October magic. It’s what they used to say about your baseball team when they made it into the playoffs, it’s how you feel when you see your Halloween costume on for the first time. Something wonderful this way comes, and when they say the Most Wonderful Time of the Year on other days– well, I can’t help but think Hallmark is wrong.
In California, it’s a different kind of magic. The weather up along the coast is warmer for only so long and the Pacific looks bluer, when you make your way out to it. The way we did, it was a backroad, a bypass I never knew existed having only gone up and down the 1 so many times. But there’s dry hills there, a lake we pass over, dark trees scattered at the bases of this new landscape that are usually dusted by the Marine layer. It was a lucky day to be experiencing this magic, discovering a new road and just like that it brought you back to the past. The last time I was in Half Moon Bay was five years ago. I wore a funny outfit with tights worn under shorts and long leather boots with a white fleece scarf– in the spring. We were exploring the town, family and I, and my sister’s ex boyfriend who wasn’t really supposed to end up an ex. Everything was green and the houses around the Main Street seemed beautifully aged, not old. Today things seemed old, a bit run-down, but resigned. Happy. They live the good life out here on the water, far enough from the city yet close enough to be the perfect day getaway for anyone looking for a bit of that magic.
Scenes of Half Moon Bay, 2012.By the sea
And when you come here, to the waterfront, the Brewery where dogs lounge below in the shades of the tables, kicking up the dirt at the many pumpkin patches lining that backroad in between the cracks of the foothills smothered in sunshine, you better not be alone. Have a dog, it’s the best. Have a sister, she’s truly your best friend. And have a partner, a lover, the love of your life so that when you experience days about on small adventures like this, you can actually stare into each other’s eyes and feel blessed that though one day, there will be other days to follow. A small party to take in the day, to sit around in a car while music from high school is blasted driving along the same waves where the Mavericks happen. Too many people make you feel alone, makes the moment forgettable. Too many people might make you forget that you’re wanted.
2012
2017
Half Moon Bay is a little known treasure to those within the Bay Area. And we all know the best time to see it is now, on a sunny day in October when the small town is glowing, explaining its most popular even the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. It’s a pasture of heaven, worth the drive, a true breath of fresh air for anyone longing to feel those true affects of change during the fall. Change for the best, in this case, as you see the town get comfortable in its own skin beneath the sun.
There is no reddening foliage from the few trees, no log cabins, no crisp cool air or button-up plaid. This is fall in California. Almost perfect, a bit off, never-changing. It stays the same– and it only matters if, as the visitor, it has changed you.
The fog might thin and the heat may swelter, but then this city becomes a gem that’s fallen out of a dream and into the hands of women in rompers and boys who wander parks wth coconuts filled with rum and falling shades. I sat there by the Phoenix poolside and on the slopes of Dolores waiting any minute to die and truly find that Heaven was nice, but it wasn’t San Francisco.
Old friends and new fancies, what more could you ask for a weekend staying in the City?
The breeze isn’t too bad when the sun is out, and the J-car that cuts through the steep side of Dolores Park and on tracks behind mossy Victorian houses is perhaps the prettiest rail line of Muni. I made these plans on a whim earlier in the week more so because of an irrational longing for tea. It’s been a frustrating complex, coming back from London obsessed with the lighter, aromatic luxury that tea feels like, versus the creamy, stiff but heartwarming sweetness of coffee– American style. I am a woman in peril, unsure of which beverage to which I pledge my allegiance. No matter the reason for tea, reason is treason– perhaps this was the British’s secret weapon all along to win back Americans: not Bond, not Harry Potter, not actors from Game of Thrones– but the simple opulence of tea time, and the various flavors that entice you to your liking.
Lovejoy’s Tea Room, Noe Valley.
