New to the Bay

Traffic court.

2010-03-03T09:41:00.000-08:00

So I had this car for two months. And y'all, it was ridiculous. I live in the mission - an outer corner of the mission, but the mission - and parking sucks. Constantly on watch for new spaces, memorizing the street cleaning days, moving that thing just for the sake of moving it. Don't get me wrong, there are awesome things about having a car - like being two and a half hours from Monterey, or going to Ikea. But seriously? Zipcar for that shit. No more cars ever again for me. But I did have one for two months.

In that two months, I managed to blow a headlight and totally forget about it since I never drove the thing. Lucky for me, San Francisco's finest were on the scene to remind me. I got a ticket. This ticket has one option: put in a new headlight, then "just have any police officer sign the ticket". Yeah, cool. What am I going to do? Speed up behind one and flash my new headlights at them and they'll totally know what that means? I don't know if YOU have tried to flag down a police officer to sign your headlight ticket lately, but they sort of have better things to do.

But it was a lease, right? And I returned the car on the 26th of February, and my "do this by this day" ticket was for the 4th of March. I told this to the officer as he was writing my ticket, and he told me I could come in with my lease paperwork and just show them that I didn't have the car anymore.

I go down to traffic court today (the day before my very last chance GIVE ME A BREAK IT HAS BEEN RAINING) and first of all, I go through the metal detector. With my bag. The surly lady that watches all of your wine openers go through the machine asks me "Do you have a wine opener in your bag?" The answer they don't want to hear is "Oh, probably." Because of course I have a wine opener in my bag. This was the bag I took to Monterey last weekend and I obviously needed a wine opener if I was going to be in a hotel, but it doesn't matter because I would probably have one anyway. So she tells me it has a knife and that I can't bring it in to traffic court. I ask her what I should do with it, and she tells me to put it in my car. I tell her I don't have a car, and she tells me, verbatim "You can try hiding it somewhere outside." Laughing out loud wasn't the response she wanted, but I legitimately thought she was joking.

Wine openers can, if done with great force, be shoved between the rails of a bicycle saddle and tucked up under there. YOU'RE WELCOME.

So I stand in line for 25 minutes and finally get to a human, who tells me he can help me out with this, then tells me it's time to pay the $25 compliance fee. California, I hate you. Compliance fee? I pay you $25 because I did what I was supposed to do? I mean, jesus. He then tells me that what he is SUPPOSED to do is schedule me a court date in June, but since my situation is "unique", he's letting me slide.

Out of pure curiosity, what do you imagine happens in that court date? I show up four months after I've gotten rid of the car to plead my case? A judge - presumably someone who paid a real ridiculous amount of money to go to law school, and presumably costs the state a shitload of money per hour - looks at the same piece of paper from Honda that I just showed the traffic clerk? Do I cry and say that I'll never do it again? Because I won't. Because I don't have a car.

The whole process was just ridiculous. It's a headlight. And look, I know, you should have headlights. Hell, I ride a bike. I want everyone behind me to have headlights. Get seven of 'em. I want to see you coming. So I get it. But, seriously, mandatory scheduled court dates for a blown headlight bulb? It's a little much. I have ideas on how we might close that budget gap I'm hearing so much about.

Happy anniversary.

2009-08-31T20:54:00.000-07:00

My college gallery opening had a program of sorts, where all the graduates gave a short bio and quote. The end of mine was "It's been a good run - here's to the rest of it."

This time one year ago, I was zipping up my suitcases. I had to wake up early to catch my 6 a.m. flight out of Dayton, so I'm pretty sure I tried to go to bed early. I didn't take much. I assumed I'd just buy everything again when I got to San Francisco.

I didn't have a job. I didn't have an apartment. Thanks to an overlooked exit counseling session, I didn't even have my real diploma in my hand yet. The $1500 I had received three months earlier as a combination of graduation presents had long run out and I was living my life on a slowly dwindling credit card limit. I owned a house, I had a life, and now I was going across the country on a one way plane ticket in two suitcases. I don't do terrified very well, but I managed to figure it out for that day. It wasn't exciting. It wasn't exhilarating. It was awful.

So I arrived in San Francisco and I settled down to do whatever it is you do when you're 23 and you just gave your life up. I found a one month sublet for $600. It was 10x10 and couldn't hardly fit my bike and didn't have a kitchen. It had a bay window that looked onto 18th street and the sun woke me up every morning. I needed that bay window. I didn't have much to get me up in the mornings and having a natural, warm alarm clock will always be my favorite memory of San Francisco.

I broke my collar bone 18 days after moving here. It pissed me off. I had no money and no future and now I couldn't even put my own shirt on. Ten days later I scored a $700 freelance job that paid my rent for October in the new apartment that Harry and I found. It was the first money I made since graduation. I paid my rent, bought a burrito, and stored the remaining $150 away in the hopes that it would feed me for a month.

Things got better. I got another freelance contract, one that I still hold today with an incredible company that was really the first to take an interest in me out here. I took a job for a few months in Silicon Valley that just wasn't right for me and learned a few huge lessons about how I wanted my professional life to start. I returned to freelancing and have managed to make a pretty strong go at it. I've been overbooked for a month and a half and while it would be inappropriate to say that this might be things turning around, let's just say I'm hopeful.

It has been a heartbreaking year in a lot of ways. Say what you will about personal growth and learning, but none of it comes all that easy. I have not fallen in love with San Francisco the way everyone else seems to, but I'm slowly making my place here. I have a favorite bar. I have a couple of favorite restaurants. I've been car-free for over a year and have managed to do all the traveling I need to on a bicycle, something I wouldn't have ever believed was possible a year and a half ago.

I miss everybody and I miss everything. Being on the west coast when everyone you love is at least two time zones away is awful. I've become a much more internal person since moving here, and perhaps that's okay. I'm a little smarter, a little more calculated, a little more careful. But at the same time, it's the most unrestrained I've ever been. There's nothing glamorous about this life - it's a whole lot of Tecate on our roof deck, and a whole lot of $5 burritos because they can last me for two meals - but it is a life that's completely fluid and unpredictable and it's exactly what I needed to do.

San Francisco, I've been real hard on you this year. You are expensive and a little hard to get around and I'm pretty negative about you sometimes. So here's to all the Tecate on the roof deck. Here's to freezing at night because it's California and I'm too stubborn to wear a jacket somewhere that sounds like it should be warm. Here's to appreciating every single sunny day at Dolores Park, to burritos the size of my face, to street food regardless of whether it's made by 30 year residents selling bacon-wrapped hot dogs or new residents with push carts. Here's to your ridiculously beautiful neighborhoods, your ocean, your bay, your wine country.

Harry's quote was "This is it, kids, we're going to live forever. We're part of the story now." Breaking a collarbone 18 days after you throw caution to the wind and move across the country discounts your invincibility a little bit, but I think I'll hold on to it for a little while longer. It's been a good run, San Francisco. Here's to the rest of it.

Suisun Valley

2009-07-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

I've been absent lately, thanks to a couple of things - first it was work, then it might have just been laziness, and last week it was a quite tragic event in my favorite roommate's life that called us both back to the midwest for a week. I also visited LA this weekend, cementing the idea that I can't ever live somewhere where I would need to own a car again, but that's scarcely the point.

A time before that, we traveled to the Suisun Valley to do a 20 mile bike loop and get my first exposure to wine country. A good friend with a wine blog asked me to guest write for her while she's on a cruise in Alaska, and this was my first idea. So, head on over to Michelle's blog to see my guest post for her, Visiting the Suisun Valley Wine Country. And I promise we'll all catch up soon.

Ha!

2009-06-07T01:10:00.000-07:00

So, I'm involved in the 48 Hour Film Festival here this weekend... which means you, my dear readers, may have seen a super questionable title on this here blog sometime in the past 24 hours because we needed a blog window to shoot and the title needed to not be "New to the Bay". And then we ran to film another scene, which meant I totally forgot to change it back, and I just realized 14 hours later that I had done something really stupid. My apologies to any readers whose sensibilities might have been offended. :)

Also, this is a shameless plug to come see our film on June 15th at the Roxie. And while you're at it, come see all of them. They might be awful, but it might also be a lot of fun.

Love for Zipcar.

2009-06-04T17:07:00.001-07:00

My mother asked me a few months ago what I wanted for my birthday. I'm not very good with "stuff" - I live and work in a studio apartment with another person, and we have very little furniture in it, so finding a place to keep new things is tricky. I also don't really need anything - I've lived here for nine months with the things I have now, and I can't really come up with a tangible thing that would make my life better or easier.

What I did know is that I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted to do something. While I like to preach about how great riding bikes is, and I go on and on about how fabulous the public transportation options are around here, it's not always easy to do the things I want to do. We don't keep food in the house because we can only transport what our shoulder bags can carry. (I know racks and panniers are an option, but I'm already on a 40 pound, 30 year old bike. There's only so much extra weight I'm into right now.) The Roommate has family up north that we don't see very often because the bus + bike combo to their place would literally take us three hours one way, which is not ideal for a Saturday day trip.

Perhaps the solution is obvious to the rest of you, but it took a little while to become obvious to me: I wanted a Zipcar membership.

Zipcar, for anyone not living in a major city, is a car sharing program. You get a membership, and it gives you access to cars at hundreds of locations for an hourly or day rate. Want to go to the grocery store but can't buy more than you can carry? Get a Zipcar for an hour. Day trips up to see the family? Cars start at $69 for the day. And while that's a little hefty for a rental car, it requires zero advance planning. I can get a car in fifteen minutes. And my closest Enterprise lot closes at 1:00 on Saturdays and isn't open on Sunday, so a Saturday day trip would actually be a two day rental.

Plus, Zipcar pays for your gas and insurance. I don't have my own car insurance - since I don't have my own car - so this is an extra charge that traditional rental car companies have to charge me. I'm also still under 25 for a few months, and Zipcar only requires you be 21+.

I've rented from them three times now, and every experience has been great. I've had to call them for various reasons - a check engine light was on, someone forgot their jacket in my car, etc. - and they're always quick to answer and very helpful. A phone call with the press of one button extends your reservation another 30 minutes, which is helpful for the hourly rentals when your trip hits an unexpected snag.

I pay for their yearly membership rather than a monthly thing, because I just don't drive very much. It's worth $50 a year to me to have the convenience of a car whenever I want it. Carless members of large cities, I can't speak highly enough about them. Check them out at Zipcar.com.

Left Coast Smoke.

2009-06-02T14:02:00.000-07:00

I was born in Kansas City. For the first eighteen years of my life, my blood was part barbecue sauce. I just can't get enough of it. Sure, I'm partial to my hometown's style, but since I've left, I'll eat just about any of it. Memphis, Carolina, Dallas - bring it all on. Barbecue transplants can't be so picky.

I was sitting inside Shotwell's, my regularly mentioned favorite bar, when one of the bartenders, Dean, mentioned that he was thinking about starting a food cart. Barbecue, he says. Pulled pork sandwiches to start, with slaw and a couple of different sauces.

I became entirely too excited. Way, way too excited. The barbecue options - good, solid sandwiches with pulled, well-smoked meat, drenched in sauce - are few and far between in my neck of the woods. There are a couple of restaurants on Mission that call themselves barbecue, and I certainly mean no offense to their establishments, but they haven't been what I was looking for. I wanted barbecue, and Dean was offering me my chance.

I was worried that we wouldn't end up seeing the fruits of this labor any time soon, but sure enough, I got to be a taste tester the very next Sunday. I fell in love and couldn't get the sandwich out of my head.

They've got a sort of floating campground setup. A crockpot to keep previously-smoked meat warm, and then they heat it up for you, along with lightly toasting the buns, on their electric griddle. There's a tomato-based spicy sauce and a mustard-based milder sauce that's more Carolina style.

They're frequenting bars in the Mission on a fairly regular schedule. I know they're at Shotwell's on Mondays (6-8), and I've heard rumors of them showing up at The Knockout and 500 Club. Stop by and introduce yourself. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. A sandwich with a generous portion of meat, your choice of sauce and a side of slaw will run you $6. You can track them on twitter at @leftcoastsmoke. Good guys, good food. And my answer to beer+barbecue in the Mission.

Edited to add: I ran into Dean and John last night. They're at The Knockout on Thursdays.

Learning.

2009-06-01T15:47:00.001-07:00

Despite living here for nine months as of today, there's still a lot of room to learn things about this city.

Such as, and I am not kidding you, I did not know Muni trains ran underground. There is a good reason for this, I suppose - I ride a bike, and I rarely take public transportation since the collar bone healed up many months ago. I take the BART if I have to meet someone at the airport. That's about it. Also, you can't take bikes on the Muni trains, which is the only other reason I ever consider public transportation - aiding me and the bike in getting somewhere difficult.

But this weekend, I was going to meet a friend who lives in the Sunset, in the part of the Sunset that isn't easy for me to get to. Possible, sure, but we were going to have a few drinks at her house and I really didn't feel like planning to do all that 1 a.m. riding in a neighborhood I'm unfamiliar with was a good idea. Lucky for me, the L runs right down Taraval, a block or two off of her street. So, sure enough, I walk up to Market & Church (a much more pleasant walk than I had imagined; riding a bike has completely distorted my sense of distance and time between places), and I look for the L... which I think should run above ground, because that's where I see the J run, and therefore that's where trains run.

That's not where trains run.

Enter me, looking like an idiot, finally figuring out where I needed to go. Nine months of living here, with a stop one mile from my house, I had no idea that Muni ran underground. I guess there's still time to learn new things.

Other things I've learned recently - my constant whining about wanting more diners (read as: places to give me toast and eggs) close by has been answered by deciding to walk to the Castro. We were seeing Up on Sunday afternoon, and I'll be damned if there weren't three diners on the same block. Toast, eggs, ham, potatoes. These are the things I want on my Sunday, every Sunday. A walk past Dolores Park, up 18th, to have breakfast and catch a matinee at a really beautiful theater.

And, an unrelated note - Left Coast Barbecue, a new traveling food truck very near and dear to my barbecue-covered heart, is now at Shotwell's every Monday night from 6-8, serving up sandwiches that will make you think about them for days to come. Stop by and support the guys - they make a very good product and they're very excited to share it with people.

Just kidding.

2009-03-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

You remember that routine? The settling in? Life becoming normal and scheduled?

I was just playing. Apparently.

Thirteen days ago, on a Monday, I was talking about how much I loved my office to someone who came over for our weekly poker game. Tuesday, I sent him a photo of our sound stage so he could see how great my office was. Wednesday, I bought my $159 Caltrain pass for the next month. Friday morning, I walked in, finished the project I was working on, and quit my job.

The reasons are not terribly important, but the situation came down to the fact that I wasn't doing what I was hired to do. I was being asked to do all sorts of new things, and I kind of liked them, but then I started missing deadlines and not turning out great work because, well, I didn't know what I was doing. My 90-day review, the big one where the probation period ends and the health insurance and paperwork begins, was in three days. It was time to get out.

And, I loved freelancing. I had such a perfect relationship with a couple of companies, and I ditched that lifestyle because I needed the security of a salaried job since my student loans were about to kick in. I didn't have the confidence I needed as a freelancer, so I gave into an opportunity I wasn't really sure I wanted in the first place.

I texted - yes, texted - a former freelance employer from the train home. He asked if I could come back to work on Tuesday of the next week. Freelancing career, re-established. I'm very lucky to be able to do something like that.

Lesson learned. Do not take jobs you're hesitant about. The universe has a way of fixing itself. So, uh, if you need a 3D/motion graphics freelancer, hit a girl up. I'm committed to the freelance lifestyle by now. I just missed it too much, and learned my lesson the hard way about getting rid of it. I've got a few things in the works, but it's slow going for now. One thing is sure, though: I haven't been this excited about the future since getting to San Francisco. Six months have made me smarter and better at what I do, and that's really exciting at this point in my career.

Also, I don't have to get up at 7 to take a train to Mountain View anymore, and that greatly improves my quality of life. If I mention in the future that I want to work outside of the city again, someone should remind me of this post.

Settling in.

2009-02-20T13:41:00.000-08:00

This blog has gotten a little neglected, and I've been trying to figure out the reasons. I have lots of things to talk about. I have ample time to write. But everything I consider writing feels like it belongs somewhere else, so my personal tumblr has been getting more use than this guy.

The reason is simple: San Francisco, I think I finally get you.

In eight days, I will celebrate my six month anniversary of moving here. It's a little presumptuous to say that I think I belong here, or that I have seen everything the city has to offer - all of that is far from it. I still sort of feel like an outsider. I still have a hard time figuring out things to do when people come to visit me. But the things that once baffled me no longer do. I'm settling into a routine and I'll be damned if I'm not almost convinced that I might be here this time next year.

I became a huge advocate for cycling. I continued to get healthy. I broke a collar bone. I found a favorite taqueria. I found a favorite bar. (Multiple candidates were considered on both fronts.) I know my neighborhood. I found my park. (It wasn't hard to find.) I got a job in Silicon Valley and learned how to bitch about the train. (This is a throwback from the NYC days, just slight adapted.) I learned how to circumvent the hills I couldn't climb and learned how to climb the ones that I originally couldn't.

San Francisco, you're all right. I get a little nervous when The Roommate starts talking about being here forever and ever, because I don't think I necessarily will be. You are a good fit for me right now, though, and I'm starting to get you figured out.

My life is pretty routine. I wake up and jump on one of two bikes, depending on if I want a slow and easy cruise or if I'm willing to suck up the road jitters of aluminum in exchange for the ridiculous amount of speed that my real road bike allows me. I take either the 7:59 or 8:59 bullet train from 4th and King to Mountain View. I work at my motion graphics job, I have lunch on Castro Street, I burn down Villa in the afternoon to try and make my 5:37 train. (I get there at 5:32 and pray to God that I'm overestimating the number of cyclists waiting in front of me, more accurately.) I get off at 4th and meet The Roommate. We'll probably stop at Safeway before departing so we can get groceries for dinner. We'll ride back to the mission; I'll get pissed off on 9th street because someone honked at me. We might just go straight home. We might stop at Inner Mission to have a beer (or three) and a game of pool (or ten). Eventually we'll be home, and we'll make dinner, and then maybe we'll just stay in or maybe we'll go to Make Out Room (if it's a Tuesday) or maybe we'll go to any one of the handful of dive bars that we love because we can play pool or cards without anyone hassling us. The next day we'll wake up and do it all over again.

