A little note on scheduling: thanks to jetlag management, we get up at around 8 a.m. (and are sort of awake from 6 a.m. onwards), and we go to sleep around 9 p.m. It feels a bit weird, but we cram so much into these waking hours that I can't stay up any later even if I wanted to.
Day 3 was the day my feet broke. I already started feeling some weird pain in the outer arch of my left foot towards the end of Day 2, so I decided to try to take out my orthopedic insoles for a day and see how that would work out.
It did not work out. At all. We don't use any form of public transport, and have seen almost the entire city by now. That's a lot of walking. And so my recollections of Day 3 are a bit of a blur - I mostly just remember the pain and the frustration about it happening when I really needed my fucking feet to work.
Anyway, we started with Haight-Ashbery, which looks pretty much like a hip Berlin neighbourhood, except with more hippies. At one point a possibly homeless guy who was washing bookstore windows struck up a conversation with me. I didn't understand half of what he said, but it all sounded very poetic, so I alternated between Bemused and Appreciative, until I finally realized that he was basically lamenting the stupidity of "my generation". He ended his monologue by expressing his hope that "China would take over all these businesses."
We ate a late breakfast in a big, dilapidated diner that smelled of mildew and gave off a very peculiar vibe. Neighborhood diner meets Turkish bath/opium den. It was really quite spacious, with tiles on the floor and painted walls. Everyone seemed to know each other. Both the waitresses were in jeans and looked like they should have had dreadlocks (none of them did). One flirted with a young all-American guy who seemed to be writing code on his laptop. Two tables down two middle-aged tattooed lesbians were chatting away over breakfast. The place had everything.
Quick note on cafe/diner/restaurant demographics: all the places we've been to had a full cross-section. People with little kids next to hipsters next to middle-aged couples next to white-haired ladies. I have to say it's awesome.
The breakfast was insane. Gosia ordered a breakfast burrito - and I can honestly say that I'm 100% behind that particular idea. I had eggs benedict with hash browns and... God, I don't even remember anymore. So much food.
We left Haigh-Ashbury and went straight into the Golden Gate Park, which is really a neighborhood in its own right. There's an Academy of Sciences, a Botanical Garden, some museum, an island, a small marina, a Japanese garden, an AIDS memorial grove - it's enormous. Me, I mostly remember how much my feet hurt walking around it.
After the park the plan was for Gosia to get a bike in Richmond (the area between the Golden Gate Park and the actual Golden Gate Bridge) and ride across the bridge and back, while I busied myself with the Internet at some cafe. Unfortunately, Richmond proved to be relentlessly residential - at least to the uninitiated. After Gosia took off, I spent over half an hour looking for ANY place to sit down. At one point I just plopped down on someone's front steps and gave into despair. Eventually I figured out that I had to get to a big street (luckily I had a map), and managed to find a cafe that would have me. The world seemed beautiful once again. The barista was really nice and complimented me on my Dr. Zoidberg t-shirt. And at one point, as I raised my eyes from my laptop to look outside, an African-American girl crossing the street gave me a big smile and waved at me. I was relieved to find I immediately smiled and waved back, despite being raised in a place where that NEVER happens. And then they played this song:
Things were good.
Things were good.
Eventually Gosia came back, very happy with her ride, and I managed to persuade her to go eat at a Korean BBQ restaurant that was just down the street. She wanted to go to something called the Stinking Rose that prides itself on only serving things that contain garlic - which is an admirable venture in its own right - but I promised myself I would try this legendary Korean grill food, and we even researched the best places in SF, so we knew one was nearby. We still weren't hungry after that ridiculous breakfast from 6 hours ago, but oh well.
Thank God I won. It was amazing. The place was pretty bare-bones - PCV on the floor, cafeteria tables, and charcoal smoke hanging in the air - but the food was incredible. I had short ribs marinated in... something, and Gosia actually ordered tripe with vegetables. (Yes, grilled tripe. And it was good.) We had to grill all the stuff ourselves, using a grill built into our table, and while I don't really find that sort of DIY stuff appealing, the food was so good that I didn't really mind. Aside from the actual stuff we ordered, we also got rice, a pot of spicy tofu soup (on the house), and a gazillion bowls of various side dishes. My favorite were some sort of dried anchovies with... something. Honestly, I've no idea what we ate, but it was divine.
And then we went back home. On foot. From the Westernmost district of San Francisco to one of its Easternmost ones. With me barely being able to walk. I think we passed through Japantown on our way - I vaguely recall seeing a rather cool-looking, very modern building with a huge red circle - but I mostly just remember the pain. Thankfully there was a pharmacy near our hotel, so I as able to buy some pain-relieving cream, blister patches and a bandage/support thing for my foot. American pharmacies are ridiculously well-stocked, and it's all self-service. Finger splints, wound dressing, something called GOODNIGHT BUNION... I swear, in a couple years they'll have limb-restoring gel and replacement eyeballs.
By the time we finally got back to our room, I didn't even have the strength to make bulletpoint notes for this recap. I just prayed the pain would go away, because on the next day we were supposed to go to Castro and Mission - i.e. the places I was most curious about. Spoiler alert: as I'm writing this, my feet still hurt.
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