“Typical stinkin’ freezing cold day in Aukland New Zealand.” D. Zaghet.
6HoursLater
It was a lot colder in San Francisco then I had imagined, mind you we did step out of the airport at 8am. Getting into the city was pretty simple. It was probably the loudest train I’d even been on…even with my earphones up to the highest they could go. We dropped our stuff off at USA hostels but couldn’t check in till 2 so we strolled through what we would later find out to be the Tenderloin. Within 5 minutes we had seen our first arrest. Just four casual cop cars putting two lads in the back but apart from that it seemed like a very quiet city.
We ended up in a typical american dive bar call High Tide. It was right around the corner from the hostel and the tacky neon sign was too hard to ignore. The bar was empty with the exception of one older gentleman sitting at the corner watching TV. Between him and Zag I couldn’t figure out who was more surprised/impressed with the other as they got into a well educated conversation about Basketball and I sat there staring at the decor. The floor and back bar walls were covered in one dollar bills, each signed by a previous patrons. It would’ve been pitch black if it weren’t for the abundance of fairy lights hanging through the bar. Our bartender was a sassy Chinese girl called Riki who was heading home for a month the next day. To say she was already in holiday mode would be an understatement. When not pouring our drinks or training the newbie she could be found line dancing or reapplying her makeup while telling us stories from the night before. When it became apparent that the two of us would be the entirety of her afternoon rush, she sat herself at the end or the bar, whacked her earphones in and began bellowing out a few random Chinese pop songs for us, drowning out the commentary from the basketball game we had been watching.
By the time we got to our room we were delirious from sleep deprivation. Our excitement at the prospect of two interesting roommates was shattered within minutes of meeting the two Aussie boys on the other side of the room. They weren’t into us from the get-go and the feeling soon became mutual. After our first shower in what seemed like a week we both decided that rather then search the city for a bar we’d head back and watch the Superbowl with Riki. It turned out to be a pretty close game from what I could understand and it was worth watching just for the ads and halftime show, not to mention the random assortment of characters entering the bar and staying for one drink then leaving again.
“I almost forgot my magic wand…” proclaimed one such character returning a few minutes after his departure, “..or tennis racquet as the europeans call it!”
The pair of us were pissed and in bed by 9 and I could heard Zag snoring within 5 minutes. Turns out I must’ve got more shut-eye during the flight over here as I couldn’t sleep. I turned on Grindr and within half an hour I was out the door and heading to a whisky bar, only stopping to think twice when I thought of waking up the other two boys then realising that I didn’t give a fuck what they thought anyway. Hunter was originally from Texas but had been in San Fran for about 4 years. Despite being 28 he had the whole boy next door thing going on and was a writer for an online magazine however we spent the majority of the time talking about food. He has the map on his iPhone open the whole time giving me a full run down of the city which was apparently the food capital of the states. The city seemed a lot less intimidating by the time I left his house and got home, it was only about 1am but I was exhausted and fell asleep to the sound of Zag snoring below.