None of this makes for a particularly amazing blog, however. I can't believe I've been here six months. In some ways it feels like I've been here forever, but it mostly feels like I just got here. I don't know when that new city smell wears off, but I still regularly find myself using "I'm not from here" as an excuse. I still don't feel like I've committed to being here - it feels like I could get up and leave at any time - but I certainly don't have any actual plans to go, and I can't figure out somewhere else I'd rather be, so I guess that's something. It's been an interesting ride so far. Here's to the next six months.

Yes we can.

2009-01-20T15:14:00.000-08:00

I was working for a newspaper when I was 15. The city elections were coming up and I wasn't old enough to vote, but I was working on the section of the paper that detailed the candidates' stances on various issues. I followed everyone's campaigns by the second, and when election day came, I wrote all my choices down on a piece of paper and gave them to my mom, hoping she would use her vote to represent me.

My grandmother's funeral was the day of the 2004 elections. I left the family party early; it would be the last time I'd ever step foot in the house I grew up in. My dad rushed me to the airport so I could get back to Ohio in time to vote for John Kerry. It was my first presidential election. My flight got me in with thirty minutes to spare before the polls closed; I cast my first vote. I would find out the next day, sitting on the steps in my college surrounded by all my liberal hippie friends that he had conceded.

I woke my husband up the day Barack Obama announced his intent to run for President of the United States. It was a Saturday; it was cold. I happened to turn on CNN and he was talking and I made John get out of bed to come watch it with me. I sat cross-legged on my couch and cried.

I got a yard sign the second they were available. I voted early for the primary. I rushed home from work every single day there was yet another state primary so I could watch the results roll in. I ordered pizza on Super Tuesday and sat there for hours balancing the numbers in my head.

I moved to California without a television, so I went to a bar for every single presidential debate. I slammed beers and screamed and high-fived strangers and agreed that Joe Biden's smile could convince me to do anything. I found it only appropriate to rush out of downtown to that same bar on the night of the election so I could see the results as they happened. I maxed out my text messages sending notes to everyone I knew.

I called my mother in Kansas and woke her up and it's a wonder that she could hear me over the noise of the bar when Barack Obama was named President-Elect. I sobbed as soon as they announced it.

I walked in to work this morning and the television in our lobby was playing it. A few assorted co-workers were huddled around, so I pulled up a square of couch and joined them, skipping the first hour of work. CNN announced that Barack Hussein Obama was officially the president; I hugged my messenger bag in order to not cry in front of co-workers that barely know me.

Yes we can; yes we did. I have never cared so much about politics in my life as I did about this election. President Obama, you have an obligation to not make me look stupid. I've done as much as I can for you. Now it's your turn.

Thursday love list.

2009-01-15T15:00:00.001-08:00

I've been in a kind of negative mood this week since The Roommate has been wicked sick. Also, since it's gotten warm again, all the cyclists that were scared to get on their bikes when it was 40 degrees outside in the morning are stoked about riding, which means I have had to miss three stupid CalTrains this week because they were already full of bikes. I'm a little grumpy.

The thing is, though? I live in San Francisco and I bought a new bike and the weather is gorgeous, so I should probably shut the fuck up. I'm really good at negativity, people, but I'm sort of sick of it. So here are the things that I have loved over the past few days:

Dolores Park on a Sunday afternoon. I don't have a dog, but I really like watching puppies play. The Roommate's family came to visit and brought their giant mastiff along. I got to sit on a blanket and watch puppies play all afternoon, and I got to watch people react to a dog that is their size. Amazing.
Living in the Mission. I know I've remarked on this before, but I literally don't have to leave my neighborhood. For anything. Ever. Grocery stores, bars, restaurants, bike shops. There are three bike shops visible from the bottom of my hill. Three! I don't get to ride all that much unless I'm going to work, because everything's too close to my house to justify even getting on a bike. That is incredible. (Also, no drunk driving, ever. And I don't get drunk enough to be arrested for drunk walking.)
Cyclist unity. When you come from a town with two million people in it, and your Critical Mass has 40 cyclists in it, the unity is strong, but doesn't do much. Here? The Market/Octavia bike lane has caused a huge stir. When Caltrain is full and we can't get on, we all stand and bitch together because we get each other. Cyclists here have a shared cause, and there are enough of us to do something about it. I was bitching today about getting bumped from my train on Twitter, and a friend in Cincinnati reminded me that he'd kill to have my problem - trains and too many cyclists. It was nice to gain that perspective again.
My Safeway has a killer wine selection. Don't get me wrong, the midwest has the occasional really great grocery store with an awesome wine selection. But I can walk across the street after I get off the train and get an incredible bottle of wine that was made less than 50 miles from my house.
Transportation options. This week, I have ridden to 4th and King. I also needed to pick up a new bike, so on Tuesday I took the BART to Millbrae to Caltrain, and then did the same on the way back so I could stop in Daly City. 40 miles of transportation with lots of different travel options, all just using my feet.
Local blogs. I know blogging is wicked trendy and now everybody has one, but I live in a city big enough to have its own spin-offs of the really popular ones. Eater, Curbed, -ist, Streetsblog - all with SF branches. Also, if I need to figure out where I can get brisket at two in the morning, SOMEONE out there has already asked the question and answered it in some form I can find by googling.

So, there you go. Hope you all have found things to love this week. Enjoy the sunshine! (But if you see a redhead on a tiny blue bike on the train that looks super angry, it still might be me. I'm still sick of getting booted from trains.)

Removing Market/Octavia bike lane.

2009-01-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

I kept thinking about doing some 2008 re-cap blog post, but now it's the 8th day of the new year, and we're pretty much over talking about that transition. A friend of mine asked the other night when the last day you could wish someone a happy new year was, and I think we can all agree that we're starting to push the limits. So, I'm done. 2008 was full of a lot of great moments, but overall was a pretty terrible year. Notable: re-connected with The Roommate after four years of not seeing one another, made some amazing new friends, graduated, moved to San Francisco. Those are the good things, and they are what I hope to remember years down the line. Done. 2009, you need to be better. You should be my first full year in San Francisco, and now that I've gotten better at riding a bike again, we're going to explore the hell out of this place together.

The road to recovery after the collar bone incident has been a terrible one. The physical limitations were pretty awful for awhile, but they're mostly over. The ones that have still lingered are the mental ones. As in I had a pavlovian response every time I heard a bicycle changing gears, because when I geared up, I broke my collar bone. So I was completely unable to change gears for a solid two months after getting back on a bicycle. Yes, I am serious; yes, I know that's really pathetic.

But lo and behold, The Roommate went out of town for most of December, and I didn't have anyone to try and show off for, so I very slowly learned how to switch gears again. That meant I could finally ride up the massive hill I live on. It was a pretty major breakthrough. And now? Well, now, the world is my fucking oyster. Riding up Guerrero to Market? Hard when you're geared high. Magnificent on a geared bike. So now new places are in my range (please note, anyone unfamiliar with the area: this is seriously an intersection that's just over a mile from me). I've been getting a lot more exposure to the upper Market area.

It is for this reason that I'm all fired up about the impending removal of the bike lane at Market & Octavia. Let's start out by watching this video.

In that video, you can observe a few things. You can also feel free to look up the intersection of Market & Octavia at Google Maps or something so you grasp the layout, but the gist is this: the entrance ramp to the highway is on the right. Making a right turn from Market onto said highway is illegal. It is very clearly marked that you cannot make a right turn there. Market Street, at this point, is a downhill slope where it's fairly easy to build up a little bit of speed. The bike lane is separated by a small divider in-between the lanes. There is also a sign warning bicyclists to watch for cars turning illegally. You know when you have to warn someone to watch for idiots doing something illegal that you've got a somewhat large problem.

The problem is that people in cars want to get on the highway, and they can't do it there, but other than a sign telling them not to, there are absolutely no barriers. So people do it anyway. And the cyclists are in their lane, going straight, and people turn illegally without looking and hit cyclists. So the problem is people doing something illegal. Done. The city's solution to it? Remove the bike lane, which was put there with the intention of protecting cyclists.

When there are issues of cyclist safety in San Francisco, it's really easy to shake your fist and blame the damn kids. Damn kids, with their disregard for laws, not watching where they're going, riding on the sidewalk, not wearing helmets, riding fixies without brakes, etc. And, fair enough. There are a lot of incidents that CAN be attributed to cyclists breaking the law. But this is not one of those things. Sure, if someone was riding a bike wearing a helmet, and their bike had brakes, it would be easier for them to stop and not get so injured if someone turned illegally in front of them. But the fact remains that none of this would be a problem if people weren't turning illegally.

There's a lot of debate about this subject, and I really wish the solution could just be education. Educate drivers and cyclists about how to get along. Unfortunately, that just doesn't work. There are signs on major streets around here reminding people to share the road, reminding people that bicycles are allowed to take up an entire lane. That certainly doesn't keep cars from passing too close in the same lane. Cars want to go 40 miles an hour, and most cyclists can't. So the solution is to pass them. I get that. I pass cyclists that are going too slow in front of me when I'm on a bike, so I get it.

But every single day I have to deal with the honking, and people passing too close, and drivers generally acting like assholes because I have the nerve to be on the road. Removing this bike lane on Market means I'm now going to have to try and take up the whole lane. I don't have a problem doing that, but it certainly isn't going to keep anyone from speeding up behind me, swerving around me on the left, and cutting me off to turn there illegally. The only thing it will do is make cyclists have to watch traffic more. It is making us the problem, when we really just want to ride bikes.

It's easy to say "well, do you have a better idea?" in these situations, and the truth is that I don't. I don't have a degree in transportation and city planning, and I certainly don't get paid to sit in an office every day and come up with solutions that cater to a host of different people. So I certainly don't understand all the challenges this task faces. All I know is that I ride a bike, and I'd really appreciate not getting hit by a car. I think it's pathetic to say "the bike lane isn't working, so let's remove the bike lane", rather than coming up with a different solution. I can't blame someone for not wanting to ride a bicycle considering how people react to cyclists in this town. It was easier in the midwest when you just knew everyone hated you and no one was looking, ever. Now you have to consider whether or not someone's looking and whether or not they hate cyclists that day. The "are you going to kill me" dance is the least pleasant thing about my daily commute.

I'm interested to see what the SFBC's official statement is going to be on this. I hope they come up with a better solution and push for it. They're much better at all of this than I am.

Oh, and even though we might be past the time where it's okay - Happy New Year, everyone. I rang in midnight at my favorite bar in the city, Inner Mission. Dave and Tom poured champagne for everyone, I got a kiss from The Roommate, and slammed a Young's Double Chocolate after they flipped the lights on. It was a good way to ring in 2009. Hope yours were equally fantastic.

The "give up your seat" controversy.

2008-12-19T17:08:00.000-08:00

The west coast is generally thought of as being nicer than the east coast. I've had the benefit of living on both coasts, as well as major stints of time living in the middle. What entertains me the most about these stereotypes is what "nice" and "mean" are defined as in each city.

I got indirectly ripped on in a missionmission shoutout about a week after moving here, about how assholes move from the east coast and then don't understand what life is about.

maybe because all the bad attitudes come from points east. i love this thing about carpetbaggers wishin frisco was more like the crappy places they come from. we californians try to take it slow & easy but there’s always some new-be not gettin w/ the program. we have become LA. sorry for the rant but were on edge down here in the flats.

And, I mean... fair enough. Feel how you want to feel. This dude portrayed "mean" as me yelling some equivalent of "If you hit me with your fucking door, so help me God" at a guy who... well... almost hit me with his fucking door. This, of course, is sort of a panic instinct for me. Being able to throw that many words out was somewhat shocking, as I usually have the time to scream "Seriously?!" in the hopes that they realize it was directed at them, by which point I am half a block away. So, if that's mean, I'm mean. I'm also from a crappy place, I guess. And I don't really wish San Francisco was more like where I came from. If I liked where I came from, I probably would have stayed there. Ah, but I digress.

The definition of mean and hateful is subjective. "Fuck you" really, honestly isn't that offensive in New York. It is a way of showing displeasure. They are words that are forgotten as soon as the two involved parties - the fuckee and the fucked - have gone their separate ways. They are forgotten, because they are just words. Certainly I wouldn't throw out a "fuck you" at my grandmother if she bumped into me on the subway, and I would feel badly if I threw one out after someone stepped on my heel and I turned around to learn that they were seven years old. But I believe that we get to a certain point as adults where maybe words aren't so illegal. I'm just saying I would much rather someone tell me to get fucked than tell me my bike is ugly. (Sometimes, words do hurt.)

A post from BART Musings that I just came across brings up something that I find to be really awful: not giving up a seat to people who might need it on public transportation. This is where New York owns you, rest of the country. If you are sitting and remotely do not look like you need that seat, and someone comes along that really does need it, watch your ass. The ragamuffin teenager who spent approximately thirty-four subway stops talking about "that ho" will spring to action when someone with a cane rolls deep onto the 1 train. It is a beautiful phenomenon. Someone will give up a seat, somewhere, for you.

MUNI riders kind of don't do this. Of course, I am speaking from somewhat limited experience, I guess. I'm not a daily MUNI commuter. I was riding it regularly when I broke my collarbone and couldn't hold myself up on a bike for awhile. I ride it when I'm with people that aren't cyclists. There are other special occasions, like today when I bought a new bike for The Roommate and learned I cannot ride one and roll the other along with me like that super hot cyclist girl from a few months back on Van Ness. But I do know that I have seen a lot of sort of shameful behavior when elderly or disabled people get on the bus and there are no seats.

What I find funny about this is that maybe this behavior really isn't a San Francisco thing. One of the comments on the aforementioned post says something about being afraid they'll offend someone. I've gotten this sort of reaction - I'm a seat giver. I feel so crazy guilty sitting down on public transportation that I pretty regularly stand when it looks even remotely crowded, even if there are still seats I could squeeze into. I've offered my seat to people and had them look completely shocked. I don't mean to offend someone. I'm really trying to help.

I got pretty irritated with this during the collarbone incident. I had the sling on. There was a day in particular where I was carrying a few huge bags. There were no seats and I was in a lot of pain. But I'm also very young, and I look healthy aside from that sling thing. I don't like being the one to select who doesn't deserve a seat that day, so I felt really weird asking. It would have been nice to have someone offer. I would have been grateful. No dice - from 4th street to 20th on the 12, not a single offer.

The "to give or not to give" controversy is interesting to me, and people talk about it pretty much anywhere with an active public transportation system. I think the dynamic is very different. Here, I see so few people actually offering seats that I can see how someone might get offended. In New York, it is customary. You are sixteen years old and I am eighty holding this walker. Give me your seat.

Yes, we all pay the same $1.50, yes, we all have equal rights to that seat. But really, it's just kind. I would destroy someone if my grandmother got on a bus with me and no one offered her somewhere to sit. It's nice. She is old and tired and hopefully gave up seats in her day. Let the poor woman sit for sixteen blocks, for God's sake. I was still giving up seats even with the broken bone. I still felt like people needed to sit down, and it was clear that no one else stepped up.

So what's up, San Francisco? Am I totally clueless? Is offering someone a seat actually a dick move and I don't know it? Are there really nice bus lines where everyone just stands in the event that someone with a cane shows up, and I just haven't taken any of them? Tell me how it really is so I can judge fairly.

Milk.

2008-12-15T11:49:00.000-08:00

I saw Milk at the Castro on Saturday night. If you live in San Francisco and have yet to do this, you should probably get on it.

For anyone who's not following movies, doesn't live in a major city that's playing it, or has managed to stay under a rock when it comes to cinema, Milk is the true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay public official in San Francisco. He was killed in 1978 by another supervisor, in an act that stunned the city and will forever tarnish San Francisco's history. (I would have given you a spoiler alert, but that's sort of like when people reminded you that the ship sunk in that big boat movie a few years back. You should know how this story ends.)

The film couldn't have come out at a more poignant time. One of the biggest moments in the movie is when Prop. 6, an initiative to keep gay and lesbian teachers (and anyone that supports them) from working in the public schools, failed. It was around this point that I started uncontrollably sobbing. I'm not a crier. It's not really my thing. But seeing all these people getting to dance in the street for gay rights only made me think, "That should have been me." And once that thought hits you, you can't let go of it. And if you're me, it'll mean you continue crying until the lights come up in the theater.

The movie is stunning. Truly. I know what Sean Penn looks like and might be able to do a quick illustration of him off the top of my head. But he becomes this character. He is funny, he's a little awkward, and he makes you fall in love with him. His supporting cast is absolutely fantastic. They capture the spirit of the 1970s in San Francisco: over the top, but with a mission, because they're more than a little scared. This is not the flamboyant, out-and-proud Castro district of 2008. This is people coming together because they need each other's help.

If you live in San Francisco, please do not go see the movie at any other theater. Please have the experience of seeing it across the street from where this movie actually happened. There is no greater landmark for the neighborhood than the giant neon "CASTRO" sign outside of the theater, and we are exposed to grainy 1970s footage of it over and over in the film. You are sitting in the building you are seeing on the screen. People laughed and cheered, everyone got the little jokes and the ironic parallels to our current time, people cried together. Gus Van Sant manages to take one of the most tragic events of San Francisco's history and turn it into a beautiful celebration of life and a reminder of where we came from.

If Prop. 8 would have lost, we could have all left, gone out and had a drink, and congratulated ourselves for continuing his legacy. But it passed. I wish the movie had come out before the election - not that I necessarily think THAT would have turned the tables, but still. I think everyone got complacent. I kept my voter registration in Ohio (to my defense, by the time I had to register in California, I didn't know if I was permanently relocating here or not), mostly because I thought they needed my Obama vote more. This state is full of transplants like me. I think we all just assumed that Prop. 8 would fail because, come on, it's California. Of COURSE we're not going to pass this crazy proposition.

If you have the opportunity, go see Milk. I've already admitted how much I cried, which means you don't have to feel badly if you do. Promise.

Caltrain commuting.

