La Regal @ Berkeley

I went back to Berkeley last night to see what I missed on my last outing here. Not much apparently, the streets were relatively empty, except for a couple bums spread across the town. After getting chased away from a prospect Japanese place by a bum, I wandered over toward the campus. On center street I found a Vietnamese place called La Regal with no bum guardians. Soon after I sat down in the back corner the other patron left and I had the whole restaurant to myself. Somehow my main coarse of calamari came out before the pork appetizer, leaving me ready for a doggy bag by the time the pork arrived. Overall the food felt fairly traditional and the atmosphere was awkward like I've come to expect out of a good Vietnamese place.

Berkeley at night

Berkeley

Berkeley has always sparked interest for me being one of the most liberal colleges in the US. Today I took the subway across the bay and north to explore the area. Getting off the subway downtown Berkeley immediately felt safer then downtown SF, littered with relatively tame looking students wandering to and from campus.

Sausalito Revisited

I took another trip over to Sausalito today to see if I could find some more interesting places to visit then Scoma's. I made sure not to eat all morning so by the time I arrived I was famished. In an effort to see what I missed last time I walked north of the touristy strip where I came across The Seafood Peddler. It was pretty empty in here and a bit expensive, but the Halibut was a fresh and tasty reward for starving myself. The bread was pretty nice also. I'm sure there's many other options for fresh seafood up here, but this one hit the spot.

bar @ Seafood Peddler

Halibut

Thirsty Bear Brewery

I decided to go ahead and find a new brewery this afternoon. The closest thing I could find to my apartment was ThirstyBear Brewery on Howard and 3rd. Inside you'll find more then enough space to bring a big group of friends, they also sport an outside deck, and you can check out the brewing area through a glass looking area.

Thirsty Bear From Outside

bar 

View Lounge @ Marriott Marquis

After getting of to a late start on exploration on this day, I chose to take it easy and track down a rooftop bar in the near vicinity. The Marriott Marquis can be found on 4th street below market, only about a mile from my temporary home, up on the 39th floor is the View Lounge. This place has two rooms with wide open windows opposing one another, looking to the east and the west. If you can manage to get a seat at one of these windows you'll be happy, however there's additional seating with second tier views in the smaller rooms around. I was happy with the slider appetizer I ordered, which consisted of one pulled pork, one chicken and one beef burger. The only downside to this bar is that you can tell it doesn't have any history right when you walk in, which is a nice feature of many bars and restaurants in San Fran. Either way, its worth checking out for the view.

View Lounge view east

Journey To Lombard Street (Continued from Haight Ashbury)

After finishing up at Haight Ashbury, I continued to walk east toward Soma. However after about a mile or so, a vision popped into my head, one that told me that I would be be at Lombard street by the end of the night. I reoriented myself northward and soldiered on up and down the hilly landscape. I soon found myself in Alamo Square park, where from the top of a hill, I could look to the east and see the city scape of San Francisco proper.

Haight Ashbury (Continued from Golden Gate Park)

Immediately after exiting the east side of Golden Gate Park, I found myself surrounded by homeless people again. It felt just like exiting the subway station on Mission Street, except these bums were actually standing and discussing things instead of screaming random shit into the air. I passed these groups as quickly as possible and walked down Haight street. There were more bums as I walked along and another type of entity I couldn't quite pin, they seamed like backpackers, they looked like they probably slept on the street, but they were more organized and less deranged and smelly. As I took a photo of one of the land marks, one of these walked up to me and demanded to see the photo I'd taken, she then went onto carefully explain that she didn't tolerate people taking photos of her and that I could take the picture again without her in it. I wasn't quite sure what to think about this but my best guess was that this chick was on the run for murder or something, so I gladly deleted the photo while she watched.

Marlowe @ SoMa

I've noticed this place Marlowe a couple of times walking around SoMa, so I decided to pop in the other day and see what it was all about. Marlowe is kind of  a hole in the wall located across the street from the train station, however it offers a compact bar area with a nice selection of beer and wine. Due to my lack of ability to properly schedule my daily activities, it was already about 3pm when I got here and I still hadn't eaten a thing. Unfortunately I'd arrived too late to eat off of the normal lunch menu so my choices were limited, I settled for the Marlowe burger and waited as patiently as a starving person can. The burger was slightly compact and didn't seem very special to me, which it should have considering how starving I was.

Golden Gate Park

As I've looked over the maps of San Francisco on Google, more and more frequently a large green rectangle has been screaming to get my attention. Zeroing in on this area I found a brewery on the west side of it and decided I could begin my conquest from this point. The Beach Chalet as it's known, is located on PCH and can be spotted next to a large windmill. Inside you'll find a lot of activity, a fairly normal menu for San Fran and a selection of  Beers brewed on the spot. I tried the Dark Side Foreign Extra Stout and was satisfied with a sweet malty flavor with a bitter finish, which hopefully would give me enough energy to make this journey. 

