señor taco’s travels

Walking from the BART stop to the office the other morning I saw a quite
peculiar sight. A man was riding a 50’s era bicycle down the street against
traffic (the wrong way that is). Only his right hand was on the handle bar and
in his left hand was clutched a portable radio/tape machine. As he rode along
he would listen to a bit of music, then hit the fast-forward or rewind button
to move the position of the tape. It was audibly odd. Sort of a
la la la…screeeeeet…woo woo woo la…screeeeeet screeeeeet…la la
hey sound. The people were singing to him, but that’s not what he wanted
to hear. The whole time he was doing this he never looked up, I hope he made
it wherever he was going okay.

This morning, while driving to work I noticed that it was a bit foggy out.
Little did I know that while crossing the Bay Bridge I would only be able to
see three or four car lengths (not cars spaced in front of me, but about 60
feet or so) in front of me. It was very tripy. I liked it, but once in a
while is plenty.

Yesterday was a different story. The weather was misty with the sun just
poking through clouds behind me and in front of me was a rainbow. I snapped
a picture of it, I’ll post it soon.

It’s all been nutty stuff. At least with the rain and cold there isn’t snow or ice.

Well, I guess I could have gone longer without my first ticket, but it happened
tonight. I apparently didn’t yield to pedestrians correctly. It’s just too
bad that a SFPD officer was there too. I’m not angry about it, I probably did
wrong and now I will have to pay for it. Hopefully it will be able to be kept
off my record with a drivers safety course.

So, there are a couple of really cool advantages. The first is getting to see
fantastic scenes from my car. Take yesterday for example. On the San
Francisco side of the Bay Bridge I got to see a gigantic cloud layer hanging
over the bay. The city was essentially clear, but looking to the Golden Gate
I could only see the tops of both towers. Then looking to Sutro Tower it
wasn’t engulfed in clouds as it usually is, instead there were just fingers
of fog creeping over the hills. Absolutely stunning.

The second advantage is that I get to rock out, because I’m a rocker, and
that’s what I do. :P

Jan and I went after work to check out a pub down the street from work. The
place is called Dylan’s and it’s at 19th Street and Folsom. One word, great.
I love that place. It’s a great Welsh pub with great atmosphere and friendly
bar staff. I can see going back there many a time. Woo!

So I went to lunch yesterday with Chris (no, not that one, the other one, yes,
him) at the Atlas
Cafe. While were there a group of three very cute women were seated behind
Chris. One of them had an aquamarine t-shirt on with lime green stenciled
letters (as in a hand made t-shirt) on the front saying Matt and on the back Skiba. Kind
of like this:

Not that those names would be odd or anything, but that’s one of the
singer/songwriters for Alkaline Trio. I don’t know many people that would recognize his
name, except for maybe my best friend Matt [not the same guy, btw]. Anyway, it
was an odd moment when I saw that.

She was really cute too, I should have said something about Alkaline Trio to
her. Oh well, I’m a dork and I’ve proved it once again.

So, I was sitting at work on Friday afternoon, working as usual, when Nina
came up and asked me if I wanted some tickets to the href="http://www.sfgiants.com/" title="San Francisco Giants">San Francisco
Giants game that night against the Arizona Diamondbacks. I said sure and
they were mine. So, the first person I could think of that would go with me
is Jan. He of course said yes.

Come the end of work we drove over to the href="http://www.ballparks.com/baseball/national/pacbel.htm"
title="Pac Bell Park">ballpark, got in, found our seats on the Club Level
(which was very nice by the way) and discovered we were sitting with two other
people from Wild Brain (Andrea and a visiting director). Many a beer was had,
some food was consumed, and fun was had.

As for the game, the poor Giants. They just lost all momentum in the top of
the 7th when a caught out was called not an out. From that there were 6 runs
against them in that inning that never should have been scored (for a total of
7). After that the Giants just didn’t play that strong and ended up loosing.
Such is life. No matter the turn out of the game, Pac Bell is a great (if not
the greatest) ballpark to go to.

I was on the phone with my best friend Matt the other night and he asked if I was happier in California. With the exception of missing my friends that are still in New York I told him “yes.” I feel much happier out here for a variety of reasons, and just to torment some of said NY friends I shall recount them here:

• weather: I know there can be bad weather out here, but darn it you just don’t think about the weather unless it’s hot or cold. The humidity is pretty much perfect and there is plenty of sunshine.
• music: I’m an admitted punk junky (punk rawk! woooo!) and most of the bands that I like are either from San Francisco or SoCal. They do a lot of shows only in California. I’ve only been here about 3.5 weeks and I’ve already seen one show, I have plans for another one in July and maybe one two days after that. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing a lot more shows out here.
• stores: yeah, yeah, consumerism is bad. blah, blah, blah. I’m going to live my life my way. What makes me happy is that there are plenty of stores close by that I can just go to easily. Best Buy? There’s one down the street from work and another about 10 minutes from my apartment. In NY that was a 30 minute drive, at least, and more trouble than it was worth.
• women: yes, I mean that in the most lecherous way possible. There are beautiful women out here. Far and away more than were in NY (at least to me) and they have a better attitude (at least so far :). I like to see that around. It makes me feel better about moving here :P

Thats all I have for now. I had some tasty Vietnamese food for lunch. Not much more I can say to that.

So, on the drive to work today I am at the 9th Street exit from I-80. There’s a wrong way sign to my left to tell clumsy motorists not to try driving the wrong way on the exit ramp. Between the wooden pole and the sign are wedged several folded up pieces of cardboard. I was kind of wondering what they were when a panhandler walks up, pulls one out, looks at it, puts it back and grabs another one. He then unfolds it and stands on the corner with his “need help, god bless” sign. Wow, what a system. I wonder if the other one was the “I’m a vet down on my luck” sign (I’ve nothing against vets, in fact I’m gad there are vets, but panhandling is not my idea of “honest work”).

So, John had an extra ticket for the Giants vs. Rockies game for today and he gave it to me. Pac Bell Park is nice, very classic ball park. I liked it a lot. Our seats were in the first level, under the overhang. Great place (shaded) and you could really see the game. Jan suggested that next time trying the third level (”view level” I think they call it) on the right field side. We walked up there and took a look, yeah, I’ll have to try sitting up there sometime. We took the ferry from Alameda right to the park. I’ll definitely have to go when Matt comes out, he’ll love it.