Sam's Blog

Mark Twain wasn't kidding.

We arrived in San Francisco on Saturday afternoon and it was very cloudy with fog. I knew it was going to be chilly, but man, I wasn't prepared for this. The marine layer is crazy there. Though I should've been more proactive about checking the weather the day of, I thought that I'd be fine. Luckily I packed two jackets, but the only thing that I forgot was closed-toe shoes. It wouldn't have been that bad, except for the wind chill factor. So I was unprepared for the weather, but I realized that after walking all over the city, I was actually sweaty and cold all at the same time. Not too shabby. I uploaded the pictures on my Flickr account.

I realize that I didn't write about last week. I forgot also to mention that while I was at club Pure, we saw Seth Green. The celebrity sightings follow me into different cities! Nate and I also saw the very lovely Jonathan Silverman (The Single Guy) in SF on Fisherman's Wharf. So strange that Nate and I can recognize him still, considering that he hasn't been doing much these past few years. I guess our eyes are always open for celebrities. Anyhow, last week seemed like a blur. I spent all last week recovering from Vegas. I was sick/had allergies all week and still have remnants of it today. Here's a brief outline of last week:

Monday - Dinner with Jamie, Alison, Aaron, Josh and Myra at India's Oven. It was my first time there and it was yummy! Alison and Myra were staying in LA until Tuesday.

Tuesday - I took a long walk with Josh and we ended up at Best Buy. I bought the new Clueless-Whatever! edition on DVD. Had dinner in the shopping center (I had Panda Express and Josh had Baja Fresh).

Wednesday - Had dinner with M, Antonio, and Anne at BJ's (we wanted to go to Chili's, but it was closed for a private party...who would rent out a Chili's? We did get a $10 gift certificate because of the trouble, so that was cool. M and I are going to use it tonight!). We convinced Antonio to go to the Hustler store in Hollywood and I got some cool cards and magnets and stuff.

Thursday - I finally had lunch with Amy P. after a whole year away in Japan. She seems really refreshed in a lot of ways. She is moving to San Francisco and going to culinary school. I am very excited for her and wish her the best to her fresh start. I love that girl. Ramona was in town with her sister Kiran. Kiran had just moved to New Orleans for med/grad school at Tulane, but due to the hurricane, she flew back home and is now looking for a school that can take her. I doubt she will be able to go back there in a long time. She left her car and a lot of her personal things there because she only packed to leave for the weekend to wait out the hurricane, but was forced to go back to CA when the levee broke. I hope that her stuff is okay and that her friends in her program are safe. In any case though, I am glad she is here in LA with us and not stuck there. I am sure things will work out for her. We had dinner that night with Kurt at the Library Alehouse in Venice. It was yummy. Kurt was having a crappy day so we went to his apartment and got him drunk. I was glad that I was able to help solve his problems temporarily, even though it was only for a night. I had a lot of fun with them and Tripp. He cracks me up. We watched a lot of Ali G. and The Chapelle Show and he showed us the R. Kelly "In the Closet" video (parts 1-5). Man, oh man was that hard to watch. It was so bad that it was hilarious. I am anxiously awaiting parts 6-10. Josh and I left their place really late that night and I didn't get much sleep. Not the best thing to do when you have to work the next morning and have to plan for the weekend roadtrip.

Friday - Work was good because I was able to leave at 12:30. I will miss summer Fridays. I took a long nap when I got home and was disoriented for the rest of the night. Jon was celebrating his birthday at Zanzibar, a very cool bar in Santa Monica where the fabulous KCRW DJ Jason Bentley spins on Fridays. Jon has become friends with him and he took requests from him, which made him a very happy camper. Jon's dad was visiting him for his birthday and it's so eerie how much they look alike. He really is how Jon describes him, kinda like an overgrown kid, but he was very endearing and him and Josh got a long very well. Kurt joined us that night and we had a very fun time. I chatted with Kurt a great deal. We haven't talked about meaningful things too much in a while and I am glad that we are finally hanging out more. It's so hard to do when we live on opposite sides of the city. It doesn't sound that bad, but with traffic, the drive is not very pretty.

