San Francisco, being my kind of town, has incredible thrift shops. The best thrifting in San Francisco is in Haight Ashbury and the best shopping in Haight Ashbury is on Haight Street, which is completely lined with thrift shops.
My motto, as you know
I journeyed down to Haight Street, known to the locals as The Haight, to judge for myself whether or not the thrifting was better in New York City or in San Francisco.
After taking me to Gus’s (the best sandwich shop in the city apparently), Raj gave me his own personal thrift tour, showing me the best spots.
At the many stores we hit, I found, and fell in love with, a red, wine-colored cocktail dress and a lavender jacket. Anyone who thrifts knows that one or two great pieces is quite the haul. I bought a San Francisco 49-ers shirt as a souvenir and am now prepared for men to ask me if I’m a fan as a way to make small talk, should I ever wear it out in public. My flirting skills, knowing no bounds, will probably have me saying, “no I just own the shirt.”
I came close a few times to buying a vinyl jacket that I absolutely did not need. “Absolutely did not need” would describe all of the shopping that I did while in Haight Ashbury.
I mainly wanted the statues of the naked golden ladies that were over the dressing rooms of one of the places I went to. I thought that they would make a nice addition to my Columbia apartment.
It would really give my apartment more of a Greek-sculpture-garden vibe rather than the soggy-cardboard-box vibe it has now and you just can’t get that from William Sonoma.
They were, alas, not for sale and so my apartment will have to make do with the aesthetically-pleasing pieces of furniture that I find on the street.
Following that, we had a night out on the town, me with my new jacket and Raj with his equally nice clothes. I was able to take a ride in one of those utterly terrifying self-driving cars that make you fear that you’ll be careening towards a sudden death in a matter of seconds. They also make you question how far automation will put us out of work in the future, but I forced myself to think happy thoughts, like about the amazing thrifting that can be done in San Francisco.
And if you ever find yourself in San Francisco, do yourself a favor and shop at The Haight.
On my second day in the city, I saw exactly what I’d dreamed of when I pictured going to San Francisco all of those years ago: the San Francisco Bay covered in glittery fog and the Golden Gate Bridge disappearing into the clouds.
I’d never been to the West Coast before– I’d only ever gone up and down the East Coast. Standing on the opposite edge of the continent, I wanted to go to the beach.
After walking the length of the bridge, I decided to hang a left at the beach.
At first, I walked down the path into a wooded hillside towards the water and then decided not to in case I encountered a bear along the way. (It is on their state flag after all).
The view from sunny California
Having told no one where I was going that day, I decided that maybe it was best not to walk down a mountainside alone and instead made it to Marshall’s Beach by taking the road.
I’d packed a swimsuit for my trip without any plans to get anywhere near the freezing cold water in the Pacific Ocean. Since I decided to go to the beach spontaneously, I didn’t have it on me. Instead, I climbed over the rocks and walked barefoot along the shoreline, discovering for myself that the water was in fact numbingly-cold.
Watching the waves crash, I started to get FOMO and wished I had my bathing suit, despite how cold it was. I turned a corner and realized that this was not the type of beach for which you needed a bathing suit.
When Google searching beaches with which to best glimpse the Golden Gate Bridge, none of the websites mentioned that Marshall’s Beach was a clothing-optional beach with a large gay scene.
And I’m not mad about it. I always love a good trip to the beach.
So did I partake in the nude beach experience? Did I adopt a when-in-Rome attitude and plunge naked into the Pacific Ocean? Did I emerge from the water naked with my long, wavy hair blowing in the breeze behind me like a Botticeli painting?
Maybe.
I can tell you that I came out of the excursion with a sunburnt nose and my bad knee even worse than before, having witnessed a few eye-opening things taking place on the sand, but I loved it. A day at the beach is still a day at the beach.
Following that, I ate bao at a chinese restaurant called Bao, which more than lived up to its name, and got a drink at The Buddha Lounge in Chinatown. I 10/10 recommend both.
Day two was down with another adventurous San Francisco day in the books. I was ready to limp around San Francisco for another adventure on my third day in the city.
The Tragic Queen,
Raquel
P.S.: Check out my previous blog post on what my first day in San Francisco was like.
