Notes to Self

The folks at Intelligent Traveler: National Geographic said they wanted to hear what we love about our cities. So I took a moment out to fill in the blanks, and am posting my responses here. To tell them what you love about your city, get the questionnaire on their website.

San Francisco is My City

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is to Tosca on Columbus for a Cosmo.

When I crave Thai Food I always go King of Thai Noodle house or any number of other wonderful Thai restaurants in the area.

To escape I get in the Escape Pod and I head to Big Sur.

If I want to do something fun and silly with my out of town friends, I go ride the elevators at the Saint Francis, the Mark Hopkins and a few other high-rise hotels to take in the views and then take pictures of said friends lounging in the lobbies.

For complete quiet, I can hide away anywhere south along Highway One. Pick a beach, any beach.

If you come to my city, get your picture taken with the twins, Marian and Vivian Brown, although I haven’t seen them lately. If you don’t run into them, then go into the Mission and take your photo with the murals on Balmy Way.

If you have to order one thing off the menu from Tu Lan it has to be Vietnamese Shrimp Fried Rice. This divey hole in the wall is kind of scary for out of towners, but the locals love it. Sit at one of the tables near, or even at, the counter so that you can watch the cooks and check out the other dishes they are making.

24th Street in The Mission is my one-stop shop for great Mexican food. Las Palmas Mexicatessan for wonderful hand made tortillas made from masa ground in the kitchen, as well as tacos, burritos, and other Mexican yummies to go. La Victoria Panaderia for morning pastires. La Torta Gorda for a torta. Discolandia for those south of the border sounds.

Locals know to skip Fisherman’s Wharf and check out just about anything else in town. Really.

When I’m feeling cash-strapped I go to Caffe Trieste in North Beach and have a latte while the opera plays on the juke box. Then I go hang out at City Lights bookstore and read in the aisles.

For a huge splurge I go to my favorite restaurant in the city, The Slanted Door, for lunch.

Photo ops in my city include any bar or cafe.

If my city were a celebrity it would be homeboy Robin Williams. Sensitive, hilarously funny, vulnerable, not too old, and a bit foggy.

The most random thing about my city is that Industrial Light and Magic currently has offices on the spot where the future Star Fleet Academy will be. And there’s a statue of Yoda there. Another random thing in SF is that there are exact copies of Ghiberti’s Doors of Paradise at Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill.

My city has the most beautiful, friendly, sexy, gay men.

My city has the most down to earth, intelligent, and tech-savvy women.

In my city, an active day outdoors involves hiking – going anywhere involves hiking.

My city’s best museum is SFMOMA, more because of the building. But they’ve been on a roll with traveling exhibitions lately and they have an excellent photography collection.

My favorite walking route is anywhere in Golden Gate Park .

For an evening of art, check out First Thursdays in the downtown art galleries from 5:30 – 7:30pm. Start at 49 Geary!

Sam Wo’s is the spot for late-night eats. Greasy spoon Chinese food and it’s open until 2 or 3 am.

To find out what’s going on at night and on the weekends, read sfgate.com, sfweekly.com, and the bayguardian.com.

You can tell a lot about my city from the Ferry Building and its Farmer’s Market. We love food, we love our food to be local, we love independent booskstores, and we love sweeping views.

You can tell if someone is from my city if they visibly cringe when you call it “San Fran” or “Frisco”.

In the spring you should hang out at Cafe de la Presse with a bowl of cafe au lait and watch the tourists stream through the Chinatown gate.

In the summer you should bring a sweater and dress in layers, and don’t be surprised if people are wearing their turtlenecks.

In the fall you should take a day trip to the wine country to experience the fall colors and the crush.

In the winter you should wait for a storm and then head out to the beach in the car, grab a coffee at the Java Beach Cafe, and then park the car in the lot at the end of Fulton or Lincoln facing the ocean. Then just watch the raging weather come in off of the ocean.

A hidden gem in my city are the Kabuki Hot Springs.

For a great breakfast joint try the St. Francis Fountain on 24th St @ York.

Don’t miss the Day of the Dead festival in The Mission at the end of October.

Just outside my city, you can visit Napa Valley and Sonoma County for wine tasting.

The best way to see my city is walking and taking MUNI. There is a great cross section of the SF population on MUNI, and you can get just about anywhere on the long haul buses. From downtown you can go to the beach on the 5 or the N-Judah, you can see the SF hipsters on the N-Judah, and a MUNI tour would not be complete without going through Chinatown on the 30 or 45.

If my city were a pet it would be a Jack Russell Terrier. So cute and playful, yet it will bite your hand off if you don’t pay attention. Did you know there are more dogs in SF than there are children?

If I didn’t live in a city, I’d live in the middle of nowhere.

The best book about my city is Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, which I remember reading as a weekly column in the SF Chronicle.

When I think about my city, the song that comes to mind is Tony Bennet’s I Left My Heart in San Francisco, of course.

If you have kids, you won’t want to miss The Exploratorium.

Bay to Breakers could only happen in my city.

My city should be featured on your cover or website because it is the most worldly and wonderful city in the United States.

Check out the artist-at-large San Francisco site for a lot more information on visiting San Francisco!

In my mind I have been hankering for travel. But I haven’t been able to get the body to cooperate. This has been going on since April. It is now the end of December. I know where I want to go. I have personal projects to accomplish in my next destination. A revisit, to a place I’ve been to before. But my heart hasn’t been in to making the definite plans.

