Our last day in San Francisco found us back at the Department of Motor Vehicles. But before we ran our last errand in The City, I picked up breakfast for us from Sugar Café. We shared a Cinnamon Pecan Brioche and a Dark & White Chocolate Brioche. They were very tasty. Too tasty. Ryan and I decided that they spelled certain death should we make that a regular breakfast.
Cafe Sugar is a neat little café. It feels like it belongs in Los Angeles with its modern furnishings and a tiny bit pretentious employees. The menu is full what read to be pretty delicious items though with a name like Sugar Café, you would think there would be more sweets on the menu. I guess really though, that’s okay, we eat enough crap as it is.
I hope to enjoy an entire meal there the next time we get out to San Francisco.
This time Ryan was getting his ambulance license. The wait was quite a bit longer this time around.
We had the same, hilarious DMV agent. We threatened to be back and what do you know, we were and we had him. He was really fun, made being at the DMV not so painful.
All the studying paid off as Ryan passed his ambulance test with flying colors. We took the 24 down Divisadero to the Castro where Kevin was waiting. The plan was shopping and then lunch at Nirvana.
I picked up a little gift for Micheal and Ryan got a couple of things for some co-workers.
Lunch at Nirvana was awesome. Mike and Kevin used to bring me there all the time, well, at least three times haha. I had the Tofu Panini on Focaccia while Ryan had the Mano Mango Noodles. They have quite a few vegetarian dishes, highly recommend it.
Kevin drove us to our Hotel 480 where we were staying to pick up our bags and then off to San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to catch our flight out of San Francisco.
We used the excuse that we were on vacation one last time as Ryan got a Kona Mocha Chip ice cream and while I sipped on my Dark Chocolate Frappe from Pete’s Coffee. I sure do miss Pete’s, they make the best cappuccino.
So here we are, waiting for the boarding for our plane to begin. I’m hoping to get some work done on the flight so I’m not so rushed when I get home to finish this project.
I got an email from Paul from Jestertunes.com saying he wanted to meet up at Pride. He has been a long time reader of my blog and I thought it would be totally fun to meet a reader.
I listened to Keith and the Girl (KATG) as I walked the walk from our hotel to the Bart and from the station to the Civic Center where all of the festivities were going on. For the longest time I was lost in the KATG episode instead of pride and it wasn’t until Paul called me that it really kicked in where I was haha.
Down there I bumped into a classmate from Santa Rosa Junior College who I met through an old friend, Chris. He’s another porn star (Turk Melrose) (wow, I know a lot of porn stars) and probably the best looking one I know, wink wink.
One thing I have noticed about the porn stars I know, they are all so nice. Like, the sweetest people you would ever meet. He was signing autographs and looking all sorts of busy so I didn’t hang around too much.
But while I was at his booth waiting for him to get a free moment, I found a couple of DVD’s of an old flame (haha) and a flier for their company, Pornteam.com, which used the same stock photography I purchased for the Megaplex site I made. I found that pretty funny.
Then off to another booth. I was approached a few times for kisses and handed condoms and lube from a few people… Oh Pride how I love you.
Met Paul and his crew at the Smirnoff booth. What fun people these guys were! We shamelessly judged and drooled over guys and had just a gay ‘ol time.
Then there was of course, the weird (even more weird than the above Gay Zombie)
After a while we decided to make a bee line for some dinner. Every year they get Thai food after the festivities.
On the way to Thai we bumped into Nick Starr. Fun guy. He propositioned me a few more times (hehe) and we took a few pictures together, Paul, Nick and Justin: Internet Whores.
I just had a cup of really yummy soup at Zen Yai Thai since I was waiting to eat my real meal with Ryan.
We bumped into some more porn stars (damn, lucky us) and haggled them on a DVD. Went from $25 to $10 to $5 to $7 + and ass grab. It was fun, he was cute (on the left).
We hung out there for a good long time, before I went back to the hotel where, despite our plans for authentic Thai, we ended up crashing the rest of the night. Still, it was a lot of fun, and meeting some readers was awesome too.
Our last day in San Francisco was a busy day. Ryan had a lot of paperwork to get processed and needed a few LiveScans for a job application and ambulance license so we marched down Powell to the Bart station.
Wow, I guess I forgot all about the Pride Parade. Thousands of people met us at the Bart station, completely hiding it from our field of vision. We hung out, watched a few floats go by, reveled in the fun, friendly good times and took a few pictures.
As with any gay event, not everyone there was there to celebrate equality. Some religious zealots where protesting the parade, the weekend, the gay marriages in California and just whatever popped into their heads.
