Rainy San Francisco

After turning in the rent car, taking the shuttle bus to the Oakland airport, taking another shuttle bus to the BART station and taking a train underneath the bay, I was standing in the rain in front of San Francisco's grand City Hall. As my buddy Jonathan remarked several years ago, this is what a city hall is supposed to look like. The building commands more magisterial legitimacy than most state capitols. I wish I could've been there when they were marrying gay and lesbian couples.

Market Street was festooned with rainbow flags in preparation for the Pride Parade. One of the local TV stations actually broadcasts the parade live. Imagine what would happen if a Texas station did that on a Saturday morning.

I walked all the way up Haight to the San Francisco branch of Amoeba Music. Their prices on new releases aren't great, but their stock is huge and it's easily one of the best record stores in the country. I hear the one in Hollywood is even bigger. I found a late Sixties Elektra compilation for six bucks that had cuts from both the Stooges and Carly Simon.

I had coffee at a place that only had soy milk for cream. I don't like to get all Texan on anyone, but that just ain't right. Then some guy wanted the barista to shut the window so he could watch passers-by without getting his laptop wet. The barista wouldn't do it because it would've cut off the airflow to the back of the shop. Just when I was about to offer to trade spaces with the guy, he muttered something about workers not caring about customers and stormed off. What a dildo. I bet his coffee was something unnecessarily complicated, too.

Civic Center to Amoeba and back is a good hike, but I needed it after doing the old In-N-Out thing for breakfast. I took BART back to Berkeley and met up with Heather and Mike for burritos. I'm not the biggest fan of Cal-Mex, but they definitely do burritos right out here. They're huge, cheap and fresh.

Today I'm going to walk around Berkeley. I've stayed here several times, but I've always spent most of my time across the bay. Anne Bancroft's untimely passing got me to thinking about The Graduate, so maybe I'll stroll around the UC campus and hum some Simon and Garfunkel.