“I left my home in Georgia, headed for the ‘Frisco Bay”
–Otis Redding, Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay
School was out for summer and I was in a mood. The kind of mood where I sit around playing California Dreamin’ on repeat as my semester ramped down because that’s exactly what I was doing: dreaming of California, a place that I’ve never been to but have heard so much about due to the total tonnage of songs dedicated to it. I’d made it through my semester and, I’m not sure if you’ve seen the news lately, but that semester was a little bit more difficult than usual.
Around this time, my metrocard was getting low and the temperature was getting high. I found myself wanting to be in a walkable city with famously mild weather.
Packing only the essentials
All of my friends were back to their corners, jet-setting to their own summer plans. I decided to do something that I’ve been dreaming about for a while:
I booked a flight to San Francisco.
Dressing the part of someone who’d go to the Bay Area
In proper girl-on-a-budget fashion, I made plans to sleep on a friend’s couch and then toggled back and forth between the $120 flights on airlines with shoddy safety records, and 15 hour layovers in the midwest, and the slightly pricier tickets from more reputable airlines.
Prior to actually visiting San Francisco, I envisioned a politically-correct mecca, filled to the brim with the liberally-enlightened. I’d seen the same iconic images as everybody else: picturesque, Victorian houses stacked up and down hilly streets, a blue-burnt sky behind them, and the Golden Gate Bridge silhouetted on the horizon.
What I found instead was a not kid-friendly, gritty and grimy city brushing up against a hypoallergenic tech sector. (The amount of signs I saw advertising for strip joints was actually kind of impressive and made it look like a local delicacy). Each street was elbowing the next, with Lululemon-clad women boarding the bus one minute and Boho-hippies boarding it the next. The bus would then migrate over to the decayed financial sector, which has become more of a homeless sector, having lain dormant since the pandemic.
All of these multitudes and more were compacted onto a tiny peninsula.
I was trying to understand where this “out with the old and in with the new” mentality came from. I read the same articles as you (well, some of you): tech people setting up camp and redefining the city, homelessness populations being the largest in the country and turning into a way of life, and the cost of living skyrocketing to untenable heights, all taking root in San Francisco over the past decade.
I had to lay eyes on this for myself.
You’re probably wondering why I went to San Francisco in the first place. I want to set a novel in San Francisco (don’t ask me why because everybody asks me why and I don’t know why, which would indicate that I make questionable decisions) and felt that I could not tell the story authentically until I took the city by storm myself. I slept on my friend Raj’s couch (This is Raj. Say hi to Raj).
Raj has been my brother’s best friend since they were 2 when I was in utero.
While he went to work, I tooled around town.
I arrived the day after the city held one of its biggest traditions, which had inconceivably included both marathons and raves, so I basically showed up during a city wide hangover. It was like a day at the beach when everything is so calm that the water barely moves.
My first stop was City Lights Bookstore, the indie bookstore where Alan Guinsburg debuted Howl many moons ago. After nearly ending up at a lamp store a few times thanks to my GPS, I arrived at City Lights, a beautiful bookstore that was nearly Alan Guinsburg themed at this point, but didn’t sell any of the hockey romance novels that my mother keeps trying to get me to read. Sad.
From there, I went to see this bay that everyone talks so much about. I saw the Golden Gate Bridge, which is blue at a distance and only red up close. I could see Angel Island and Alcatraz on the horizon beside one another.
I closed out my day at Pier 39, seeing –and smelling– the sea lions.
The sea lions on Pier 39 made me irrationally happy as they spun through the water and then flopped onto the stacks of sea lion bodies on the dock. I enjoyed witnessing the Greco-Roman wrestling matches of the sea lions who’d sardined themselves onto a dock and were now biting and barking at each other.
I started to think that if I were to be reincarnated as any animal, it would not be too bad to come back as a Pier 39 sea lion. I particularly related to the one antisocial sea lion on a different dock who refused to socialize with the other sea lions.
He wasn’t dead. He moved a few times. He was just chilling like he was dead.
