San Francisco

Let me start this off by saying that San Francisco is the coolest city ever, and Dunedin, if you're going to lose me, chances are it will be to SF. Apparently we fit right in too, as we had a few instances of tourists coming and asking us for directions!

After the lack of sleep in Vegas and the slightly traumatic turbulent flight to San Francisco, we arrived at the Hotel Mithila (more of a backpackers than a hotel, and the shower didn't work the entire time we were there) around 4pm and went straight to bed. Later on that night, we had the first of what I predict will many amazing veggie burritos, and discovered a store right next door that sold cheap beer and American scratchies, so we were sorted. It may not be Taz, but our new favourite beer - while in the US at least - is PBR, which at $10  a dozen certainly meets our stringent price requirements.

PBR is the new Taz

First stop on day one was the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA, which pretty much allowed us to tick most of the boxes on our list of artists whose work we wanted to see some day. They had a fantastic Yves Tanguy painting, and I was most excited to see my first Rene Magritte (the Belgian Surrealist artist who painted the iconic images of the man in the bowler hat, and whose work was the focus of my Master's thesis). The Marcel Duchamp urinal was another highlight, but unfortunately the Jeff Koons sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles had been put into storage six months earlier (and no, they would not take me down to see it especially, even though I'd come all the way from New Zealand. Apparently that phrase only works for meeting Rancid).

We then wandered up Haight Street, encountering some impressive street art, gorgeous old SF houses and cool vintage clothing stores along the way.

Street art on Haight

Andy on Haight

Every street in this neighbourhood looked similar, so many cool old houses

At the very end of Haight, we lost Sam to Amoeba Records, a huge record store with a ridiculously large punk section (this will become a theme throughout the trip). Nico and I looked around too for about 20 minutes, and then went and sat in Golden Gate Park to relax and wait for Sam. Excitement ensued when we came across our first squirrel, who was even carrying a nut! Ah the little things...

From there, it was on to Alamo Square, which those of you who grew up in the 1980s will recognise as the Full House houses. Sam did his best Uncle Jesse pose, and we celebrated with a few PBRs (which certainly would have been the subject of a morality lesson and cheesy father-to-daughter talk from Danny Tanner).

The episode where Uncle Jesse went punk

It would seem that the slight downside to San Francisco is that it is a city full of dogs (thankfully most of them were little ones on leashes), and the entire time we were there we saw one cat. One! We had to take a photo of him since he was so vastly outnumbered. Nico and I were tempted to catnap him and take him back to the hotel since we miss Ferret so much, but common sense prevailed.

American kitty

The next day, Nico was off to stay with some family in Texas, and Sam and I took a streetcar down to Pier 39. We decided to make the most of our City Passes (pay $79, and get unlimited access to buses, trams, etc and entry to about 6 different attractions), so started off with a trip to the aquarium. It was pretty cool going through an underwater tunnel on the travelator thingy and looking up at all the sea creatures, and we got to pat a stingray. Probably something we wouldn't have bothered with if it hadn't been included in the pass, but decent nonetheless.

Pretty jellyfish, slightly tired Andy with a horrendously unwashed fringe

We were looking forward to doing the SF bay cruise, and although it was slightly marred by conditions that deteriorated as soon as we got out on the water, it was still really amazing. Turns out I'm fairly relaxed about coping with bumps and 'turbulence' on a boat. We got a great view of the city, and then went under the Golden Gate Bridge, before circling Alcatraz and heading back into shore, about an hour all up.

San Franciso skyline in background

It was certainly not hat weather by this stage

Looks like an escaped convict from Alcatraz if ever I saw one

We walked back along Market Street after our cruise to check out the Warfield Theater where would be seeing Rancid play again that night. The plan was to go back to the hotel, have dinner, get ready and then head along to the gig about 8pm. After we saw the lines of people that were already queuing up, we realised we'd need to get there way earlier, and unfortunately the part of our pre-gig plan that ended up being cut was eating dinner. I did warn Sam that this may not bode so well, but we thought we'd be fine if we only had one or two beers at the show then had dinner straight after. So by the time the first band started, we'd already had two beers, and then for some reason moved on to rum....During H2O's set, a hardcore guy the size of a bus slammed into me at running speed, and although I was just annoyed at the time that he spilt my full beer over me, it resulted in very bruised ribs for the next few days.

Rancid were even better than last time, the venue was beautiful (kind of like the Regent Theatre or Sammy's in Dunedin), and they played for at least two hours. During the second hour things got a bit hazy, I went off and danced down the front I think, lost my favourite hat, and obtained a number of bruises I only became aware of the next day. Good times.

In hotel room, pre-Rancid

Outside show, pre-Rancid

During Rancid, hat still intact, beer kicking in

Post Rancid

Apparently we got pizza and made some friends afterwards (our camera testifies to this), but it was pretty much straight back to the hotel (Sam tells me I had to be dragged) with no stalking of Rancid this time. Which was probably a good thing, cos god only knows what I would have ranted to Tim Armstrong in that state.

Inevitably, the next day didn't start till 4.30pm. Our plan was to go to a gig at Gilman St in Berkeley, the famous all ages punk venue where Rancid, Operation Ivy, Green Day etc started out, and where the Vibrators from the UK and a few other bands were playing that night. When we finally got round to checking what time the gig started, we were most disgruntled to find that it had started at 5pm, and would only go till 10pm, so we were fast running out of time. We hurriedly grabbed a coffee, then hopped on the BART (train) to downtown Berkeley. We had taken a quick look at a map, and vaguely knew where we were going, but as with most of our other map reading experiences, we severely underestimated the distance from the BART stop to the venue. After asking some people at a bar, we were given directions and told it was not within walking distance (pfft, Americans seem to think nothing is within walking distance and can only be reached by driving an SUV). When I mentioned that we were probably going to be late and miss a punk show at Gilman, a weirdly blinged out old hippie dude with a young blonde on his arm said "Yeah, twenty years too late," which I grudgingly admit was quite a good call. And so it was - we walked for about an hour (through some pleasant leafy neighbourhoods at least, none of the dodgy vibe of our lost-in-Vegas walk) and arrived at 10.20pm, missing the gig entirely. Some sad-faced photos outside Gilman St were the only product of our walk. I did perk up though when we wandered aimlessly for a bit more, and I caught sight of the Golden Gate Fields sign (racing track featured in famous Rancid song, near where Tim grew up, and which I'd been hoping to locate). A friendly security guard took our photo, and then we headed back into SF, slightly more contented with our adventure. The rest of the evening was spent at an incredibly cool little bar right by our hotel called Minx, which was playing one of my favourite movies, 'Cry Baby,' with subtitles, while cranking a mix of Descendents, Rancid, Misfits and old 60s girl groups in the background. They had a stuffed raccoon in the corner, and $2 PBRs, so we settled in at the bar and enjoyed some nice rants with the very styley, tattooed, leopard print-wearing patrons.

Gilman Street

Gilman Street venue in background

This is not Churchill Downs, this is not Hollywood Park...

  Okay this is Andy signin off for now... Until next time, see you guys later... Sorry, I really wanted to say that - we do need to start getting ready for the Kyuss Lives show tonight though, so it's perhaps a fitting place to end the blog for the time being, more tales of SF to come soon...