Fresh from the oven

Et bien, ça devait arriver :(
La dernière journée à San Francisco …… sniff sniff.

Nous avions plusieurs plans pour cette journée. En début de journée nous allions au Coit tower, ensuite des amis de montréal arrivaient à San Francisco, donc nous allions manger avec eux, ensuite c’était un show de musique au Ameoba Records et finalement un nous terminions ça à un événement de combat dans le jello ……..

Malheureusement, pas mal tout ça a été annulé. Au moins, nous avons quand même pu voir nos amis qui venaient d’arriver pour boire de la mimosa!

Finalement, le voyage c’est terminé et c’est direction l’aéroport pour le retour!

Je n’ai qu’une chose à dire : J’AI VRAIMENT ADORÉ SAN FRANCISCO!!!!

Like the other days, I woke up rather early (way before Sofia), so I had the chance to speak a little to Malea and Eli (we barely saw them because we were so occupied with our busy schedule).

Friday was supposed to be our Castro day (the gay district). Since we didn’t had time before to see the Golden Gate bridge, we added that before the visit to Castro. We also added the City light bookstore on Kearny, since it was on our way. At this bookstore, I bought 3 more books (damn! With all those new items …. how can I fit them in the luggage!!!).

To see the Golden Gage bridge, we took 3 buses and it all went smoothly. Sadly, we didn’t walked the bridge because of time constraints. To get back to Castro we took bus 29 …. what an error!! We spent more than an 1h30 in it with kids who just finished school (with them yelling) to get back to Mission District and then to Castro ….. I was really pissed, cause all that time stuck on the bus meant less time to see the gay village there.

Finaly back to Castro, we went back to Jef cafe A bon port to see him and eat a really yummy crepe. Jef was a little stressed, but I tried to change his mind with my SUPER skills to make people laught (i’m joking here if you don’t get it, hehe … I’m not that pretentious … well I think ;P). That’s was about it for the Castro sightseeing, cause we were meeting Malea at Orbit room at 6h30 for a drink. The mixologist there is really good and it’s a great show watching him making the drinks. Eli joined us a little later and an hour after we went to eat.

We tried this restaurant called Dosa that serves South Indian food. It’s mostly crepe with vegetables, spices and other things inside and it’s just AWESOME! Sadly, I ate a really spicy appetizer and my main dish was also spicy …… my mouth was burning! I drank a lot …. and I mean a lot of water.

For the final night in San Francisco, we decided to go to Transfer for the Bender night. Malea joined us, but since Eli was still a little sick, he instead went back home. The place wasn’t full but the music was really great! I guess friday’s night at Transfer are rather boring (I read that on yelp.com) and Bender was a new night there. I think it will be successful on fridays now for sure.

Around 1am, I convinced the ladies to leave the place (most of the people were leaving too) to spent the last hour at Jet for the Jet girl night. I taught this was kind of a lesbians night, but it turned out to be more of a pimp like type of night …… oups!!! my bad. But since we paid the 5$ to enter, we spent the rest of the night there.

After that so-so party, we were hungry, so we went to the same place that where we were 2 days ago (but sadly, the cute waiter named Curtis wasn’t there). There was so many people there (no wonder, the bars had just closed) that we needed to put our name on a list … to eat at 3am!! We talked about many things with the guys beside us and after we finally entered and ate our meal, we went back to sleep with a full stomach :)

C’était une journée très simple destinée à prendre ça relax à San Francisco. L’idée était de parcourir tout la rue Haight pour trouver des petits magasins de linges ou de trucs sympas.

En fait, cette rue est superbe pour le magasinage! Les boutiques intéressantes sont en grand nombre et c’est tellement facile de dépenser comme des fous (chose que nous avons fait). Dans un des magasins, le commis nous a parlé d’un “screening” d’un film style B-movie dans le Dolores park, donc nous avons ajouté cette événement à notre itinéraire.

Pour bouffer, nous sommes aller au Herbivore (des plats principalement cru) dans le Mission. La bouffe était bonne … mais pas autant que celle du Café gratitude.

Bouffe digéré, nous retournons au shopping, mais cette fois ci sur Valencia. Pendant que Sofia était dans un magasin de bicyclette, moi j’étais au Dog earned book, une librairie, et je dois dire que cet endroit est vraiment génial! Il y avait tellement de livres (des nouveaux et usagés) pour tout les goûts et de tout les styles. Aussi, il y avait plusieurs petits romans “soft-érotique” accrochés sur les côté des étagères. J’ai fait quelques achats (entre autre un livres de courtes histoires érotique gay dont 2 de ses histoires sont écrites par Anne Rice).

Après une autre heure de magasinage, nous avons décidé que c’était préférable d’oublier le “screening” et plutôt se rendre à l’appartement pour faire un somme avant la soirée Frisco Disco à The Transfer. Malheureusement, notre somme a durée jusqu’aux petites heures du matin …. donc on a dû oublier cette soirée :(

Du moins, nous avons pu récupérer un peu d’énergie.

We woke up rather early to see the most of those two other cities. We took the BART to Berkeley to find a really charming city. We did some shopping (got a guitar book and some gifts) and ate at Cheese board pizza where the pizza was …. in a word ….. awesome!

We roamed around the University of California just to see how huge it was. Also, we spotted some dinosaur at the museum of paleontology (woho! a t-rex!). We left rather fast Berkeley to get to Oakland for some heavy shopping before the store closes.

Sadly, Oakland was no fun at all :
We couldn’t find anything fun to do or great store to see. It was just like a big city with nothing fun for us. The only thing I got there was a sun burn!!!