They blamed the fires on the gays. They blamed the terrorist attacks in 2001 on the gays. They blamed the salmonella on the gays. They blamed the storms on the gays. Apparently it’s our fault. Sorry guys. Our bad.
The kicker was when he said, “If you guys are such a loving, kind and friendly people, why do you need all of these police officers? It’s because you cause hate and destruction that they are here” and then went onto something about paying good Californian’s tax dollars for us to celebrate our heresy…
I guess what he was missing was this. The police are there not to protect us from ourselves but from people like him. Pride is about as safest I have ever felt in a city, day or night. The only thing one gay guy wants to do to another gay guy is fuck him (excuse my vulgarity and obvious exaggeration).
Well anyway, we finally made it to the UPS Store for Ryan’s LiveScan only to find it had closed for Pride. Haha, a UPS closed for Pride, how awesome. We took a seat at Squat & Gobble for lunch while we figured out a Plan B.
Squat & Gobble is the perfect little brunch place. I always think of Landon when I go there. I’m pretty sure you would love it Landon, reminds me of The Café in Washington DC only… better. It was delicious. While there we found another LiveScan place, hopped on a bus and back to the Mission we go.
LiveScan went easy enough, then back to the hotel. I’m leaving Ryan here to go to Pride for a bit. Catch you guys later!
Pride went much differently this year. Instead of the long nights full of drinking, dancing and partying, it was long days full of running around San Francisco with friends, shopping and eating out.
Ninah came into the city today to hang out with Ryan and I. We met at Dósa, a mostly vegetarian, restaurant specializing in Southern Indian cuisine. Think the namesake (Dósa) and samosas and the like.
We found the restaurant on Yelp!, as we find most of the places we dine when out on the town and not in Columbia. Yelp!, if you don’t know, is a social network built upon user reviews of restaurants, hotels, bars, doctors and pretty much anything service oriented. It really should be your first stop, if not one stop shop, for getting around a new city.
The food was fantastic, if not a little spicier than we had anticipated. I don’t see how any even mildly affluent person in India could possibly be dehydrated. I think I drank half a gallon of water. But oh, it was worth it. If you’re vegetarian, there were at least two other vegetarian restaurants just next door or down a block from Dosa in the Mission.
After Dósa we headed to the second largest shopping centre in America. We hit all the usual spots, picked up a few things at Express, at H&M, Fredrick’s of Hollywood and a few others, then headed to the Apple store to have my laptop looked at. The battery has been giving me trouble (turns out it was user error). While I played at Apple, Ninah and Ryan went to Armani Exchange and then we headed to the hotel for a well deserved rest.
We found a sushi joint that looked good and headed up to the Tenderloin. Ninah and I shared a few sushi dishes while Ryan went totally vegetarian. Once again our meal was a little spicier than we had expected so much so that I couldn’t handle the seaweed salad sushi.
We used the heat from our sushi as an excuse to pop into a 24/hour donut joint for dessert. We each only had one donut, wow were they good!
We walked up the block to the hole in the wall Seth and I used to frequent called The Cinch, donuts in tow.
It was the hot tranny mess that I remembered. Fabulously messy. There was a drag show on that night, even better.
We hung around for one number and then decided to check out of there and get Ninah to her lesbian-mobile (aka Suburu).
Ninah brought us back here and now it’s time for bed. Goodnight!
Ryan needed a California Driver’s License for a job application so off to the DMV. We took the 21, got there in perfect timing, which was weird since most of our vacations, while fun, never fall on schedule.
Ryan made an appointment. Thank goodness, that places was packed. Though, I never have been to such an efficient DMV or DoR.
He passed the test, horray. Now he is officially a citizen of the great state of California, kinda. ;-)
Ever since the lasik I have felt that I’ve become a bit dyslexic and this was illustrated as we walked out of the DMV and found ourselves faced with a classic city hot dog stand.
However, what I saw was something different. Yes, they both sold hot dogs and both offered you two gallons of mustard and ketchup, just one pump away… But the one I saw had direction, had a message and was owned by Jesus, the son of God…
This is what I saw
I think it is a sign. I think what this tells us is that Jews can in fact consume ham, if it is good enough for Jesus… or maybe these were Kosher Jesus Hot Dogs. I’m still not sure.
We made it to San Francisco a couple of hours late, something to do with excessive traffic on the runway at SFO. So that kinda sucked but I got some work done with the extra time so I guess it wasn’t so bad.