I spent much of my first day bumbling around, courtesy of my nonexistent sense of direction. Raj was an excellent tour guide, explaining to me the different socio-political forces at play in San Francisco, the geography of where I was, and the best spots in the city. He actually knew the history of where he was and so could tell me the significance of where I was standing at any given time.
Once I was in San Francisco, I felt like I could feel the city’s character muscling its way to the surface, a character that shuns the very idea of the tech industry being anywhere near Haight Ashbury, the home of free love and public fornication. San Francisco is trying hard to maintain its reputation as the beat-poetry, psychedelic-rock birthplace by trumping its newfound granola-tech-people-with-homeless-encampments-lining-the-streets-reputation.
You’ll be sure to learn my thoughts on how that’s going by the end of this four part saga.
One of my favorite things about living in New York City is not just the way in which various different types of restaurants can coexist here, but the way a restaurant needs a hook in order to stay alive.
You can create whatever seemingly mismatched fusion restaurant, whatever astrology-themed bar, or animal-themed cafe you want, so long as the food and drink earns its keep.
A generic restaurant is more likely to be put out of business than an eccentric one– basic restaurants need not apply.
This occurred to me a few weeks ago at Senza Gluten, the gluten-free Italian restaurant I went to for my cousin Olivia’s birthday. My knowledge of Italian came in clutch as I informed the table that “senza” means “without” in Italian, which is about all I can do with my limited knowledge of Italian: impress people by reading off the menu at an Italian restaurant and enhance the viewing experience of season 2 of The White Lotus.
Our gluten-free meals were excellent, unlike most gluten-free which runs the risk of tasting like carpeting. We had our gluten-free meals, toasted the woman of the hour with all of the alcohol we’d just purchased, and then had some gluten-free bagels the next morning at a gluten-free bagel place.
Only in New York City could so much lack of gluten thrive.
For her birthday, I bought Olivia a “pussy astray/incense holder.” The women selling them in Union Square Park clapped them together to demonstrate that they were “indestructible, just like the real thing.”
Olivia is one of the few people I know who would appreciate such a product.
Olivia, appreciating such a gift
I’d spent the weekend eating gluten-free around town, on purpose, and witnessing a woman standing in Union Square park unironically clap together vagina-shaped drug paraphernalia, like they were chalkboard erasers, and yet, the thing that I was most struck by was all of the things that I could only get in New York City.
Between the unique food and the unique gifts, New York City is the place to spend your birthday.
At the end of the summer, Valentina and I went to the Bronx Zoo for a last hurrah.
Hot take: zoos are not strictly for children, as animals are universal.
And yet there were children everywhere.
Valentina and I made our way through the crowds of strollers in scorching hot weather, feeling very superior to the toddler who kicked its shoes into the gazelle pen, and losing our minds over the beautiful elephants, same as any sane person would.
This led to many great discussions, such as “what animal would you want to be reincarnated as?” and “do you want kids?”
The Bronx Zoo claims that all of the animals they have in captivity are the result of being rescued from the wild and rehabilitated, which was justification enough for Valentina and me to enjoy ourselves.
I pspspsped the giraffes and they did the same thing that my cat does when I do it to her: not come towards me.
I kept my Harry Potter references to a minimum when in the reptile room, staring at the boa constrictors behind glass.
I used the limited amount of animal knowledge that I could recall from childhood to keep the conversation going.
How many bones do giraffes have in their neck?
7, the same as humans. They’re just longer.
Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
It depends on the zebra. You can shave them and have your answer.
What animal rules the animal kingdom?
My house cat thinks it’s her.
Valentina and I spent the afternoon reclaiming zoos for adults. We did not see any Capybaras or Ocelots, the respective favorite animals of Valentina and myself. We missed the penguins, which were the main reason that we went, but we can always take another trip to the zoo in the coming year.
We were able to see lions, elephants, giraffes, and every other majestic type of animal from the Animal Kingdom. I desperately want to go on a safari but due to my on-going fear that I will accidentally cause my own death one day, I’m thinking about maybe sitting that one out.
My recommendation would be for everyone to go to the Bronx Zoo and experience it for themselves, so that you might stare at the penguins and succeed where Valentina and I failed.
The Tragic Queen 