Tea is best enjoyed alone, I think. When you finally have a book or book of stories to read and a delicate mug or teacup to really take in the taste, to repose against a lumpy couch or at the kitchen table, it doesn’t matter. But there are exceptions, when there is no book to be had but a favorite familiar face, a face of a friend from the old stationery store you two worked together at and saw the worst of people losing their shit over paper goods. She gets there at the tea room, Lovejoy’s, in Noe Valley just off of the J line, and she’s with her roommate you’re meeting for the first time and that she’s been living with in Martinez for a year. Martinez! When we last met up she was living in Potrero Hill, and I feel instantly bad about making them both drive all the way from the far East Bay to here. But queue the piping hot pots of black vanilla-lavender tea and trays serving fresh fruit and perfectly-sliced sandwiches and all is forgiven. We talk about Europe, how I adored London and missed Belgium and was taken aback by the dirtiness, sadness of Paris. Everything feels sincere too, my friend is a dear. She’s the sweetest person I’ve ever worked with and she’s always in good company. This time, her roommate and I discover we’re both INFPs and I’m doing my best to help her prep for her first visit to Paris, even if my view of the City of Light was rather dim.
The magical array of teacups for sale at Lovejoy’s Attic, across the street from the tea room.
Summer tea is a real thing. The warmth, the calming feeling and always best enjoyed in the evening when the days are longer. Best enjoyed with friends. Best enjoyed no matter where you are during the summer months. Ralph Waldo Emerson figured it out–
“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
Ocean Beach, San Francisco.
The following day when the sea called and the sun was out, the only thing left to do was drink in the air. Best served up salty, cool, and spraying against your feet in the dark sand. Summer tea has no real formula, but just for this weekend, that’s the kind of taste that leaves you wanting more– and to share it with favorite faces, always.
It was well quoted in high school, and occasionally reemerges as a meme for this month as October 3rd does for October 3rd in light of further 2000s nostalgia. I’m talking about the line, wake me up when September ends. A simple, vague declaration universal to the feeling of trying to forget, moving on. It’s a lyric of a song from the band to whom I most certainly do owe most of my creative individuality towards, Green Day.
However, I am reveling in this September. For starters, new faces in my life as my favorite season approaches, the season that symbolizes new changes on the horizon, and seemingly all good, and not just for myself. Those around me are finding themselves driving their dream cars, emerging victorious from the perils of the BAR exam, and within three months time, travels to New York will begin again. But for the moment, the new change I enjoy is that of great company and chasing the dream that is finally seeing Green Day in concert. And a concert wouldn’t be coming without the release of their latest album, Revolution Radio. Oh god. A new one. They’re still here. The lifelong dream lives on– in the wake of a season where change is interchangeable with fading.
YES YES YES. Out October 7th.
I was fourteen when I started listening to the music I swear by now, and Green Day was the band that did it. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was a soft yet emotionally-rigged tune that I was told by my sister would be a song I’d enjoy, and lovable songs in the mid-2ooos for me were definitely hard to come across. I was totally immersed in my (undying) love for strictly classical and old jazz, and anything outside those realms were just trash. And coming from my sister who was infatuated with all Ashanti/ Ja Rule and Nelly hits on the radio, suggesting an alternative rock ballad was quite out of left field for the both of us. I was hesitant– and one day, there it played on the radio. It wasn’t that bad, it wasn’t overkill for me. It was a slow but endearing song with a soft piano in the works and a haunting chorus. What my parents considered a downward spiral for me musically was just the beginning of becoming a new Paris, unique and self-fulfilling.
My preppy-turned-awkward punk/hippie years in high school are not the most aesthetically-pleasing to look at in old photos. As terrible as I looked you can equally see how happy I was, blissfully ignorant of my teenage phase yet doe-eyed and hopeful. I traded low-heeled Mary Janes for black Chuck Taylors and started my high school’s first environmentally- focused club. In skinny jeans I trusted alongside my studded belt to walk into my counselor’s office to discuss applying for college…it was only the beginning of sophomore year. By 2009 I was set for USF and a new chapter in my city, and I’d built up an adequate playlist on which to live this life to. And then that summer, before heading off, my favorite band gave me “Viva La Gloria!” Another fierce anthem that really resonated with me and my passions for the future. Trying to revolutionize and change the world with what I thought I knew at the time and through purely terrible writings. This was an aspiring writer who thought it was all figured out, ready to burn the world with her work and a kickass song singing praises to a punk heroine created by her first artistic and relatively hometown heroes.
As Fall approaches the City.
