Saturday, May 26, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Met Geordino at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market. He introduced me to some really excellent coffee at Blue Bottle Coffee Company. We browsed the market stalls taking photos here and there—he's a photographer, too. Geordie stopped for a sausage sandwich. One stall sold burrushi (or burritoushi). We ran into Susan from Honolulu who was also at the market with her friend Carol. A fire truck was parked at the curb on the Embarcadero. A small boy jumped out, and a waiting fireman offered me a chance to sit inside. It was really neat, and I didn't want to take photos of the inside in case anything was top secret. I hopped out after a minute and asked him why the truck was here, was something going on? and he said, "No, we're just here for coffee," which made me laugh. It seems they prefer Peet's instead. Geordie's cousin Jake showed up, and we met. The three of us wandered more through the Ferry Building. I had mentioned I was looking for shoes, and Geordie and Jake had no other plans, so we headed into town on a shoe hunt. Along the way we ran into Mo from San Diego, we saw an elderly Asian man playing an erhu, we saw the Flatiron Building, we stopped at See's Candies. We stopped at North Face. Rex showed me the dial-on-the-back shoe which uses wire instead of shoelaces, but I wasn't interested. We went to Puma and Adidas. In both stores you can build custom shoes with the colors and detailing you choose. All the athletic shoe designs I saw today were too flashy or showy or complicated for me—I like clothing to be unbusy. One pair of non-custom Pumas might have worked except the shoe had a thick white edge/sole and I didn't want to spend time worrying about getting that dirty. We stopped at Bloomingdale's and I showed Geordie and Jake the fancy restrooms. We stopped briefly to watch the Louis Vuitton color wall. I went to H and M boys where I bought some clothes while Geordie and Jake waited and rested. We then headed to Kay Cheung in Chinatown for delicious dim sum. In Chinatown we saw a store where you can buy live chickens, ducks, pheasants, and other fowl. We saw a tea bar with a woman at the storefront playing a guzheng. Lunch at Kay Cheung was $30 after tip for 3 people. We watched a woman at a neighboring table pick out the fish she wanted from the live fish tank and see it show up cooked and whole on her table in only a few minutes. We walked along the edge of North Beach and found a really cool revolving door in the American Zoetrope Building. We walked under the Transamerica Pyramid tower and looked through the gate at the cool park next door. We walked through Embarcadero Center, stopping at Banana Republic for some shopping. We parted ways at Embarcadero Station—I needed to get home to get ready for dinner. Home by Muni. I fell asleep on the train and luckily woke up before my stop. Home. Tired. Nap. Woke. Dressed. Dinner at Remi and Jesse's with Remi, Jesse, Chris, Andy, and Patrick. Remi and Jesse prepared a lavish grill-on-the-table meal with vietnamese rice wrappers, shrimp, various marinated meats, lettuce, parsley, basil, tofu, cucumber, marinated cucumber, carrots, broken rice, kim chee, and more. We were warned to save room for dessert: Remi had prepared a fantastic coconut almond raisin clafouti. Afterwards we played two different board games. One was like the Newlywed Game, and the other made it fun and interesting to learn new things about the people playing the game. I can't recall the names of either of the games. Left around 10 or 11. Home.