Oh, but there is a problem. The car rental place closes at 6pm. Our plane landed at 4:15, we got our luggage at 4:45, we got on the Bart at 5:00 and we have a 50 minute ride to our stop and then a seven block, up hill walk to Avis with a 50lb suitecase and two carryons. If we don’t make it, we are screwed.
We make it. (meh, not in the mood to create rising action, straight to the dénouement)
Get the GPS, not dealing with getting lost at this point, not matter how well I know the city. Head to Santa Rosa. We meet up with Kayla and Jeana for some awesome Sushi. Awesome sushi. Of course, why wouldn’t it be awesome? It’s California sushi.
After dinner I give Ryan a tour of Santa Rosa. Where I worked, where I went to school, where I lived, where I hung out, it was way too exciting for me. The house where Seth and I lived was totally renovated and looks amazing.
So then we are off to the river house, where I lived when I first moved to California and where I ended my stint in California and where I will likely pick back up, my life in California. It was late, we were tired… I go to the door, insert my key, pull the handle, it opens.
Then, without hesitation, it slams itself closed.
I try again. It closes again.
We hear a voice speaking through the crack in the door, “Hello? Who is this?”. I reply, he opens the door a crack, tells us he needs to get dressed and asks if we can go through the back.
Get dressed? Ok? Back door, sure. We have what I can only guess was a rabid Australian Cattle Dog mixed-up-mutt threatening our lives with his backing, snarling and dripping canines. Vincent, the man who answered the door, the owner of the dog and the contractor on the house, insists the creature is harmless, and frantically lets us into the house. He shows us all the work he has done… blah blah, we certainly can’t stay there. I guess Vincent has taken to living there. Hmmm.
We make some calls, no one has a place for us and we end back, after touring through Healdsburg, back in Santa Rosa and we sleep in our car.
Thanks Home Depot parking lot. Meh, it wasn’t so bad, we woke up early, got some breakfast, met up with Callie and my old Starbucks customers and friends. And then it’s off to San Francisco.
Drop off the car, unload our luggage at the hotel, and then I go to lunch with my cousin Patrick at this great little place called Mario’s Cigar Shop. Fantastic paninis.
Despite sleeping in a rental car our first night in California, we had a blast.
Now the good. We had an absolute blast at Six FlagsSt. Louis. The park was pretty much dead on gay day, which was kinda sad, but it meant no wait for the rides!
It was just Ryan, Jenny and I at the park. Jeremy, his cousin and friend were on their own.
I had not been on a roller coaster in years. Probably not since before high school, so this was going to be a lot of fun. We road every ride, taking advantage of there being no lines.
After Six Flags we went to Jenny’s, took a nap, played with her puppy and then had a fantastic dinner with Geoffrey at this place called Duff’s.
Despite all the stress and trouble getting to St. Louis and getting around the city, we had a wonderful time.
The other day I wrote about needing a picture in order to post these days. That or unwrought emotion. Pictures are safer ;-)
So I went to Rock Bridge State Park to visit the Devil’s Icebox cave. It’s a pretty neat place, very cool, literally. It went from around 80-90 degrees to the 50’s in just a short trip down some stairs. It was fabulous.
The entrance is pretty majestic and daunting when you are alone. I just knew someone, or something, was going to get me as soon as I turned my back on the stairs and began my journey into the cave.
The cave is 11 kilometers deep, I went in about 50 feet before I decided that was enough. In my defense, I was carrying my Nikon D80, Tokina 10-17mm and my SB-600 flash. Plus I wasn’t wearing my “play clothes” haha. Oh, and there was the whole, no flashlight deal and the, is that a serial killer just around the bend waiting to kill me, thing. Yeah, I wasn’t paranoid at all.
All and all it was a fun little trip all by myself. It would have been a lot more fun had taken a friend with me and the proper cave exploring tools, like a lantern…
The temperature difference hit me pretty good and hard once I got out of the cave. Hot, humid and gross. Fogged up my lens pretty nicely but created an interesting effect on this picture.
Ahhh, even though I didn’t take but a few pictures, and even though the park is pretty damn boring, I had my fun.
Ryan and I decided to go the “green” route home from Chicago and took the new Megabus from Union Station to Union Station.
The bus was brand new, clean and pleasant. Nothing like the China Bus Ryan and I took to New York City from Washington DC. Nothing like that haha.