A little deceived, we went back to funland (known as San Francisco, the city of freaking wind!!) and finally went to the castro (the gay village!!). Gay flags EVERYWHERE I could look. Now, I’m sure I’ll forget about nofunland (you know, that place called Oakland) in a sec.

Since the night before we were supposed to go at the Cafe but instead went to Orbit room, we decided to go see it this time …. but it was only 6pm, a little to early to cruise the bars for me. We made a stop to A bon port, a lovely cafe owned by Jeff (a friend of a friend). To our surprise, we spent a lot of time there talking to Jeff and two other people we just meet. The man was a spanish teacher (that makes me think, I really need to work on my spanish) and the woman was a french/english teacher (I think). When the place got soo crowded by french people (it was a special reunion or something) we left.

To end the night, the Cafe (kind of like the Drug store in Montréal with a lot less pool tables) was our destination. I lost all the pool games to Sofia, but I did some really awesome shoots! Then, a guy named Micheal wanted to play agains us. Him and his friend totally won every time … we sucked hard!

It wasn’t really subtile that the guy was kind of flirting with me (and to ruin the suprise, yeah he was kind of my man for the night). I must say that the guy was a little ….. crazy like in his reaction, but the conversations were really fun and not shallow at all. I took the guy’s phone number (yeah!! I have a place to stay when I’ll come back to San Francisco) and he left around 1h30 am (I know, I could have fallowed him, but I have my reasons … crazy reasons, hehe). The last 30 minutes, I spent it wathing my friend dancing and having lots of fun with a certain somebody.

We got throwed out at 2am and I got kissed on the cheek (with the tongue also … not soo fun) by a random guy in the street who needed to light his smoke. We grabed a snack at the nearest restaurant with that certain somebody I was reffering to before and we met Curtis our waiter (he was cute and kind).

I forgot everything about Oakland, because of the fun we got to have in Castro!!! I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE SAN FRANCISCO, hehe.

Nous avons tellement marché cette journée! Wow!! Mes jambes crient de douleur!!!

Environs 1h-1h30 pour ce rendre de l’appart jusq’au Golden Gate Park et beaucoup beaucoup d’énergie en moins. Nous sommes arrêté à un “bike shop” pour la location de bicyclette. Bicyclette loué, nous les avons utilisé pendant une grosse minute!! Sofia ne les aimait pas du tout …. donc bye bye notre journée en bicyclette :(

(Avant que j’oublie, sur le chemin nous sommes arrêté dans un petit magasin de linge où j’ai acheté un chandail vraiment trop gay. En fait, il est super et je l’adore.)

Alors, cette déception de “non bicyclette” passé, nous sommes allez mangé au CaféGratitude sur la 9ème. Un petit resto trop chouette où la bouffe est à 90% cru et où l’ambiance est vraiment génial. Sofia à prit le spécial du jour and moi j’ai pris une pizza. Que c’était fantastique!!! À conseiller! (aussi, nous nous sommes fait tirer aux tarot gratuitement avant de sortir du resto)

Ensuite, direction le Golden Gate Park. La nouvelle membre des Lesbiens on Ectasy m’avait dessiné une belle petite carte pour trouver un endroit de “cruise” où les queers étaient. Malheureusement, la carte n’était pas … comment dire …. totalement à l’échelle et non plus très claire. Donc, nous n’avons jamais trouvé l’endroit pour “cruiser” :(

Nous avons alors terminé à la plage et c’était fantastique! La vue était superbe et le sable était chaud. Le vent était vraiment fort et pour la majeur partie du temps, ce n’était pas trop froid.

Un petit souper au Pacho villa (j’étais un peu déçu de mon repas, j’aurais dû prendre un borritos) et un verre au Orbit Room pour terminer la soirée. Voilà c’est tout.

So waking up was …. oh my gawd! Soo freaking hard! That day was our “tourist going to alcatraz day”, so I coudn’t sleep for to long and get all of my energy back.

At least, the day was sunny for the most part. We walked down Broadway to the port. We stopped at the Fisherman’s wharf before the trip to Alcatraz at 5h25 pm. This place looked so much like the Five Flags amusement park in Montréal. Lots of gift shop and restaurant and some walrus …. ok we don’t have those at Five Flags. We then went on the ferry and minutes later we were on Alcatraz. I must say that the audio tour is a must, cause you get to hear about the place by people who worked there and prisoners who were there.

Funny story, before getting on the ferry, a guy took a picture of Sofia and me …. but since we didn’t realized it at first, the first pic is us walking away :D

At the end of the day, another bar was in our schedule (a place called the Bar, where the drinks were 0,80$ on mondays for the ‘80 night), but we were sooOOOOO dead that we went back to sleep at 10pm.

Alors, pour la 2ème journée, nous nous sommes promenés dans le chinatown sur la rue des touristes. Il y avait constamment des magasins de souvenirs un après un autre. Pour déjeuner/diner, nous sommes aller au House of Nanking et je suis “tombé sur le cul” tellement la bouffe était bonne. Ça aussi, c’est un MUST!!

Après, c’était direction “shopping”!! Une nouvelle paire de lunette, un nouveau chandail, un nouveau chapeau et une nouvelle paire de soulier et VOILÀ! Plein de dépense …. j’adore :P

Au retour à l’appart, Sofia a préparé le souper pour Maléa, Eli et moi et nous avons mangé tout les quatres une superbe salade mexicaine.

Pour terminer, il y avait la soirée “French kiss” au bar Pink dans le Mission. Là, j’ai bû trop vite comme un con et j’ai perdu une bonne partie de la soirée (blackout totale). Je déteste vraiment quand ça m’arrive, car je n’ai plus aucune inhibition et j’agis comme un con, mais bon … “shits happen”, alors on oublie tout (pour ce qu’il y a ce souvenir) et on bouge de l’avant, non ?!