And this would all fade– life would laugh at these ideals of mine as I actually got out beyond the suburbs. But later on, as I sat at my desk in an office high rise overlooking downtown San Francisco, contentedly listening to all Green Day again, I crossed paths with Gloria. That raging, loving, passionate-to-burn-all fury that motivated me for my future was coming back in just a few minutes of a song. And I couldn’t have listened to “Viva La Gloria!” at a more inspiring week. I’ve only gone on about my music and punk heroes of high school past because I tend to get caught up nostalgia– and it only added to a memorable start to the fall. Looking back at last year, there was so much uncertainly and almost fear about the coming season. Fall marks change, but in contrast to before, today, now, and in my future I only wish I could put change on hold– to make these memories last. Gone are the first excitements of your parents finally meeting the person you sincerely adore, the person who keeps surprising you in new and wonderful ways that make you seem not alone any more, as alone as I had been in these past few months. Gone is when you and that person roamed Polk Street for what seemed like forever for a bathroom until sprinting into Grubstake Diner and leaving with the best grilled shrimp you ever tasted. Gone is that moment you woke up next to their face whose look you’ll never forget– someone so happy you’re by their side. So happy that they try to make these dreams of yours come true, determined and headstrong to find a pair of tickets to see Green Day with you– even if tickets are already sold out for all upcoming shows.
And also gone now, borne ceaselessly back into the past as Fitzgerald would have liked it, was a dream of a Sunday, a well lived fantasy that only came true for a single afternoon. Here we were, you and I , you in your gray driving hat and I in my wine-stained white dress and sunhat draped in pearls and lounging on a blanket beneath the sun and vintage cars as someone out by the distant dance floor sang “The Very Thought of You” almost sounding like Lady Day. Nothing quite felt like The Gatsby Summer Afternoonbefore in my life, and never did I think I would have that feeling in the first place. It was a fanciful and expensive little event I always had eyes for but couldn’t afford or couldn’t convince anyone to go to. This was another Cinderella moment in which magic brought me back in time, to 1922 when I could we enjoy all things from a simpler time and in each other’s company– because without you, in your gray hat and red tie, this magical moment would not have been made possible. Never stop surprising me, never stop being wonderful, and for now, never stop being this perfect in the moment.
Owe my beauty look of the day to Bésame Cosmetics.
That is my September thus far. And I’m not ready to wake up. Gloria is back and ready to tackle the bright future before her, the chance to chase another lifelong dream again, but she deserves some rest before the big battle.
Once upon a time two little girls watched a truly remarkable film. The younger sister was eight years old and was still caught up in silly, childish things like fairy tales. Something about the mischief of creatures who could have existed in the world and the magic they bestowed upon plain old humans as a means to guidance on their everyday plights struck a deep cord within her little, innocent soul. She could not wait to see this film, and after watching it she was forever drawn to the beautiful costumes, breathtaking scenes of misty hills and lush woods where French castles were strewn about, filmed in hazy but heavenly-like cinematography where each scene has a golden or blue-rinsed glow. This film, Ever After, was indeed a fairy tale of a beloved classic, but just as it seemed magical, the story itself was far from any magic.
The realist twist on Ever After would become a deep-seeded passion of the little girl’s own storytelling in the years to come. She would grow into a young woman who would move away to a not so far away land, and in not finding her prince, but redefining the limits and possibilities of becoming her own princess, would endure obstacles all as equally harrowing were they conjured by the most evil and terrifying magic. She would lose all her money, become confined the wretched house in the country she had once loved, but somehow escape 2 years in a life of servitude towards the art of papery. Friends she had once known and even new faces would turn on her online. But for awhile, she’d found solstice in a man she’d been in love with, a potential prince and True Love and all those things she’d believed in for so long. But when these things eroded, so was her peace of mind– slowly caving into the stark realization that fairy tales were perhaps just that, for a reason. Nonexistent, fanciful; nothing near now. But she would also remember that in the midst of tragedy, that never meant in a story that it was the end.
