with an older, mustachioed Italian bartender who'd obviously worked there for decades and served the countless moviestar guests of Mr. Coppola. Both bartenders attitudes changed just that little bit when I asked them about their single malts, if nothing else, it wasn't a boring order to fill. So, thanks to Ilan for turning me on to scotch, it's serving me well.