Spendthrift Shoestring

Update: London moving dates & (budget) travel

Well hello there, old friends. It's been a while. 

The main bit of news is that our departure for London has been delayed. We'd been working with the assumption that we'd be taking off in early December. Now it appears that we will in fact be departing in late January. Fingers crossed.

Over the last few weeks we've begun the moving process, with uneven progress. On the home front, we had Thanksgiving visitors and our dear renter moved all her things into our apartment. On the travel front, I made a super exciting West Coast run to visit family and friends, spending time in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Napa. The only really vacationy component of the jaunt was the time in Napa, where highlights included meals at Ad Hoc and Bistro Jeanty and a blissful overnight at Harbin Hot Springs.

I also made a trip this past week, first to Panama City, where I got thoroughly drenched, and then on to Bogotá. The buzzy stories circulating about Bogotá are all on the money. I'll write about both destinations in upcoming Gadling posts.

On the subject of Gadling, I've been publishing more budget travel-themed posts there. So, right, what are you waiting for? Go on and check out Gadlng's beefed up budget travel section.

Two Caffeine Delivery Vehicles

San Francisco. Coffee. Cafés. Three of my favorite things.

A Gibraltar at the café at Café du Nord. Note distorted faces reflected on the table's surface.

Chicory-infused drip coffee at Just for You.

San Francisco: Weekend Trio

The aftermath at Just For You.

West Portal neon signage.

Ocean Beach streetlights and bonfire.

San Francisco: Some Fragments

Culture.

Commodities.

Streetlife.

San Francisco: Americania Hotel

Joie de Vivre Hospitality is probably my favorite hotel group. For those unfamiliar with JDV, it's a California chain of boutique hotels that span the market from inexpensive to very pricey. The hotels are modern, attractive places, many of which have been retrofitted from very basic motel templates. There's an emphasis on green values at the hotels, and there are intermittently good deals as well. Each hotel has a specific psychological (or social or subcultural) imprint that appeals to a different market segment. Everytime I contemplate the JDV empire I wonder why a similar model hasn't been adapted more widely in other places.

Matt and I in San Francisco now for a few nights, staying at a JDV property, the Best Western Americania Hotel. We're paying $81 per night for our cute little room, which we found through Orbitz. Through April 15, JDV is running a special deal that waives hotel taxes.

San Francisco: Harvey Milk Audio Walking Tour

Red Alert! My friend Paul VanDeCarr recently finished "Harvey Milk: Out of the Bars and Into the Streets," an amazing San Francisco audio walking tour, which traces the history of Harvey Milk and gay politics in 1970s San Francisco. VanDeCarr is a master storyteller with encyclopedic knowledge of San Francisco, and the audio tour is educational and very entertaining. The tour leads listeners from Milk's camera store at 575 Castro Street to San Francisco City Hall. It's an engrossing tour, perhaps especially for those who love San Francisco and its vibrant political history.

Download the audio tour at Inside Stories or on iTunes. (And if you download it from iTunes and dig it—as you will—be sure to comment on it afterwards.)

San Francisco: Four Images of the Mission & Noe Valley

Images of San Francisco, all taken today...

Amazing tiles at the corner of Hill and Valencia.

La Taqueria, the best taqueria in the world.

Graffiti on 22nd between Bartlett and Valencia.

Decoration at Lehr's German Specialties on Church at 28th.

San Francisco: Room 4

Just a few weeks old, Room 4 on Valencia at 20th Street is a strikingly affordable vintage shop, with a great selection of clothes and home furnishings. I spied a big, beautiful Cudahy's Rex Pure Lard tin—empty of course—and flipped the tag over cautiously, sure that it would be priced in the $50 range. But no! The classic piece of Americana was mine for just $24.95.


My new big red tin.

The shirt selection was also really good, and again prices were considerably cheaper than those I've become used to over the last few years in various outposts of cool around the world. My shopping mate Ryan snapped up several shirts.

It's exciting to see a vintage shop with reasonably priced items in the heart of Valencia Street, a stretch of commercial territory that has continued to gentrify since I left San Francisco in 2003.

For those curious about Cudahy's Rex brand, there's some information here.

Returning to San Francisco

It's been almost exactly five years since Matt and I left San Francisco. Since leaving, I've spent about 16 hours in the city. I returned for several hours to attend my godfather's memorial service in late 2003. The following December, I spent a night and a few bookended hours en route to Sonoma County to see my mother. And that's it. The feeling of returning to a city I loved so much after such a long break is simultaneously fascinating and unreal.

Yesterday we took the N-Judah to the beach and back and then walked through Duboce Triangle, the Castro, and the Mission back to our gorgeous sublet on Natoma between 6th and 7th. It's all a happy, familiar blur. In some ways the city seems as if it hasn't changed a whit; in other ways it seems altered and unfamiliar.

Five years is a long time.

Meanwhile, a song from London is on high rotation: "Dance Wiv Me" by Dizzee Rascal & Calvin Harris ft. Chrome. I think it might just be the best song ever recorded.