decidedlyodd

On Thursday afternoon, a group of us began our trip by car from Seattle to San Francisco. We stopped for the night at my parents’ house in Oregon, before continuing on Friday. I went out Friday night in the Castro, which was quite busy being pride weekend and all. We went from Moby Dick’s to Midnight Sun to Lookout trying to find a less packed bar, but of course each was more packed than its predecessor. Still, it was a pretty fun evening.

On Saturday morning, Robert and I went to Costco and Safeway to pick up various food and drink items for the next day. The SF Costco was a madhouse, but we got in and out of there pretty quickly. We grabbed a relaxing brunch at some French place on Potrero Hill which was great as well. Everybody traveling in our group met at Lookout in the afternoon for drinks before heading over to Alioto’s for dinner.

Unfortunately, Alioto’s became probably the worst dining service experience I’ve ever had. We had three separate tables of 6-7 people, each with its own separate check. We all ordered at the same time, except for two people who arrived at my table late. Through some confusion, the waiter held all the food at my table because of the two late arrivals, even though we did not ask the staff to do that. Consequently, our food didn’t even arrive until about 30 minutes after another table in our group had finished eating. Some people’s food was cold because it had been waiting. We were mad about all of this happening, but I found it relatively understandable. Stuff like this happens at restaurants all the time, so I wasn’t going to get too bent out of shape about it. Still, I felt like we needed to lodge a complaint about what happened.

Despite asking to speak to a manager several times, the restaurant refused to send one over. Instead they sent over a hostess who tried to explain what had happened. After her explanation, the waiter came back over and accused us of accusing him of intentionally ruining Robert’s food (it was cold because the food had been held and he had sent it back to be reheated). Worse still, the waiter wouldn’t even listen to our complaint. In fact, he kept talking over Robert and wouldn’t even hear him out. I was shocked by how rude and unprofessional the waiter was. When dealing with a difficult customer, usually wait staff will try to be polite and apologetic (customer is always right and all that) even if the customer is dead wrong (not that we were). The checks for our entire party added up to somewhere around $900 before tip. The check for our table alone was close to $300, but after what went down we left the waiter a whopping 41 cents in tip. I can’t remember the last time I stiffed a waiter because it’s not something I really ever do. The way the waiter reacted to our complaint was just totally and completely unacceptable. I’ll would never eat at that restaurant ever again and would never recommend it to anybody. Extremely disappointing.

After all of that drama, we cabbed it back to the Castro for Pink Saturday, which is a big street party held on the Saturday of pride weekend. Our cab driver was hands down the angriest, most road ragey person I have ever met in my life. He was yelling loudly about how he wanted to cut this other driver’s head off, how it would be a luxury if somebody shot him, how people driving in this city are animals, how his hair had receded and greyed because of the stress of driving a taxi in this city, and so on. It was highly entertaining and provided a nice contrast to the sour ending at the restaurant. The street party was a lot of fun and there were A TON of people. In particular, I had never seen so many drunk lesbians in one place in my life. After wandering around to take in the atmosphere of the street party, we all ended up at the Midnight Sun for the rest of the evening. It was packed, but fun. There were just two bartenders but they were working non-stop the entire night. There were literally piles of tip money behind the bar because they didn’t even have time to put it away. Those guys must have made quite a haul that night but they worked hard for it!

Sunday morning, I got up and went over to the Parc 55 hotel where most of my friends were staying. We had a small party in a hotel room where we could refill our drinks and get something to eat in between watching the parade. The parade was fun and of course there were a lot of people there watching it. Afterwards, we wandered down to the festival at the Civic Center. Again, lots and lots of people but it was fun. After another trip back to the hotel to regroup, we went back to the Castro. It was crowded, but not nearly as crowded as it had been the other nights. After a couple bars, I was getting grouchy because I hadn’t eaten in a while. Mark, Ken and I walked over to some taqueria on 18th and Valencia in the Mission to get some tasty Mexican food. After that, we met up with some other friends at 440 Castro (aka the bar formerly known as Daddy’s), but I suddenly felt super tired. I haven’t been sleeping very well since I’ve been here and even then I haven’t been getting my necessary 8 hours. I went home early so that I could crash around 9:30. Now, I’m sitting awake and can’t sleep, which is why I decided to at least do something productive like write a blog entry instead of laying in bed starring at the ceiling.

It’s been a fun but intense weekend. San Francisco is a great town and pride is of course a big event here. I’m reminded of how much I miss the Bay Area. I frequently think about moving back whenever I come visit, but when I return to Seattle those feelings sort of go on the back burner. Maybe some day I’ll move back, although I always have this strange feeling of not actually being cool enough to live here.

All right, time to try to go to sleep again…