Six weeks have blown by. Tina and I are on a plane home in a few hours. Today is the end of an amazing time. We’ve made some great friends, who’ve introduced us to even more great people. We’ve learned a great deal about Melbourne and the surrounding areas. We explored wide and treaded lightly. I hope we knocked the stereotype of the obnoxious American down a couple of notches and did right by our own.
So many sights seen. So many things done. Although I’ve written down a fair amount here in these posts, many more experiences have gone untold. In the coming weeks, we’ll have to try and recap some of the things that we’ve missed.
I’ll sign off with the enthusiastic recommendation that anyone reading this come here and see it.
Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
In case you haven't heard, Barak Obama is our 44th president.
The buzz here in Australia has been very much in favor of Obama. For obvious reasons the world has been watching our election and tonight they saw, at the very least, history in the making. Optimistically, they watched what we all hope is the end of eight years of painful grief. Eight years of frustration. Eight years of madness. Eight years of eight fucked up years.
Well, now he's president. Now he's the man. He made it clear that change won't come from him alone; that we're all going to have to pitch in. But even though, all eyes are on him. Not averted, as i got real used to doing every time Bush came on TV. But we're all going to watch this man when he speaks. Maybe because we're interested in what he has to say. Maybe because we've never seen a black man lead the country. But most definitely we'll watch because change has indeed come.
It's Cup Day in Australia. The first Tuesday of each November is the Melbourne Cup. This horse race is the culmination of the Spring Carnival season and said to be 'the celebration that stops a nation'. It's a public holiday in the state of Victoria and arguably the fashionevent of the year. Ladies begin planning their outfits months ahead of time to pick the perfect frock and complimentary hat or fascinator. I repurposed some bits from my halloween costumery and fashioned a hairpiece to wear. We're heading out to meet Amy and Michael for a spot of lunch then off to the pub to watch the race and see how i go at becoming a punter.
meanwhile, it will soon be election day in the US. Lots of peeps have checked in to verify that Jay and I voted even tho we're away. Jay received his ballot via email and was able to fax it in. I FedEx'd mine last week and confirmed its delivery. If only our currently being in the US' future meant I'd know the results sooner. People here are very interested in this election and talk to me about it often. A recent poll determined that something like 75% of Aussies would vote for Obama if they could. It isn't quite the same to be so far away, but my work day tomorrow will find me tuned in. Hoping to ditch a bit early and hit an election event in the city. Perhaps this one:
Work called me to Sydney for a couple days. Michael and i spent the day in meetings while Amy took Jay to check the sights and knock back some G&T's. The evening found us celebrating Michael and Jay's bdays belatedly with dinner overlooking the opera house and harbour bridge. It included an impromptu fireworks display and was capped off at the Intercontinental Club's rooftop lounge.
One of the many great things about camping in Australia is waking up to crazy bird sounds. The laughing kookaburra’s probably one of the most recognizable bird calls. If you ever watched the old Tarzan series you know the sound.
When Saturday morning rolled around we were slow getting up. We laid on our bed of pillows and listened to the Kookaburras. It was agreed we would skip cooking breakfast and load up the car so that we could get to our planned campsite. That way we could spend the better part of the day doing stuff.
We climbed out of the tent to a warm and cloudy day. Real muggy. Breaking camp was quick since we only had the tent set up. After the car was just about loaded up a flock of parrots landed near us and began pecking at the ground. We happened to have a little baggie of bird food so Tina went to work. After the food was gone and we pulled out of the campgrounds we found a blurb in a pamphlet advising not to feed this particular type of bird as they attack and kill many other types of indigenous birds. Oops.
Rolling through a small strip known as Hall’s gap we stopped to pick up some more supplies. This general store had few mentionables
As reported previously the fresh meat section had no fresh meat.
With supplies in hand we headed over to Smith Mill campground to get settled. Setting up didn’t take long so we jumped back in the car and went to go check out McKenzie Falls. These falls are pretty rad. They cascade down into a canyon and form some nice pools where you can chill and take photos.
