The Bender

I had started this post some time back, but never got a chance to complete it. But I was reading another blog this morning about her upcoming trip to SF, and thought about this entry that I never finished. Well here it is.

By the time I give my son any of this material to read, I will be well beyond the point of appearing to him as someone who was young, a little bit crazy and did a lot of stupid things. This is blog is about one of those days.

A brief background: My wife has a sister who she is very close to and lives in the same city as us with her husband and their small child. My sister-in-law's husband and I get along very well, including but not limited to, similar interests in drinking a lot and smoking a lot of weed. So the whole family was invited to San Francisco for one their family friend's weddings, in the second week of May, 2006. Now I used to live in the city by the bay for just under 3 years, in one of the best times of my life (just after law school, had a job with decent hours, three of my best friends in the city, enough money and a healthy liver, just met the woman I would marry). Needless to say I have very fond memories of the SF. I hadn't been back in about a year when we were sent the save-the-date for the wedding. I started planning a drinking bender immediately. My brother in law had been to SF only once before, and aside from doing some touristy things, I felt that I didn't show him the local side SF. We had another friend, who was also coming to the wedding and also married into the group of family friends, who was also on the same page as us, and would be joining us.

I wanted to make it a drinking adventure that encompassed a chance for these guys to see parts of the city that tourists don't normally see. Plus we would have the chance to get absolutely shitfaced. We had a pre-wedding event to go to later that evening but we didn't care. I was up early that morning and about as excited as 6 year old on Christmas morning. After taking care of a few things, we all met up at about 10:45 a.m. in the hotel lobby.

It was a Friday morning. And so it began.

We were staying in the financial district, because the place the wedding was to take place was very close.So to get started, I wanted them to take on the Muni local trains, so they could get the experience of riding on that. We jumped on the N-judah line and headed for the Inner Sunset. Now one might wonder why would anyone go to the Inner Sunset part of SF. Well, it is close to Golden Gate park and it was where I lived for my three years in SF. A bit of the suburbs of the city, but still an OK area with some decent bars. The neighborhood is just one of many in SF, and somewhere I wanted the guys to see. After getting our shit together, we arrived there at about 11:30. We decided the smart thing to do was get a good drinking base. This combined with the fact that you can not get decent Mexican food on the east coast, we opted for Mexican food to start. We went to one of my favorite places, L'avenida. And that is where the drinking began. We had two beers a piece with lunch. From there we walked to another bar near by called the Mucky Duck (a sports bar, where I spent many a Sunday watching football.). One drink.

Being about 12:30 at this point, we decided it was time to move on to the next neighborhood. We jumped on the N-Judah line heading back towards downtown, but we didn't go that far. We exited in Carl and Stanyan, near Kezar stadium, the former home of the SF 49ers. We walked a little ways, heading towards the Haight neighborhood, but stopped off at Kezar Pub. This is a decent area, just on the edge of the Haight, with an interesting case of characters. Its also the Eastern end of Golden Gate park. Good place to buy a dime bag or watch the disaffected youth skateboard. But as this was a drinking bender, we started drinking. Kezars pub was good for 2 more rounds. And we were off.

From there we walked onto the famous Haight St., only a block and half up. The are is clearly not what it used to be, even when I lived there (to wit: there is a fucking GAP store on Haight), but in terms of seeing, it was worth it. So our second neighborhood was the Haight. We stopped at the first bar we saw - I think it was the trophy room. Great dive bar that was completely empty. The beauty of doing a bender on a Friday afternoon is not ever having to wait for a drink. Two more rounds. I do believe I was still drinking beer up to this point and was enjoying Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap. Glorious.

