One GIANT Parade

Where else on earth can you see a bearded M&M? I'm willing to bet nowhere! The Giants brought the city of San Francisco its first world baseball championship ever on Monday and on Wednesday more than a million people flooded the parade route from Montgomery and Market to the Civic Center. Manager Bruce Bochy got to ride the parade route in a convertible while hoisting the World Series trophy. While players, including Brian Wilson and The Machine got to ride in fake cable cars.

During his congratulatory speech lame duck Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said "I thought I was the only machine as Terminator." On a side note Lt. Governor-elect Gavin Newsom actually took his seat in the mayoral drop top. The first time I've seen him in a parade since I moved to San Francisco.

Giants win! Giants win!

It almost feels like old hat to say that the 2010 San Francisco Giants are Major League Baseball World Champions even though they earned that title fewer than 12 hours ago. I got to hand it to them they won it the same way they've been winning games all season with dominant pitching and timely hits sprinkled in. Perhaps what shocked me the most about the game winning 3-run homer besides the fact that it was Edgar Renteria that hit it was how the ball carried and carried out of left field. No other home runs had been hit to left field in Arlington during the entire World Series, yet this aging, oft-injured short stop who is not exactly known for crushing the ball did with the ball something that no media proclaimed "big bopper" could do all series.

The best part about last night's win was the partying in the streets going on city-wide. Candace and I walked up to Fillmore and Haight where several bar patrons emptied out onto the streets to shout "Let's Go Giants!", they were singing, dancing and clapping. Cars on every major road were honking their horns and people spilled out of their homes to sit on their stoops and watch the action unfold. The revelers stood on the bike racks of Muni busses trying to pass through, but the driver was just as excited as some of the partiers. Someone finally cleared a path for the busses to get through. In the Mission District fans seized a fire truck where they danced and shouted. Folks in the Castro tolite papered Muni wires. Others gathered at 5th & Market then headed down to the old US Mint to celebrate on the steps. So many people gathered in and around AT&T Park that the California Highway Patrol had to shut down the highway off ramp at the end of 280. There were a few problems with rioting, but overall nothing too serious and my car is just fine!

I'm definitely planning on joining in on the Championship Parade and Celebrations at Civic Center on Wednesday. I'm very excited to see Brian Wilson's Beard in person!

RIP Spooktacular and What I've been up to

The picture above got me in the mood for Halloween. Now that I'm getting into the spirit, I feel the need to apologize to my Maine friends this year for not returning to help throw the Spooktacular. The legendary Halloween Soirre had a great multi-year run and all of the great memories that accompany such events. Some of my favorite memories from Spooktacular's past had less to do with the actual party and more to do with the preparation for the party. Late night brain storming sessions with Chris and Ben, getting the music and decorations together with Shorn, coming up with costume ideas and crazy games to play will always be among my fondest memories.

As I mentioned in my last installment, I'm trying to improve my San Francisco experience. Part of me hopes that I'm able to land a job eventually through doing this, the other part just wants to get out more often and make more friends. This past Saturday I checked out Potrero Hill History Night with one of the guys I volunteer with at KALW. I am eager to simply learn more about the city and the night included listening to interesting stories about what it was like to grow up on the iconic San Francisco hill in the 50's and 60's and about the early days of public gardening. The night was interrupted by the roar as the Giants won the NL Pennant.

On Tuesday night I checked out an event at Swissnex entitled Brain Date. My girlfriend Candace and Erica from KALW joined me for the discussion on how brain waves can be matched up to help you find your match. They even served free food and drinks after the event and let folks in the audience try out the brain date interface. I really liked the venue and the topic was quite interesting. I'm hoping to join Swissnex for future events.

The World Series starts today and I predict that the Giants will handle those pesky Rangers in 6 games and bring San Francisco a much deserved baseball championship. I guess we'll have to see.

Surfing, singing, and Seinfeld

During my last visit to Maine I decided that upon my return to San Francisco I would try new things, meet some people, and most of all have more fun. After all even in a city where the average 1 bedroom apartment is more than 15-hundred dollars per month, there is some good cheap fun to be had. After all, my Broke-Ass Stuart Guide to Living Cheaply in San Francisco tells me so.

The week following my return from the land of lobster and pine trees, I got a wonderful and unexpected offer to join a group of KALW news co-workers on the beach for a surfing spectacular. We arrived at the beach in Pacifica early enough to have to wait a few minutes for the surf shop to open. After grabbing boards and wetsuits we changed into our swimwear and lugged our boards to the surf. After some on the beach instruction from our resident on-staff expert surfer girl Martina Castro we hit the water. After figuring out how to sit on our boards and listen to instructions on what waves to take and which ones to let roll under us we prepared to catch waves.