Tina chose this spot to relax a bit.
Next stop was the balconies. The balconies are a series of massive rocks that jut out of the canyon’s rim. They look like balconies.
To get there we hiked down a path roughly 1 kilometer through amazing jungle like terrain.
We saw a little friend hanging out in the brush. Well not really little. This dude was about a foot long.
We wanted to feed him so we referred to the feeding guide.
Nope. Nothing about reptiles.
And then the balconies.
Well, after several hours exploring we were bushed so we headed back to camp.
We prepared some grub over the fire pit and camp stove. That night would be chicken lovelies and couscous. And before you ask, chicken lovelies are simply drumsticks with the bony knob chopped off the end. Presumably so the exposed bone seasons whatever you’re cooking the lovelies in.
After dinner we kicked it while some new neighbors showed up. A family of germans; in a sweet camper conversion made by Toyota. It had a pop up roof, a mini kitchen, all powered by a diesel motor of all things. You would never see anything like this in the US.
They were real friendly so I helped them gather wood for their fire. Little did they know about my penchant for fire.
Tina and I were getting tired so we called it a night. We wanted to get an early start so we could hit a local winery on the way home.
Not a bad day. The next morning came pretty pain free. We loaded up and headed out of the park.
We hit the Seppelt winery and did a tasting of some real great wines. I had to reel myself back in because the last thing to taste was some tasty port. They were up this 12 year stuff that was 75 bucks. Even though the US dollar has been relatively good down here I opted not to get it. But we did end up with a box of some great bottles of other stuff.
All in all we loved this part of the country. We were out in the middle of nowhere and the camping’s pretty sweet. If we can squeeze it in we’re going to go check out Wilson’s Promontory. There’s only a couple of weeks left so it may not work out. Damn.
jay's been wanting a hair cut so i suggested he stop in to see Fab or Evan at Rockit Barber Shop. It is in the lobby of my office building and the fellas offer up a free beer with your cut on Thursdays and Fridays = right up jay's alley. he decided to stop in yesterday. i met him there when i was done working and they even gave me a brew while i waited.
on the way home, we found ourselves taking in a bit of CBD post work culture with a cold beverage at the Royal Melbourne Hotel. i've noticed that pubs here often have the word hotel in their name, though as far as i can tell none of them actually offer up overnight accommodations.
as we were chatting about dinner options and jay's birthday plans, a patron interrupted to let us know that he thought my tattoo was elegant. it was clear he had more to say and soon enough he was talking of mischief whilst lifting his shirt. yep!
between his accent and drunken slur, it was sometimes hard to make out what he was saying tho we were able to gather he's a melbourne based journalist. when i asked what he's writing about, he sang us a song from oliver. highlights included tales of his meeting with Alistair Cooke and jay calling him a cheeky monkey.
This past weekend saw tina b and I heading to a neck of the woods northwest of Melbourne called Grampians National Park. Its a wonderful little clump of hectares covered in gum trees, eucalyptus, and other types of out-backy goodness. Snakes, insects, fur bearers, and birds in every color of the rainbow infest this park as well.
Upon entering the park from the east the landscape shoots upward very fast. The terrain is jagged and volcanic. The thick covering of trees soften the foothills visually but make no mistake that the park is no joke. As you wind through the park’s east border and into the interior a wide expanse unfolds. An immense valley expands before you showing how big parks can be in this part of the world.
Our trip over to the Grampians was a little over a three hour drive from Melbourne. Friends, Michael and Amy, lent us their little Citroen for a couple of weeks so we were going to take advantage of the short time with the car and do some car camping.
In addition to the car we were being loaned camping gear that was in storage a few kilometers away. Since we were going to be camping in a few days we didn’t want to wait til the last minute to check out the gear so we went the Wednesday before our trip. Tina works during the day so, we headed over to the storage unit at night and hoped there would be lights in the unit itself. After getting lost a couple of times and crossing the wrong bridge, doubling back again we finally made it. There was some weird music being piped in over a bullhorn type speaker. It sounded really weird. Finding the storage unit we quickly saw there were no lights in the locker and proceeded to rummage through all the various things one keeps in storage, looking for things associated with camping.