2008-12-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

So, I've been doing this Mountain View thing for a couple of weeks now, and I'm starting to get the hang of it. I feel like public transportation is an intimidating system for people who have never done it before, so hopefully my grand two weeks of experience can be helpful to someone else.

The first three times I took Caltrain, I was convinced it was cursed and that I was never going to get to work on time.

Trip #1: Truck stopped on tracks, gets hit by train, fatality. Trains run 2+ hours late and the system completely shuts down.

Trip #2: Wandering pedestrian gets hit by train, system shuts down.

Trip #3 (very next day after trip #2): Computer that controls train signals goes on the fritz; trains run 75+ minutes late.

These, however, appear to have been pure coincidences, as I haven't run into a single problem since then. (If everyone could knock on wood a little bit, that would be great.)

Here's the deal with Caltrain. Buy a ticket before you get on. It may or may not actually be checked - there's nowhere to swipe, no one looks at your ticket before you get on the train, but it is required that you have one. I've never had someone check my ticket in the morning yet, but the regular conductor on my nighttime trip always checks between Millbrae and 22nd. You can buy one way tickets, day passes, books of 10 tickets (that have to be validated when you use them), or monthly passes. The fares work by "zone". So, San Francisco is in zone 1, the very first stop. Mountain View is in zone 3. So I have to buy a monthly pass that allows me unlimited travel between those three zones. It costs me $152.50 a month, a number that sent me reeling at first until I compared it to the cost of owning and driving a car 80 miles round trip every day.

And, to my major joy, Caltrain is doing what it can to be bike-friendly. Every train has at least one bike car. Now, to be honest, there is not enough room to accommodate all the cyclists. Caltrain appears to know this and I haven't seen anyone get particularly lippy when too many bikes get put on there. Technically, it's four bikes to one rack. The new cars have four racks; old cars have eight. This really, truly is not enough space. Sometimes the train ends up with two bike cars, which makes life much easier. The racks are metal and have bungee cords attached to them. Wrap them around your bike and you're set. Every bike is required to be marked with its destination so bikes going the same place can be grouped together, and if I'm going to Mountain View in the morning, I don't end up having to dig my bike out from five others on top of it going to San Jose.

Oh, Caltrain. I had hoped to be productive on you. So far, I've done a whole lot of crossword puzzles. I had hoped that I'd finally start reading the newspapers I buy every day instead of just turning to my puzzle, but alas. I'm tired when I get on the train to come to work. I'm tired when I get on the train to come home. I get halfway through a puzzle and then I just want to stare blindly out the window for a little while. Still - enables me to ride a bike eight miles a day, and it keeps me from driving a car. You are my best $152.50 investment of the month.

Employed.

2008-12-02T17:32:00.000-08:00

Oh, internet, we simply have so much to catch up on.

I will provide you with a lovely touristy post soon, but here are the highlights from Mom's visit: Inner Mission, Make Out Room, Ferry Building, Fisherman's Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, 49 mile drive, Mt. Tam, Stinson Beach, Presidio, Dolores Park, Tartine, Bi-Rite, El Faro, Sutro Baths, Ocean Beach, Mission Bar. We'll do the real re-cap of that later.

Today, we're discussing the job situation. Again.

So, I moved to San Francisco because I had no money and I really wanted a job. The midwest showed interest but didn't really love me. So here I am, California. Employ me.

Yeah, me and the rest of the assholes that recently got out of college. Then Wired laid everyone off. Then Current. Then... well, you get the idea.

My first client was amazing - a banner ad for one of the city propositions. (The campaign was ultimately successful, and they sent me an email later thanking me for my work on it. Score.) My second client was the one that paid all my bills for November, but we had to split ways because we were honestly not suited for one another. His process and mine just did not line up. He paid me as soon as I had completed a day's worth of work, he paid me incredibly well. I'd paypal him an invoice and he would have money to my account within 10 minutes. I was grateful for him, but our differences were just too much and we had to end it. Haven't heard from him since one mixup where I didn't reply to his email within a day of him sending it and he flipped out. Probably for the best.

Then there was the little animation that I took about a month to do and could have finished in a week. I am a bad person. He was an amazing client and loved the work I did for him. He also didn't seem to mind that I took way, way too long to do his very small job.

Then came the biggest success yet: on-site freelancing with a really amazing little firm. This company showed me what my life could be if I could really sustain this lifestyle. They loved me and I loved them, and that's all I have to say about that. I am invited to their Christmas party despite not being salaried with them. They're Net-30, so I have yet to prove that they pay their freelancers, but they are an amazing little company and I sincerely hope to maintain a relationship with them.

They are all wrapped up by one of my favorite people I've gotten to meet in San Francisco. I talked to this gentleman in August before I ever moved here. He gave me hope that I'd be employed. Then I bought a plane ticket. Then I wasn't employed. But he kept in touch with me, by god, brought me in for a coffee chat in October, then randomly emailed me out of the blue a month and a half later to ask me if I could do some freelance for them. I was - and still am - ecsatic. We had our first meeting this morning after over three months of email tag, and now my foot's in the door and I actually have files to work on.

Leaving the meeting, I got the phone call with my full-time job offer from the company I thought had given up on me.

Allow me to show you a timeline:

September 26th: Apply to job from craigslist.

October 1st: Get email asking salary requirements.

October 1st, 12 minutes later: Reply with salary requirements.

October 24th: Get email at 4:18 on a Friday asking if I can come interview on the following Thursday.

October 24th: Reply at 4:29 that oh my god I absolutely can.

October 30th: Trek to Mountain View, learn how to operate CalTrain, have amazing interview and get really excited that they're going to hire me.

November 11th: Send email, nervous that they hired someone else and that I'm not going to be able to pay my student loans ever.

November 12th: Receive email saying they have three more interviews but hope to make a decision soon. Cry.

November 27th: Tell mother that job will not be mine, pretend it's for the best, get excited about continuing to freelance.

December 2nd: Receive phone call while in 30 minute meeting with newest freelance client, offering job. Make three very important phone calls to closest family and friends. Take job.

It is not enough money and it is in Mountain View. But I am employed, after six months of being out of college and financing my life mostly on credit.

So I'm a commuter now. I think I've decided to try and be a pseudo-bike commuter. Riding from 21st & Guerrero to 3rd & Bryant every day? Not an issue. But now we've got Caltrain to contend with. I think biking to 4th & King is honestly my best way to go. I could BART it to Millbrae - I live close to the 24th St. station. But it takes me 10 minutes to walk there, I don't get any exercise, and I don't save enough money losing that one zone off my monthly Caltrain pass to justify the daily BART expense. Plus it's one more method of public transportation I can't control. I can basically control the time it takes me to ride to 4th & King. I can take my bike on Caltrain, though I've heard the horror stories about not having adequate room for bikes. At least I'll be getting on it at the very first stop, so as long as there are less than 32 of us trying to get bikes on there every morning, we should be okay.

I never really wanted to be a commuter. But we don't always have control over the way things go. Here's to commuting - and to getting a paycheck, by God, perhaps even before 2008 ends.

Love letter to Bodegas.

2008-11-19T21:46:00.000-08:00

In my pre-San francisco life, I was quite the cook. Dinner parties for 30+ people? Not a problem. Thanksgiving in my two-bedroom apartment? Bring it. Since moving here, well, let's just say I've been a little more... restrained. I don't have any money, I just acquired pans, and ultimately it's just me and The Roommate. So save a ridiculously overpriced chicken parmesan exploit and a whole crab episode (I live somewhere that has a CRAB SEASON!), there hasn't been a lot of cooking in my life.

Part of this is that my grocery exploits are a little different here than in the midwest. Midwest grocery shopping, oh my god, is one of my favorite things in the whole world. You drive your car (this is the one place where I will defend an automobile to the death) to a giant food warehouse where ingredients are usually fabulous quality and you stuff your cart with enough food to cook for weeks and then you get home and unpack it all and it got there IN YOUR TRUNK rather than you carrying it for miles and oh my god I might be hyperventilating.

Non-believers may have thought I was kidding about how much I love grocery shopping. Non-believers are probably wrong.

The grocery thing is the hardest one for me to get over when moving to a bigger city - or, at least, a city with no car. Now, San Francisco, let me hand it to you - here's your advantage over New York. You've still got those sprawling, ridiculous grocery stores with fantastic quality items, and god love you, you have the courtesy to sprinkle them all over the place. (I know Safeway might be boring, but I love them. I know this is probably going to cause problems between us. It's the midwest in me.) San Francisco is this funny little hybrid city. A lot of residents still own cars. It's certainly urban and populated enough that you don't NEED a car, but having one isn't impossible, like New York.

The bulk of my grocery shopping in New York happened via Fresh Direct. I could wax poetic for days, but let's just say it would be in the top five reasons for me to move back to the city. Amazing ingredients, delivered to my door when I want, FOR FREE. I have recently learned Safeway delivers, but they want to charge me $15 or something ridiculous if I don't order enough stuff. (Perusing FD's website now leads me to believe you do have to pay for delivery, but it's still way cheaper. Love. Fresh Direct.) Also, I lived on the fourth floor, and they would bring my groceries into my kitchen, because they are awesome and I am easily winded.

Delivery services are your best friends if you need a lot of groceries. It certainly makes life more convenient. My NYC train stop was also right in front of a local grocery store. It was an awful grocery store, mind you, but not the end of the world if I needed something they couldn't screw up. (No meat. No meat ever from the C-Town on 145th.)

Then there are what I consider specialty grocery stores. They have ingredients of absolutely the best quality you can imagine and they are sprinkled all over the place. Some are really specialized - cheese shops, meat markets, etc., like Lucca's. Love to Lucca's at 22nd & Valencia. An Italian market that makes fresh pasta and has fantastic sandwiches, a good cheese selection and a nice wine spread. Some are just small grocery stores that carry a sampling of amazing ingredients. This is where I give a shout-out to my baby, Bi-Rite.

Bi-Rite, you beautiful bastard. You heartbreaker. You are my favorite place in the city and if I had $100 to drop on a meal for two people you better believe I'd do it every day inside you. Your meat is exquisite, you have fresh whole crabs, you just got in actual Jamon Iberico for $100 a pound, you have truffles, your ice cream is the most sinful thing that has ever passed my lips and it is $8 for a damn quart. This is the downfall of the specialty grocery store. You are going to spend too much money, and you are not going to know how it happened. Chicken parmesan for The Roommate and I this weekend? $42. Yes. That included an $8 pint of ice cream (Mexican chocolate with salted peanuts, I'm looking at you). But other than that it was two chicken breasts, box of panko, italian seasoning, half a pound of shredded mozzarella, pasta, jar of pre-made tomato sauce, aluminum foil. $42. I could have gone to Valencia Pizza & Pasta two blocks away and gotten twice as much food for half the price and wouldn't have had to cook it myself. But, in all fairness, it was an apology dinner since I had just been a giant jerk about my bicycle's gears slipping and I needed to be nice to The Roommate. This was my $42 penance.

This is where I introduce to you... the bodega.

San Franciscans, you probably call it something else. I don't know anyone, so we never have a chance to talk about these little bundles of joy, so I have yet to test the waters. Rest of the country, you call them convenience stores, and they're usually attached to gas stations. You will probably not get why bodegas change my life.

First of all? They are everywhere. Everywhere! Between me and the Bi-Rite, I think I pass four of them. In two blocks. There are literally two on the same block and I can see a third one from there. There is one on every block. They are slightly overpriced but they are RIGHT THERE. Mere feet from my door! You want milk? You don't want to go all the way to the grocery store because you have to do that on your bicycle and you just know it's going to blow up in your bag in the mile and a half it takes to get home? You should probably walk down the hill less than a block and get a gallon of milk. Okay, it costs $5.50 and that is obnoxious. But... it is right. there. And god bless San Francisco, your bodegas always seem to carry the most beautiful array of Pepperidge Farm cookies I've ever seen. Out of my apartment and back into my apartment with Double Chocolate Milanos, a gallon of milk and a Chronicle in less than five minutes.

They occasionally serve food. The bodega at 19th & Guerrero (you could probably call this one a deli if you really wanted to) actually has a fantastic array of food. You can walk in and get lasagna heated up and then walk to the park and eat it. And here, god love you, they often have huge selections of wine. Decent wine, even!

People usually have preferred locations. It entertains me when these preferred locations are not actually the closest one to their homes. In NYC, I was all about 144th & Broadway. I was 6-pack of Heineken girl there. I'm loyal to 20th & Guerrero and 21st & Mission. Some bodegas have names. Some don't. The Roommate understands what I mean when I ask if we can go to the bodega. That is all that matters. They don't need names. They are nearly identical but all of them have their little quirks. 20th & Guerrero has rogue board games hiding in the little side room. One day, I'm buying one.

This is the trade-off I accept for losing my car and my giant grocery stores. I will suck up the delivery charge and let Safeway bring me my groceries. I will strap a big messenger bag on my back and go to Foods Co. or Rainbow and buy as much as I can fit into it and ride it home awkwardly down 20th Street. I will go to Bi-Rite and spend way too much but eat like a queen. And I will sure as hell stop at my bodega every day, where the incredibly nice man talks to me about the weather every single time and never remarks that maybe I'd be less of a fatty if I could buy a gallon of milk without a bag of cookies, for once.

The bodega does not judge you. It knows what you need. It does not judge when you're a single female walking in and picking up two six packs AND a 22 oz. of Anchor. You can walk in sweaty and disgusting after you've ridden home from work, and it doesn't even make a catty remark about how you probably just ride a bike to overcompensate for all the Milanos. (It's kind of true.) The bodega is slightly over-priced, but humble and unassuming. It is there for you in the best and worst of times. Thanks, bodega.

Bicycle commuting.

2008-11-18T11:30:00.001-08:00

I am a bicycle commuter.

Sort of.

I don't have a "real job", you see. I'm a freelancer. Lately, I've been freelancing with a super fun, very small company around 3rd & Bryant. I live around 21st & Guerrero, which means this commute is about 3.5 miles. Since I am a giant scaredy-cat about getting back on a bike ever since I went over its handlebars like an idiot, I rode the bus one or two mornings. It's a fairly easy bus commute. Walk from my place to 20th & Folsom, grab the 12, get off at 4th & Folsom, walk down 4th to Bryant, hang a left. Simple.

When I did this, it took me 40 minutes. It's .5 miles to the bus stop and .3 miles from the bus stop to the office. Let's just say I have a history of never catching the 12 in a timely manner - waiting 15 minutes is not unusual. I don't know if it's the bus or me, but this happens pretty regularly. All of that means I have to leave my house at 8:15 if I have any hopes of getting to the office by 9:00. 3.5 miles away from my house.

So I sucked it up and got back on the bike and took a nice, not terribly scary route to work. And you know what? It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I ride down 20th to Folsom and take it all the way down to 4th, where I jump on 4th for a couple of blocks and then head down a back alley so I can ride into their parking lot. I feel fantastic when I get there. I want to fill my body with water rather than over-sugared coffee. Riding seven casual miles every day makes me feel better, more healthy, stronger.

But let's talk about why bike commuting is a bitch. Folsom has a bike lane once you pass 14th. Great. Except Folsom is lined with businesses, and businesses get deliveries, and delivery vehicles park in my bike lane. So now I have to check out what traffic is doing and whip around the vehicle taking up my lane, and cars get pissed, and I get pissed. (The other day, a Bud Light truck around 11th & Folsom was parked entirely blocking the car lane so that the bike lane was completely clear. I yelled out a thank you to him as I rode past, because I legitimately appreciated that.)

Taxis are the worst. They have absolutely no regard for other vehicles on the road, and that might be fine if you're in a car, but I'm not. Drivers in San Francisco think they're used to cyclists, so they know how close they can comfortably drive to me. Here's a hint - your comfort zone from the inside of your SUV is significantly different from mine, on top of my 35 pound bicycle (it's a late 70's mixte, leave it alone). I may be a cyclist, but I am not a terribly good or adaptable one. It is me versus a car for twenty minutes every morning.

And nighttime is worse. Coming down Harrison is terrible. No bike lane. Despite the fact that it's something like a six lane road, cars get pissed off that I'm there. And fair enough - at my fastest, I'm probably clipping along at 20 miles an hour. If someone was doing that in front of me, I'd get angry too.

The worst is when I can't figure out what a car is doing. When we're both trying to anticipate the other's actions, it gets dicey and awkward. Someone needing to turn right across my bike lane when I'm approaching an intersection is like running into a brand-new co-worker at a sex shop. And not in the tame "I just dropped in to grab condoms" section, either. Neither one of us knows what to do and so we're both going to dance around awkwardly until someone figures out how to duck out of the situation.

There are signs all over this city reminding cars that bicycles have the right to take up an entire lane, but no one really gives a shit. If I take up an entire lane, I've got cars on my ass waiting for me to speed up. If I ride to the side, cars are going to nearly side-swipe me trying to pass in a lane that they don't really have room to pass me in. And that's saying nothing of someone opening a car door without looking, allowing me to run head-first into it.

But I love it. I do. I don't mind walking in to work all sweaty with my pants rolled up. I've learned to not mind the honking. I'm a considerate cyclist - I'm not diving in and out of traffic unless I have to because something in front of me is blocking my path. I don't run red lights - I have a tendency to stop at yellows because I know I'm not actually fast enough to get through an intersection. I panic when the walk lights don't count down their seconds, because I don't know when the light is going to change, so I speed the hell up. I only become an asshole the second time you honk at me when there is clearly nothing I can do to change our situation.

Cyclists and drivers hate one another. Hate. And we are all self-righteous. I am better than you because I am on a bike. I am getting exercise, I am seeing the city block by block rather than setting my car to auto-pilot and ignoring my surroundings. I roll up next to people in the morning and we occasionally have conversations, while you are caged up and will never interact with another human being between the time you lock your door and the time you arrive at your destination. You've got the morning radio show, I've got nature. You pay $50 a month to push metal plates around, I get my exercise twice a day as a side effect of how I get to and from work, and the city is my gym.

But we act like assholes. We are all better than one another. I get that cars are irritated with cyclists. If I was in a car and someone in front of me was going twenty miles under the speed limit, I'd honk my horn and act like a jerk too. If I've got somewhere to be, never mind the fact that they're propelling themselves with their feet and I know they can't go 45 miles an hour. And cyclists weave around unpredictably, and who knows if they're going to run a light... Look. I get it.

