Holy crap, I'm almost a year behind on this diary and I have no idea who this girl is. Maybe a friend of Tara's from Houston that she put me in touch with? Tara, a little help?
Here's Sid and I with our smoking coconut-bikini tops. After we got our outfits on, we realized that in San Francisco dressing up as a hulagirl isn't just for Halloween and worried that some people might not ever realize that we'd even dressed up.
On the way back to my place, we stopped at Whiz Burgers on South Van Ness. Despite being in a sketchy-ass gah-gah-ghetto section of the Mission (that I almost lived a block from), this old skool 60s drivethru burger place puts In N' Out Burger (which I love) to fucking shame. Hot Damn.
Afterwards, I went back to Meredith's to say goodbye and tried to pretend I wasn't super-sad about having to go back to San Francisco all by my lonesome.
With Fiasco's very first gig cancelled because of Rothko temporarily getting shut down, we decided to eat a ton of pizza at Lombardi's and then dance our sadness away over at Misshapes. Meredith stopped at her corner bodega on the way over to Lombardi's to get our brown-bagged Sparks on.
...somebody's San Franciscian "wacky dad" showed up! Hahaha. Get aload of this guy. He recognized Michael from somewhere and started talking to him and Michael was clearly not 100% positive who the guy was and kind of uncomfortable talking to him. We did what any good friends are supposed to do when your buddy is stuck talking to someone they don't want to be talking to...
Hoodie Michael (looking like the Emperor from Star Wars, Ha!) me and Mary making a drunky-drunk face. After leaving Arrow Bar, Michael suggested we head over to the Haight and check out a house party he'd heard was going on. We were just about to all pile in his car when...
"Seriously Leigh, I know you love the movie, and yes, Sean Connery is pretty awesome in it, I will give you that. But c'mon, no more talk about The Rock, okay?"
After finishing our drinks (and wishing "The Ass" a wonderful visit in SF) we headed back to my apartment where we stopped in the lobby to take a picture of the huge mirror that's framed with an awesomely 80s splatter-paint "artsy" frame. We love art.
Before being hired by AdBrite, I'd been using their service to sell advertising on this site - on Thursday morning, I received my very first paycheck for all the ads that had been bought! Wooooo!
On Monday evening I got a call from a guy in SF named Algy (not pictured here). Algy is really good friends with my buddy Tom Donohue in NYC and Tom set us up on a man date!) inviting me out to see a band called Tarantula. Anyway, when I got to the venue, I ran into Nina's friend Jason who I knew from NYC until he disappeared into thin air. Turns out he moved to SF. You may remember Jason as the "Questionable Gay-Porno Jason" Tara and I discovered...(WARNING: EXPLICIT MAN-PORN COMING UP)
After we all had slid, oh, about thirty times each, Mike D. wanted to see if he had the camera skills to capture me doing a Grant Stoddard-inspired David Lee Roth kick. First attempt, way early...plus he's got a finger covering 1/3 of the lens.
After Mike was finished up at Casanova (PS - Mike, I have no recollection of where that box of Rice-a-Roni came from. Do you remember?), we piled into Michael's car and headed to a secret destination known only as "The Slides."
Here's me in the pre-game using the international sign language for "YOU are GOING DOWN!" (As in "You are going to lose this game." Not the other "YOU are GOING DOWN!" There's a whole different set of gestures for that one. Be careful not to confuse the two or you could end up playing the strangest game of Scrabble in your life...or uh, becoming really good friends with a deaf person. It could go either way.)
Man, sometimes you wait your whole life to see something and you finally see it and you just got to stand back and be all like "Wow, I'm finally seeing it." But then depression sets in because it's like "Where do I go from here?"
After lunch we hopped in my car and headed north to check out the Fisherman's Wharf area. Where there are all sorts of hot tourist attractions like the world famous...
On the crazy, twisty coast-hugging road back, we saw signs for some beach (Baker Beach, maybe?) and decided to head over and check it out. Maybe even take a swim!
Even after seeing it a bunch of times, the views are so beautiful that it literally makes you go "Whooooooa!" every time you see it. I managed to snap this pic of Mer mid-gasp.
After filling up, we drove back north into town, got some dinner and then went and saw Shaun of the Dead. And afterwards, we went to the Sony store and Meredith got herself...
Here's me picking her up at the airport. See how excited she is? I told you that my Nissan Sentra rental drives the bitches wild! After we'd caught up, I made good on something I'd been promising for weeks...
So after a week of living together, my new roomies and I decided that we were long overdue to head out and hit the town together. We were in our kitchen trying to figure out where we should go when my new roommate Christine uttered nine magnificent words: "Hey, there's a karaoke bar right down the street!" I was like "Shut the fuck up!" Christine replied "No, I'm serious, it's called The Mint and it's one of the biggest karaoke bars in town. They have karaoke every night. It's like 3 blocks from here! And you gotta hear Kareen sing - she's really good." Talk about fate, huh? (You'd think "Where's the nearest karaoke bar?" would've been one of my standard questions while apartment hunting, but I swear it never even came up!).
On Friday night, I finally ventured out for my first "social experience" in California when Tara put me in touch with her friend Adrianna who throws a party at a place called Rickshaw Stop.
Speaking of fuckers, here's Grant and me. I met this fucker working at Nerve back in the summer of 2001 and aside from his short-lived stint out in LA, we've been inseparable ever since. Here's me making a face and trying my best to pretend I wasn't going to miss the shit outta him. (Awwww.)
Since we were all pretty much recovering from my going away party earlier in the week (and also since I'd used "Hey, I'm moving" as an excuse to party pretty much every single night for the past five weeks) we decided to play it low-key and have a mellow last night at Misshapes. Here's Fatty, Amy and I on the cab ride over.
The mover's had already come and taken all of my stuff (to California!). Meredith was out of town for the weekend and was nice enough to lend me her apartment.
With T-Minus four days until my big move to SF, I headed out to Clark, NJ to have dinner at my Grandparents and say goodbye. Here's me and my mom with G-ma and G-pa.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