I would say that the Megabus is aimed at college students more than anyone else. You must make your reservations online which not only cuts costs but consequently prevents “bums” from getting on board. You have to have access to a computer with an internet connection and a credit card to make the reservation. I guess this is a good idea, maybe I just don’t have an opinion on it. I fear sounding elitist by saying it was nice to not have sketchy people on the seat across from you, that sounds bad so let’s just pretend I never typed it, k?
One interesting dynamic, a bit of Rosa Parks perhaps… The bottom floor of the double decker bus was inhabited by white middle to upper middle class girls. Not a boy or non-caucasian in sight. Go up the stairs and 90% black girls. There was one older Greek woman, two Asian boys and the two of us.
I guess the minorities were forced upstairs, no matter what minority you were in haha. The upstairs was nice though, more seats and a fantastic view, the downstairs has some seats facing other seats with a table in between. Magnificent! Next time we go we are going to take those seats so we can chit chat with others and play Blackjack or something. We played together, I won Blackjack but Ryan kicked my ASS in a game of War.
We made our first and unnecessary stop in Normal Illinois. The passenger we were waiting on never showed, boo to that.
Our second stop was at a truckstop/laundro-mat/restaurant/arcade/store… It was all sorts of white trash.
What more could you ask for? How about really fucking scary dolls?
Not enough? How about some “turn from sin, turn to Christ” cassette tapes. Yes, you read that right, cassettes.
One guy from the bus took of the boxes of tapes to the bus. The entire box. Lord only knows what he plans to do with them (pun not totally intended).
The entire place was pretty hilarious. I understand that truckers need a place to chill when on the road, a place to escape to outside of their trucks… But why does the place have to be so trashy?
The “Lounge” consisted of a couple of cheap metal chairs, a 19″ color television broadcasting the cliche Nascar race of the day and some neon lights of various colors hung haphazardly on the wall.
The smell was something else, wow.
We were given about thirty minutes to hang out there, get lunch at one of the nearby fast food establishments and just stretch out legs.
Of course, as with any stop, there has to be a few stupid people that disregard the time constraints. I swear, how do these people get through life? Three girls were left behind at Subway until someone yelled from upstairs to the downstairs of the girls running behind the bus a good fifty yards back.
Hilarious? Yes. Would I have liked for them to run an extra 100 yards? Of course.
We got into St. Louis despite the acts of God going on around us. The storms were so strong that they were pushing the bus between two different lanes. We got home safe and sound and then crashed, poor Ryan had to be at work five hours later!
All and all, I will definitely take the Megabus again, hopefully pretty soon!
So I’m here in Chicago at Starbucks and it’s out last day here. Actually, it’s our last half day here. How sad.
We have had a wonderful time here taking in the sites, hanging out with friends and bumping into friends we didn’t even know lived here!
Our first day here, we met outside of Orange. It is this really neat breakfast/brunch type cafe off Harrison near the library. I had not seen Ryan in a few weeks so that was a pretty special moment for us both.
We both enjoyed a delicious breakfast, Ryan had these waffle and fruit shish-kabobs and I had a simple small order of silver dollar pancakes and eggs. With the main course we had a tasty treat called Frushi. It’s fruit sushi and it’s really quite tasty. A little but on the sweet side but good none-the-less.
My early flight had me up around 5:00 am and Ryan was on the bus from like 11:00pm the day before. That being said, we were quite tired. We picked up our suitcases and proceeded to make the venture down State to our hotel stopping at a few sites along the way.
They fella who checked us into our hotel room was a nice enough guy but got on our nerves a little bit when he was moving our bed from a king to two double beds. He said a few times, “are you sure you want just one bed”, “are you sure, it’s a smaller room and just one bed”. I took this a little better than Ryan I think haha.
We got into our room and took a little nap before exploring the city. When we woke up Ryan showed me the surprise he had gotten us. A Canon SD870-IS. I was way excited. For a few weeks I had been looking at getting a new point and shoot digital camera focusing my efforts on the Canon SD1100-IS. It is a more expensive, supposedly higher-end camera.
After Ryan’s careful research, and famous frugalness, he decided on the 870-IS. And as it turns out, it is a better camera. You do sacrifice the viewfinder in favor of the large LCD, but you gain in the zoom but 0.8x and the image stabilization is in the lens not the CCD which is really a better way at doing it.
Oh, and despite not having a viewfinder and relying on the screen as the only way to view your shot before you take it, it gets something like 30 extra shots per battery charge.
Ryan and I took the new camera with us when we went out that night to Pizzaria Uno, Starbucks, and wherever else we wandered. I really cannot even remember haha.