I get angry when drivers seem to do things out of spite. The other day, coming toward the mission on Folsom passing under the bridge, a giant F-350 who had been honking at me flew by me really, really close. I would have been fine, but it made me really nervous, so I swerved a little. Could have fallen. And sure, that's because I'm skittish and not very good at what I do - but all I'm saying is that you're not proving a point. The way you "win", with your two-ton+ vehicle, is by hurting me. The bicycle and I barely break 200 pounds. We are tiny and slow. You are not winning by proving a point to me.

Through all the rage and indignity, I simply can't get enough. I had a slight mental breakdown to The Roommate on Saturday when it occurred to me that I'm still really, really scared on a bicycle. The slightest thing goes wrong and I am completely powerless to recover from it. But it turns out all I can do is just keep riding the damn thing, and eventually it'll get easier. The other option is being caged up. That doesn't even sound like me.

I've read two stories today about cyclists getting hit and injured at busy intersections. How about we all try to be safe and not act like assholes? And this is directed at you too, cyclists. You know we're jerks. I get the indignity and that we're trying to take our streets back - but whether we're proving the point or the car is, we're the ones at risk for getting hurt. Let's keep this shit fun.

(P.S., a side note to The Roommate. It appears I am doing this for myself, after all. Sorry I had forgotten about that.)

Burritos.

2008-11-11T13:58:00.001-08:00

Every city has them. In Kansas City, it's barbecue. Cincinnati has its chili, New York has its pizza. Prior to moving to San Francisco, I had given the Bay area chocolate. There's a lot of really, really good chocolate here, people, from my favorite and somewhat-well-known artisan chocolate maker Scharffen Berger to the lesser known, web 2.0-ey up and coming Tcho. (Full disclaimer: I am a tester for Tcho, but the fact that they send me free chocolate doesn't make me love it any more. Okay, maybe a little more.)

And then? Well, then I moved to the mission. Home of the mission-style burrito. People. San Francisco has BURRITOS. That's their thing!

The mission-style burrito is a thing of beauty. You have had something similar to them, most likely. The chain burrito craze hit a few years back and has since blown up, largely thanks to Chipotle. (Say what you will about Chipotle, San Franciscans, but be very careful. I eat your burritos now, but Chipotle burritos defined five years of college for me.) I remember eating New York Burrito in Salt Lake City back in 1999, but that was my first experience with burritos the size of my face. They are an art form here. You can get a regular burrito, but if you're smart, you'll go with the super burrito - which has, among other things, cheese and sour cream, my favorite parts of any Mexican dining experience. They'll run you around $6 and you can probably make them last two meals, depending on where you go.

I will not make any claims as to the "best" burrito, because I have only had a couple of them, and that would not be fair. There are more taquerias in the mission than there are anything else (they rival the number of bars, I swear). Supposedly the first super burrito came from El Faro at 20th & Folsom, a location I pass almost every day but have never gone to. It's a San Francisco tradition, and I'm incredibly excited to share it with my mother two weeks from today. Incidentally, I was the first one to take her to a Chipotle, so it's only fair that I show her where they came from.

What are your favorites, locals? I'll admit, I really like Cancun's food - I know it's kind of a standard answer, but they've been good to me. I didn't mind El Toro's (17th & Valencia), and I was recently subjected to one from Chavo's, which is totally not in the mission but was still a decent lunch.

Oh, and since I've mentioned my San Francisco biases, it's only fair that I list the other three - get your pizza from John's on 44th when you're in New York, your barbecue from Arthur Bryant's on 18th in Kansas City, and your chili from the Ludlow Ave. Skyline in Cincinnati. You're welcome. :)

P.S. I just wrapped up one big on-site job and another small personal job, which means I have nothing to do. Expect more posts this week, including the "furnish your completely bare kitchen" post I've been working on for months.

Destinations?

2008-11-07T14:35:00.001-08:00

I am a shitty San Francisco resident, people.

You see, here was the point of starting this blog - show people my experiences living in a new place. I really love hearing people not from New York talk about New York. It makes me see certain things in a new way and get all nostalgic about when I found those things to be weird too. (In Cincinnati, when someone doesn't hear what you just said, they'll often say "Please?" instead of "Could you repeat that?". I say "Come again?" and people there look at me like I'm crazy.)

It was also going to be an excuse. A beautiful excuse to get out and explore the city and do all sorts of... whatever. You've heard this before.

And I have done none of it. I moved to the mission, like an idiot, and I have no excuse to leave my neighborhood, ever. I break a collar bone and can't ride a bike. I decide to freelance instead of getting a real job so I never leave my house. I get an on-site job and it's at 3rd & Folsom, a 15 minute bike ride from my house and a commute that involves not one single degree of difficulty.

Now? Now, I have lived here for over two months, and my mother and best friend are coming to visit me for Thanksgiving. They have never been to San Francisco before and it is my job to make their week worthwhile.

They are exactly like me - pool, dive bars, burritos. Yes. All of it. So I'm not worried about what to do around my apartment. I know those answers. What I don't know is where else to take them. We have no desire for the overly-touristy, though going to see the bridge might be nice. But where are all those beautiful hilltops that everyone takes the touristy pictures at? I don't even know how to be a tourist in my own city. I have failed myself, and I'm about to fail them.

Nothing expensive, nothing that involves a wait line. (Ice cream from Bi-Rite excluded.) When Mom came to visit me in NYC, there was no Empire State Building. Violates both rules, so it was out. Both of them claim that they couldn't care less about sight-seeing, but the fact remains that they are in this amazing city for the first time and I'd like to give them a couple of experiences to write home about.

The Roommate recommends Sutro Baths, and I agree. I recommend seeing the bridge from somewhere high up and pretty and accessible by MUNI. They will eat burritos and do dive bars in my neighborhood. There's probably going to be a Market St. shopping trip, but we have no money and I'm not sure what there really is that's super unique to this great town of ours.

Help me not look like an asshole, guys. What am I missing out on? (Probably taking them to Boudin, and somewhere with chocolate. Side note.)

Oh, and P.S., you crazy liberals, thanks for Tuesday. I sincerely hope it was as good for all of you as it was for me.

Vote.

2008-11-04T10:58:00.000-08:00

I am so busy I don't have time to breathe, thanks to an on-site freelance position that I really enjoy. We'll speak more of that later. Right now, though, here's what's important.

Today, commuting to work on my bicycle, someone pulled up to me in the bike lane and asked if I knew where a bank was. I didn't. But it opened a line of communication between myself and another person. We talked the rest of the way to work. He gave me advice on my bike, I told him about my broken collar bone. We didn't exchange names. There were lots of people parked in the bike lane today, so we called back and forth to one another to let the other person know it was safe to go around. I made a human connection today as I flew in and out of traffic. This is what riding a bike affords me: there is a sense of community, a sense of belonging. I am a part of something.

This story could not have happened to me at a better time. I am 23 years old and have participated in two presidential elections. I left my grandmother's funeral early in 2004 so I could fly back to Ohio and vote. My candidate was already chosen, and I wanted him to win, but I was in the "lesser of two evils" crowd that you hear so much about come voting time. I didn't feel like I belonged to a movement. I was simply making a choice. I voted for Kerry, who ultimately lost. It would be easy to say my vote didn't count, but it would also be painful and pointless. It would imply that I regret voting; that it didn't matter.

But this time? This time, I am in it. I have invested for over a year in my candidate, from the steps where he gave his first speech declaring his intention to run, to the convention where he accepted the nomination to be this year's candidate. I was the first on my street with a yard sign. I attended every function I could. I participated. I became a part of something bigger. I didn't let the fact that my vote "didn't matter" in 2004 deter me from committing to this as hard as possible.

I cannot say this enough: Your vote matters. I very strongly believe in my candidate and my political views, but this is not the day for me to push them on you. I hope your mind is already made up. I hope you believe as strongly in your candidate as I do in mine, no matter who you're voting for. You can debate all day whether or not your vote matters, you can spout facts about the electoral college, but this is the one thing you can do.

This is your vote. Belong to something.

(Oh, side note, if you would like me to push my views on you - YES on Prop 1A, a really gigantic FUCK NO on Prop 8, and YES to Obama/Biden '08. But honestly, just get out there.)

Bar roundup, and why I'm really loyal to Make Out Room.

2008-10-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

I'm unhappy with my work situation right now, so I don't want to talk work. Let's talk drinking.

I know I've mentioned bars here before, so it's probably no secret that I'm kind of a major critic of them. Here's what you've got to understand about me: I really, really like bar games. My social life is centered around them. I throw a mediocre game of darts and play a similarly mediocre game of pool, but god help me, I could do both of those things for hours. I love cards. I love stupid little bar machines. And also? I really, really love beer.

San Francisco and I are okay as far as bars go, mostly because I live in an area of town that's littered with them on every corner. We are not okay, because I don't make very much money, and my desire to pay more than five dollars for a beer is really low. That being said, here's a roundup of my experiences so far:

Doc's Clock. I like Doc's a lot. It's on Mission between 21st & 22nd, so it's close to me. Their happy hour lasts from 6-9. Midwest happy hours - and most east coast happy hours, for that matter - exist until 7 if you're lucky. I can get cheap drinks until 9?! Thanks, Doc's. I also like Doc's because I don't like to have to wait twenty minutes to get a drink. It gets busy, but it has a tendency to get busy way later than I arrive. The Roommate and I have a tendency to arrive at happy hour time and be done by 10 or so, which is just when Doc's is hitting its stride. They've got a fantastic shuffleboard table, and an assortment of board games that are all missing a few pieces, but work well if you're willing to adapt. (Our favorites: Trivial Pursuit where all of the pieces have at least one wedge stuck in them and Connect Four missing half of the pieces.) PBR is $2 until 9p, or all night on Sundays. And after that, the PBR price only goes up to $2.50, so you don't have to be too worried. Plus, the bartenders are awesome - I had to wait a ridiculously long time the other night because the bartender was involved in a conversation and didn't see me. Two Anchor Steams for free because he felt bad. Yes to all of it. Thanks, Doc's.

Kilowatt. Oh, Kilowatt, I moved further away from you and now you feel like you are SO FAR AWAY. (Five blocks. Suck it up.) Kilowatt is the best place to play pool in the Mission IF you want to rotate in and out of tables. And if you're not completely worthless as a pool player. Free pool on Sundays. Gets wicked crowded when football is on, unfortunately, so we occasionally end up across the street at Delirium until it clears out. Beer isn't particularly cheap, but isn't the end of the world. They've got a nice selection and a killer pale ale on tap. $3.25 for most beers during happy hour, which only lasts until 7. Also, they've got two dart boards. They're awful dart boards, but they exist - and they're on a raised platform so assholes aren't constantly tripping over you while you try to shoot. Plus one for Kilowatt. Unfortunately, there are two tables up there, and when there's nowhere else to sit, people default to sitting there - making it impossible to shoot. I can't handle Kilowatt when it's busy, but I love it on Saturday afternoons.

500 Club. Love me some 500 Club. I will fully admit, however, that I've only been there when they were showing the presidential debates, so I can't say anything about the clientele. What I can say is that their happy hour lasts until 7, all drafts are $2 on Tuesday during happy hour, and the bartenders are very good at what they do. I will be investigating this deal tonight while I rock today's crossword puzzle, because I am a nerd.

Delirium. I kind of don't feel like I belong at Delirium. Ever. Still, the beer is cheap, and on Sundays, they've got free food and free pool. The free food is seriously an event - they grill about seven pieces of meat at a time and set it on a table in the middle of the bar, and you better be watching for it, because seven pieces of meat go very quickly. Like, seconds. And it'll be about 30-45 minutes until the next run of meat comes up. But it is free, so it's hard to make a major case against them. A couple of TVs if you want to watch a game and don't want to battle the Kilowatt crowd.

The Phoenix. Love/hate relationship. $5 Hoegaarden. Grumble. But they have food, and occcasionally I just want to sit at a bar, watch World Series of Poker reruns with The Roommate, and down an order of fries with mayonnaise. This is the perfect location to do that, if you hit the timing right so you're not battling way too many people that are trying way too hard. I've got a soft spot in my heart for this place, but I just can't figure out why.

Inner Mission Beer Parlor. If I wasn't so poor, I would love the hell out of this bar. It looks super divey, and hell, maybe it is. What I know is that they have a simply incredible beer selection. Absolutely my favorite in the Mission. They're also $5-7 per draft, and that's a little much for me to pay for a real night of drinking. Getting $25-30 deep with tip for a night is a little more than I'd like to pay, and I feel a little bit like an asshole ordering $3 bottles of PBR in this place. They do have two pool tables, a decent amount of seating, and the pool tables aren't as competitive as Kilowatt. I'd like this place a lot if I could feel less guilty about dropping a lot of cash on beer. As it stands, I still like it a lot - I can just only go on nights I don't particularly feel like drinking. Too bad. Good beer = I want to keep drinking it.

Elbo Room. I probably have to say that I don't like Elbo, and that's too bad, because I kind of do. Decent beer selection. But oh, god, it's so dark. SO dark. Your eyes have to adjust something fierce. I know. It's a bar. But if you've never been there, you cannot understand how damn dark the place is. I don't like bright, shiny bars, but this is ridiculous. They have pinball machines in the back. I understand they have an upstairs, but I've never been there. I like sitting at the bar for a beer or two occasionally. Also, they start to get packed pretty early, and then it's obnoxious. They also claim to have the longest happy hour in the city, 6-9p, which is a lie, because that title is held, in my experience, by my favorite of the Mission dives so far...

Make Out Room. I love this bar. I have a really ridiculous amount of reasons to love this bar. Also, please realize that my experience with this bar is mostly before 10, and does not involve shows, and those are the two things that they kind of specialize in. That may be why I have such a ridiculously high opinion of it. But allow me to paint you a word picture. In SAN FRANCISCO, they have $5 pitchers (!!!) of PBR until 10. Look, people, I know it's not great beer. But The Roommate and I can get two beers each for $5, and that is amazing. Their other drafts are cheap during happy hour too, and they have cider, which I can drink like water. They claim to have no cover charge Monday-Thursday. We turned up there on a random weeknight and they were charging a cover. When we talked nicely to the door guy and said we really just wanted a pitcher and didn't want to see the show, he let us slip in and just sit at the bar. (We weren't trying to be assholes - it was a comedy show, we paid absolutely no attention, and sat at the bar chatting instead.) I've never had a huge wait for a drink. I'm also usually there before it starts to get packed.

The most recent reason I love them? I got real, real messed up there last week, and I have a certain bartender to thank. We went to see the debates at 500 and had a couple of drinks, then ended up here a little later. (Post-sandwich.) We bought the first pitcher of beer, then made friends with a bartender who looked really bored. I asked him if he was doing okay, he said he was super tired, and I asked him to tell me about his day. After immediately insisting that I didn't really want to hear about his day, I reassured him that I actually did. We made friends quickly. Turns out he's moving soon. We told him that we both recently moved here and wanted to know what awesome things we should probably be doing. Our beer was nearly out, so he poured us another pitcher as he was talking. We're certainly not ones to refuse free beer, so we hung out for awhile longer. This incredibly nice bartender proceeded to introduce us to some friends and try to integrate us into the bar scene. A little later came the shots.

People, I can't take shots. I just can't. But when a bartender pours three shots of tequila for him, you and your roommate, you suck it up and suck it down. And shockingly, for the first time in about four years, I managed to successfully keep a shot down. A couple drinks at 500, then two pitchers, then the tequila shot? It was all over for this girl. But I got to chat up a really great bartender all night, I became successfully reacquainted with hard liquor, and I did it for $5 because the really great bartender was buying us drinks. (We tipped him incredibly well on our way out because we were incredibly grateful for how our night turned out.)

Much, much love to Make Out Room. And much love to all of the mission bars. (Except the creepy one on Mission where we drank $4 Coronas and I got hit on by an incredibly lewd fellow who did not speak English, but spoke the international language of gross hand gestures. No love to that place again, ever.)

Mission Street Food.

2008-10-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

I have a set of storyboards that I had wanted to get out in an hour and a half, but I literally have no ideas for them, so I've decided to procrastinate by making all of you jealous of the incredible food I got to eat last night.

Have you heard of the new Mission Street Food truck? It's honestly a really brilliant concept. The chef from Bar Tartine, a restaurant I simply cannot afford to eat at, has rented an already-established food truck. On Thursday nights, he parks it at 21st & Mission and makes three sandwiches, as well as an Asian Pear Slaw and brownies. This was the third week. It's been a wildly popular concept, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out why. $5 sandwiches! GOOD sandwiches! $3 brownies!

I'm a food nerd, so the concept is honestly amazing to me. We're taking very good food and making it accessible to a lot of people. It's incredibly experimental - we all know the stigma some people see behind food that comes from a truck - but it's backed by a solid name. This is good food that you can get in a paper tub on the street.

Chef Anthony has a blog, so we can all keep up on what's going on in his world. I convinced The Roommate to walk down with me (two blocks from the apartment!) and grab dinner with me last night.

Let's face it: the wait is astronomical. I waited an hour for a sandwich. The signs claim they're open from 8p-2a, but I have a really difficult time imagining that to be true. We got down there around 9:20, and the whole experience probably took us about an hour. We waited in line for about 45 minutes, then waited about 15 after placing the order to get our food. The thing is, we knew that was going to happen. For whatever reason, no one seems to really care. Sip a soda, watch the crowd, smell the pork cooking - we all know the experience that we're participating in. They aren't advertising, so we all only know about it because we're blog-reading nerds. We read that there were 45 minute waits, so what did we do? Flooded them with orders and made it last even longer.

The food is incredible. "Sandwich" is a sort of tricky term. I consider it a sandwich as much as I consider a taco to be a sandwich - because, well, I ate it like a taco. It's one piece of flatbread topped with delicious, delicious toppings. Both The Roommate and I had the cleverly-named PB&J - pork belly and jicama. The pork just melts in your mouth, the jicama provides a starchy textural contrast, and I swear to you I would drink the damned aioli that they drizzle on top of it. I could have killed two of them, and next week, there's a strong chance I'll skip lunch so I can do just that.

