Friday, May 20, 2011
Class of 2011 graduation ceremony at Davies Symphony Hall. Met Jim (who sat in the foyer next to the Green Room), and usher Teresa (sp?), Jim from the musician team, and others whose names I could not remember. Shopping in Hayes Valley: Modern Appealing Clothing (MAC), Welcome Stranger, Azalea Boutique. Stopped to eat a chocolate-lavender macaron at Miette ($1.75). Lava 9, Cary Lane, Sean, Residents Apparel Gallery (RAG). I also visited a few stores whose names I cannot remember. Service everywhere I went was friendly, helpful, and not hounding. Customer traffic was light. Almost universally items were too big for me and tops were boxy rather than tailored. Notes for each store follow. Modern Appealing Clothing (MAC): very unique items, most items very expensive (e.g., I found a handkerchief for $40), some very bold-colored items including an astounding fluorescent suit jacket. It sounds tacky but it was very tastefully done. If you have lots of money to support poor high-end clothing designers and need to stand out in a crowd, Modern Appealing Clothing (MAC) is a good store for you. Welcome Stranger: Supposedly they are the only place in San Francisco you can buy Topman. The sales clerk said it was an exclusive. All of the Topman suit jackets on the shelf right now have a weird dimple caused by the buttonhole's placement about half an inch off from where it normally would be. I asked the sales clerk about it and he agreed with me it was unusual and looked odd but he did say that they were selling. Also, he said a new shipment had just arrived and if I return this weekend it should be out on the floor. Maybe not this weekend, but I'll return to Welcome Stranger just to check out the Topman collection as it changes. There weren't very many small sizes, but if I find something I like perhaps they can order it for me or I can order it online. That's sometimes still a better deal than buying online sight unseen. Compared to all the other Hayes Valley shops I had visited on this day, Cary Lane has amazingly low prices. In addition to men's and women's clothing they also carry some boy's clothes into roughly the early teens, but the shirts were still too small and did not fit me. When I asked about small sizes, the sales clerk said that the owner wears small sizes himself so he likes to keep those sizes in stock. The clerk also said that customers will often buy small sizes en masse, e.g., one in every color of something that fits, so items can sometimes go quickly. I asked how tall the owner was, and the clerk guessed 5 feet, 3 inches. I tried on a sweater jacket that I liked very much except it had a 2-way zipper which looked awkward with the 2.5-inch zipper pull hanging right over my crotch. Yes, you can cut off the zipper pull, but there's still the metal part of the pull and on this item it seemed more noticeable than others to me so I did not buy it. It would have been better with a regular 1-way zipper. Or, perhaps, a transparent aluminum bottom pull rather than a metal one. Emile Laufaurie for Sean: The sales clerk at Sean was particularly down-to-earth and helpful, having me try on a few suit jackets and reassuring me, after some questions about my sizing, that they have clothes that would fit me. The styles are a little too loose and middle-agey for me, but I might return when I have more time to spend shopping. Late afternoon meal at Tartine, a cafe that's not affiliated with Tartine Bakery. Tuna half sandwich, spinach-potato soup, chai tea latte. They had run out of wheat bread, and I okayed a substitution of white bread. (The only other choice was baguette, and I don't like how for a sandwich the hard edges of a baguette digs into one's gums.) Turns out the white bread was a poor choice because the sandwich didn't hold together well. After a few bites it was just falling apart on its own, but I managed. The soup was good. The chai was so hot that I could not drink it until after I had finished my meal. Useless. Drove home. Traffic on Market Street was thick until Market and Castro. Weight training: pec crawl. Late meal: jasmine brown rice with leftover stir-fried Thai cubed tofu. Cleaned spinach-potato soup stains from my suit. Continued rereading from Snow Crash.