Saturday morning was hard. Nate and I got up at 6am and got ready. I still hadn't unpacked from Vegas and so I just took all of the old clothes out and put some new ones in my bag. As I said earlier, I wasn't prepared for the weather too much. In hindsight, it wasn't that bad, but the nights were very very cold. We met up with Matt and Mike and embarked on our journey. We got into SF in the afternoon and checked into our hotel and wandered the streets. We all weren't familiar with the area at all, so it felt like we were tourists, stopping by and looking at the city maps at bus stops and such. (We realized that there are no maps of the city in LA and that there are so many more public restrooms/port-a-potties in SF than LA, which isn't really a big deal, but it is when you've been walking forever and need to go to the bathroom in a residential area.) We walked and shopped all over Chinatown, Union Square, and Nob Hill. I got closed-toe shoes (Converse) because I needed a pair anyway, so it was perfect. Apparently the hotel was in a sketchy part of town in the "Tenderloin" district. We had no idea when we booked it. The hotel was fabulous actually and it was centrally located to all of the places that we wanted to see, but the surrounding neighborhood wasn't that great. Oh well, it wasn't that bad. As Imee said that weekend, "There's nothing tender about the loin." We were to meet up with a few friends that night. We had dinner at a great Chinese restaurant and returned to the hotel and got ready. We wandered the streets of SF towards some of the "cool" parts of town. We got good tips from locals and ventured on in the streets of San Francisco. We ended up on 16th and Valencia, an area populated by young college students and tons of bars. We bar hopped in that area, first going to Casanova and then another bar that I forgot its name. Kristy, Imee, Marita, Camille, and Alison met up with us at a bar called the Skylark. It was a hip-hop club that played okay music, but was really crowded. Gavin stopped by for a bit, but it wasn't his scene, so he left shortly after. He only lived a few blocks away and was very tired because he had just gotten off work. At that point, we were drinking a lot and taking shots. Mike didn't feel too well and went back to the hotel, poor guy. We bounced from that bar and went to a very cool place called Delirium (thanks for the recommendation, Dan!). It had cool people and cool music. My friends met up with their friends Curtis and his friend that we named "Texas" for the night. We all stumbled around and met up with two British guys on the way to another club. Kristy drove her Land Rover and we all squeezed in. I sat in the very back trunk with Matt, Nate, and Texas. We all got out at Club 6 and I counted 11 people in the car. 11!! Holy cow. I don't even know how we all fit. We danced and drank and had a lot of fun. My friends are so great to me. I just saw them in Vegas and had a blast there. They treated me and my friends so well. Much love to you girls in the Bay. We got pizza at Steps of Rome and went over to one of their friend's house. He had the biggest dog that I had ever seen. It was the size of a pony. Anyway, we went back to the hotel in the wee hours of the night. What a great and crazy night. One of the best nights I've had in a really long time.

The next day, we tried to recover from the night before. We walked to the Castro district and ate at Chow, a very cute restaurant on the corner of Market and Church. I am impressed by all of the great little restaurants in the city. We were very pleased. Everyone is very polite and pleasant as well. We shopped at the Castro and decided to walk to Haight/Ashbury. It didn't look too far on the map. We took the direct route, going up 17th street. We realized that it was a bad decision because we had to go up the steepest hills. By the time we reached Ashbury Street, we looked down and saw how far we had climbed. It was wild! We could see a large part of the city at the top of that hill, it was awesome, yet also very tiring. We were saddened to see a GAP at the corner of Haight/Ashbury. Everything is so commercialized now. It did have great thrift shops though. I got a cute jacket. I was very pleased. We met up with the girls again at Golden Gate Park. There was a music festival there called "Doin' it in the Park" and it was an all day affair with DJs and BBQ food. We got there towards the end so there was no food left. We hung out for a bit and then went back to the hotel to get ready for the night. We were exhausted from the night before and from all of the walking that we did that day. We went to a yummy placed called Home, which basically served home cooking style comfort foods. The corn bread was excellent and the mac and cheese was mmm mmm good. I had the pot roast and it was the best that I've ever had. We hit up the Castro district again and checked out the nightlife. We went to The Bar and got a table on the patio. It was so crowded on the dance floor and started getting muggy, so the fresh air was fantastic. Monica met up with us there and it was SO good to see her finally. I think it had been over a year since we had seen each other, so I was ecstatic. She just started law school in the city and is enjoying life. I love seeing my friends happy; it's one of the best things in the world. We ran into one of Nate's roommates there and then followed him to Badlands, a semi "raunchy" club, according to Monica. It was way fun and there were a whole bunch of cute lesbians dancing in our section (including a girl wearing a bow tie, black bra, white suspenders and capris) and Nate and I were amused by them the rest of the night.