Be aware, though, that they run out of food. And OF COURSE they do - you don't want to bring food you won't sell, so you have to estimate a little low, but this place is being absolutely flooded with traffic. There is no way the truck is open until 2 a.m. By the time we actually got up to the truck around 10, they were a customer or two away from running out of the handmade flatbread - but were substituting tortillas for $1 off each sandwich. They ran out of the brie for the brownies far before we got up there, assuming that most people would probably not be open to the idea of cheese on their brownies. (They compensated by giving me $1 off my brownie as well.)

Oh, and the brownie? Delicious. It just disappears in your mouth. So moist, so rich. These brownies will kill you. It's a good thing The Roommate and I decided to split one, because I couldn't have eaten it on my own.

The hype and the wait are worth it. They do this once a week, kids. Every week they're practicing and refining. As long as you go into it expecting a learning experience, you'll enjoy it. Also, there's one of my favorite bodegas across the street, so you can go get a beer and pound it while you're in line. (Still hung over from Make Out Room the night before, we opted for sodas, but the group behind us took the 22 oz.-in-bags route. More on Make Out Room and my tequila shot later.) Do NOT go there expecting a short trip, do not get impatient, and get there early. After just two hours they were desperately running out of things and making substitutions. I don't know what the line was like when they first opened, but I wish I had gotten there early enough to get brie with the brownie. Next week, you can bet I'm going to get out of my apartment closer to 8 rather than watching The Office before I go.

Blog Action Day: Perspective.

2008-10-15T13:27:00.000-07:00

Today is Blog Action Day, everyone, and this year's theme is Poverty.

I have a history of being exposed to poverty. I also have a history of talking about how I have no money. But if we could, for a moment, let's sit down and consider what it really means to not have any money.

Growing up, my family wasn't always doing terribly well. My parents were where I first learned the dangers of credit. They didn't make a ton of money, but we always had very nice things. The hot tub in the back yard, the satellite dish back when that was a super huge deal, the new cars every two years. My mother loves Christmas. I was technically an only child (step-siblings and half-siblings, but we never lived together), so I was spoiled. Presents as far as the eye can see, all lovingly wrapped for me to destroy on the morning of December 25th. As a kid, you don't necessarily consider where these things come from. It took me awhile to learn about the concept of credit.

I worked in pre-foreclosure for my first year of college. I was making enough money to support myself and my live-in boyfriend, who was finishing up an incredibly difficult college major. It paid our rent ($345 for an efficiency; I miss the midwest), it paid for our food, and it paid for us to occasionally go out and do fun things. It was also the worst job experience I've ever had. I sat at a desk every day and listened to people tell me that they could pay their mortgage or feed their kids, and what would I do if I was in their position? The truth is that I could never understand their position. How do you get there? How do you purchase a house and suddenly not have the capacity to pay for it? I pitied these people, I really did, but I had difficulty understanding their situation. But I listened to them yell at me for eight hours a day, and then I would go home and cry. I hated my job. But it was major exposure to the idea of living beyond your means.

I'm sure we're all looking for some heart-warming tale of how I learned my lesson about credit from that job, but I don't know if I'd get ready for that just yet. It should be noted that I have incredibly good credit. I've got a high credit rating, because even if I'm carrying huge balances, I pay my bills every month. A high credit rating means that my bank keeps raising my limit, which means that my balance keeps raising, because I'm going to pay it off in that magical "someday" where I don't have to worry about money anymore. And now I carry close to $20,000 in credit card debt. It's a combination of factors. College, the year-long stint in New York working at a job that didn't support my newly-turned-21 habits, a wedding, moving to San Francisco after being unemployed for seven months with absolutely no savings.

I live more modestly in San Francisco than I ever have, because, well... it's pretty easy to do so. The Roommate isn't a huge money-spender. I don't really know a lot of people around here. I am a $2 PBR girl, not a $10 cocktail girl. I live in a neighborhood where the best food is often the cheap food. I don't spend any money on transportation and I am splitting the cost of the cheapest studio I've seen in this city. I get by. But when I first moved here, I had no money. However, I've got really good credit. So if I was hungry, I could just transfer a few hundred bucks from a credit account and eat modestly for a few weeks. Sure, the credit runs out eventually. But I've got enough open that if I HAD to pay my rent and get by like that for a few months, I could make do.

This is where I am lucky. If I have to dig up money for an emergency, I can. It's not a smart way to operate. But it is an option. I have parents who don't really make a lot of money, but are willing to give me what they have if they know I'm really struggling. Sure, I moved here with "no money", but I am not going to bed hungry because I have no other options. Also, I am going to BED. In a bed, wrapped up in a comforter, with no concerns about my safety throughout the night. I wake up the next morning and take a hot shower. I grab a bowl of cereal. I go to my coffee shop, with my computer, and I work. I'm buying $1.75 house coffee instead of $5 lattes, but I am still living comfortably. I have nothing to bitch about, ever.

Over the past five and a half years, I have always found myself living in low-income neighborhoods. It's not really a matter of taking advantage of pre-gentrification - the neighborhoods immediately surrounding my college were certainly lower-class. In New York, I moved in with two good friends who happened to live in a safe, but as-yet-ungentrified location. (I have a feeling it's coming eventually.) I live in a neighborhood now that's a strange mixture of people who are legitimately impoverished, families that have been here for years, and hipsters. (I really have no idea how the hell to describe my neighborhood in a way that's fair and beautiful, so I'm just giving up.)

If I want to walk to the train station, I have to pass people who are crazy. And I don't mean to be derogatory or sound like an asshole, but I mean legitimately crazy. The type of crazy that only comes when you haven't eaten for four days - and when you did eat your last meal, it might have been some McDonald's leftovers that you dug out of the trash. The type of crazy that comes from not having a good night's sleep in a decade. The type of crazy that comes from not having any friends, not having any family, not having a single person to turn to. The type of crazy that has to literally sleep with one eye open lest you lose the possessions that look like trash to passers-by, but are literally all you have to cling to. The type of crazy that comes from feeling like the system has failed you. The type of crazy that KNOWS you are crazy and can't do a single thing to save yourself. The type of crazy that has completely run out of rope.

It makes me feel awful. I feel awful because I legitimately can't imagine it. I'm sure my parents had some incredibly close brushes with being impoverished when I was growing up, but if they did, I certainly didn't know about it. I always had shoes on my feet and a meal on the table, and at the end of the day, I got to curl up in my warm bed and sleep, safe and sound. I have been incredibly lucky in my life. I've got a lot of debt, and it's going to take me a long time to pay it back. But I'm college-educated. I can charge a lot of money for my freelance work because I am good at what I do and I have five years of education and work experience to back it up. My clothes fit a little loose now and I don't look quite as professional as I should, but I still have nice things to wear to a job interview.

Everyone around the blogosphere has been offering their tips and tricks for what you can do to combat poverty, so I'm not going to add to them. The truth is that there are no hard and fast solutions out there. What I want everyone to do is just think. Consider a world where you have to put your head on the sidewalk at night, a world where you have to paw through garbage in front of well-to-do individuals in the morning to see if someone threw out part of a sandwich. Consider how humiliated you might be and how hard it would be to retain your pride and your sanity. I don't have a lot of money. I'm working on making my income a little higher, and I certainly hope that when the day comes that I have disposable income, I'll be trying to help others with it. What I can do right now is smile at someone I pass. If I'm walking out of a restaurant and I have leftovers with me, I can offer them to someone I see digging through a bag of garbage instead of just throwing them away eventually.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen my biological father cry. One of them is when he was telling me a story about why he always carries change. He used to do a fair amount of traveling in dense, urban areas, and would often be asked for money. Rather than ever handing someone a dollar bill, he would always give them change. When you do that, you have to touch the person. You don't have six inches of paper separating you. You give them what you can spare, but at the same time, you're making an actual human connection. He felt people didn't do that enough anymore, that we're too detached, and it's his small way of making a difference.

So what's your small difference going to be? If you can't come up with anything else, I would just like to ask you to think. Consider for a moment what it would mean to have nowhere to turn. Kiss the one you love, and think before you fall asleep about how lucky you are to have the things you have, even if you wish you had more. There are people who wish they had anything.

Full-time freelancer.

2008-10-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

My life is a little weird, kids, and I understand that my next few statements are probably going to open the doors to a whole lot of "poor baby" comments. So, just get ready for it.

I have completely abandoned the idea of getting a full-time job. I go back and forth between using the word "full-time" and "real", and this says a lot about how I feel about my current situation. After taking a couple of freelance jobs, I realized that I really love it. I had always felt like that was true about me. I freelanced off-and-on during college to pay a few bills and it always worked out really well for me. Then when college was over, the work simply didn't exist. I picked up a couple of freelance jobs out here, and honestly? I love it. As an indicator of how my life goes, The Roommate actually asked me the other day why I ever bother leaving the house. I'm pretty sure he kind of meant it as an asshole statement, but I couldn't care less. It's a pretty good point. I don't have to leave my house, ever.

My life as a freelancer is an interesting one. I make a really obnoxious amount of money... kind of. I make a really obnoxious amount of money at an hourly rate, and that would be great if I was actually working 40 hours a week. However, I am not, so it ends up balancing out to a simply livable amount of money, and I manage to live pretty cheaply here (especially since I discovered the $5 pitchers of PBR at Make Out Room, and no, Mom, it isn't what it sounds like, it's just a dive bar). It is the world's most liberating feeling to be able to work when I want to. It doesn't mean I'm not working hard - though I certainly could be working harder. I'd say I divide my time right now between actually doing work that makes me money and seeking out new work.

I have to be honest, the freelance lifestyle is scary when you first start it. Also, I'm sure this will change when the work is a little more regular, but I honestly don't feel like I'm ever working. I spend my days hopping from coffee shop to coffee shop, occasionally heading downtown to attend a meeting with a client or to network with potential clients. (I also try to schedule my meetings around lunch so I have an excuse to grab the $5 lunch special at Mehfil on 2nd & Folsom with The Roommate, but THAT is another story.) If I wake up at 8 and I'm still tired, I can go back to bed. I'll just work a little later in the evening. If I feel like sitting in my pajamas and drinking milk all day, I can do that. Or I can actually get motivated and go to one of the many free wi-fi hotspots in my neighborhood. (Because, as mentioned before, my neighborhood basically rules.)

It's difficult to say that I won't be getting a full-time job, because if someone came along right now and offered me a lot of money and benefits, it would be really hard to turn it down. I'm not secure as a freelancer yet. I need the jobs to keep rolling in so I can build up a little savings and not constantly worry about how I pay the rent for the next month. But if that happens, I'll be really pleased with my life. For now, I'm just sitting back and letting it happen. I've made enough to pay my credit card bill for this month, pay the rent for next month, and buy the occasional $5 pitcher of beer. And honestly, as long as those things exist, I'm secure enough.

On that note, it's time to get back to work. (You see, even though it's 6:30, I didn't choose to get out of bed until 11. So now I'm overcompensating.) And after that, we'll be investigating those $5 pitchers at Make Out Room. I might even get cocky enough to ride a bicycle there. Fingers crossed.

San Francisco microcosm

2008-10-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

To say I love living in San Francisco feels a little strange. I really, really like being in San Francisco. Living here has been an experience. I'm not sure if we can say I love it yet. I don't know many people here, and I really miss my house. I have an apartment that is twice as much as my mortgage for a third of the space. My job prospects are still few and far between. The broken bone factor sort of put a damper on a lot of things. What I can say is that I think someday, I'm really going to love living here. That magical day when the money starts rolling in enough that I'm not actually afraid of how to pay my rent for the next month and I get some of my stuff out here from home, I'll be much happier. There's nothing I dislike so far, there are just things I miss. Like being employed. And having something in my kitchen other than two bowls and a skillet. (And ants.)

Here's what concerns me. I'm concerned that San Francisco is destroying me, and I will never be able to live anywhere else as long as I live. I was talking to a friend the other day, and somehow weather came up. I have literally forgotten it is autumn. The weather has not changed since I got here. It's occasionally a little chilly in the morning or the evening, I suppose. I have no concept of what the rest of the country is going through. I have yet to see rain. I grew up with snow. I have lived through snow in October. If the day ever comes that I actually bitch about weather here, someone should probably remind me that I'm an idiot.

So I'm afraid I'm going to simply lose time. October means something to me in the midwest, but it does not mean a damn thing here. I am still wearing shorts. I can ride a bike year-round. I am petrified that it is going to suddenly become March and I'm not going to know where the past six months of my life went. I am petrified that I am going to turn 30 and not have any idea how I got there. (Note: The jump from six months to turning 30 is a much larger one than I would usually lead you to believe.)

I'm also a little afraid that I'm going to forget how the rest of the country works. Can I ever move back to a conservative town after living here? I will have the experience of observing the presidential election from one of the most liberal towns in America. (Note: I would have said THE most liberal town in America, but a newspaper here recently endorsed McCain/Palin, and I know it's a worthless newspaper, but the point is that A NEWSPAPER IN SAN FRANCISCO ENDORSED JOHN MCCAIN. Ahem.) I come from a somewhat conservative town, followed by an incredibly conservative town. Somehow, one month in San Francisco is managing to make me forget 23 years of living everywhere else. The options of where I'm able to live next are dwindling rapidly.

The San Francisco microcosm is a funny one, and I'm only mentioning this now so that when I forget that a little later, I can look back and see that I actually wrote these words, and there was a time when I acknowledged that the world I'm living in is a little strange. Don't take that as a complaint, by any means - I moved here for a reason, and it's just been a slightly different adjustment than I had anticipated.

Today marks five weeks that I've been here. I'm pretty confident that's the reason my "time slipping away from me" post here came about. The job front is looking up a little. I've decided to be a full-time freelancer rather than getting a "real" job, something I'm pretty excited about. My only concern is my ability to keep the work coming in, but it's going solidly enough so far. I've got a client right now that seems like he's going to be a fairly repeat customer. There are a couple of communication issues, and I hope we're able to resolve those to develop a good working relationship. I wanted very badly to freelance full-time a few months ago, but it didn't quite work out. Now, the work is starting to come in, and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed every day that I can keep enough balls in the air to make this a successful enterprise.

So, thanks for five good weeks, San Francisco, even though you're making me broke and destroyed my collar bone. Here's to the future.

No on Prop 8.

2008-10-01T15:55:00.000-07:00

My freelance job I just finished up was for a political cause that I actually care about. As much as I can care about something that is on a ballot for a state I'm not registered to vote in, that is. I'm choosing to not update my voter registration to California just yet, because I still own a house in the midwest and quite frankly, that state needs my Obama vote a whole hell of a lot more than California does. Also, I'm not ready to deal with all of the official bullshit that comes along with moving from one state to another.

The point is, I'm not going to speak too terribly much about politics here, because I can't vote on California ballot issues. Since I can't use my actual vote for them, all I can do is say that I really hope people feel the same way I do, and I really hope my opinions are in the majority on election day.

Whether or not I deserve to talk about it, I'd like to call attention to Proposition 8. If Dan Savage can do it, I'd really like to be able to as well. Proposition 8, in a nutshell, eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry. Every state in American needs to get prepped for the idea that this issue is going to come up again and again. People want, and as far as I'm concerned, certainly deserve to share rights. Feel however you want to feel about marriage as an institution and what "family" means, but as far as I'm concerned, people should be permitted to define their own family and they should have access to the same rights and privileges no matter who they want to spend the rest of their lives with.

I'm straight, but I'm committed to the cause for a couple of reasons. One, I legitimately believe everything I just said about rights being available to everyone, and two, my dad is gay. The story is much longer than that, as is the case with everyone in my age group with gay parents, but the short version is that I was raised in a home with straight parents and my father came out when I was about 17. I feel physically ill when I think about the idea of him having a partner that he wants to spend the rest of his life with and that partner not being able to make decisions for him if he (god forbid, knock on wood, the whole bit) ever ends up in the hospital after some tragic accident or something. His roommates (living in a freakishly red state, I might add) have been together for a very long time and live as if they're married - but no matter what they feel for one another, whether or not they would want to be married, it's a right that isn't available to them. I have to be against any issue that keeps them from having the option to make that choice.

So, please. If you're the type of person who has money to spare, support the Prop 8 people. I'm not sure how much good it does to donate to political causes sometimes, but if you're thinking about getting involved and donating to something, consider the incredibly bright people behind Prop 8. It's 2008. Seriously. Let's stop keeping people from doing things they want to do that don't affect or hurt anyone else.

Driving.

2008-10-01T14:40:00.001-07:00

It is all too appropriate that the day after I talked about how public transportation is my favorite thing in the whole wide world, I ended up driving a goddamned cargo van through the streets of San Francisco.

First of all, to anyone that actually owns a cargo van - how do you people do it? Fifteen seconds on 16th Street and I simply wanted to die.

Second of all, the most fun thing about strange broken bones is that you don't realize what you can and can't do with them until you've actually done it. For example, with a broken collar bone, I cannot turn the steering wheel of an automobile. Of course, this isn't information that was made clear to me until I attempted to turn the steering wheel of the van I had just rented.

Thanks to the wonders of craigslist, I went from having no furniture to being the proud owner of a double bed and a coffee table. The bed cost me $140, the coffee table was free because it was literally 100 pounds and the owners really wanted someone to take it down their stairs and get it the hell out of their apartment. The thing is, as mentioned before, I don't own a car. So after considering zipcar, we just decided to suck it up and go U-Haul style. It ended up costing me $48 total, which isn't so bad.

What is so bad, however, is the fact that I haven't driven a car in a month, I have a broken collar bone, I have never driven something this big in the city, and my foray into San Francisco driving came in the form of a cargo van. CARGO VAN!

It went well enough. I took advantage of my situation and did some driving around the city to buy a few things that we need for the new apartment - two gallons of milk, tacky shower curtain, etc. The necessities. (Also: Oreos, cottage cheese, turkey, 6-pack of Anchor Summer.) I managed to hold up my side of the 100 pound coffee table with minimal wincing; The Roommate put a bed together so I didn't have to even with the PDF of Ikea instructions that was for a different model.

