Long walks in the night, a typical San Francisco evening, and one full of hope and ambition. Well, maybe not ambition (let's not get ahead of ourselves) but I'll take hope. Listening to Mahler's 5th on the iPhone helped.
Maundy Thursday, as I realize I did nothing for the poor today. I'm not a believer, but pope Francis washed the feet of criminals today and I did nothing. Maundy Thursday always makes me think of the docent at Westminster Abbey: the 60ish woman with the comically clichéd bad teeth, and the pageboy haircut that must have been quite daring when she first went to Vidal Sassoon in the 60s, explained to me in the treasure room that the silver platters were used by the Queen to distribute alms to the poor on Maundy Thursday. Quite the highlight of Holy Week, if you ask me.
On my walk, I wended my way out of Noe Valley over the hill to the Castro, through the Wiggle to Divisadero, and along Divisadero north through Alamo Square and north of Geary to California. I've been noting / complaining for months about the Brooklynization and the Marina-ting of the Mission, but failed to consider the converse: the Missionary zeal to colonize other neighborhoods.
San Francisco is much like the suburbs where the same big box stores repeat with tedious monotony mile after mile: Target, PetSmart, Vons/Safeway/Ralphs/Kroger (shudder), Home Depot/Lowes, Fondue Pot / PF Changs / Macaroni Grill , and on and on ad nauseum. In San Francisco, we have home-grown chains, carefully maintained under the 12-store limit that the Board of Supes has determined, but we have chains nonetheless. These chains start as superlative individuals and then typically spread across the city, sometimes with good effect (Martha and Bros) and sometimes not (Pasta Pomodoro).
I had to stop for ice cream at the newly opened Bi-Rite grocery at Divis and Hayes, practically next door to Nopa. Quite possibly the only ice cream outlet with service slower than the original, kitty-corner from Dolores Park, but there were only three people ahead of me so I enjoyed my canonical Salted Caramel and Orange-Cardamom sugar cone.
Another Mission invasion I noted was the Delfina Pizzeria on California at Fillmore. Fillmore Street has spruced up even more (not that it ever needed sprucing, much) but the only business I recognized from my first encounter with the street in 1997 was the Extreme Pizza, and even that was nicer than the almost hole-in-the-wall I remembered.
After a trip back towards Market on the 22-Fillmore (where the only unusual thing that happened was a young guy who was contact-juggling two stone balls, God only knows why) I stopped in at HiTops (slogan: Cold Pitchers, Hot Catchers; really?) to once again try to figure out what that place is about. Some pathetically attended Western regional game from the Vernal Vacuity tournament (Wichita St vs LaSalle for the honor of losing to Ohio State, most likely; LaSalle sounds to me like the rejected name for the Edsel and Wichita State is presumably in Kansas, I guess) being played to an audience of approximately 400, and the Giants losing to the As in the last gasp of spring training at Telco park.
After that a visit to the incomparable Patrick at Moby Dick and then home.
