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Waiting for my flight in Austin. This is the most styled my hair will look for the next 5 days.
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I think we're looking at the bay here? But who knows, it's easy to lose your sense of direction when everything is covered in clouds.
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There's some kind of weather divide that cuts through the center of the city. If you ride the bus from east to west you can actually see it go from sunny to this.
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I can't prove to you that it's sunny in Chinatown right now, because I'm clearly in Golden Gate Park. But I'm like 99% sure that it is.
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I'd been calling these things California Goth Flowers (they have them in LA too), but according to some signage they prefer to be addressed as "Aeonium arboreum Zwartkop."
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The sunny east half of town. The 2007 coastal California guidebook I tore some pages from warned me against several very specific parts of SF, so I made a point to visit all of them, starting with lodging that was more or less in the Tenderloin.
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View from my room. SF is indeed expensive as hell, but in some ways strangely resistant to gentrification. Like remember how in the 90s parts of lower Manhattan were a sea of homeless people selling stolen stuff on the sidewalk? They still have that here.
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From my somewhat limited research sample I will also assert that this neighborhood has the best bars.
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A five-minute walk further east takes you to Union Square, where things are cleaner and shinier and the hotels cost twice as much.
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As a tourist, I'm required by law to stop and photograph multi-story murals. There's a hefty fine for noncompliance.
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My visit occurred in the midst of a heat wave, which means it reached maybe 72F one day. People were going crazy, wearing shorts and ordering iced coffees and shit.
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It took me forever to photograph the Chinatown gate because some millennial was posing for a glamor shot in front of it. In the end, this one came out better anyway.
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Female lion, you can tell because she has a lion cub under her paw. (This was explained to me by some dude as I was taking the photo.) Typical lion gendered division of labor.
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The upper level of a two-story intersection. Also, The Green Door. It sounds like a classy place. Check it out next time you're on whatever street this is.
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So you're going to see a lot of Chinatown pictures because San Francisco's Chinatown is home to some of my fondest childhood vacation memories.
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My parents took me here (not this specific alley, but Chinatown overall) during a road trip that also included Seattle and redwoods or whatever. It seemed like Disneyland to me (possibly because I had not seen Disneyland).
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When I returned to SF Chinatown in 2008 (the tail end of the trip for which that coastal CA guidebook was purchased) it somehow looked smaller and less glamorous.
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But this time it seemed effing amazing again. (Perhaps I finally shook off that maturity that was plaguing me a decade ago.)
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I checked, it really is like 95% magnets. And now you're all mad at me for not bringing you souvenir magnets.
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I suspect the optimal spot from which to photograph the Transamerica Pyramid is the middle of this intersection, but there were cars there.