My other thing to bitch about today is internet access. Everyone can feel free to hate me for this, but let's just say I spent September stealing internet. Look. It's a major city. I live in an area that's incredibly densely populated. Nothing is keeping you from protecting your wireless internet. So if you leave it unprotected, there's a chance I'm going to steal it. I am poor and was living in an apartment illegally for a month. It's really hard to keep the morals in tact. So I stole internet for a month. New apartment building is surrounded by people that are incredibly smart, so all of the routers are protected and I can't steal the services someone else is paying for.

The midwest and the northeast have Time Warner, and while there's certainly enough reasons to complain about them, they never charged me for a single thing other than monthly service. Ever. That means no $100 "internet installation fee" (here's looking at you, comcast) or $80 modem. If only I had realized how great I had it.

So, I ended up selecting the cheapest service that AT&T has, and we'll see if it sucks. I always have the option to upgrade it if it's wicked slow, but I figure I went the past month with really awful internet service and managed to survive, so I'll probably make it through with my $20 internet at least until I have a job that actually enables me to pay a bill or two.

Oh, right, jobs! The reason I'm out here in the first place. Yes, jobs. Freelance job finished up yesterday, and I'm hoping something more will come out of that. I have a casual coffee meeting with someone who owns a firm I'd really like to work for next week. I emailed about a freelance job that I would be absolutely perfect for today. A company in Mountain View emailed me to ask me about my salary requirements. (No interview yet, but I'm hoping when they realize how relatively cheap I think I can be bought for, they'll bring me in.) Things are beginning to look up. No call from incredibly cute bakery that I applied at a few weeks ago, which is disappointing. Win some, lose some.

Who's watching the VP debate tomorrow, kids, and where are you going? I'm thinking about hitting 500 again, but realize that I can most likely go anywhere in the mission and they'll have it on. I've learned my lesson with 500, so if I attempt it this time, I'll be there super early.

Public Transportation.

2008-09-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

I really wish I could convince every person that lives in a city with public transportation to take it. Having lived now in four cities of various sizes with public transportation systems, it's always fascinating to see the way people feel about no-car life. It only occurred to me after I started riding a bike that I could get by without a car in the last city I lived in. You have to understand - midwest cities are car-based. (The exception might be Chicago, but if you've ever had to deal with rush hour there, you'll realize that there are still a ridiculous amount of automobiles.)

I lived in Midwest city #1 until I was 18, then shifted to Midwest city #2 for college, with a break for awhile in there to live in New York, and now I've ended up in San Francisco. City #1 has a public transportation system, but honestly? I don't know a thing about it. I lived in a suburb, you see, and I'm confident that city buses didn't run out there. Or if they did, I surely didn't know about it. I had the parental taxi until I was 14 or so, then started dating a boy who was old enough to drive, then was the proud owner of a 1990 Mercury Sable when I was old enough to drive. (Her name was Mabel and I cried the day she ended up in a junkyard. For the curious, she was followed by her 1995 edition, Boris the Taurus.) Also, at this point, my parents could give me $10 and I could drive on it for a week, so I wasn't freaking out about gas prices, and at 16, I hadn't quite realized that I was hurting the environment.

Midwest city #2 has, actually, a really fabulous public transportation system. As mentioned before, I didn't know that until I got on a bike. It's a very hilly city, you see, and I think I've stated in the past that I'm not a particularly good cyclist. (Reference: five wrecks in two months; broken collar bone.) Bike racks on the front of buses are the second best thing to ever happen to me.

The first best thing? About a year and a half or so into college, a bunch of people reached an agreement that let every student at my major public university ride the bus for free. A flash of my student ID and I didn't have to pay a cent to get wherever I wanted to go. The bus system was kind of confusing and hard to get used to, and it wasn't terribly fast or consistent, but if you learned how to make it work for you, it was a godsend. And it was, again, free.

New York, I cannot say enough about your public transportation. I miss it so much, regardless of the time I spent bitching about it when I was there. A combination of subways and buses could get me anywhere I needed to go. I lived pretty far uptown and wasn't yet on a bike, so the subway and I made good friends pretty regularly. For $76 a month, I could get off at all the wrong stops I wanted. And I firmly believe that every 21-year-old girl needs a couple of good stories in her repertoire about what she saw on the Manhattan-bound E train at 4 a.m.

San Francisco public transportation is weird. Really, really weird. There are buses. There are cable cars. Some lines have numbers and I think some have letters and then there's a subway system that appears to be run by a completely different company. I remember visiting my then-boyfriend in 2003 and he took me all over the city on this method of transportation or that, but I had no idea what the hell was going on. The Washington D.C. Metro that I mastered at the age of 8, as well as the Paris Metro at the age of 17 when I was mostly pretending to speak French made more sense to me. (My problem with BART, for locals, is that I can't grasp the idea of anything other than flat fares. NYC: $2, wherever you're going, ever. $7.80 to go to Oakland? Weird.)

I really encourage people to take whatever public transportation they can, if for no other reason than to prove to them that it's probably way easier than they think it is. Midwest city #2 recently held a day where people could come downtown and learn how to ride the bus. There were buses set up so you could get on them and take seminars learning how everything worked. I'm not kidding. And while I think that's kind of stupid - it's a bus, people, seriously - it isn't a foreign concept to me. There's all this anxiety with people who have never been on a city bus before, and it certainly surrounds the fact that everyone but you totally looks like they know what they're doing. An incredibly brilliant friend of mine told me a story once about how she wanted to ride her bike around, but the bus pulled up and she couldn't figure out how to pull down the bike rack so she totally didn't do it. It makes me really, really sad.

I was a part of the issue, though. I lived less than three miles from my college, and I spent most of my time driving there. Ridiculous. $228 per quarter, plus gas, plus the ridiculous toll I was taking on my car by only driving it in the city for super short distances, etc.

The PT issue here is getting slightly easier thanks to the recent injury. Getting on a bike simply isn't happening for me, so I've got to get around somehow. It's also encouraging me to get out and walk neighborhoods more, as I have very little desire to take two buses to get somewhere, especially if the first bus is only going to take me less than a mile. Of course, in the case of getting to the hospital for my follow-up appointment, I decided it was really stupid to take one bus .8 miles to take another .8, so I just walked it. I will continue to get exercise even without a bicycle, I swear it.

If your city is smart enough to have some form of public transportation, take a Saturday or something and check it out. Don't do it when you have somewhere to be ASAP, because you'll just panic and get all anxious about the fact that you're not in control of how fast you get there. Ride somewhere just for fun. You'll be surprised at how awesome it is, and how much you totally didn't spend in gas that day.

500 Club + Debate aftermath.

2008-09-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

Note to self: Next time you go to 500 Club to watch a presidential debate, you might want to get there an hour early. Good lord.

So, 500 Club was absolutely packed by the time I got there at 5:45. I will say this - it's the type of place I think I'd like a whole lot if it didn't have so many people in it. It could use a pool table, but quite frankly, I feel that way about every bar I've ever been in.

It is an interesting experience being in a room of people just like you. I managed to get up to the bar, thankfully, because this sling is still putting a damper on my ability to hold a beer. I was standing next to a guy who was really, really unhappy to be there. He was older and really hated the fact that his bar was being infiltrated by crazy hipster liberals. I wanted to feel badly, but it turns out I didn't. When we'd get all riled up about Obama, he'd attempt to shout out some counterpoint. Didn't so much come across as intelligent debate so much as being curmudgeonly. He left fairly early, and because an incredibly kind girl wanted to be nice to the chick with her arm in a sling, I managed to snag a seat at the bar right in front of the television. Score.

Props to 500 Club - it was a little difficult to get drinks, but the bartenders were fabulous. They ran out of Anchor Steam about halfway through, but they have a fantastic selection of other beers, so no one seemed too distraught. Me? I was throwing down $2 PBRs, partially because I'm very poor, partially because I like hipster beer, but mostly because I was a little afraid that someone was going to knock into me, and I am notorious for spilling beer all over myself if someone gets within two feet of me. I have yet to spill a bottle of beer on myself or others, but a pint glass? Watch out. Also, The Roommate couldn't get close to me at the beginning, so I needed something I could pass over people's heads to him, and a brimming glass of Racer was not going to work out.

A friend of mine in her assessment of watching the debate at a hipster bar in New York said "We're really partisan, so we don't know if Obama is winning or not." This is how I felt. Don't get me wrong - I'm making my Sarah Palin jokes ("Oh shit, they asked about Russia! If McCain mentions Palin, we're taking shots!") and pounding the bar every time Obama says something about healthcare. But really, he could have thrown the debate and we would have cheered at everything he said and booed McCain. I felt like both parties made some incredibly good points. But really, we were just happy to watch Barack Obama and ponder the idea that we might have a president we actually support in a few months.

So, thanks, 500 Club. I'll be back, but I know how to play your game now. See you at the next debate.

Working + Debate.

2008-09-26T14:53:00.001-07:00

So, I've been a little absent, and I apologize.

Very, very good news: I picked up a very short freelance job that will pay my rent for the month of October, which is a pretty huge thing in my life. I have also started opening up some fairly healthy dialogue with a few companies that are looking for freelancers, so with any luck, maybe I'll never have to put on pants or leave my apartment, ever. I'm loving the work I'm doing right now, even though it's a small job and it's pretty simple. I'm doing motion graphics and getting paid for it, and that's the whole reason I moved out here.

In addition to paying my rent, it will also be paying for my beer for at least a couple of weeks, at the rate/bars I've been drinking at. ($5 pitchers of PBR at Make Out Room? I know it makes me sound super hipster, but if The Roommate and I can get drinks for $1.25 each, I really don't give a good damn. And I feel way better about the $4 Anchor Steam we order after that pitcher.) And speaking of beer, go to a bar tonight and watch the presidential debate.

Really, just watch the presidential debate. But I don't own a television, and I'm sure many of you are the same way. It's foreign policy tonight, kids, so let's fire up the McCain drinking game and see who at least talks like they've got the most experience.

SFist has a list of places that will be showing it. I'd like to hit the 2 Lips showing, but have little desire to get on a bus, and I'm still all slung up from this stupid collar bone thing. Instead, I'll be at 500 Club, and a recent text message confirms that The Roommate will be meeting me there. So if you're in the mission, swing by! And if you see a redhead in glasses, launching back the cheapest beer they've got and wearing a sling, there's a chance it's me, so come say hi. I still know enough people in this city that I don't need to use my second, broken hand to count them. Come make friends!

Accidental delay.

2008-09-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple of days, folks, and I apologize for that. Let's go ahead and get it out of the way: I snapped my collar bone falling off of my bike.

It is incredibly difficult to refer to myself as a cyclist sometimes. We should also get it out of the way that I've fallen off of my bike five times in the past two and a half months.

Test ride: Ripped up left foot. Still scarred.

Rounding a corner too fast: Convinced my pedal was going to scrape and I was going to land in traffic, I chose to give in to it and slammed my bike directly into a curb, flinging myself into a pile of dirt. Still scarred on inside of left ankle from pedal scrape.

Totalled bicycle: A really, really not pretty incident involving a lot of injury. Scarred on elbow.

Meeting train tracks: Like an idiot, threw bike into BART tracks on Market St. on a Saturday night. Convinced I broke a small bone in right foot.

And then there's this one. I've considered coming up with a really cool story, but there isn't one. What I can come up with is this: I was in my highest gear and my chain slipped off. I was pedaling really, really hard. When my chain slipped, my feet flew off the pedals, and I simply lost control of the bike. I went over the handlebars, directly onto my elbow and shoulder, causing a stress fracture in my right clavicle.

If you see a red-headed girl walking around the mission (uh, let's say from 16th to 22nd between Mission & Dolores), with her arm in a white sling, probably wincing a little, possibly walking with a tall boy with brown hair and a red beard, it's probably me and The Roommate. Stop and say hello to us. I look really, really pathetic, and I promise you my hair is usually a lot cuter than this.

Special thanks: There were four people who stopped to help me, called an ambulance, and called The Roommate. If you helped out a cyclist on a little blue bicycle around 7th & Townsend on Thursday, thank you so much. I don't remember any of your names. I was really scared and in a blinding amount of pain, and you were all really great. I wish I knew who you were, but thanks for staying with me and making sure I was taken care of. I'm sure you had better things to do with your day.

Additional thanks go to the paramedics that said it was okay to curse and told me that when someone offers you morphine, you should take it. I'd also like to thank every single person I came into contact with at San Francisco General Hospital, especially the male nurse who helped me fasten my bra when I was crying and couldn't do it myself, who reassured me that he had one just like it.

I'm not going to lie: It hurts. Really, really, really hurts. It's getting a little better by the day, but "better" from "worst pain I've ever experienced, literally" is not much of a step up. I took a successful shower yesterday, and managed to BART it over Potrero Hill to go to a job interview this morning, so these are all steps in the right direction. I have learned that morphine makes me sick, vicodin doesn't affect me, and that I really like Bayer with caffeine added to it. I have also learned that Farmacia on 20th & Mission has Mexican coke for $1.29. That doesn't have anything to do with the rest of that information or my health, but it's pretty important to me.

Plus, I'm wicked angry that I can't ride a bike. It was the one thing keeping me happy and entertained around here, and now I've lost it for 6-8 weeks. There have been much happier girls than myself in the past.

How are you doing, San Francisco? It's hot out today. Hope you're staying remotely cool. Get a Mexican coke. Totally worth it.

New apartment, inconveniences.

2008-09-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

So, despite earlier claims that I was going to stay in my $600/month, no-kitchened studio (in my defense, it was going up to $860 for October), I'm signing papers on a new apartment tomorrow. It comes with a year lease, which is incredibly scary. In good news, The Roommate is capable of affording it on his own in the event that I have to bail and go back to the midwest where I might actually be employable. It is an incredibly large studio apartment with a separate kitchen around 21st & Guerrero for $1150 a month, and it probably goes without saying that I can't imagine a world where I'm more excited. As my mother was kind enough to remark today, who would have guessed a month ago that I'd be so excited about just having a kitchen? Ridiculous. But that's my life for you.

The employment search is, well, continuing. Still haven't heard back from incredibly-cute-bakery woman, but I'm not expecting to hear from her until the end of next week or potentially even the week after. I've started applying to every single job I might be even remotely qualified for, as well as some jobs that I just know I won't get. Today's joy comes in the form of a high-end artisan chocolate shop setting up an interview with me. It won't pay nearly what I need to make to scrape by in this city, but it will be significantly more than the negative income I'm working off of right now.

I had kind of forgotten how inconvenient it can be to live in big cities with no car, especially when you're somewhat used to having a car. Or at least the option of a car - my last month and a half in my previous town, I wasn't really driving the car, but I had the option if I wanted it. Now I have to move. With no car. And I might be buying the furniture that is currently in my furnished apartment, so I need to figure out how to get that to the new place.

Other things that are irritating? I've got to buy all sorts of crap for the new place. I'm a cook, after all, and now I have a kitchen. Nothing but my incredible chef's knife, a microplane grater and two potholders (priorities.) made it to San Francisco with me, so things like pans are all of a sudden going to be incredibly important. As a cyclist, I can officially buy what can fit into my larger of the two messenger bags, which is still not terribly big. I might have to suck it up and go public transportation on this one.

Grocery shopping was among the most frustrating things about living in New York, that is, until I decided to exclusively use FreshDirect. Anyone living in a city that has grocery delivery service, you're an idiot if you don't take advantage of it. Especially if there's no delivery charge, and the things you can buy are super high quality. Sure, I paid a small premium for some of it, but I was also living in a city where it was incredibly inconvenient to go grocery shopping. I was also living in an area of town with awful grocery stores. So to acquire enough groceries to last me a week - we weren't big takeout people - meant getting on the train, going somewhere else, then carrying whatever spoils I acquired back to the train, riding with them, getting off, walking home, etc. I know these things make me sound like a little bit of a whiner, but when you're buying $150 worth of groceries in a single pass, things get heavy. And I get irritable. Enter FreshDirect, the answer to all of my problems, and the city got instantly more convenient for me.

I've been googling around and may try out Planet Organics. Not quite the same thing as my beloved previous solution, but those people haven't gotten smart enough to expand out of the NYC market yet. The Roommate is on board with just going to the grocery store and buying whatever I need for dinner that night, but I like my solution better. Having food already in the fridge is a pretty likely sign that I'm actually going to cook. By the time I get home, I probably don't want to go out again, and the chances of me actually making a decision on what I'd like to make before I leave the office (ha!) and get to my apartment are pretty low. If the food is there, I'll make it. Plain and simple. This may sound lazy, but I suspect I'm not the only one like that.

Oh, related news? I'll be even closer to the ravioli place, and now I'll have a kitchen. Mmmm.

A week and a half in this apartment, and I'll be out. I'm already thinking about what I'm going to cook first. (Hint: it's probably ravioli.)

Grocery roundup, frustration.

2008-09-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

Spirits are a little low around the old apartment, kids.

No job leads are coming through. The "be here tomorrow" emails I was getting from a certain creative recruiting company when I was still living in the midwest are, somewhat as predicted, no longer rolling in since I packed my bags and moved 2500 miles. I spend eight hours a day staring at my computer, sending email after email, unable to enjoy the fact that I live in one of the greatest cities this country has to offer.

Still? Trying to remain happy about some things. Went on a great bike ride on Saturday, as I did the Saturday before (with the exception of the wreck, which we are no longer talking about). The Roommate and I have figured out a fun little loop that goes up 16th street, cuts in a zig-zaggy way over to the Embarcadero, and ends up at Pier 39, where I pretend I need a break, but really just want to watch the seals. Then it's back down a little to Market, which we take all the way to Valencia back to our neck of the woods. Attempted hitting up The Phoenix again (despite the fact that I was there after last Saturday's bike ride, and okay, I was there on Friday too but give me a break because where the hell else can I watch the WSOP, get fries with mayonnaise and drink a Hoegaarden?), but it was overrun by some weird mission bar crawl.

The same mission bar crawl, I might add, that made me leave Kilowatt after a girl sat half on my lap and pretended I didn't exist while I was watching the Ohio State/USC game, then when I elbowed her in an attempt to move, told me to stop being such a bitch. At 5:30 in the afternoon. When only one of us had been drinking. Seriously, I know I've only been here two weeks so I have no right to bitch yet, but please stop invading my bar. And get a smaller purse.