Monday was a beautiful day. It was the perfect San Francisco day. I couldn't ask for anything else. It was warm enough for me to wear a halter and capris. We met up with Gavin again and went to Fisherman's Wharf for some clam chowder. Matt and Mike are both from New Hampshire, so they wanted to try some. I'm not a big fan of chowder, so I got chili instead. Kristy and Marita met up with us and we walked around Pier 39 and saw the sea lions and did the tourist thing. It was actually really fun. Marita and I remembered going to the pier on our 8th grade field trip and we went with some friends into one of the singing booths and recorded ourselves singing to "Eternal Flame." We were such dorks! But it was so nice to still have those great memories. It's been a long time since then! Good times!!

We left the city and drove to San Jose to see the Winchester Mystery House. We all wanted to see it because we had heard so many different and conflicting things about it. The story that I believe and the one that the tourguide told us is that the owner, Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company fortune, had never really gotten over the death of her baby girl and husband. Sarah felt that her family was cursed, and sought out spiritualists to determine what she should do. A medium told her that their family was cursed by the spirits of all the people who had been killed by the Winchester rifle, and that she should move west and build a house for herself and the spirits. The medium also told Sarah that should construction ever stop on the house that she would die. She built many oddities in her house, such as doors that led to nowhere and staircases that led to the ceiling in order to trick all of the spirits that were haunting her in the house. It was eerie because we went on the exact day that she died 83 years ago. The house was huge and interesting. I was amazed that it wasn't too damamged with the two big earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. We can see some remnants of the damage, but it wasn't that bad, considering that it is over 100 years old. Here are some fun facts about the house:

Number of rooms: 160

Cost: $5,500,000

Date of Construction: 1884 - September 5, 1922 (38 continuous years!)

Number of stories: Prior to 1906 Earthquake - 7; presently 4

Number of acres: Originally 161.919; presently 4

Number of basements: 2

Heating: Steam, forced air, fireplaces

Number of windows: Frames 1,257; panes approx. 10,000

Number of doors: Doorways 467, doors approx. 950 not including cabinet doors.

Number of fireplaces: 47 (gas, wood, or coal burning)

Number of chimneys: Presently 17 with evidence of 2 others

Number of cars at her death: 2 (a 1917 Pierce Arrow Limousine & a 1916 4 cyl. Buick truck)

Number of bedrooms: Approx. 40

Number of kitchens: 5 or 6

Number of staircases: 40, total of stair steps - 367

Number of skylights: Approx. 52

Number of gallons of paint required to paint entire home: Over 20,000

Number of ballrooms: 2 (one nearly complete, and one under construction)

Blueprints available: No, Mrs. Winchester never had a master set of blueprints, but did sketch out individual rooms on paper and even tablecloths!

It really was a great experience and I recommend going if you are ever in the San Jose area. We didn't get back home until 1am on Monday. It was hard to get up for work, but I survived.

It was Andrea's last night in LA yesterday. She's going back to school in Denver and I know that I will miss her. In true Andrea fashion, she requested that we go to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles for dinner and then grab drinks at St. Nick's afterwards and we all did just that. Dinner was yummy. I had been craving fried chicken for a while and it was perfect! St. Nick's was not so hot. It was totally empty and we only stayed for a little bit.

Whew! It's been a long few weeks. I hadn't traveled in a long time and for me to go to Vegas and San Francisco one weekend after another was crazy. I am slowly recuperating. I know that it's all worth it because I had tons of fun and became a lot closer to my friends.

On a sidenote, my company is sponsoring a drive to collect items for hurricane victims. If anyone would like to contribute, please let me know. I went through all of my stuff this morning and donated a lot of things. It's nice that I can do that because this way, I don't feel as helpless. I never know how to help in situations like this. I am a believer that every little bit helps and I hope that it does. It's such a tragedy and my heart goes out to all those that are affected by it.

Happy Birthday Marty! I called but your voicemail was full. I miss you. I hope that we can hang now that Orientation is over! Woohoo!!