I was out in The Escape Pod three days ago, the day before Christmas. I had decided to store campy type things from the van in the house, so I was getting the portable kitchen items out from under the bed when I discovered my old traveling shoes.

I pulled them out from under the bed and held them in my hands. A pair of boy’s slip on Campers with a wide velcro strap. Size six or seven, I can’t remember. I remember buying them at Shoe Pavillion. The last time I had these shoes on I was flying home from Paris. It was 2005. My last long trip.

I held those shoes in my hand and thought about all of the places they had taken me. All over The Yucatan, San Francisco, Paris, Reims, Epernay, Vertus, Fontainebleau, Chartres, Beauvais, London, Berlin, Pottsdam, Prague, Dolni Bezdekov, Kutna Hora, Zurich, Aix-en-Provence, Marseilles, Arles, Tarascon, Beaucaire, back to Paris, and then home, back to the van in San Francisco. And many points in between. Airplanes, trains, boats, and buses. Subways, metros, and trams. From the boulangerie to the cemetaire, to l’eglise. Through all of those little villages in Champagne. Sitting in cafes drinking wine, pivo, or coffee. Shooting photographs. Mulling over decisions. Standing next to the graves of my ancestors. Two and a half months of being somewhere other than the place I call home.

I brought those shoes into the house, with the other stuff, and put them on. Immediately they felt, no, I felt, like I was home in some way. The memories of the places they had taken me came flooding back. I felt my psyche shift from someone who wants to talk myself into traveling to someone who has traveled, who is going to travel. Like, ok, I’m going now.

мебели

They feel so comfortable on my feet. Familiar. I’ve been wearing them for three days, even though both soles are cracked through and they need a shine.

Photos: Above is walking the 2kms between Bratonice and Dolni Bezdekov, the first home of one of my grandfathers. The bottom photo was taken in the square in Arles, opposite from Saint-Trophime.

If you happen to be in or near San Francisco, there are only a few more weeks left to catch the Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson exhibition at SFMOMA. It’s up until February 24th and it’s one of the better traveling exhibitions that this particular museum has put on in a long time. Go!

Don’t fret though. If you happen to be on or near the East Coast, New York City specifically, the same exhibition will be hosted at MoMA’s P.S.1 Contemporary in the spring from April 20th to June 30th.

There have been quite a few people running in and out of my life lately. Some of them from out of town, others from out of the country. Two in particular, one from somewhere around London and the other from a place called Rio de Janeiro had me hopping around The City and showing off some of her best vantage points.

I love having people visit. Unfortuately, since I live out of my car, I can’t play as much hostess as I would like to, but I do my best. While they were in San Francisco I took my friends to one of my favorite bars in The City, Tosca, where we had lovely Lemon Drops and a made-up drink without a name. We went to galleries, museums, bookstores and did a lot of street hiking. And through all of this was placed conversation about place and identity, habits and culture (which I didn’t think Americans had), and a lot of silent contemplation.

That is the beauty about travel. Being confronted with one’s own culture. If you think about it, there is so much that we do daily out of habit that is marked as different to someone from somewhere else, that we don’t even notice it. Some of them are little things …

Like double-dipping.

Who would have thought double-dipping being a no-no would be something that seemed uniquely American and differed from culture to culture? But hey, it is and does.

One afternoon we were sitting in a taqueria chewing on our yummy burritos, each with their own stash of chips and a group of little containers of each kind of house salsa spread across the table. Pico di Gallo, Salsa Verde, the other green kind made from avacados, and a hot red one.

I told my friends that the salsa was for everyone, and they eagerly dipped, at the same time mentioning how strange it was that the other Americans they had eaten with didn’t seem comfortable in sharing food and dipping sauces. It seems that us US Americans are germaphobes. (I say US Americans because, as I was politely reminded by my friend from Rio, she’s an American too and then Canadians and Mexicans are also North Americans … well, you get the picture). I replied that most US Americans will share dipping sauces, but that it is double-dipping that is looked down upon. What, is double-dipping? they both looked at me inquisitively. It was then that I realized that I had been asked a cultural question about being American. It felt odd.

So I explained about dipping a chip, munching it, then dipping it again.

We wouldn’t think twice about that, they both said, from opposite hemispheres of the world.

Because the US is made up of so many different cultures and has absorbed many of the traditions of these cultures, it’s really hard to find something that is culturally American. But there you go. Double-dipping. I like learning these things about my culture, such as it is, and as weird as it is sometimes.

Oh, and by the way, here’s a tip if you travel to France – when eating in a group, and a large cheese plate is placed on the table, never cut off the point of a triangle of brie.

One of the hardest hit pages on artist-at-large.com is the list of Downtown San Francisco Galleries that are open late on the First Thursday of every month. I tend to not pay too much attention to the passage of time, but notice when looking at my web stats that First Thursday is on the week’s agenda.

Also this week ascross the bay in Emeryville, the 21st Annual Emeryville Exhibition is opening tomorrow night (Friday, October 5th). The reception is from 6 – 9 pm, and this year the location is 5885 Hollis Street, EmeryStation East, Emeryville (corner of Hollis and Powell Streets).

Afterwards, head over to the First Friday Art Walk event, held in Oakland. There are shuttle buses that can cart you around so you can leave your car and join the artwalk crowd.

San Francisco Open Studios start this weekend and end on the 4th of November. Every weekend for the next month, artists in different neighborhoods will open their doors for you to come in and see their work. The opening is this Sunday, October 7th from 4pm – 7pm at SomArts Gallery at 934 Brannan Street