S.F. Day 1

San Francisco. Say it in a baseball announcer's voice.  Saaaaaaaan Fraaaaancisco.  Yesterday went pretty well.  The alarm went off, I rose and showered and put on some hot water for coffee (instant Starbucks--I wasn't going to brew), and then the cabbie showed right on time.  I waved to the sky cap and checked in curbside.  Got to the gate just in time to board.  Had a horrible middle seat, but I feel asleep for the first three hours of the flight.  The car rental worked.  I swear I had two fears.  Remember that I banged the car all up last summer?  Well. . . my insurance paid over a thousand dollars for repairs, but the rental car company wanted me to pay some remaining seven hundred.  I wouldn't and didn't and wouldn't return the calls of the collection agency.  Until last month when I realized that I was going to need to rent a car in S.F. again from the same airport.  So I called the creditor and they reduced the payment in half.  Still, I was worried I would be on some black list.  The second thing is that I wasn't certain my driver's license was valid.  I got a picture of my car in the mail one day.  You couldn't really tell, but the note said that it was me running a red light.  I don't open mail every day, week, or even month, so by the time I recognized all of this. . . . I guess they really didn't cancel my driving privileges after all.

So I was nervous at the counter and being just as friendly as I could be in case that might help them make any decisions they needed to make.  In the end, they gave me an upgrade.  I got to pick.  I took the Jeep utility thing.  Really.  I was feeling pretty cool.

I drove into San Fran on another perfectly gorgeous day with the bluest of San Francisco skies trying to remember where to get off the highway and where to turn and of course fucked that up badly, so I took a nice tour of the city nervously driving in bus only lanes and following one way streets too far, etc.  But finally I found the hotel and was greeted by Q.  And yet another miracle.  My room was ready for check in.  It was just eleven.  Up to the forty-first floor and into the room to look out across the city into the bay.  Unbelievable.  I thought of all the dives I have stayed in so many times before.

A quick change and out the door, Q steered me to the Cafe Mason for breakfast.  The waitresses were knockouts and the food was good.  We oooed and ahhhed over both, paid up, and headed for art.  But I'd forgotten my camera lens caps and so we hurried back.  We walked in and the little girl with whom Q was especially taken asked, "Two?"  !!!!!  She didn't love us.  She didn't even remember we were there three minutes before.  Q and I must have looked like another pair of old queens to her, I guess, if we looked like anything at all.

"I want to start dressing better," I told Q.  "I don't think I'm looking my best."  Q said something I won't bother to repeat here.

And so we got up Geary Street and into the galleries.

"Look at this shit!" I demanded.  "Get me in here, I'm telling you.  Tell me my stuff isn't better than this.  G-E-T M-E A G-A-L-L-E-R-Y!"

Q began talking about his cut.  I told him what the gallery would take, and what my expenses were, and then what was left, and Q started talking about another career.  Can an artist really make any money?

At MoMA, we saw the Cindy Sherman retrospective.  I've never been a big fan of Sherman until then.  The prints are huge and shiny and impressive.  Over and over again.  Nope.  She's good alright.  Better than that, even if her work has only one tonal mode.  I kept wondering if her life was like her work.  I could only hope it was not.

Beers in the MoMA cafe which is always fun as cafe watching at museums is as good as it gets, I think.  Then a run this way and that until we hit a liquor store and came up to the room to relax and have a drink.  Then the hunger and Q's quick call to a friend who recommended a sushi bar around the corner. Sakes and beers and order after order of sushi and sashimi and then Q's friend's recommendation, Monkfish liver.

"This tastes like butthole," I said.

"You're nuts.  This is great."

Loud drunken argument over Monkfish liver, buttholes, and my oafishness.  And then into the street and to one of Q's friend's speakeasy bars.  Q rang a bell and a pretty girl stepped out, closing the door behind her.

"Can I help you?" she smiled.

"Swordfish!" I yelled jumping up and down.  I've always wanted to say this.

"What?"

Q looked at me and laughed.  "Swordfish.  It's the password to a speak easy in a Marx Brother's film."

The two of them chatted a bit about his friends who owned the bar and she mentioned a place they had just opened around the corner and then we left and went there.

"Two martinis," I said trying to slip into the chair at the bar.  It was bolted to the floor and was about six inches too close to it.  It tilted back so that you could slip in and that is how I sat, reclined at a 45% angle.

"This is awful," I yelled.  "Whose idea was this.  No shit.  Who the fuck can enjoy this?"  Q gave me the stink eye.  "Look at that," I whispered.  "True tragedy.  That's walking talking tragedy right there."  I was directing him to a sad looking blonde who looked to be explaining all the horrible things she was living through.

"Stop it," Q said.  "She is an employee at my friend's bar."

"TRAGEDY," I yelled just as he got another text.  "Why don't you turn your phone off."

"That was the owner.  He just bought us a round of drinks."  Just then, the barmaid picked up her phone and read.

"The owner wants to buy you a round of drinks," she said.

"Why doesn't anybody text me?"  This was the one drink too many, I thought.  We'd hit that a while ago, but this one absolutely was.  I was jet lagged and tired from getting up at 4:30 that morning, and now a little drunk, too.  And so Sean and I went back to the room for a nightcap before he drove back home.  We talked a bit and finally, exhausted, we said goodbye.

He is sick this morning.  You can read about it on his blog post today.

I just got a call from Ed Ross, the photographer.  We've not met, but we're about to for lunch in some fabulous cafe, he says.  And so I must motivate.  The day is once again perfect with perfect blue skies.  Yes.  Yes.
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