San Francisco

We have spent the last several days in the Bay Area with the kids and my sister, Pat. We celebrated several birthdays, and Lissa treated us all to a fantastic meal at her restaurant, Town Hall. She also hooked us up with some winery tours in Sonoma County. Here are some photos Corey took of fire dancers at the annual Pirate Ball at Roshambo Winery in Healdsburg.

We ended up or tour with a visit to the little town of Bolinas, which is on the coast in Marin. We took a long walk on the beach and through the town. A place frozen in time, I like it because of the beautiful setting and its bohemian attitude. They put a moratorium on issuing new water meter permits in 1972, effectively controlling growth. Whenever the DOT puts up a road sign indicating the turnoff to the town, the locals tear it down. I think the DOT has given up now. The kids all agreed that the town gave them the willies.



(Nancy)


After my Eureka trip, we re-united and spent a few days in Fort Bragg, a little north coast town north of SF that we really enjoy. Jack needed a break from camping and I was (am?) still tired of camping, so we stayed in motels and ate out. What a fun time. Great fresh seafood, nice people, good sunny beaches and long beach walks. The only bad part was the stable horse who tried to buck me off and leave me bleeding on the beach. I stayed on, thankfully, but she was a little Arabian mare in heat – why would they rent out a horse in heat? She was so crabby she was trying to kick and bite everything in her way, and when we were told we could canter then the wrangler’s horse wouldn’t due to being a bad horse as well, my horse exploded.

Well, there went the budget, but San Francisco showed us a great time. We just finished up the main part of a family trip to celebrate Pat’s birthday. She flew in from Minneapolis, Corey flew in from LA, and Arian took the train from Sacramento, all on Thursday night. (Too bad Ben was out of town and missed the fun.) Everything worked, thanks to cell phones, and we gathered everyone up for a great long Bay Area weekend.
The weather was almost too hot, and therefore gorgeous. The city was exciting and beautiful as always, and the kids are amazing and loved by us beyond words. Town Hall gave Lissa and her entourage an incredible meal Friday night, which went on for hours due to the vast amount of too-good food and drink. This was my first time to Town Hall and it’s really, really good. The space is a big, beautiful earthquake era red brick building, meaning the building stayed up in the 1906 earthquake, and used to be a car manufacturing building I think. The food is New American/Creole and the jambalaya and everything was cooked and presented absolutely perfectly. Go there if you ever can. Gotta love eating out in San Francisco, where there is enough competition that you really have to be good to succeed, and they are. Bay Area restaurant people are gifted with amazing ways with food and I love eating out here. Her company had just opened another restaurant down the street and we went there afterwards for their opening night and met yet more people who work with, love and respect Lissa. She’s the manager of Private Dining, the big room they have for private parties which is booked every day and night and is a very important part of Town Hall.

The next day we piled in to the van that Lissa had rented for us from Zip Cars. Zip Cars is a cool San Francisco company that rents cars to people really easily; they have a few cars in many parking lots all over the city. You set it up easily on line, walk to the neighborhood spot where the car is, scan the card on the windshield of your car to activate the rental, and drive off. No forms, no personnel, no waiting. I wish I’d thought of that business; it’s genius. Keeps people from having to buy a car when they only need one occasionally. Lissa and Ben rent Zip cars when they need to do grocery shopping or out of town trips etc.
Off we went to the wine country. The sommelier she works with had set up private tastings for us up near Healdsburg. What fun that was. 3 very different types of wineries. Roshambo, very hip, young and cool. Ferrari, too weird and commercialized for us so we left. Lancaster, way out of our league but we stayed and enjoyed their hospitality and very exclusive high, high end winery and sipped fabulous wine we all knew we couldn’t buy. But the guy was very nice to us anyway, because of Lissa’s position, and we had a private tasting room in the “library” which is walled with wine not books. This was in a room built in to their huge, architecturally wondrous cave where the wine ages.

The Wine Country was in its gorgeous autumnal wardrobe, and the colors everywhere were radiant. That night, Jack and the kids went to a huge party where everyone dressed as pirates, at the hip cool Roshambo winery, in costumes we’d bought in the city. Pat and I went to see The Departed – during this trip I’ve been missing movies. It’s way too violent but the acting and the plot are great. In sleepy little Santa Rosa, we had to literally wake up the cab driver parked out front to get a ride back to the motel. In an effort to save money we stayed in a fairly bad part of town and shared the neighborhood with hookers and their friends; I had to ask the motel manager to call the cops to get them to quiet down from their fighting in the parking lot right outside our room, and the cops were there when Jack and kids got back from the party. But no one bothered us.

Now I’m in Sacramento with Arian for a couple of days while Jack and Cookie are taking pictures north of the Bay Area. We’ll hook up again in San Francisco on Friday. Cookie had fun staying at Ben and Lissa’s apartment and used the time to recover from the torture we put her through when we washed the truck at one of those self service washers. She was so calm with everything else we were doing, that we really thought she’d be fine, but she freaked. I think she was so mad at us she was glad to be rid of us for a weekend.