Wednesday, 27 May 2009

14th May

We went a few blocks away from Union Square onto Bush Street and the Mayflower Hotel.
It was good to be staying somewhere that had individuality and was reasonably nice. It was even nicer that when I complained to the staff that our keycards weren't working I also managed to get an upgrade into the nicest available room!
So now we had a seperate sleeping area and a wee kitchen.
Great.
After settling in we planned a night out on the advice of a local bartender who suggested we try North Beach and Columbus Avenue. Unfortunately we hadn't planned on anywhere to eat so settled on Hanks Sandwich Bar before embarking on the walk up to North Beach. This would have been a funny excursion had the repercussions of Hanks 'food' not lingered with us all for days - that's all I'll say about that.

NEVER EAT AT HANKS. Hank himself staggered in at 8pm as we were halfway through our chow bringing with him what i can only presume was a multiple divorcee of advanced years who thought she still had the goods to cash the checks. He pumped up the volume on the terrible 80's mix and staggered across to get great splashes of cheap white wine into horrible whiskey glasses before briefly leaving his mistress to slur a string of unintelligble (what i can only presume) insults at us whilst stagger-dancing. Hanks place must have been 10ft by 10ft by the way....
















So we headed to North Beach, did our usual party trick of aimlessly wandering around for a good hour, and eventually happened upon a pretty crappy bar with a pretty crappy DJ who upon further inspection I confirmed, WAS in fact a woman. Of sorts.
This place was like a cross between the streets shown in Taxi Driver filled with the people shown in Saved By The Bell - The College Years. Strip club after strip club after strip club with various twats outside trying to entice/force people in. No (t)Hanks.
We went slightly south into what seemed to be an under-18's bar and saw the San Fran Bizzaro World version of Jesse. Yes it was Jewel's band and they were utter garbage and they had no idea.Here we are enjoying another one of Jewel's inimitable solo's
















After one ridiculously priced and weak drink we decided to hop in a cab and go back to near our hotel. Come on San Fran! Buck your ideas up!
We decided to go to Bigfoot Lodge which was the place Ian and Owen had received their shoddy advice some hours hence. This is a good place and there's a massive statue of Sasquatch in the bar and a good video jukebox. This was better.

Ian decided to leave so me and Owen went to another bar called Hemlock which was excellent. Here i encountered a woman who looked like a bag lady wandering around the bar with two coolboxes on a trolley which contained free cake. She was giving out slices and professionally printed fliers as enticements for strangers to her upcoming 50th birthday party. I politely declined... Here i am moments later; the best places usually have the worst toilets. Out of the blue I exclaimed my delight at Bikini Kill to two confused but not overly-perturbed girls and we left.
















We decided to have one more across the road at Vertigo, a bar/club that was themed on the famous film, that should be cool right? Hmmm not really, it was very touristy but it was good to people-watch and we'd had our fair share of boozy fun in the end and we could walk home satisfied.

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