So today was email upon email, pleading with very good firms to give me a job. The financial situation is a little desperate, folks, I'm not going to lie. In two weeks I have to pay rent for another month, and then there's going to have to be some very serious decision-making about my future in this city. I know jobs don't just pop out at you, I know the good ones take time. That's why I'm being semi-patient. But at the end of the day, I am an unemployed girl sitting in her apartment for eight hours a day refreshing craigslist. No one likes that girl.

Today, though, I decided I had to get out of the house for an hour or so, which led me to a very small market tour of the mission. No bicycle, because I was too lazy to carry it down, but everywhere was very close to my apartment anyway, so it didn't matter.

Number one was Bi-Rite on 18th between Guerrero and Dolores. The type of place that could easily be my only grocery store choice, ever - great food, two blocks from my apartment. Reminds me so much of the little grocery stores I loved so much in NYC. Also, though? Expensive, which is why it isn't currently my grocery store of choice. Wicked expensive. I know food is more costly here than it is in the midwest, but christ. I am not prepared to shell out that kind of cash right now. Fabulous wine selection, additionally.

Number two was the Guerrero Market on 19th & Guerrero. I went there yesterday to pick up a giant piece of lasagna (just slightly cold in the center, like my home microwave makes it!) and a Chronicle. The Roommate went with me and tried a homemade chicken empanada. We didn't discuss it, but based on how quickly he faced it, I'm fairly sure it was okay. In news of the classy, we also bought a half-gallon of milk, walked to Dolores Park (so many pugs! so cute!), and drank the whole damn thing. I have always thought I could be a major contender for the milk challenge, but I've never actually tried it.

It should be noted that the whole reason the Guerrero Market and I made friends the first time is because yelp claimed it had macaroni and cheese. Since I no longer have a kitchen, I have started to crave all the things that I make really, really well. Yesterday was mac and cheese day. Except it wasn't. Because I think they either have mac and cheese or mac and beef, depending on the day, and they have now only had mac and beef for two days in a row. It is making me sad. I need a giant bowl of real mac and cheese soon, or I'm going to lose it.

Number three was the place we refer to as yuppie food market on 21st & Valencia. I think it's called Valencia Whole Foods. I have never actually purchased anything there, despite walking through a couple of times to see if there's anything that suits my fancy. They do sell the New York Times, and they are just a few feet away from the coffee shop I like so much, so you'd think they held a higher place in my heart. I did see today that they sell one of my favorite cheeses in the whole world, but I felt weird only buying a block of cheese, so I declined. I have yet to be super impressed by them. And it's so, so expensive. The markup does not make any damn sense.

Number four? Lucca's. Oh, god. Now, here's the problem, and here's why I walked out without buying anything. I have heard only good reviews. But I wanted to eat pasta. They are a ravioli place. It's in their name. But I don't have a stove. So I don't give a damn that their fresh ravioli has been reviewed super well, or that it could not have looked more tasty, or that the people behind the counter made me want to buy every single thing they have... no, what matters is that I can't cook anything they sell. I really wish they had more of a deli-style thing where they could throw some cooked ravioli in sauce for me or something, but that's not what they're going for. It would simply be a solution to make me happy. I would have dropped a ton of money there today if I had a kitchen.

After all the walking-in-not-buying-anything, I ended up at my favorite bodega. Thanks, Mike's at 21st & Mission. You have a huge variety of Milano cookies, you have gallons of milk that aren't overpriced, and you sell individual bags of microwave popcorn for when I decide it's movie night. You have never treated me badly and I continue to walk all the way down there when I know there are closer bodegas to my apartment. Thanks.

Jobs, bikes, movies.

2008-09-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

Step one: The Roommate kindly reminded me that he didn't quite "get his ass handed to him" at Kilowatt the other night, and that's fair. He did win one game. He put up a very strong showing in the rest of them. It's just that people there are very, very good. Also worth noting that I'm actually the one who got my ass handed to me.

Step two: Still unemployed, with very few leads. I have applied at four companies that I would really, really like to work for. I won't be mentioning any of them, but two of them are companies that probably everyone has heard of, and the other two are companies you've definitely heard of if you're a designer. This means they are major jobs, and I'm really nervous about my chances at them, but I'd really like it if one of them worked out for me.

So here's where I begin to plead, in a very strange way: If any of you are looking for designers with about two years of experience, particularly 2D/3D animators with a background in all sorts of visual design, feel free to give me a shout. I've got a portfolio and the whole bit, but I'll refrain from posting it here since I'm still trying to hang on to that faux-anonymity. Also, anyone looking to pay me for anything, ever, should probably hit me up. :)

Step three: It was a day for idiot bicycling yesterday. My gorgeous, perfect bicycle is not dealing particularly well with the shifts in temperature. Anywhere between 50 and 80 degrees in the same day? My brakes, both front and back, have started to rebel in a very big way. Screaming, echoing as I approach any moment where I remotely have to use them. So if you've seen a girl on Mission, Valencia or Market riding like an idiot with brakes squealing louder than you've ever heard in your life, it's probably me.

So yesterday, I blow through an intersection. I realize that this is an asshole move on my part. Not only is it an asshole move, it's an illegal move. But I legitimately did not have the option of stopping by the time I realized the light was turning, and I certainly didn't have the option before I realized just how giant that intersection on 4th Street was. However, Person in Porsche SUV that started to barrel through the intersection - I know you saw me. I know you saw me, because you got about a foot and a half from my bicycle and almost t-boned me. Now, I get that I was doing something illegal, and so this would have completely been my fault, but I doubt you would have actually felt much better if you had hit me, as was clearly your intention. There is no reason to make a statement. I am riding as fast and as hard as I can, and I know you didn't realize my brakes are no longer working, but you still didn't need to deliberately drive like a dick.

It would have totally been my fault, though.

Things that wouldn't have been my fault? If I had run straight into a pedestrian at 14th & Valencia. For anyone who isn't familiar, there is a bike lane on Valencia. On Friday nights, this doesn't really matter, because everyone's too busy pulling their cars into it and throwing on their hazards so they can drop their friends off at trendy but-not-too-trendy bar of the moment and then go look for a parking space. But in this instance, cars were backed up, and I'm flying down the bike lane. A pedestrian jaywalks in front of a taxi, I can't see him, and he steps into my lane about fifteen feet ahead of me. No brakes. A combination of me screaming and my brakes screaming seemed to fix the situation, as I didn't plow directly into him. Perhaps we all need to watch out for everyone doing illegal, stupid things a little more. The Porsche for me, me for the jaywalking pedestrian.

Step four: Go see Burn After Reading. I saw it last night at the Century theater on Market St., and it's phenomenal. It hasn't gotten the best reviews, but I think it's phenomenal. As a piece of cinema, it's lacking a little, but as something to spend $10 on for an hour and a half of pure entertainment, it is what you should be doing with your Saturday night. (Also, the Century theater is really, really nice. And I don't have to bike all the way up Van Ness for it, which is a major plus. Metreon isn't showing it, for whatever reason, so we ended up here. Seats are wicked comfortable.)

Being awkward.

2008-09-11T14:52:00.000-07:00

I'm a little bit awkward. I know this about myself. I'm that sort of endearing kind of awkward, I guess, if you're into mildly awkward women. I really don't mind making fun of myself, I'm pretty funny, but I have a tendency to do really stupid shit and immediately realize it, then voice that concern, drawing even more attention to the fact that I'm a little socially inept.

Like last night, walking down Valencia with The Roommate's co-workers, one of whom remarks "Is that the sex shop?" as we pass by Good Vibrations. "Yeah! ...Maybe." I respond, really, really quickly. It is between 17th & 18th and Valencia. I live at 18th. I walk down Valencia all the time. The Roommate and I have had a conversation about it, because the doors are always open. There is no other reason for me to... oh, fuck it. I live on the block and I know what's there. I could have just said "Yeah", and they probably would have moved on. No, self. Tack on the immediate "Maybe". That'll show them you're not really, really awkward.

So I have this job interview today. It's at a bakery. A cute, adorable bakery, the smells of which wafted through every single part of the building. It is run by a cute, adorable woman who was kind enough to bring me in for an interview for a sort of apprenticey-type of job. It's very, very part-time, but I thought it might be something good for me. It would get me out there, doing things, and it would make me a little bit of money. Plus I really, really love bakeries, I love cooking, blah blah blah. Perfect job for me if it was full time, but for now, it might be a lot of fun.

As I have only interviewed with design firms for the past four years, I really don't remember what it's like to interview for anything else. I'm prepped with various answers - why do I want to work in a bakery, for example. She tells me first thing that she's just going to ask me some really, really random questions.

If your house was on fire, what three things would you save?

What do you like to do with your hands? (Girly story about crocheting scarves for everyone I know when I get a little down in life.)

Who's your favorite artist? (The design graduate blanked and couldn't remember a single artist's name, ever.)

My personal favorite? Calls other bakery employees over, tells me she's going to embarrass me, and asks me to tell them a joke. I'm a funny girl. I'm a story teller. I do not know jokes. Two things - and ONLY two things - come to mind while I'm staring at these women. Why was Helen Keller such a bad driver? (She was a woman.) And, the even more classed-up version, what do you tell a woman with two black eyes? (Nothing. You already told her twice.)

So these are the things that I cannot, under any circumstances, say in a job interview. I stall as long as humanly possible before channelling the biggest pun-teller I know. I rub her apron and tell her "Wow, this is really nice. Is this felt?" Clearly, it isn't, so she shakes her head. "It is now."

This story is inevitably going to become a major part of who I am as a person. She mentioned that it would be a couple of weeks before she got back to the people she interviewed. I'm, uh, keeping my fingers crossed. And probably going to research some jokes, just in case this ever happens to me again.

Pool players, Bar roundup, Yelp.

2008-09-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

In the city I just moved from, I was a fairly decent pool player. Owned a pool cue, shot about three days a week, could occasionally manage to run a table for a few rounds. I used to be a god-awful pool player, but seriously stepped my game up over the summer and became comfortable enough with where I was, skill-wise. There, I was a pool player. Here? I'm just a confused-looking girl holding a pool cue.

Where do you people come from? I have taken a liking to Kilowatt, a bar not too terribly far from me. I'm also a darts thrower. (I cannot bring myself to ever use the word darter because it is stupid.) This is what brought me to Kilowatt in the first place. Two steel-tip dart boards. None of this wussy electronic bullshit. Kilowatt is ridiculous. Two pool tables that people rotate in and out of. The one closest to the door appears to be more competitive and certainly goes faster, but by the end of the night last night people were rotating on both.

The Roommate is better at pool than I am, and he got his ass handed to him. I put on a fairly embarrassing showing last night. Seriously, people are GOOD.

I'm a bar person. It's not so much a drinking thing as the fact that I really just like sitting at a bar. Also, the pool playing and dart throwing sort of means that bars are where I'm going to spend my time. So far, I've sampled a couple in the area, and luckily I have yet to run into anything I really hate. I like Kilowatt. I've done happy hour at Elbo Room, shuffleboard/happy hour/later than happy hour at Doc's Clock, shot pool at Lexington Club (which I didn't realize was a lesbian establishment until The Roommate and I had been there for entirely too long, but the drinks are cheap and the pool table was fabulous), and ate french fries at some Irish-y place on Valencia after I mutilated my foot on Saturday. Don't remember the name. Only remember getting hit on hardcore twice, drinking Hoegaarden, whining about my foot, and waiting too long to get in the bathroom with some girls that were trying too hard. Thanks, Saturday night.

Favorite tool? Yelp. And it's taken with about nine thousand grains of salt, but proves to be at least entertaining, if nothing else. Yelp, for people not in a major metropolitan area, or people who already know where the hell they should go to shoot pool, is a fabulous website where you can review restaurants, bars, stores, etc. If you live in my area of town, it's also a way to see which bars within a mile radius of you are way too hipstered out.

Oh, wait, that's all of them.

Seriously, there has never been such mud-slinging as the hipster hatred on the internet. Good lord, San Francisco. Be polite. The thing is, after reading so many reviews, I'm starting to be able to paint actual pictures of how I think I might respond to certain places. There's a lot of hipster that I'm willing to put up with. I'd rather roll up to a bar with twenty fixies sitting outside of it than have to fight through a crowd of girls with giant purses. These are my own personal prejudices. I'm also willing to overlook just about anything if I can get in on a pool table on a Saturday night without having to constantly hit people with a cue.

Cycling around town is getting easier. Google maps claims it's 3.3 miles from here to The Roommate's office, a feat that takes me no time, is completely flat and feels fantastic. Took the slightly longer way home from there, so I got about 7 miles in today. Working on gearing higher and higher, getting stronger, etc. Since destroying my foot, I hadn't been doing much riding. Felt nice to get back out there today.

Apartment search may be over.

2008-09-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

So, I've mentioned that I'm subletting illegally, yes?

I currently sublet from a fabulous woman whose name is not important. She is not allowed to sublet. She was maintaining her $860/month apartment in case she wanted to move back to the area, but she's currently living in one of those outer cities of the San Francisco metro that I can't name and probably can't point out on a map. She is subletting it to me for $600 a month, provided I don't have mail sent here so she doesn't get evicted.

I had yet to meet her, but she had a job interview in the neighborhood today and decided to stop by. Upon discussing everyone's situations, we've decided that I'm going to keep my tiny apartment with no kitchen, and The Roommate will move in here when his lease is up at the end of the month. So now my 150 square feet of heaven will house two people.

We moved here with what fits into two suitcases. I think we'll be able to make it work. We have yet to exhibit any behavior that makes me believe we're going to kill each other. And you know what really, seriously sweetens the deal? $430/month rent in the mission.

Stay tuned for stories about us killing one another, or all the stories that are inevitably going to come up when I meet the landlord and officially try to get it transferred into my name. I've told her that I have no job but fabulous credit, two very true statements, and she thinks it won't be a problem. I've told her that two people will be occupying the space that's clearly meant for single occupancy only, and she claims it isn't an issue as long as we don't have a cat. If everyone could send me some rental-based karma over the next couple of days, I'd certainly appreciate it.

Other points of winning: I'm going to buy her furniture off her for super cheap, so I don't have to worry about moving Ikea mattresses up the stairs, and she doesn't have to move the table/futon/other table out. Oh, and I found a place in my neighborhood to buy pillows, so I can officially stop sleeping on my arm. Success on all fronts!

Why I really like my neighborhood.

2008-09-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned that I'm a New York girl, and well, that's sort of true. I was raised in a large midwest city and then transferred to another large midwest city. In the meantime, I spent a year living in New York, and most of my close friends were bright enough to go there for college, so I spent a considerable amount of time there. It's my major experience with no-car, major city living.

I lived at 143rd St. and Broadway, a location two blocks from either the 1 or the A/C trains. For any of you that have ever casually visited New York, let me assure you - you probably never went there. You got to Columbia and you stopped. There is no reason to go to 143rd & Broadway, unless you're going to the 200's to catch The Cloisters. (You should.) My neighborhood had very little for me - but I had a 3-bedroom apartment in Manhattan for $1450 that I split with two roommates. It was gorgeous and I can't believe we ever let that lease go. But, life happens, and you lose your freakishly cheap, close-to-a-train rent. Then you're living in San Francisco and crying out for $1600 studios... I digress.

I was close to the train, and I never minded the commute. I guess because I never knew otherwise. My midwest cities were all car-based, my New York life involved a train. (And the occasional 4 a.m. taxi.) Everything was a short train ride away, and hey, I paid $74 a month for that damned MTA pass. You better believe I was using it as hard as I possibly could.

I actually had it pretty easy with midwest life too. I always chose to stay toward the downtown core areas, so I was a 2-3 mile jaunt to everything I wanted to do, and most definitely walking distance from a few bars and restaurants that became my usual haunts.

But here? Oh, god. Can we talk about my neighborhood? It's fallen under fire in the past couple of days, literally, due to a couple of violent incidents that I'd rather not talk about. They are tragic and awful, and they could happen anywhere, so I'm not so worried that they're happening close to me - just worried for the neighborhood in general. It would be really easy to harp on them, but The Roommate and I love this neighborhood, and so I'm just going to focus on why it's currently the best thing in my life.

Midwest city #1 had a very large hispanic population, so I grew up with Mexican food. None of this Taco Bell/Chili's nonsense - real Mexican food. You can't throw a rock from my apartment without hitting some fabulous Mexican restaurant. (Well, I can, but I'm not very strong. I'm sure you can't.) The Roommate and I were craving donuts on Saturday, so we googled bakeries and found a donut shop a block away. (95 cent cake donut, yes, please.) We walk to fabulous Indian restaurants, I walk to the bike shop (when I got a flat... not because I make a policy to walk to bike shops), I walk to the nine thousand bars that are the proverbial stone's throw away from me.

I haven't explored much of San Francisco because... well... I haven't had to. All the things I love and need in my life have been in this very area. That's not to say that I haven't gotten out a little bit, but I most definitely haven't found a single reason to leave my neighborhood. This is the aspect of "big city living" that I was missing in my New York days. The Roommate and I very badly need a new place to stay as of October 1st, and we're both so spoiled with our neighborhood that we're a little unwilling to look in other areas. We're happy to trade off square feet in favor of being able to go wherever we want in just a couple minutes.

The best thing about moving to cities where you literally know nothing, however, is finding all of these things. Where can I buy a New York Times? Where can I get a gallon of milk? Thankfully the internet is alive and well to help me with some major issues (the donuts), and I can piece the rest of it together by just exploring on my own. I've already got a favorite bodega. I've got a favorite donut shop. I'm like those people that order the same thing every time they go to a restaurant - I tend to fixate.

I know I've got a lot of passers-by thanks to the Mission Mission blog reference, so speak up while you're here! What are your favorite places around here? Where should a girl who's not too-hipster (yeah, I know, who isn't?), doesn't particularly care for super crowded, over-priced bars be spending her time? I'm a pool player and a darts thrower, so those things are major bonuses. The only bars I've attached myself to so far are Kilowatt and Doc's Clock. And while we're on the topic, where the hell would a girl go around here to do actual grocery shopping?

Cycling woes.

2008-09-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

The second thing I spent money on in San Francisco was a bicycle. (The first thing, if anyone's curious, was the $7.80 required to get out to Oakland and pick up the bicycle.) It was easier and smarter to get a bike here rather than getting mine out here. I owned a late 70's Raleigh that I had recently totaled, but was working on rebuilding - let's just say I have a history of not being particularly coordinated, and when you combine that with my history of doing really, really stupid things... you probably get the picture.

