Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

Saturday night after dumping my stuff off but before we went to the play, I was introduced to Kitty, one of my sister’s friends who likes to visit. We don’t know if Kitty is an abandoned stray who sleeps in a warehouse or something until 4 in the morning or if she’s just a really greedy little kitty who has found a soft spot with my sister. She does eat, though, as if what we gave her was all she got all day. The routine has become that she knocks on the door early in the morning, gets fed, then hangs out until my sister leaves for the day. She is a very sweet and well-behaved kitty and I am told that she looks much better than she did a few months ago when she showed up all dirty and scraggly and skinny.

Above is Kitty ignoring me and below is Kitty posing for me.

So, Sunday morning, I hung out with Kitty, had wonderful French pastry and coffee for breakfast and a really good visit with my sister. After our lazy morning and saying goodbye to Kitty, my sister and I wandered over to Fillmore and began our long trek south to the Naval Shipyard where they were having the Hunters Point Shipyard Artists rabbit warren open studios. We were able to find a line that would take us from where we were all the way there without changing buses. But it was still a longish ride. I was a little jittery about it as I had a friend in college who’s dad had been stationed at Hunters Point and he’d sent his kids to school in bullet proof cars. But it was really no worse than any of the buses I’ve ridden in Los Angeles.

At the time, I hadn’t yet gotten in the habit of pulling my camera out at every opportunity, but there were some hills we crested that had wonderful views. Then, once we got to Hunters Point (end of the line) it was amazing. It just looks like a line of old decrepit barracks on the outside, but when we went in, it was room after room of nothing but artists studios of every type: painting, sculpture, jewelry, mixed media. It was incredible. Like I said, a rabbit warren. In fact, when we tried to leave, we got lost and a nice guy directing parking helped point us in the right direction.

The reason we went was to visit a friend of mine who’d been offered a wall in her friend’s studio.  Diana does sculpture as well, but the offer of a wall gave her reason to delve into painting and delve she did.  Stephanie, her studio-mate, offered kindly to take our picture:

Above is my sister, me, and Diana. Behind us is Diana’s artwork.

After we visited awhile, we toured some of the studios and my sister even ran into a long-time friend while we were out and about. Finally, though, we were feeling a bit peckish and wanting to get back into the city proper to see about a late lunch or early dinner. So, eventually we made our way back to the bus, transferred to a train and ended up in North Beach.

On the way to North Beach we passed through Chinatown:

Then we landed in North Beach. Ah!  North Beach!  I love it there. It’s home to what used to be one of my favorite liquor stores (closed for some mysterious reason when we were there), as well as one of my favorite cafes, and where I have had some really good healing experiences.  When we landed there, we just walked around a bit while I felt nostalgic. The restaurants there have taken to having someone stand out front and invite people in as they pass by. I know, it’s a bit like shoe salesmen at the mall, but it’s nice to see people who are willing to work for their customers (cuz a lot of businesses out there still could care less about the customer – even in this economy).

We ended up being charmed into going into Michelangelos Cafe for dinner.  They’re at the top of Columbus. They offered us free wine and snacks while we pondered what to have. We had good wine, tomatoes with mozzarella and basil, and something else for an appetizer that was scrumptious. For entrees I had the veal with portabello mushrooms, which was good. But my sister won the prize as she had the lamb shank. And I wish I had taken a picture. It tasted wonderful. It looked great. Of course it wasn’t finished and we decided to take it to go. We had also decided dessert would be at Caffe Greco, but all we talked about down to Caffe Greco was how good the lamb shank would taste as leftovers. Yum!

On the way to Caffe Greco, we saw Hotel Boheme, which I have always liked because of the name and lines of the building. But if you look below, you can see some of the businesses that are now gone.

And then at last we were there. Caffe Greco:

I wish I had thought to take a picture of my panforte and my sister’s dessert, but I didn’t. We did enjoy ourselves. It was a nice stop. I love that cafe. I always will.

Next we wandered to Columbus to see what we could see. O’Reilly’s Irish Pub is still in North Beach. The strip clubs are still on Broadway. And City Lights Bookstore is still there on the corner of Jack Kerouac and Columbus.  For some reason, I thought it was closed. I had forgotten how many wonderful independent and used bookstores inhabit San Francisco. So refreshing and such a nice change from Borders and Barnes and Nobles behemoths.

Above, Jack Kerouac alley, below, looking north along Columbus. Vesuvio Bar is on the left, and there’s City Lights Bookstore.

We didn’t stop in the bookstore or bar, but we did stop in a couple of nice little shops. One was a museum of sorts and I wish I’d taken pictures. It was fun. Lots of cool things from all over the world. We also had lots of good sisterly talk on our walk along Columbus.
By the time we got downtown and to our bus stop we realized we’d left the lamb shank (the wonderful, glorious lamb shank!) in Caffe Greco!

*sigh*

Anyway, we got home and fell asleep to a James Bond flick, still talking about the lamb shank.  And tomorrow would be another day…