Monday, September 3, 2007 – The last day of vacation. As usual, it’s somewhat bittersweet. We’ve had a great time, but it’s also time to be heading back to the house, refreshed and with new ideas or approaches on who we are and what we want to do next. Eddie’s picked up a concept that we’re trying to employ – people don’t do great things, they just do a bunch of little things that add up to something great. Accordingly, we don’t need to be doing magnanimous ventures, we just have to figure out what the next step is.
For me, the next step is to get off the court appointed list. On Wednesday, when we return. First thing. That ought to free up some time to work on some other ventures we want to start, and it’s not turning enough money to justify the time expenditure anyhow. Not to mention the fact that it is absolutely soul-sucking and unsatisfying.
Julian (the lawyer from SF) picked us up for breakfast and, after figuring out that some places were closed for the holiday, we ended up going across the Golden Gate Bridge to Salisilito. Now, it’s an unusual set of events, but somehow we’ve ended up eating three different meals, on three different days, at the same little diner there. Not quite sure what the message is there, but it’s definitely an odd coincidence.
After puttering around with Julian for a bit and bonding with him more and more – you can’t help but enjoy his infectious smile and good-natured sense of humor, we went back and met up with Paul to tour “the Lower Haight and Valencia Street”. You may remember that Haight – Ashbury (which is an intersection there) was the birth of the “hippie movement” with all of its attendant issues.
Some of those issues still exist, but what you see now is a neighborhood that is on the cusp of gentrification. All over San Francisco there are incredible public facilities – women’s centers, parks, clinics, etc. – in the “lower Haight” they happen to have fantastic murals on them. They also have streets and alleys where murals are done by young artists (through a municipal program) on the side of the buildings. You see some pretty amazing things there.
The Haight is also known for its quirky shops. Although some were closed either because it was Monday or due to the holiday, the other thing you note is that they work on their own timetable – most didn’t open until noon. We spent the morning wandering in and out of them buying shiny things and other gew-gaws that we couldn’t live without. One herbal store had some really neat stuff – soaps, lotions, etc., and of course no trip would be complete without a stop at “Good Vibrations”, which originally started as a vibrator store geared to women. They didn’t have much that you couldn’t buy elsewhere, but they did have a very interesting display of vibrators that have been marketed since 1900. Only in San Francisco!
After we got back to the Castro, about 3 in the afternoon, Paul left us for the last time. He really is a nice guy, and we missed having him with us. Eddie’s parting gift to him was a book titled “How to Massage Your Cat.” This came after much good natured ribbing between Eddie and Paul about one love for and the other’s dislike of cats.
We went back through the Castro one more time, buying those things we’d seen that we couldn’t do without and collecting up other treasures that would barely fit in our already overstuffed bags.
For our last dinner, we decided to go back where we started, to Firewood. A sudden chill in the air sent us running for our jackets as we walked back up the street to our hotel to finish packing. The cab to the airport was coming at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday so that we’d be able to catch our 7:30 flight.
New Things We Learned On This Trip
a. San Francisco is a place where diversity is more than “tolerated”…it’s celebrated.
b. People in San Francisco aren’t interested in where you’re from or who your family is -- they’re interested in what you are now, and what you’ll be in the future.
c. Things that “get on our nerves”……”drive us crazy” don’t mean a thing to others..and when disclosed become quite humorous, i.e., undiscarded rubber bands from a newspaper (Eddie’s); double parked trucks (Paul’s); pigeons and Chinese drivers (Roberts); drivers talking on a cell phone (Larry’s).
d. When you’re around entrepreneurs, you tend to be more entrepreneurial in your thinking. The collective energy of the thought seems to lead you down different paths.
San Francisco is a great place, and I’m sure we’ll be back. Next time there’ll be things that we don’t have to do (i.e. actually step in the ocean to realize just how cold it is), and others we didn’t get to do that we’ll want to do (like actually go inside of some of the museum, rather than just looking at the outsides of them.) But for now, vacation’s over and it’s time to get back to work and start planning the next one.
Niecy -- Style Diva
We LOVE her!