One Bay or Another…

I’m now into my fourth week living in San Francisco and so far the city has surprised and delighted me every day in one way or another. Many of these surprises have been out of the ordinary, to say the least, most of them pleasant but I have also seen some odd and disturbing things.

There are different types of weirdness, which I’ve called ‘Weird and Wonderful’, ‘Weird and Scary’ and ‘Just Plain Weird’. There are definitely more examples of Weird and Scary I could write about, but in the interest of keeping this blog fairly light-hearted, I haven’t included them.

Here are some examples from the just the last week.

Weird and Wonderful

Rabbit on a lead

Sadly, I don’t have photographic evidence of this, but last Wednesday I saw a rabbit on a lead down in the Financial District. Yes that’s right…a rabbit, on a lead, being walked. Baffling.

A drag queen hosting a working dog show

As part of Fleet Week, Duboce Park held a military and working dog show event ‘Bark in the Park’. This was hosted by the fabulous Donna Sachet, a glamorous drag queen whose choice of high healed footwear was perhaps not the most sensible for the park! The search and rescue and military dogs were adorable and impressive.

Donna Sachet hosts ‘Bark in the Park’ at Duboce Park, San Francisco. Part of the Fleet Week festivities.

Bark in the Park, part of San Francisco Fleet Week 2016

Duboce Park working dog event, Bark in the Park. Part of San Francisco Fleet Week 2016

Advertising in the sky

I’ve seen planes with banners in a few places, namely Costa del Sol. But the Geico ads over San Francisco on Sunday (the last day of Fleet Week) were next level. After trying to work out how this was done for approximately 5 minutes (computer programming? Manual work by the pilots?) I gave up and consider this to be some sort of witchcraft. Six planes were involved in the making of these ads, which lasted approximately 7 minutes before disapparating.

Winning tickets in a vending machine to see Ludacris

After winning tickets to see Ludacris in a vending machine in the AT&T shop (I’m not even an AT&T customer), me and a friend headed down to the No.1 Powell Street shop to watch the gig on Friday night. It’s hands down the strangest gig I’ve ever been to and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more British. Ludacris was brilliant, but the setting was surreal and the performance only lasted half an hour. By the end some of the rowdier members of the crowd had incited others to sing a chant about ‘Number 1 Powell Street’ and ‘AT&T’ while my friend and I shuffled around awkwardly not knowing where to look and trying to avoid eye contact with the over-enthusiastic chanters.

Presidential debate screenings

I actually class this as both wonderful and scary. It’s great that so many people are engaged with politics here in San Francisco. Many venues show the presidential debates on large screens and spectators watch them as if they are a national sport. For last nights debate we headed to SOMA StrEat Food Park where a few hundred people had gathered to watch the second debate. The scary part is obviously Trump running as a candidate. Need I say more.

Crowd watching the second presidential debate at SOMA StrEAT Food Park

Presidential debate screening at SOMA StrEAT Food Park

Crowd watching the second presidential debate at SOMA StrEAT Food Park

Presidential debate screening at SOMA StrEAT Food Park

Weird and Scary

Champagne cork shooting

The homeless problem in San Francisco is heartbreaking and I don’t want to make light of it. However, on Monday I was walking up Market Street and a tramp aimed and shot a Champagne cork at me. I narrowly escaped being hit by said cork, and when I looked back he was laughing while guzzling the champers as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

House Biscuit Sausage Egg

This picture speaks a thousand words. What is this abomination? Just wrong.

Just Plain Weird

The fork-pen

While out for a Thai meal with friends on Friday (post Ludacris) along with the bill we were presented with a biro sellotaped to a plastic fork. This completely baffled us all. Looking around at a couple of other tables we saw pens sellotaped to plastic knives and spoons also. We wanted to ask the waitress what the reason for this was, but I think we scared her off by laughing uncontrollably about the oddness of the fork-pen, she must have thought we were the weird ones, so the fork-pen remains an unsolved mystery.

Thankfully Weird and Wonderful by far outweighs Weird and Scary. I’m not sure if it’s just been an odd week or if every week will provide lots of surprises and new experiences. I hope it’s the latter!