As for this girl, her sister was just as firm of a believer of fairy tales as she. Just as firm as the weight of a weary world wrecked havoc in her own life, too. Forced to miss the parties in college and spring break voyages for a paycheck, the determined and loving sister did what she must for helping the family, keeping love and sanity at once, and sometimes at the sacrifice of her own. And just when she thought she would be rewarded for such valor, none was in sight. With every love came a heavy heartbreak that seemed to worsen with time, with waning patience. Her love was too much. She was taught that love was her most valuable gift to the world, but only few men could realize it. Sadly, they were the ones she had met.
Two sisters, one wishing and hoping– and the other just not sure anymore. The eldest still waits and tries in vain to change each toad that comes along to be the Prince we all deserved, and neither of them deserving of her love. But for the life the latter sister leads now, it’s her own fairy tale still in the making, and were it ended there then all would be happily ever after– RIGHT NOW. So it’s not over yet, but she hopes the end is near. It’s just a handful of more adventures to be had until then, like the mid-morning feasts across the city of San Francisco and sunlit parties by a poolside of a beautiful retrofied hotel where a dear friend might snap her photos as she dipped her little feet into the cool blue water. Topless green-haired men and women are making out, the magic of mermaids; the closest thing to them she’s encountered. She has found that at times, being in San Francisco is as magical as things might get. Her sister does not think so; it’s a wasteland filled with greedy people and loveless, handsome men. She’s gone away from this place to find love– but whether the love really exists no matter where they are, that is a quest both sisters unite in discovering together.
Until those moments can align, it was in this week that both forget their own troubles and twisted plots to rejoice in a movie that made them believe so long ago.
Happy Monday, readers! Those who already enjoy my weekly musings on living in San Francisco might enjoy my book chronicling my first year spent in the City by the Bay.
DAY 2: The warmth of rustic throw blankets they give out at Uno Dos
DAY 3: Chinese fried popcorn chicken next door to Buddha Lounge
DAY 4: Your favorite song by the 1975 ends their concert in the rain at The Greek Theater (“Sex”)
DAY 6: Withstanding 4 glasses of Mimoasas and standing on the Ferry Boat across the Bay from Tiburon
It’s now another Sunday, a blooming spring early afternoon thinking fondly back to these old habits of mine, refusing to die. Despite them being in the shape of cocktails I’ve kept tight hold on the wonderful memories of these past few nights. But Day 5, you might wonder?
There was surely something beautiful, witnessed when sober. Thankfully so or I would not have crossed paths with this uniquely set scene of a man who took shelter in the entrance of a Subway sandwich shop. I didn’t know him. I’ll never see him again. But for seeing him there, cramped with his head bowed and perhaps pleased at what home he’d made that evening. For with the large, yellow sign tethered to the shop’s front awning, it must have felt like this was an arrangement from the Heavens themselves, the perfect GRAND OPENING and not for sandwiches.
At last, I’d like to think that the sign was for that man. A beautiful coincidence or a modest little blessing.
You don’t realize how broke you really are in San Francisco until Pay Day.
In your mind, the moment you see that bank statement you’re running through all the things you need, you want, and want to do–any way to spend that money as fast as it was put into your account. You think all this upon feeling richer and right before this city punches you in the gut, back to reality, by its price tags.
With this surge of a new Golden Era (can be disputed) for San Francisco’s economy, having the big boys of tech in town means catering to them– and not without the opportunity to reap benefits. The only way to go is up nowadays– and there is a hidden mass of denizens inversely sinking under. Including myself at times. I’ve learned to stay afloat as smartly as I can– opting out from $140 splurges on purple fedoras from Goorin Bros. and Philz coffee every damn day.
The sure signs of financial disparity within the city can be seen on a grander scale as well. An older scale; the demise of what people call the “legacy” businesses that have been around before I was even born and are usually landmarks or driving forces of microhoods/ local communities surround them. From a span of businesses catering to different demographics, all that Lexington Club’s lesbians, the kitschy cocktailers at Empress of China, and even the diamond gals whose FiDi husbands frequented Shreve & Co. can unify on is the unfortunate and bitter end of each. Shreve & Co. still lives on down the street in a new location, but how much longer can a soul survive without its true vessel?
