Somewhere in this Google map is my new apartment. I will leave it up to the motivated stalker to figure out which window looks into my bedroom. It took quite a bit of leg work and quite a few sub-par viewings before I found this place, and I look forward to the ‘9′ that will start my soon-to-be zipcode. 28 days to go!
3 things.
1. I am out of shape.
Granted, I had a couple neat Laphroaigs the night before and hadnt yet eaten before setting off, but Fillmore street is a son of a bitch. I made it half-way up before having to take a seat for fear of passing out. I look forward to the sculpted calves that a few months of hill climbing will afford me, but crap, whoever decided San Francisco should be laid out in a grid was off his nut.
2. The Redwood Room at the Clift Hotel is fantastic.
I thought it was another Schrager, but the website says Philippe Starck is responsible.
The highlight would have to be the living portraits on the walls. Shown on six vertically-oriented plasma displays are portraits of distinguished and well-dressed men and women in typical portrait pose. A quick glance shows nothing special, but prolonged viewing will reveal that you are looking at video footage and not a still image. The facial expressions change, the eyes move about the room, and they even seem to be looking at each other. Word has it a story is played out by the characters in the portraits over the course of the night, but my view was generally blocked by hotel-bar drunks which leads me to the lowlight.
Hotel bar patrons certainly like their beige sport jackets and gold bracelets. There was even a black cowboy hat at one point, and I believe I saw Ugg Boots. Just keep looking at the pretty people in the portraits and you will do fine.
3. Song Airlines rules! Kinda.
I am too tall to fly. They haven’t actually come out and told me, but I have my suspicions. So how thrilled was I when both legs of my round trip to San Francisco from Boston were nearly empty. I felt a little bad for them because there couldnt have been more than 30 people on each 757. I got a whole row.
Also, each seat has a touch screen entertainment center in the back of the seat in front of you. You have your pick of 10 feature films. They do cost 5 bucks a pop, but relax, you can use your credit card or opt for one of the dozens of satellite television channels. You could also just play a few games, one of which is a trivia game against other passengers in the plane.
But don’t get too excited. There are still drawbacks. You would be surprised how hard people think they need to push on touch screens. The old lady behind me decided to play ‘Bejewelled’ or some such shit and was thumping my seat every couple seconds. I had to move. But the many many empty seats made that quite easy to do.
Oh, and the interiors… horrid! Someone thought it would be a good idea to combine blue, purple, orange, and lime-green pleather. It was surprisingly disgusting. But I forgave them as soon as the flight attendant, describing what to do in the case of a depressurization of the cabin, said ‘Simply stop screaming and place the mask over your face.’ Classic.