Sadly, when I was trying to quickly switch from the computer to shoot some video of this guy collecting milk jug caps, I corrupted the secure digital card, or at least the data on the card. So all those pics and videos were lost. Sad. Here is a video I made with the new camera, Jason Mraz’s new song playing in the background. It’s 20 minutes of Starbucks activity squished into 4 minutes.
After some consoling from Ryan and me pouting a good while, we headed out for dinner. As we waited for the Red Line to show up we noticed this gaggle of straight guys trying to figure out the CTA system. There were with a girl and all acting the stereotypical way that hot straight jocks act.
Well, all but one. He was acting the way a stereotypical in-the-closet gay jock acts. It was pretty hilarious. he would brush up against the other guys for no reason, start wrestling fights out of no where… It was so obvious I could not believe that the other guys weren’t catching on.
We were so enraptured by the scene before us that we almost missed two fellow Columbians-come-Chicagoans walking onto the terminal. Tom and his girlfriend!
I have never talked about this couple on my blog. Tom was to pledge Acacia back in the day and I might have suggested that he rethink that. At that time Acacia wasn’t for him and while I could see that, most of the other guys could not. He would have been a guy that was burned by Acacia and I didn’t want to see that.
We have been friends or sorts ever since then and I used to bump into him and his girlfriend all the time in Columbia. It would seem that everyday I would see at least one of them in the most bizarre places.
And what do you know, here I am in a random city in America on one of only two nights in the city on a subway station that they have never been to since they never go to downtown and there they are. They just happened to be visiting his girlfriend’s mother downtown.
We didn’t hang out but we did chat for a bit, it was so fun to see them. Of course Ryan took this as a chance to make fun of me. He seems to think I know too many people because everywhere we go together I know someone. When we first started dating we couldn’t walk ten feet without someone saying hi to me.
We finally made it to Boys Town where our dinner was scheduled to be. Unfortunately Chicago Diner, a vegetarian restaurant, was closing. Nevermind that their hours sated they had one more hour before closing… grrr
They were nice though and sent us to The Pick Me Up. It was a really neat inde-punk rock-emo-hipster half vegetarian restaurant. We had these AWESOME empanadas, wow.
On the way home from The Pick Me Up we bumped into our sexually confused friend from the subway just a few hours earlier. He and his buddies had gotten off a few stops before us but here he was with two of his friends in Boys Town. They were both saying something along the lines of, “Dude, I just don’t feel comfortable around you right now” and “I feel a little weird about you”… I guess he got a few drink in him and finally made his move haha, something Ryan and I had joked about earlier.
Went home, slept, I woke up early to do some work, we met up with Brett and his really great boyfriend for brunch at The Bongo Room. Awesome brunch followed by some shopping down Michigan Avenue and tea at Argo. We need an Argo in Columbia.
Ryan and I broke off from the fun couple and went back to the hotel for a quick nap. Woke up, got all cleaned up and headed to the Chicago Diner again. On the train with us was this guy that looked quite a bit like Chadd, to me at least.
Well worth the second chance. The food was delicious and the service great. Did I mention how good the food was? Before we had even finished dinner I had ordered a copy of their cookbook off Amazon.com haha. You should get a copy too. It is worth it.
We went to a couple of local shops, met a guy named Paris who said I’d be screaming his name in bed that night, he was fun. Apparently Rhianna was there just a couple of days ago. Damn us for not being there at the same time. I would have loved to have met Jay-Z’s alleged ex gay on the side.
Off to Whole Foods and then the Center which is one of the coolest gay advocate sites I had ever been to. We walked around Boys Town for a bit more before going into a bar called Side Track.
Great bar. If you go to Chicago you must go to Side Track. Great drinks, friendly bartenders and fantastic music videos all around. We befriended a bartender named John who works the fourth floor bar there, outside. He is a paramedic just like Ryan and is going to school for journalism. He was such a nice guy, bought us each a Jagerbomb. Tasty.
We went through all of the bar within Side Track. I think there were five… Really quite the classy place.
Then off to Berlin where we almost met this potentially really cool, accidentally hipster-emo fellow who was actually probably just really dorky but we both thought was probably nice and incredibly shy. Unfortunately we are just as shy and we didn’t break the ice though I did make several attempts.
Back to the hotel room, back to sleep, whew. I woke up early to get online and blog this with some pictures and a video I did at Starbucks but AT&T’s internet is down. Boo.
Oh yeah, and I got a free hug!
Well I’m going to wake up Ryan. We don’t have much time left in Chicago so we gotta make the best of it!
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