San Fran Fun

I’m way behind in these due to limited internet access and the fact that I’m now living in the desert for a week at a time, so I’ll try to catch up a bit. I’m now in Arizona but I’ll write about the other cities I visited first. Just pretend there’s a two week delay on the internet between here and the UK.


San Francisco looks the same as I left it eight years ago. It’s nice to get to a city and already have your bearings. I mostly just wandered around all day until the evening when I went to see The Ruse (http://www.myspace.com/theruse) and Honor by August (http://www.myspace.com/honorbyaugust) at the Hotel Utah Saloon.


It was a really weird venue with a tiny dance floor and a balcony the same size that ended practically on top of the stage, so the bands didn’t know whether to look up or down, and I ended up watching the top of their heads most of the time. Both bands were great, especially since they were having last night of tour fun.

By coincidence rather than planning on my part, the next day was Bay to Breakers, a fancy dress run through the city to Golden Gate Park. I wasn’t too bothered about watching a marathon but it turned out to be really fun. It was like a huge gay pride parade without the gay and lasted for at least six hours. I didn’t understand a lot of the costumes, but neon 80s sportswear seemed to be the default and, as seems to be mandatory with events like these, there was one wrinkly old guy who was stark bollock naked (sorry – I didn’t get a pic of him).