Folding chairs? Check. Folding table? Check. Fishing pole? Sure, why not. Tent? Yup. Wait. Here’s another tent and a separate bag with some poles in it. Just take it all. OK, sleeping bags? Sleeping bags? Here’s one but… well here’s a giant down comforter. OK grab it. Cooking stove? Yup. Still in the box. Fuel!?!? Yes, here it is. After twenty minutes or so we pretty much had everything we could find piled high on a cart and proceeded back to the car
It took a while but we jammed everything in and headed home.
We left Friday around 3pm and made our way east. by the time we got to the park, it was getting dark on account we got started a little late. We arrived at the park entrance around 7pm. Due to the steep hills we were losing light pretty fast. We were also having trouble reading the map we had downloaded. It looked pretty detailed upon first examination. But, none of the landmarks were where they should have been and so finding our planned campground proved fruitless.
We pulled into an RV type park and headed into the office to ask directions. Looking around and realizing we weren’t going to get to our campground in the next fifteen minutes we bagged the search and just decided to stay where we were.
We paid the parking fee and headed down to our spot. We knew the first order of business was to get the tent up.
Now, I’m no Daniel Boone but I have set up my share of tents so I took up tent duty. Tina got on unpacking the car of all our cooking stuff. After getting what looked like the “complete” tent unpacked and laid out I started scratching my head. I knew that the quickest way to get this thing up was to find the instructions. Screw pride I wanted shelter. Flies were starting to get hungry and I can't stand flies hanging out on my face.
The tent erecting wasn’t going too good. The tent itself had no visible attachment points for the poles. The fly seemed to have some clips on it but it was a nice night out and I didn’t really want to have the fly on the tent.
I decided I should check the other tent’s bag thinking maybe there were some more tent parts to this one. When I pulled the second tent out of its bag I quickly realized this was one of those massive shelter tents that you set up over a picnic table. This wasn’t going to work. Seeing my failing attempt to provide shelter Tina came to help out.
We tried to use our collective tent experience and could not figure out why the tent would not attach to the poles. Now it was just about dark and we were out of ideas. We decided we should at least set up the fly since it seemed to be the only thing that had attachments for poles. We we’re dreading having to sleep just under a fly but we wanted some kind of shelter.
After getting the fly up I crawled in to check it out. I saw in the faint light of my headlamp that there we’re little tabs on the walls inside the fly. WTF?? Well as in turns out, Australian tents have a fly first set up then the tents hang from the walls inside. Completely backwards!
Right. Now we have shelter. On to our beds. I grabbed the sleeping bag and the comforter. Crawled in. Spread the bag down figuring it would work as a pad. Good thing because it was one of Michael’s son’s bag and it was kids sized. Next to spread out the comforter. I unzipped the clear plastic case and reached in. what? A pillow? Oh sweet, we’ll have an extra pillow. No wait there’s two pillows …. Three… fou… six pillows!?!?!??! Fuck!
After letting this settle in, we decided at least we could sleep on all the pillows and since it was not that cold out we, wouldn't freeze with just the kid sized sleeping bag. My feet would have to be uncovered the whole night.
Alright. Lesson learned. Look through all borrowed camping stuff well before embarking.
Now we had to think about food. We were both pretty over it. We wanted to do something easy. We took out the camping stove saw on the box's picture that it not only had a burner feature but it also had a grill top. We could bbq some pork chops we brought. We pulled out the stove opened it up and … no grill for the stove….
Ok, I see how this is going to go.
