Horrible puns shall abound as I attempt to summarise some of the more exciting moments from the last 2 months, getting to know San Francisco and its slightly off-the-wall night life. I’m starting to find my way around the city now (not a difficult feat given it’s 7 miles by 7 miles - a village compared to London), and I have to say I’m falling in love with the place, even if I’ve woken up one too many times on a sofa somewhere mumbling “where am I?”

In a stark, minimalist style, I shall describe the highlights of my travels using bullet-points. You can all read between the lines - I’m sure it’ll seem more exciting that way.

The World is Your Oyster (April 2nd)

• O’Reilly’s pub holds a yearly Beer and Oyster festival in Washington Square
• Being a fan of both Irish beer, and of oysters, I was eager to attend.
• As were various friends and people I’d never met.
• As was enough of San Francisco to fill the park entirely.
• Much beer was drunk.
• I actually ate enough oysters to grow tired of them.
• You can get big oysters here - more than a mouthful is… a chewy experience.
• Afterwards, we adjourned to O’Reilly’s itself.
• Somehow the girls I was with managed to get into an argument with some Irish girls…
• It all ended at about 1am when we realised that we really, really needed to sleep.

Beer and Clothing in San Francisco (April 8th-9th)

• I was informed (by my friend Emily) that it was required that I go “out on the town” for my birthday
• After meeting for dinner with a friend who was over from the UK, I embarked upon a pub crawl with a second set of friends in the Mission
• Emily, her “room-mate” and 2 friends from New Orleans turned up shortly afterwards
• I don’t remember what time we actually crashed…
• …but we started Saturday with Bloody Marys…
• …followed by my first ever baseball game - San Francisco Giants vs. Colorado…
• …and a Giants grand-slam.
• We had “lunch” at around 4 o’clock after the game.
• At this point, I realised I’d been wearing the same shirt for 36 hours…
• …necessitating a stop at GAP (the first clothing store I found) for a change…
• …before another bar.
• Back at Emily’s again, we somehow managed to spend 3 hours sleeping, followed by 2 hours playing drinking games…
• …before venturing out to a club where there was much dancing.
• Sunday was spent very, very quietly.

Columbus Voyages (April 20th)

• More visitors from the UK. It was Mike’s birthday so, naturally, we had to go drinking.
• …even though it was a Wednesday.
• The plan was to visit a few places around Columbus, the main street which runs through North Beach.
• We started at Vesuvio, a very agreeable little place on Columbus made famous by Jack Kerouac and other beat poets.
• We then moved on to two other bars. I don’t remember the names, although the beer was good.
• We ended the night at a horrible little cheap pizza place on Columbus
• Sadly, the pizza came back to haunt me later
• Driving whilst still hungover is a very unpleasant experience.

Somewhere Under the Rainbow (April 25th)

• The following weekend, and back to the city again.
• We started with more drinks in Vesuvio with Mike and his wife Claire
• Then it was just a “hard core” of us - Michael, me and Ben (another visitor from the UK)
• Somehow we ended up in the Castro (SF’s gay community) in an aggreably run-down little bar called “Amber”
• The bar became less agreeable after a rather strange man approached us trying to “introduce us to some girls”
• He was not, it turned out, a pimp.
• He was, however, interested in whether any of us “did three-ways”…
• …and also, he told us, more interested “in actually watching people doing it” than watching porn.
• We made our excuses and left…
• For a Karaoke bar up the street, where fellow patrons murdered classic pop songs…
• And I ended up in conversation with a woman whose extremely British accent could polish silver at 100 paces.
• Crashed at Michael’s, on a futon which insisted on falling over during the night.

Love/Haight (May 14th-15th)

• My replacement from the UK, Tamsin, was over for a couple of weeks
• After visiting friends of hers in Emeryville on Friday, we spent Saturday afternoon in the Haight…
• …where I was introduced to the joy of clothes-shopping in thrift stores.
• We were accosted in the street by an agreeably hyper woman called Alex, who insisted we have a drink with her…
• …and told us all about Bay to Breakers
• …which we duly attended, much to my eternal amusement.
• Following the race, we grabbed food at my favourite caff, the Raintree on Irving
• …before returning to the Haight and Amoeba Records where…
• I was accosted by a charming young lady who wanted my advice on which “Pet Shop Boys” album she should buy…
• …I like to think it was my British accent and enthusiasm for music which caused her to stop me, rather than my appearance…

As a side-note, the Haight is disturbingly like Camden, only slightly cleaner. If, however, I’m going to get accosted by random women every time I go there, I should perhaps consider a swift move to the area as soon as possible.

Bowled over (May 27th-28th)

• Given an apartment to stay in for the weekend, I headed for the city.
• Hanging out with students (well, postgrad internists, but it’s the same thing) means you end up drinking at someone’s house before going out because it’s cheaper…
• …most of a bottle of red wine “cheaper”
• We then ended up at, erm, a bar, where we proceeded to dance for several hours
• I walked home at 3am through beautifully quiet streets
• Saturday, I planned to go to MOMA
• It was such a beautiful day, however, that I spent most of it just relaxing in Yerba Buena gardens and Union Square
• At 5pm, I met my friend Cathryn to go bowling at Yerba Buena, to celebrate her new Green Card status
• Beer and dinner at 21st Amendment followed.
• Then there was just a hardcore (again) of three of us, in a weird (but great) little place called Eddie Rickenbacker’s on 2nd Street.
• One drink later and then there were 2 - me and new drinking buddy Laura.
• We tooled off to meet up with Emily around the corner in Fluid
• Fluid is not my sort of place at all - anywhere where no-one seems to be smiling or having fun because they’re too busy posing is, well, wrong (thank God we somehow skipped the cover charge).
• Skipped out after one drink and walked Laura back to the Castro.
• Ached all over when I woke up in the morning.
• I’m evidently getting old.

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