The feeling of catching a wave is remarkable. You wait for just the right one and then you lay down on your board and paddle like hell with your arms. If you do this properly the wave will carry you in towards shore. People who know how to surf have developed the timing and balance that allow them to stand up and look like they belong in Point Break. On the other hand I tried to stand up twice and promptly fell on my face and with that I'm grateful that we surf on water and not asphalt.

Friday marked the beginning of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park. The free music fest has 5 stages and is a lot of fun. MC Hammer opened the show for the 3rd consecutive year and my concert review blog was a major hit with SFGATE readers. Friday night after working my shift at the store, I joined some of my radio co-workers out for a night of Karaoke where I helped deliver such hits as Bon Jovi's 'Living on a Prayer' and Pat Benatar's 'We Belong' very poorly.

If I could somehow boil my Saturday down into a half hour, it would have made a great Seinfeld episode. That night was Phillipe's birthday. Phillipe is one of my co-workers at TJ Maxx. TJ's is his second job. His first job is working at a sex shop located at 5th and Folsom. I should have known that something was up when he called and asked me pick up his b-day cake at the sex shop and deliver it to the bar where his party was being held later that night. I agreed to deliver the cake thinking I would have my car, but Candace needed to borrow my wheels to run some errands and she went out with friends leaving me without wheels for the evening.

I arrived at the sex shop shortly after escaping from TJ Maxx on Saturday evening. The cake was locked in a closet. When it came out of the closet I could not believe my eyes. Lying on the cookie sheet was a frosting covered penis the size of my upper arm. After a quick chuckle, the reality set in that I had to carry this cake without covering about 5 blocks through the not so nicest part of SOMA.


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I collected a few smirks and a couple of jaw drops along the way, but about a mile later the penis cake had reached its final destination, Club 93.

After I made the drop I hustled up to market street only to see the bus I was intending to catch roll away from the stop I was aiming to catch it at. 25 more minutes until the next bus. Patience is a virtue that I don't have a lot of so I decided to walk the rest of the way home. No bus passed me on the 1.6 mile walk to my front door.

I got ready, went back to Phillipe's birthday party, went out to Pandora and sang more karaoke. Then ended up waiting for another bus home at quarter to 2 in the morning. Suddenly I heard the voice of a strange say she was looking for a cab to my neighborhood. After spending a minute convincing Angela and her friends that I would make a fine cab mate we started trying to flag down some cabs. A few minutes later we had given up. Dejected, the girls and I headed for a doughnut shop to try to formulate a plan. Luckily they had a friend willing to pick all of us up. Casey, Angela, Claudia and blond haired friend whose name totally escapes me were gracious enough to invite me along for the ride and by 3am I fell into my own bed. Thank you!

Wally's Wedding and the Cotton Candy Slumber

Off the mountain and back to the city...well sort of. September 11th in Old Orchard Beach, it doesn't get more patriotic than that! And in spite of a name that delivers mental pictures of toga parties on the Mediterranean, it doesn't get more American than Jimmy the Greeks!

Urban Dictionary defines an O.G. as "someone who has been around, old school gangster." Wally is without question the O.G. of my Maine group of friends. His social skills are artful and inspiring. So inspiring in fact, that the guest list at his wedding could have played out as a this is your life episode for anyone that had known him for more than 10 years. At the wedding I saw my first ever manager at my first ever job, people who I grew up with, folks I played softball with, and friends I have long since lost contact with. I spent a lot of time just talking to people I haven't seen since college and as memory serves correct many of the guests wet their whistles like they were still in college. Although I am happy to report that there was no "Frank the Tank" to lead a streaking party down to The Pier.

The after party raged for a couple hours at the hotel but quickly deteriorated into a hand full of us in Ben's hotel room watching Gladiator, eating pizza, and munching on a mysterious bag of cotton candy that materialized out of nowhere. I had planned to sleep on the floor in Ben's room, but in the rush to check-in and get to the wedding I forgot a key ingredient to my overnight stay, a pillow. With that in mind I asked if everyone had enough cotton candy, tied up the bag, and plopped down on the floor for a very uncomfortable night's rest.

Maine: Part 2

On Thursday we hit the road for Baxter State Park at about noon. The temperature was near 90 and the humidity was stifling. We decided Friendly's in Augusta would make an excellent lunch destination. Such a decision was an ill advised "hot mess" as they refer to it on the left coast. My chicken sandwich sat in my stomach for hours. It felt as if had eaten a giant rock burger for lunch. I wish I could say that the ice cream made it better, but alas it did not. I had such great memories of Friendly's dining in High School too. I remember when dozens of Scarborough Redskins scampered over to the South Portland location after sports practices, dances, and other activities. I guess I'm just not 16 anymore, but that doesn't explain all the ancient people filling up the diner booths. Maybe those folks were actually 30, but they looked much older because they had never stopped going to Friendly's.

