It's been many years since Hannah and I frequented trendy city bars. Hang on, we've never frequented trendy city bars! That's probably why it felt so strange heading into SF last night for our friend Sarah's birthday party.
We started early with a quick drink with Jack and Amanda, up from Monterey with some guests, and then decided to walk to the birthday bar instead of, you know, spend money on transport that might be safe and convenient. It turned out that our route (kindly supplied by Hannah's new Chevron smartphone) took us through the middle of the Tenderloin district, just as night began to fall.
A skim of the Wikipedia page on the Tenderloin offers such highlights as "a seedy character and reputation for crime", "a high crime neighborhood, particularly violent street crime such as robbery and aggravated assault", "brazen daylight shootings", etc. It quickly became clear that we didn't really want to be there, so I put on my scariest face and hoped that, if confronted, my English accent would charm any would be attackers. We also walked very fast and didn't look at anyone.
Thankfully we completed our journey without incident in a time that Roger Bannister would be proud of, and were soon in a much nicer neighbourhood where the only crime was how much they charged for drinks. It's amazing how quickly the character of this city changes within a couple of blocks. Where I grew up you could walk for miles and only see cows and apples (and the odd witch). We enjoyed our drinks and caught a lift with Dan and Fiona back to the suburbs, where we belong.
Dan shows off his posh side with a "Lychee Mermaid" cocktail at Bar 821.
Mixing it up with fellow ex-Haasies.
Young? Trendy? No.
