I'm gonna take a trip around the world / I'm gonna kiss all the pretty girls: mrputter

mrputter

I'm gonna take a trip around the world / I'm gonna kiss all the pretty girls

Dec 12, 2010 09:37

So wayyyy back at the end of June, I went to San Francisco. Why? Because there was an XKCD gathering in Golden Gate Park, and where Randall beckons, I will follow! But seriously, I had such a fantastic time at the

previous meetup in Boston that my attendance was pretty much a no-brainer. So as soon as I heard about this one, I was off to the travel agent to pick up tickets.

As to be expected, I had a blast. It is my contention that when the Great Reckoning comes, San Francisco ought to be spared. (Among other things, it lives at an intersection of Mexican and Japanese cultures that I find particularly intriguing. That a restaurant selling both tacos and sushi would be considered neither unusual nor sketchy, appeals to me more than I can adequately describe.)

Now, I had meant to post something on LJ shortly after my return, but laziness and other things hit (I totally have an APB out for all the spare time I was supposed to have now that I'm no longer in school; have you seen it?) and, well... never got around to it.

Indeed, I haven't been posting much of anything to LJ recently.

However, I will in the near future want to start using this blog again (more on this shortly - hopefully tomorrow?), and want to fill in some missing content in the meantime. This is as good a place to start as any? So yeah. I'm a few months late, meaning that this will be abbreviated from my original intent (I was there for three days, and had intended to make one post for each day; I've since decided to combine && compress). But at any rate:

The XKCD meetup was on Saturday June 26; I arrived Friday morning and left Monday morning, giving me roughly 3 days to be a tourist (Monday morning was pretty much a writeoff; I didn't do much beyond waking up and hoofing it over to the airport). It so happened (unbeknwonst to the organizers until it was too late) that this was also Pride weekend, with the parade taking up much of my Sunday. But... well, as we shall see:

Friday: Wandering

Arriving on Friday, I took the BART into town, where the first order of business was to find a place to stay. Yes, I arrived in San Francisco on Friday of pride weekend without having lined up any place to stay. That's how I roll, baby! *ahem*
My modus operandi? Hit the streets and just start wandering...

In relatively short order, I came across this place. How could I possibly not patronize a joint calling itself the "Happy Donut?"

So I went in, and had a donut. And came out, and saw a promising-looking hotel across the street. On inquiry, I was informed that they had a room available for all three nights, for only an arm and half a leg. "Screw it," I thought, and checked in. Turned out to be a good decision: not too sketchy, decently located, and with free wi-fi. Would stay again, etc.
Accommodation acquired, I dumped my backpack, and started wandering the city.

San Francisco is absolutely brilliant (have I mentioned that yet?). It has a little bit of New York, but on the west coast, which immediately gives it a +5 in my books. There's all kinds of cool architecture:

And all kinds of neat public art:

This struck me as being such a quintessentially "San Francisco" traffic sign. It's not so much that right turns are prohibited as that, yeah, you might not want to do that. Dude.

And of course, every city needs a chocolate tasting room.

Or... tasty salted pig parts?

My wanderings took me past Telegraph Hill and Coit tower, so of course, I had to go for a gander. I am so unable to resist climbing tall things.

Whatever one wants to say about the weather in San Francisco, it is never boring.

Yup. It's San Francisco, alright!

Saturday: XKCD

On Saturday, I woke up to an absolutely gorgeous morning.

And headed off in the general direction of Golden Gate Park. My way was marked by this huge tripodal antenna rising from a distant hill. The picture cannot do justice to the size of this thing.

San Francisco. So awesome. It has so many bicycle routes it has to resort to numbering them. Insert Sean-squee here.

A mere two blocks' diversion from my route took me through Haight-Ashbury, so I "threw on" (metaphorically speaking: one no longer needs to throw albums onto an iThing)
some Jefferson Airplane and made a pilgrimage. It was a bit underwhelming, but really: could it have been otherwise? Probably the only part of my vacation that didn't quite meet expectations.

I subsequently arrived at the park and changed into my costume (yes I am a nerd; have we not yet established this?). I went as the unfortunate recipient of the bobcat who thought he was buying an office chair from
xkcd 325. (It was a full multimedia experience; I recorded the sound of a yowling cat from YouTube onto my iThing and put it into the box in such a way that I could get it to play on command.)

As part of my costume, I of course needed a bobcat. After searching dozens of stores in three different cities (Calgary, Vancouver and SF), I had finally found one at Ambassador Toys, Embarcadero Center, during the previous day's peripatetics. I call him Schrödinger. (Why? Well, because for one thing of course, he lives... in... a box (yes I know it's "Schrödinger's cat," not "Schrödinger the cat" but allow me a little poetic license). And for another, this means that as a nickname, he gets the diminutive form of "Schröder," pronounced of course, "Shredder.") So world, meet Shredder:

(Likes: long walks on the beach, hissing at squirrels. Dislikes: Ninja Turtles and international shipping.)

Costume donned, I headed to the designated meetup point. I was early and only the 6th arrival: there were just a couple people standing around in the middle of a field, all going "I hope we're on the right day," etc.

As the initial group of 5 or 6 started growing, and accumulating more biological mass, like an unfocused human Katamari, we kept asking new arrivals if they were From the Internet. Bonus points to those who were there to help.

We reached some kind of critical mass at about the time that a half dozen geeks from Stanford showed up sporting lab coats and goggles, and bearing stunt kites. Quote of the Day: "I see lab coats. Someone flag them down!"

There were bubbles. And a girl giving out brownies from the land of Hyrule.

He arrived very inconspicuously, as is his style, but suddenly everyone realized that someone was addressing us.

A very patient man.

People dutifully lined up for a minute or two of one-on-one with him. He loled at my costume. We chatted a bit about the kerning in the "Citation Needed" sign I took to Boston.

There was a ferret. The ferret flew. The ferret said hi to Shredder. Shredder just hissed.

I got to eat the world's mysteries. (My understanding is that the dude who brought the cupcakes actually worked at the bakery where they were made.)

Avast!

And I got a copy of the xkcd book's service pack 1 to take home. Yay!

The meetup ended, people went their separate ways, and I crashed Randall's dinner at this Thai restaurant in the area. Om nom nom.

I walked the long way back to the hotel via Ocean Beach and the Presidio, but it was pretty dark and I took no pictures.

Sunday: Pride

So the plan for Sunday was to take in the Pride parade in the morning, then spend the rest of the day doing random sightseeing things. What I didn't realize was that the parade was going to last Four Hours. Ah well.
The day started off with pride kittens. And, uh, cupcakes. Kurt (the guy in the pink shirt) was hilarious and awesome.

This was probably my favourite part of the parade.

Holy Vegan Pride, Batman!

Wait. So.... Super Mario was a gay Rubix-Cube-playing hippy?

This breaks my brain. (In a good way, don't get me wrong!)

A week or two later, back in Calgary, I went to the Stampede parade with my parents. The AYB was marching in that one too. With, I'm pretty certain, the same set of participants. Things that make you go "hmmmm...."

Will do!

The gay astronaut association made me giggle.

Something something evil something.

The parade finally over, I took the BART up to Concord, to make a stop at Fry's. The most interesting thing was how the micro-climates in the Bay area made Concord seem like a world away from San Francisco. A 35-minute metro ride took me to a frickin' semi-desert where it was a good 30 degrees warmer!

Fry's turned out to be a bit of a bust, not really having what I wanted, so I headed back downtown, in a frantic rush to make it to the Golden Gate Bridge before sunset. I paid the five bucks to take the cable car from Market St. to my hotel.