It's Friday, and I've been here in the SF area for a few days. I've gotten familiar with the area already, been on a couple of short bike rides and made myself at home at Devin's place.

Tuesday afternoon, Devin got off of work at 3. He took me to this really cool place called the Albany Bulb. He brought his guitar along, and I brought my cameras. Check out the link.
When we returned to the studio, Devin cooked up an amazing dinner (he's such a good chef), and then we hung out with his roommates and talked, I listened while they played music, etc.


On Wednesday I rode out to Devin's bike shop again, dropped off my bike (apparently bicycle theft is too big of a deal here to be cocky about locking your bike up almost anywhere), and wandered around some of downtown Berkeley. South of the UC Berkeley campus, there's a great place called Telegraph street that offered a lot of unique and interesting shops to visit. I didn't have my camera with me, but the iPhone did a decent job of recording the non-artistic photos I needed. I found some really great bookstores, and two record stores that made me drool with desire. At the moment I found the aisles where the vinyl records were kept, I wished for a split second that I could be employed, that I could be a responsible, working member of society so I could afford something, ANYTHING. Like, maybe the limited edition Beck ($228) or Ben Folds ($89) sets, the Sigur Ros clear purple vinyl, some Radiohead, Sufjan Stevens...whatever. In the end, I figure it's better that I'm blowing all my non-replenishing savings on this trip, and forgoing the record purchases. It'll be OK. That's what I keep telling myself.

(Telegraph street)

(Yay for records - this is my heaven)

(Some humorous old books at one of the bookstores I visited)

I ran into some hippies as I was walking back to the bike shop. They totally offered me free hugs, and I couldn't really say no. Besides, they didn't smell bad, and a couple of them were pretty cute. So tell me, who's gonna turn down a free hug in San Francisco? From cute, non-smelly hippies? Yeah, you'd do it too.
When I arrived back at the bike shop, Devin put the new tires on my mountain bike. It's really the biggest treat ever. He gave me a super-sweet deal anyway, and I couldn't turn it down. By the time I rode off down the street on my way back to the studio, I was wondering what on earth I had been doing riding on those knobby-as-hell old tires for so many years. I was flying. I mean, there was no effort required. I've been spoiled, and there's no turning back.

(Devin performing surgery on my bike)

When Devin came home from work he made more scrumptious food and then we went to a local indie movie theater to watch "Sin Nombre." It was a very sad story, but was very well done. It was directed by the same guy who did "The Motorcycle Diaries", so if you liked that one, you should go see this.

Thursdays through Saturdays are Devin's days off work, so yesterday we went into the city for the first time since my arrival. It was an extremely full day, and we were pretty sleepy by the time we got back home.

We got into SF at the Embarcadero BART station around noon.

(Riding BART)

We walked through North Beach (the Italian neighborhood of SF) until we arrived at the Rogue Ale House. One of my all-time favorite beers is the Rogue Chocolate Stout, and Devin had never been to their bar, so we decided it would be a good stop for both of us. I tasted a new beer (Mocha Porter - I apparently need to have some sort of chocolate flavoring in my beer), and we (or at least I) got sufficiently tipsy.


From there, we walked down to the pier and had lunch at "The Buena Vista" and then ice cream at the Ghirardelli store. Mmmmm. I had been waiting so long to have one of their ice cream sundaes, and it didn't disappoint.

(Mmmm, chocolate sundae)

After that, we walked back through North Beach into Chinatown, I got bitched at by some lady for taking pictures of her food (those Chinatown chicks are nuts), and then ended up in the SoMA area (where all of the good museums and galleries are).
The first place we went to was the Contemporary Jewish Museum. They had a great exhibit going on called "Jews on Vinyl" as well as one about Jewish theater in Russia during the early 1900's. Marc Chagall was really influential in one of the acting companies, and so there was quite a bit of his artwork to accompany the exhibit. We shared a drink at the cash bar after we finished walking around at the exhibit, then went down the street to the SFMOMA.


I've been wanting to visit one of the MOMA's for a long time now, and the SFMOMA was amazing. They had an exhibit of Ansel Adams' photographs side by side with Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings. Since both artists were such good friends for most of their lives and were inspired by a lot of the same subjects, it was a very cool experience. There was also a collection of Robert Frank's photographs, as well as all of the prints from his book "The Americans." GREAT exhibit. Aside from that, the permanent collection was quite amazing on its own. They had two works by one of my favorite sculptors, Kiki Smith, as well as lots of works by everyone from Klee to Dahli to Kahlo to Rothko to Kandinsky. The list goes on and on. I've posted some of my favorites below for your viewing pleasure. :)


When we left the SFMOMA, it was getting dark outside.


Walking through SoMA at night was wonderful, and freaking cold. After being in Tucson with its frequent 100 degree + highs, San Francisco might as well be another world. There's at least a 60 degree difference between the two places most of the time, it seems. We rode the BART down to the 16th St. Mission stop, got off, had dinner at a small Mexican restaurant, a couple drinks at a local bar called "The Casanova", and dropped by Devin's favorite bookstore before getting back on the train around 11PM and making our way back to Oakland. What a great day.