Back on a broke note, I found myself with friends at the Elbo Room for the middle echelon of the Mission. Crowded, campy, and dark with voyeuristic vibes of being inside the confines of a circus organ, there was something so alive and gracious and graceful about it. Perhaps it’s because they too are doomed; set to leave this place gone and chained up for some new artisan/craft business that can afford the high lease– and these last remaining nights are a swan dive. It’s graceful, but not entirely generous. Feeling tired and nostalgic, no drink would do, but at least a soda water with a lime on the rm makes you look less of a prude. It was $2.50. For water. So maybe they’re just trying to take what cash they can from the joint. I can’t say this is the first time that’s happened with me and water either. San Francisco, God save you.
There’s some hope. Election is around the corner and thanks to the pamphlet from the League of Pissed Off Voters I got while waiting in line at the Make Out Room earlier in the night, there’s good signs of room for potential improvement and preservation. But life as we know it in this city somehow always falls short of locals’ ideals for how the city should be– how it used to be. Hippies of the 60s will always want the SF of the 60s as the 20-year transplants will always long for the first tech boom of the 90s; the Hey Day phenomenon only goes to show that no, it’s really not that bad now– this too shall pass, and something better– or worse might come along. If I could vote in SF I would. Still, what I read in line from that pamphlet gave me enough hope that legacy businesses will survive and people won’t get evicted from their homes– people are taking notice and not without change.
So I shall always love you, city by the bay of mine. For whatever iteration of yourself you become in the decades to pass, everyone will have nights like at the Elbo Room in photo booths , walking around the North Beach twilight, and sometimes coffee shops on seedy corners, face to face with acquaintances that offer much needed company. Not everyone will like you as you exist in the now, especially at your most expensive– but always, they will love certain things that surprisingly, cost nothing.
October 5 – October 11 And TGIF– thank God it (was) Fleet Week!
I actually didn’t even realize that it was Fleet Week until Thursday, when #BlueAngels failed to reach my social media feeds in time for the panic attacks my coworkers and I would suffer every 20 minutes or so. Working 40 floors up and in the midst of downtown San Francisco has its perks, but also its share of risks. No, there have been days where I scope around the clouds and down to the sprawl below for any signs of an earthquake or a plane that– knock on wood– just might crash into my office.
But oh, rooftops are a joy. Always they’ve just captured my heart and have never disappointed. Just feeling so isolated from the norm, being alone– it’s like gathering your imagination in a corner to really piece it apart; and up in the clouds there’s room for it to breathe. You couldn’t quite imagine the joy I felt in discovering that in getting away from the restraints of one rooftop at work, I found solace in another not even a block away.
Overlooking The Palace Hotel on Market, from the Crocker Galleria
Not far below but still high up, the rooftop terrace at the Crocker Galleria overlooks the intersections of Market and Montgomery Street. The benches are whimsically chopped into single seats and plastered against wild hedges flourishing in unison with lavender and other flowers I fail to name– pink ones. All is pretty and calming, and many fail to know of all its existence. San Francisco is stingy like that, about their rooftop gems. To enjoy them you have to know where they are first, but even recalling how you ever knew to begin with gets lost in your mind over time and with each revisit. These lonely roofs seem different from New York in that they don’t make a spectacle of their surroundings– they are the spectacles themselves. Imagination can run wild up here, even fly.
Even way back in college I wrote about their magnificence. It was one of my most praised pieces of poetry from that class in that I not only wrote so well of the benches and sparkling lights casting a glow on the gardens surrounded by the skyline, but finding that if there was something better out there for Peter Pan, these rooftop gardens would be the place. As I remember in my last lines, from the rough draft (for some reason these early lines strike a chord in me always),
And if they were to fall over that edge,
their deaths would not be in vain.
You can just envision these places as part of the flight to Neverland… after all, San Francisco is often observed today as the land of Lost Boys.
Flying attempts with my sister (right) and uncle (left)
And so be it. With days like jets soaring by and breaking all sound barriers and nights spent atop rooftops or even just by attempting to climb back into apartment windows– and it didn’t seem like climbing; the witch’s hat and rum were all that assured us we were in fact flying– well we’ve all come to the right place.
And the Edens among the roofs wait for our takeoffs, there and patient to confirm this truth.
A Week by the Bay 