The Utah @ SoMa

I made it over to The Utah Saloon last week, inspired mainly by the gigantic sign painted onto the side of the building and the out of place olive colored paint. I found Heretic Porter on tap which kept me in the place long enough to decide to check the menu. I was leaning toward a burger to get some protein, however after talking to the bar tender they said they'd be willing to throw a fried egg onto the Utah Club Sandwich for me. It came out looking quite juicy and I'd say the egg brought it out of the realm of bar food. I've gone back to this at nighttime during the week and I found the place brimming with activity. I bumped into a bartender I recognized from another place and she explained that this is the main hangout for bar/restaurant workers in SoMa. If you go after 11pm, my only warning is to watch out for flying beverage coasters

Paragon @ SoMa

I found Paragon down on 2nd and Townsend street, right in front of the baseball stadium. It's a pretty clean and modern looking place, and due to its location you'll find lots of people wearing orange. When I went here it was too busy to get a seat a the bar but I still managed to get a table. I opted for the burger with bacon, and a beer. The burger was a bit above average, however this was mainly due to the size of the bacon pieces I'd had added. As I ate more people began to flood into the place wearing orange so I made an effort to finish off my beer quickly in order to get out of here. Upon exiting I witnessed a mass exodus flooding into SoMa from the stadium as the game finished up. This exodus is a common occurrence here and pretty much cripples any form of transportation and makes it impossible to get a seat at a bar

Oakland Visit

Someone had described Oakland to me as a mini San Fran, so I took the subway over the other day to see for myself. I roamed around the larger streets for about an hour, the whole time there was never more then a couple other people in sight in the area, half of them being homeless. Not much was opened at this hour either, it seamed like I spotted 10 restaurants and bars total.

on the street in Oakland

Mission District

I took the subway from Market Street down to Mission today to do some walking around. Getting off and back up onto the street was slightly disorienting. Immediately a smell of trash and feces overwhelmed me as I reached ground level, a wild pack of bums was gathered around begging and yelling irrational things into the sky to help welcome their new visitor. Here you cant see or sense where the ocean is, since I had no reference for where the bay was my mental compass kept flipping, leaving me with the feeling that it was morning and the sun was still rising in the sky. I started walking what I thought was north and then realized it was south, but the illusion was so strong that I kept having second thoughts. Along mission all I found was run down taquerias, liquor stores and majorly grungy bars; it was hard to make out why this was listed as a tourist attraction.

Sausalito

Friday I got a late start at getting out into the world, I was interested in taking a ferry to Sausalito, however the last one coming back would be in 2 hours. I decided that I would do it and just budget my time carefully while I was there.

San Francisco from the Water

Li Po Cocktail Lounge

While walking up grant avenue from Market street I stumbled into china town. I tried to venture off Grant to see if there were any hidden dive bars I could check out, unfortunately as soon as I went more then 30 feet down a side street I'd run into shady looking bums or degenerates. Along grant I only spotted two bars, I decided to visit the more interestingly decorated one, the Li Po Cocktail Lounge. They seamed to be pushing their expensive Mai Tai as though it were a cure for cancer, but I decided to stick my plan and ordered a Tsing Tao. Overall the bar had a nice low key dive-bar feeling, it's probably a good place to kill brain cells alone after a bad day. While leaving the restaurant I noticed a sign mentioning that Anthony Bourdain came here on one of this shows to drink the Mai Tai, which I guess the explains the sales pitch I got.

entrance to china town

Lava Restaurant + Lounge

I did a bit of walking around SoMa yesterday to look for interesting places to drink. After some wandering and kind of going in circles for a bit, I found a sign on Brannan street which indicated that if I walked through  an alleyway north to Bryant I would find a nice place called Lava. So I did and I did, the place was empty but didn't look like a complete shit-hole so I decided to give it a shot. They had Kobe beef sliders on the menu, which attracted me after eating the Wagyu meat in Sydney, so I got some of these sliders and a Guinness to go with. The beer+sliders was 18 bucks and tasted great, however I'd say you might want to order a cheap side to go along with if you get the sliders.

Walking Around South San Fran

I managed to get out yesterday and do a random walk around town,  from SoMa to South Beach and then up to Market Street. I got a couple pictures of the bridge crossing over to Oakland, which looks much bigger in person then I imagined. I stopped at a small bar on one of the piers near Market, where I bumped into some other people passing through the city from San Diego. They agreed that both San Fran and San Diego were more enjoyable cities then LA. After a drink I walked down market and eventually turned north,  I found a pub called Murphy's here which sported multiple dark beers for me to try. I ordered myself the pulled pork sandwich and drank two different glasses of porter for 18 buck combined. After I left I remembered you have to tip in the US, whoops.