Sooo San Francisco

After a fun and sweaty Rhythm and Motion workout at ODC, I had some time to wander through the Mission, a neighborhood I haven't spent time in in years. I headed to Commnunity Thrift, the store where you can shop for second-hand clothing and household items and support local non-profits at the same time.

Before I knew it, I was in the book section, pawing through the cookbooks, when I saw this sign:


















A porn section in a thrift store? That is sooo San Francisco.

Walking up 18th Street past Bi-Rite, I saw a bubblegum machine. Well, sort of. Instead of dispensing bubblegum, it popped out seed bombs, little clusters of flower seeds with directions to throw them into "sidewalk cracks, vacant lots and parking medians"-- any gray spaces that could use a little brightening up.
























Greening the city? That is sooo San Francisco (with a fat dose of Berkeley thrown in).

At Tartine, I waited my turn in a line that stretched out the door on a Friday afternoon at 3 o'clock. I squeezed into a place at the communal table with my slice of devil's food cake and waited for the barista to call me over for my mint tea.




















I waited, but not as long as the folks at the table who waited for their sandwiches, which finally emerged on crispy slices of thickly cut bread deep with grill marks, oozing Humbolt Fog Goat Cheese and bulging with Niman Ranch pastrami.


















Local meats and cheeses, housemade bread, and a huge, wooden slab of a communal table? Très, très San Francisco.

I sipped my tea and nibbled at my cake and tried to read The New Yorker, but the scene was ripe for people watching. The preponderance of bangs and asymmetrical mullet/pixie haircuts on women and scruffy beards and skinny pants on men made me think momentarily that I was in Williamsburg (as in Brooklyn, to clarify). Tourists sitting next to me planned a trip to Union Square, other toursits across the table spoke Cantonese and marveled at their pumpkin pie, and girlfriends searched their souls over steaming bowls of cappuccino.


















Cake, tea, and The New Yorker? Yeah, it's pretty San Francisco.

But with a little dose of me thrown in.