Now it was a gorgeous day(not a normal event in SF), so we decided to move on and see if we could find a bar with a patio. On we went down Haight St.I cant remember the name of the next bar we stopped at, less than 2 or 3 blocks down, but it had a wonderful patio outside, where we sat for a long time. It was about 2 or 3 p.m. when we got there. We had started losing track of time, and to this day, none of the players can give an accurate description of what time things were happening. We couldn't waste the great day and the patio, so we settled it. And by settled in, I mean we transitioned to hard alcohol and about 5 rounds. We started playing lair's dice (one of my all time favorite drinking games). It was one of those afternoon, where everything is perfect. You are with your friends, sitting outside, drinking, laughing, not talking about anything serious. Just perfect. So as you can imagine, this continued for a while. Now our mission was to get shitfaced. And I don't mean just really drunk, I'm talking embarrassed wife, mooning formal crowds, no one wanting to talk to us drunk. And we were well on our way there, but by the time we finished up in the Haight. Another friend had joined us here, so it was foursome. We were all married, so this was truly a drinking adventure, we none of hoping to meet women, just drink and get to know the locals and the city.

From there, it was off to the Castro. Now for those of you unfamiliar with SF, the Castro is the gay neighborhood. Some people have asked me, why four married guys would go to the Castro. To answer that with multiple parts, all of us are comfortable with our sexuality, its a great neighborhood with very nice people (gay and straight) and how do you go the SF, which is known for it's gay community and not go the heart of that, as a way to experience the city. So we jumped in a cab from the Haight and headed down to Market St. and Guerrero. Now some might claim this isnt quite the Castro, but we saw a bar I had been to few times and went in. It was the The Mint Karaoke Bar. It was dark, we were drunk and we stumbled in like a tornado. It was about 4:oo at this point and the happy hour crowds were just trickling in. We were rowdy at this point. We weren't mean, but I don't think we were everybody's favorite people. So we bellied up the bar and began drinking. All of the patrons and the bartender were gay. We got a bit of a weird vibe, like the patrons were uncomfortable with us. But we were on a mission. My brother in law, got up and sang Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" There was clapping all around. At this point one of the patrons said something about us and the bartender asked us to leave. We still don't know why. I think we were just a bit much for people at the time or we made them uncomfortable. My brother in law claims that he distinctly heard cheering and clapping when we escorted out. But the resume still reads that we were booted from a gay karaoke bar.

At this point, time was getting short. We needed to be at this event by 7:00. But there was a lot of drinking to do. So it was onto The Mission neighborhood of SF. A great neighborhood, with wonderful food, not preppy at all and certainly not pretentious. The happy hour crowds were out in full force at this point. We jumped in a limo (they are like cabs in SF) and asked to be take us to a bar in the Mission. We ended up at, I think, the Elixir lounge. And we picked up right where we left off. Had about 3 rounds here. At this point, standing was getting to be a bit of a problem. But none the less we played a game of pool and chatted up the locals. We had done this at every bar we were at. That was my favorite part of the bender(or all vacations) was talking to the locals and getting a sense of the city. I had lived in SF, so it wasn't so much for me.

After about an hour in Elixir, it was onto Chinatown, via a short cab ride. We had picked up some ganja prior to the bender and the driver was kind enough to supply us with some rolling papers. So we began to smoke. We ended up at one of my favorite dive bars in SF, the Buddha Lounge. Strong drinks, dark bar, great jukebox - pure perfection. We continued drinking. Lovely. At this time we started getting call from our respective wives. We finished off the one and only round there, and headed back towards to downtown. It was walking distance, and downhill. Perfect.

We walked, we smoked, we laughed...we got paranoid when we saw group of cops and threw the second joint away. We ended up getting back to the hotel and getting ready. It was a bit of work. We ended up at the party a little late. True to our plan, no one wanted to talk to us. We continued drinking at the party. The bender had been a success. Based on this experience, I wanted to write a travel book, called the drinking guide to (enter city here). A chance to get hammered and see distinct neighborhoods and areas of cities. I think I may be the only one to buy it. Writing this was fun. Its time for another bender.

Sum up: 4 friends, 6 neighborhoods in SF, 2 joints, 17 rounds of alcohol, 0 people wanting to hang around us.