Living here is shaping me into a better cyclist very, very quickly. I'm from a city with a lot of hills, but it's a very different experience riding there. It isn't a bike-friendly town by any means. It's pretty awful. Here? There are bike lanes! Cars are used to the idea that there might be cyclists around! No one has honked at me! It's been absolutely fantastic. I've read the stories, I know there's a lot of controversy and the city should be doing a little better - but from someone who may have lived in the most unfriendly city to cyclists ever, I'm pretty pleased with how my life is turning out so far.

Saturday night, The Roommate and I decided that we didn't really want to do the bar thing. We're also not huge "let's try too hard" people, and it was a Saturday night. We decided the weather was too beautiful to ignore, and it was bike riding time. We left the mission and rode toward downtown, where eventually we ended at the Giants stadium to sit by the bay and watch the scoreboard change for the last two innings. (They had the common courtesy to win after we had ridden all the way down there.) Then we rode down the Embarcadero until I decided it was tourist time, otherwise known as time to go to Pier 39 and watch some sea lions. In true touristy fashion, I called my mother at pushing midnight her time so she could listen to them via cell phone. Left there and went to catch Market and go back to our area of town.

Just as we're crossing over a set of train tracks, he asks me if I know how to deal with train tracks. I tell him no, as I've only crossed them, not ridden parallel to them. He warns me of the dangers of getting stuck in the tracks because you can't get back out. I note this, then promptly get on Market St. and throw my bike into the tracks 20 seconds later. Crash, bang, get foot stuck in the back spokes.

I'd like to note, however, that instead of taking The Roommate's advice and taking the BART home, I continued to ride. I rode all the way down Market to Valencia, and took Valencia straight to a bar, where I proceeded to drink a Hoegaarden and watch the 2008 WSOP on ESPN and give continued updates on the status of my foot.

I've had my first San Francisco fall. When I crashed my old Raleigh for the first time, The Roommate assured me that I had gotten all the fall out of it - older bikes like that only come with so much fall in them, you see. I proceeded to wreck it two more times. Considering how mangled my stupid foot is, let's all just assume that there's no fall left in this one either. (Oh, and the bike is fine. After some incredibly kind passers-by helped me out of the street, that was the only thing I wanted to know. The front wheel is a little out of round now, but luckily I live in an area of town with bike shops every four blocks, so I can probably get that fixed.)

In other news, for the first time since moving here, it's cold! I woke up and didn't instantly want to throw all my windows open. It's cold and overcast, but I think I see the sun starting to poke out. Today is all about looking for jobs. It most certainly isn't about heating up the leftovers of last week's burrito at 10 a.m. and eating them off the microwave plate since I don't own any dishes... that would be disgusting. (I cleaned the microwave plate first.)

Being unemployed.

2008-09-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

People, let me tell you this - I can be a lot to handle. I am wordy. I get really, really obsessive about everything. I am occasionally an emotional train wreck. My friends are all incredibly good people, however, and they come with their tradeoffs as well, so it's okay that I'm like this and I don't feel quite so bad about making people put up with my shit because, well... let's just say it's a give and take sort of relationship. You know the one time people can't handle me, though?

When I'm bored.

I am a high-stress, constantly moving sort of person. I also really like to bitch and whine about it, as if this isn't the sort of thing that I live for. So, for example, I would spend the last three weeks of my school quarters complaining about projects, not eating, not sleeping, telling everyone around me that I couldn't wait until it was all over. Then, like clockwork, two days into my one week break? I don't have anything to do, and this is stupid.

I have been without anything to do since June 14th, the day I graduated from college. I'm pushing three months of unemployment. This is the longest I've ever been without something to cling to or something to look forward to. The last time it got close to this bad was the summer of 2003.

I moved from one midwestern city to another, but the two cities are hugely different. I was subletting an apartment - starting June 13th, coincidentally enough - from a frat boy who was going somewhere else for the summer. I had the attic of a three story house to myself and paid $250 a month for it. Out of pure convenience, I paid him the full $750 up front and had a place to live for the summer. I had a boyfriend who actually had things to do during the day, which left me in my sublet, unemployed and looking for a part-time job. This was before I ever had a credit card, so my bills were completely non-existent, and I was living off of going-away money from relatives. Life was affordable and okay. However. I had absolutely, positively nothing to do. This was before I realized the hobbies and pastimes that at least get me through a few hours now. This was the summer I learned to sleep.

Boyfriend gets out of class at 4:50? You better believe I can sleep in till 2, wake up, microwave an artichoke, eat it with some mustard and mayonnaise, and be back in bed at 2:30, awaiting his phone call to wake me up at 5. I was sleeping easily 16+ hours every single day, and I was good at it.

Now, I live in an apartment with three giant windows that face east, so I wake up at 6:30. By 9, I am bored. The Roommate doesn't get off work until 6. The ability to entertain myself is getting a little harder each day. I know, I know - one of the greatest cities in the country, get out, explore, blah blah blah. It's hot. I'm not used to riding a bike this hard all the time. I'm tired. Also, lazy. And I'd like to be within 8 feet of my laptop at all times so that I know when a new job has come up on craigslist.

But I am really, really bored. My favorite author released a book recently that I hadn't picked up yet, and it will be finished within the hour. I managed to convince myself to get out of the house, so I went and sampled some absolutely fabulous Mexican cuisine - and Mexican bottled coke. Oh, God. Highlight of my day for sure. But now I'm back in my apartment, doing whatever it is that unemployed people do. Perhaps I should get out more and explore the area, but I legitimately feel guilty if I'm not spending as much time as I can trolling the internet for jobs.

So tell me, friends, what do YOU do to get through those times when you seriously have nothing better to do? And if it could cost me a freakishly small amount of money, all the better.

My apartment.

2008-09-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

Note: I had been debating for a couple of days where to host the new blog, as I love my personal blog hosting site but it doesn't allow anonymous comments. I do have the time to write this much every day, but what you're seeing right now is the backups I didn't have any place for.

As a personal choice that's based on a lot of factors, I don't plan to ever have children. My friends are of the age where they're starting to have kids, though, which means I'm going to be the faux-aunt with all kinds of stupid stories. The one I'm currently crafting is of my first apartment in San Francisco.

Also, I'm a New Yorker at heart, which means I'm obsessed with talking about real estate. And I don't have a job, which means I have twenty-four uninterrupted hours a day where I can jump on craigslist and see every single place in the city that I can't afford.

Searching for apartments in large cities develops unique characteristics in people. My favorite is an ability to see through the bullshit. This unique characteristic only actually works once you've been in the city and you've seen a couple of apartments so you can compare what you've seen to what the listing said. A listing for my apartment, for example, would use words like "cozy" or "charming". It will talk up the location. And the bay window. And sure, all of those things are accurate, but can we be honest?

I live in a room. A room that is smaller than my former kitchen and manages to encompass a bathroom, a closet, a "kitchen" (upper and lower cabinets in an alcove, sink, no stove, mini-fridge with television sitting on top of it that I intend to never turn on), a futon and a two-person dining table.

The things that will make my mother cringe (oh, for reference, she might get to be The Mother when we get into her slightly passive-aggressive support of the decisions her completely out-of-control daughter tends to make) are the reasons she will never live in a super large city. In 2002, we lived in a fairly large midwestern city. We had a two bedroom apartment that, well, did the job. We needed a place to live and it fit the bill. The living room was large enough for a couch, a loveseat and a recliner. It had a dining room, it had a spacious enough kitchen, it had two bedrooms and two bathrooms.

It was $545 a month.

So it is much to her dismay, I could imagine, that I currently am paying $600 for a studio where I cannot make food. (I have been previously employed as a food writer and I just left a fully-stocked, beautiful kitchen to move someplace with a mini-fridge. The mission has takeout.) Me? I'm elated. Go to craigslist and look up apartments in the mission for $600. Let me know what you come up with. (Then, please forward the links to me.)

The shower is sort of non-functional. I've painted all sorts of colorful pictures of it for my friends recently, so I'll spare them here. They involved tying dogs to the wall and punching them in the kidneys and oh, it's just a story for young audiences. I chopped all my hair off before moving here, and it's a good thing, because I would have been standing there for twenty minutes attempting to wash the shampoo out of it. But it gets me somewhat clean as long as I take the time investment, and I appreciate that. Especially because I ride a bike, and can we talk about the heat wave that's currently enveloping this area? Gross.

The thing is, though, much like my first college apartment - consequently ALSO up four flights of stairs, except I wasn't carrying a 25+ pound bicycle then) - this apartment is mine, and I will wax poetic about it for years to come. I hate my shower, I want to make pasta, I can barely get a gallon of milk in my mini-fridge - None of these things are important. I have a bed to sleep in and what is, legitimately, a beautiful bay window to look out all day while I troll the internet for jobs on my stolen internet connection. There is enough room for me, a bicycle, and occasionally The Roommate if he drops by after a day at work. I can't quite figure out if I'd be able to make this arrangement work permanently - and also, the rent goes up to $950 in October - but it's a start. I'm luckier than most people.

Apartment searching.

2008-09-04T18:01:00.001-07:00

San Francisco residents, is there anything worse than finding an apartment? Seriously?

Step one, let's introduce a new character. We'll refer to him as The Roommate. The Roommate is a very good friend who went to college with me. He did San Francisco the smart way: found a job, then found an apartment, THEN moved here. The Roommate is brilliant to a really ridiculous degree, and not just because he figured out how normal people relocate. I'm sure we'll speak more of him later. (Note: he may or may not actually be a roommate, considering all the things I will talk about shortly, but there's a very strong chance he will be, and he might as well be considering he is my solitary connection to the city at this point.

I needed something else to stress me out, so less than 48 hours before I was moving to the city, The Roommate called and said that his landlord had kicked him out. We're not sure why. Landlord has recently been acting a little weird - doesn't want his bike in his room, freaks out when he accidentally clogs the sink, etc. Today, the other shoe drops, and he has to move out.

Well, this is tricky. See, I was staying in The Roommate's... well... room. For a couple of days. Until I find that magical apartment/sublet/who the hell knows where people stay in San Francisco. And I guess that's still okay? Maybe? Why don't we just spent 48 hours flipping our shit about it instead of thinking logically about the solution?

The apartment search also involves The Monkey. The Monkey likes to climb on things. (So does The Roommate, for the record.) The Monkey has also decided it's time for a change, so we made the decision to move to San Francisco together. Sort of. I'm coming out first to secure an apartment and then we'll live together and it'll be great. And we'll pass that rental application with no jobs and no bank statements that reflect any money.

Oh, have I mentioned that I'm financing this entire journey via credit? Before anyone starts in on how bad of an idea that is: I worked in pre-foreclosure for a year. I spent ten hours a day listening to people tell me they could feed their kids or make their three-months-past-due mortgage payment, so why don't I choose for them? It made me more money than I had ever seen at the time, so I suffered through it and just came home and cried for a year. Got me through a year of college. So I know the dangers of racking up credit. I'm just going to ignore them for a month or two.

So, we start searching for apartments. Me, The Roommate, and The Monkey. The Roommate has a job that doesn't pay enough for him to secure a two bedroom apartment in the city by himself. The Monkey has no job and next to no credit history. Me? I've got fabulous credit but a really ridiculous amount of debt. And no job. Hmm.

I arrive in the city and stay with The Roommate, and life seems to be okay for day one. Day two, Roommate's landlord corners me on the stairs and we introduce ourselves to one another. She has a friend who has an apartment that I can sublet for September. I start to launch into a conversation about how that's not really ideal for me, and then it occurs to me that I'm probably a step or two away from getting myself kicked out of this apartment. Turns out I'm the reason The Roommate is getting kicked out - it wasn't quite effectively communicated that I wasn't moving in permanently. Oops.

This begins the two day apartment search from hell. I've been off the plane for two hours and we're seeing the most beautiful studio apartment ever. $1575 in the mission. Beautiful rooftop access. Enough space for me and The Roommate, who also moved with what he could fit in two suitcases. A little pricey, though. We decide to think about it and see what else we can find. Roommate goes to see apartment way out in Inner Sunset, ends up being way too small.

The next day, I introduce myself to the Tenderloin. This is an area of town that I will only discuss objectively, as I have absolutely no biases about neighborhoods. This is also an area of town that everyone told me to avoid at all costs.

Look, people, honestly? I don't get afraid of neighborhoods. I've lived in bad neighborhoods. I'm more scared of bad neighborhoods in the midwest than I am on either of the coasts. I lived in Spanish Harlem for a year. (One of my former roommates has a story about his grandparents getting off the train at our stop and seeing two kids exchanging a gun. I have no such personal stories.) I'm not afraid of sketchy neighborhoods.

So, I go. I see a beautiful $1200 studio that I love. I call The Roommate and tell him to get to this open house right now because we're taking the apartment. He's still at work. Tells me to walk the neighborhood and look for our new bar. (We're pool sharks and dart players. And drinkers, if the amount of time we spent in pool/dart establishments is any indication of our character.) I leave the building, and in the span of 3 minutes, I have watched a man take a shit in the street, watched another man punch a man in a wheelchair in the leg, encouraging all his friends to step up and start a fight, and I am referred to twice as "Big Tits", just in case it wasn't clear what my new moniker was the first time.

This breaks my spirit, not because I have the capacity to fear neighborhoods, but because there are certain things I know about myself. I know I can't live here. In theory, I'm going to end up with a design job that pays me more than people my age should probably make. I'm in it for the cheap rent in the as-yet-ungentrified neighborhood. I will walk by people every day that literally have no other options in their lives but being crazy and fatigued and hungry, and I will go to my yuppie job, and that will make me an asshole.

No Tenderloin.

So then I go see the apartment recommended to me by The Roommate's landlord. Spirit is broken and I really hate my life. I have $500 in my pocket that the US Bank I managed to locate on Van Ness was kind enough to dispense to me. (Credit!) The apartment is on the third floor of a building around 18th & Valencia, right in the neighborhood I want to live in. The current tenant is not allowed to sublet. I can sublet it for $600 for the month of September. It does not have a stove.

I do not care.

We try to rent $1575 studio. Voicemail says it's been rented. I borrow $100 from The Roommate until I can get to an ATM again, combine it with all the cash currently in my pocket, and I am immediately handed the keys.

So now I've got 26 days to find a real apartment, or we're all going to be homeless. The Monkey arrives around the 15th. As of today, we may have a fourth roommate. (I don't have a name for her yet. We might call her The Cutie, because she rides a bicycle and has fantastic hair, and her facebook photos confirm that she looks good in a pencil skirt.)

Dear San Francisco,

If you have an apartment that's three bedrooms and under $3000, preferably in the mission, with bike storage, that you'd like to rent to four recent college graduates with no money and a current combined income of under $50K/year, based solely on the fact that we're trying really really really hard to get jobs, I would appreciate you giving me a call.

Sincerely,

New Bay Resident

Introduction.

2008-09-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

I'm terrible at these sorts of things, and I always think they're really lame, but for lack of a better first post, here we go.

On August 27th, 2008, I bought a one-way plane ticket to SFO. The ticket was for September 1st. I have absolutely no job, no savings, and didn't have an apartment until September 3rd.

Why San Francisco? Let's start with the cliches and then move on to reasons that might actually be convincing. First of all, I'm a recent college graduate who wasn't having any luck finding a job in the city I lived in. So, yes. I'm one of those stories: graduated college, "moved west in search of opportunities". Second of all, it seemed a logical choice for me. I have friends in the Bay area, I'm a cyclist, and I simply needed something new. I made the decision that I was unhappy with my previous life and I needed to make a change. When I started searching for plane tickets, I found one for $143 that was five days away. All the surrounding tickets were more expensive. September 1st, indeed.

So I packed up everything I could fit into two checked bags (thanks, $75 luggage set from Kohl's that has moved me across the country three times!) and two carry-ons (thanks, Timbuk2 bags, for already making me look like I live in San Francisco!), and got on a 5:53 a.m. flight. Nine hours later, I was in San Francisco, homeless, jobless, and with no prior experience in the city save 32 hours with my boyfriend back in the spring of 2003.

I'm a motion graphics designer. The easy question now is "Why not L.A.?" The answer is relatively simple. If I lived in Los Angeles, I'd probably have to kill myself. I just dislike it and really didn't want to live there. In terms of making decisions to change my entire life because I was unhappy, I probably should select a city I actually, you know, want to live in.

How do I know I want to live in San Francisco if I've already admitted I don't know anything about it? It's kind of a hunch. Lots of friends with lots of experiences here, people I trust, who tell me it might be a city for me. I'm a New York girl. I'm a little high-strung. The other day, flying down Mission, someone started to open their car door and I screamed a string of obscenities that would hardly be out of the ordinary in New York. This is not quite part of the San Francisco culture. I'm trying to adapt. I'm hoping that I become less high-strung as the days go on. (Getting a job would probably REALLY ease that stress. I'm talking to you, Bay area.)

Now that we've got the reasons, here's a little more about me. As previously stated, I'm a designer, predominantly 3D animation but with some 2D mixed in on the side. I'm a newborn cyclist. I moved from a city that's decidedly not cyclist-friendly, but with the college graduation and whatnot, paying $4+ a gallon for gas didn't make any sense. I was friends with a lot of cyclists. I spent $75 on a bike instead of a tank of gas and never looked back. That story may be discussion for another time.

I'd like to refrain from getting too personal here, mostly because I'm looking for jobs and I know how easy it is to find people on the internet. It's not that I'm attempting to create some sort of secret identity, just that I'd like to be able to actually document the journey of moving to a completely new city with 150 pounds of luggage, no job and no home - and the job search is a very big part of that. Networking is everything. While I have no plans to slam some company that rejects me, you better believe I'll have words for it if I go on the worst interview ever. I am also friends with a number of people in my exact situation, and I have no interest in naming them by names, because they'll get hit in google searches too, and I don't need their potential employers knowing that I watched them pass out on a pool table the night before.

So, welcome. Hopefully this'll be a fun ride. (With no more flat tires, because I already did that yesterday, on a newly-acquired bicycle.)