We arrived at Baxter State Park just after 5 and after talking to a few rangers we decided to beat Hurricane Earl to the punch and head up Mt Katahdin Friday morning. Katahdin is a beast! A 5268 foot monster that dwarfs all other Maine mountains. It is also the northern most point along the Appalachian Trail. Chris and Ben decided that the Cathedral Trail from Chimney Pond to the summit would make for the most epic journey. Then the plan was to hook around the dangerous (According to Wikipedia, 19 people have died there since 1963) Knife Edge Trail to Paloma Peak.

The Cathedral Trail was the toughest climb I've ever done. The trail was more like free style rock climbing. 5-5.5 ft boulders dotted a near vertical landscape for close to a mile. I like to think of it this way. The average person walking down the street can probably put a mile on their pedometer in about 20 minutes. The mile from Chimney Pond to Baxter Peak took this handsome hand-full of new 30-year-olds a little more than 3 hours! The view from Baxter Peak was excellent even as clouds swirled the summit. We ate our lunches, snapped some photos, and as out feet carried us on to South Peak we proceeded to wonder if taking Knife Edge back was a good idea.

After a morning of climbing boulders the Knife Edge Trail looked like a piece of cake. Up and down 3 more jagged peaks and we're home free I thought. That isn't exactly how it went. The blue blazes on the rocks were supposed to indicate the proper trail to follow, but that and the first 4 options for the path of least resistance were almost always different routes. For much of Knife Edge we found ourselves clinging to granite spires looking for foot and hand holds with a 100 foot drop into nothingness behind our backs. Loose gravel would sometimes squirt out from under our hiking shoes and no less than 4 hours later we arrived on Paloma Peak with cramped muscles, sore knees, and a burning desire to teleport back to camp with more than 3 miles of hiking still ahead.

Not long after leaving Paloma we bumped into Alison (one of our partners in camping) who wisely decided to ditch the 13 hour adventure in favor of keeping her body fully functional for the rest of the weekend. She provided a much needed lift in spirit for the remainder of our journey down the mountain.

Maine: Part 1

My latest trip to Maine was a whirlwind experience. Action packed from start to finish and the activity kicked up a few days before I left San Francisco. It started with a deadline for a story. SmartMeters were the topic and I gotta say its hard to write a sassy story about utility meters. After staying up bleary eyed for a few nights and pounding my thumb with the hammer a few times I finally hit the railroad spike on the head. I'm now working on a story about an obstacle course designed to give physically fit adults a fit. I better get my ass to the gym to keep up with my interview subjects.

My flight landed in Boston just after 6:30 in the morning September 1st. I really can't sleep on airplanes, so the red eye flight really did have that effect on my whites. I grabbed my checked luggage and made my way to the curb where I waited for Chris to pick me up. I hate taking the bus back to Maine after a red eye for a couple of reasons. First, I'm paranoid about missing my Portland stop so sleep is out of the question. Second, the movie is always terrible. Third, I always miss the bus by a couple of minutes and have to wait 2-3 hours for the next one. On this day Chris was running a little late so I ended up waiting for a while. Luckily not long after taking my seat on a bench to inhale car fumes for an hour Evan sat down next to me and lit up a smoke.

Evan was your typical 20 year old from Bah-stin. His thick accent was unmistakable. His pasty white skin covered by a dark beard with a twinge of red gave away his obvious Irish ancestry. The brim of his newsboy cap covered his uni-brow which you could tell he occasionally passed a razor through. He wore a giant bead neckless, the type that could gain you a major cleavage show at Mardi Gras. Evan wasn't returning home from New Orleans though, he was fresh off the plane from Las Vegas.

Sin city was kind to the young man who borrowed his 22 year old brother's license for the week. No Vegas bar or club turned him away. In fact, he was only carded 4 times during his entire week long adventure. Evan's luck didn't end there, he was up gambling as well, but he blew all that money on his "girlfriends". One of which was a smokin' hot polish chick whom he stayed up all night dancing with and then...Chris arrived! Parting Evan's side was such sweet sorrow.

The ride back to Maine was invigorating. Chris and I talked about our fast approaching trip to Baxter State Park and attempt to climb Mt. Katahdin. Shortly after crossing the Piscataqua I got a call from my dad. Two things became obvious at this point. One was that I needed Dunkin Donuts coffee in order to have a coherent conversation with the old man upon my return home. Two I needed to grab some sleep to get ready for the long days ahead.