Fortunately, off on the other side of the campgrounds there was a bbq pit. We gathered up our supplies and headed off to the pit. Only, this pit was a gas grill. OK. No need for the coals we brought. Lets see... gas tank seems to have gas. But the knobs were all broken and wouldn’t turn the burners on. Hmm… Lets see what happens when I turn on the tank. Gas seems to be coming out of the burners. OK, matches. Well one of the burners works and the griddle part seems to be working. But you can’t adjust any of the burners. Well, we’ll just have to have the griddle on while we cook the chops. After about twenty minutes cooking the griddle's residual grease really started to smoke.
Our chops finally done we started to the communal tables to eat and take a breather from our long day. We cheers’d each other with some fine (cheapest) beers I brought. After devouring our meal. We headed for bed. I turned on the camping lamp and got out Telex from Cuba for some bedtime reading. I read aloud so tina could follow along and after about three minutes, Tina was asleep.
I turned out the lamp and stretched out my exposed toes. Finished the last couple of sips from my beer and was out.
Growing up in California, I had what you would call a standard infatuation with cars. I acquired all of the standards: hot wheels, sizzlers, sst’s, tonkas, matchbox. As I got on in my adolescence I graduated to model kits, rmc’s, soapbox’s, bikes, and go-karts. When the intended use of those model kits got old I’d customize them with a bic lighter and some red paint. My friends and I would compete to see who could make the most graphic car wreck. We were sick little kids so in a way we got off on smashing up those models and we wanted to make it look real. But it wasn’t about that.
Simulating those wrecks made it seem less ‘play’ and more real. In a way, it was a device that made it somehow seem like we were grown up and had cars. We were nurturing a desire that was programmed into us since we were old enough to watch a TV or listen to a Beach Boys song. Cars were an extension of our imaginations. They were a symbol of our libidos.
As adults, after we were taught the realities of car ownership, we retuned our perspective and got hooked on the more practical aspects of being a car owner. They gave us independence and we could do anything with them. Including useful stuff, like load them up with groceries, help a friend move, take a date out on the town. You could load up your car with half of your house and go camping for the weekend.
And it was all thanks to the car.
Nowadays, its clear that cars are killing us slowly. We see evidence everywhere that we pay dearly to have them in our lives. Even our mental state suffers from the impact of car ownership.
Yet despite all this we still act like kids when that certain new model comes out or a new action show comes out and the star is a talking high performance crime solver.
During the past few weeks here in Australia I have developed a new fetish for the automobile. Everywhere you look the cars are unique. The first thing you notice is the steering wheel. Right side. The shapes of the cars a different. You see a Ford, yet it doesn’t look like a Ford. You see a van and even those look totally different.
And then there’s the Ute.
Ute, short for utility, is a car and a truck. It would be a car if it didn’t have a fully functional bed. Or it would be a truck if didn’t have a sleekly designed front end. Utes come in all shapes and sizes.
if you want a practical one, you got this kind....
if you'd like to be a little more sporty, then there's this kind....
if you'd like a little more sport....
if you'd like to get some work done then you'll want this one...
if you'd like to be sporty while working then this one's for you...
if you're one for the classics, got ya' covered...
if you'd like your cake and then haul it around before eating it...
if you don't want your cake to get wet while hauling it...
if you're into transporting classic dry cake...
if Quentin Tarrentino was Australian then the 'pussy wagon' would look like this...
.... and if you're plum off your rocker then this is probably yours...
At present I’m still trying to find my Ute. I’m sure its out there. It would have to be part Mystery Machine, part Karmann Ghia. I’ll keep looking for it. But the next time you look at your own car, if you have one, ask yourself if it truly does all the things you need it for.
it was a truly splendid weekend. Saturday offered up a bike ride from the Docklands to Williamstown where we spent most of the day. At the end of it all, we took an hour ferry ride back and ended the eve with a roast pork and fennel dinner. Sunday was 30 degrees (approx 90 Fahrenheit) with a perfect breeze in the air. We took a road trip to Bass and Phillip Island.
Jay made some new friends.
and my blind date went off just as I had hoped. Her name is Evie.
*Man Drought. yep, that's right. ladies, there is an apparent shortage of men here. news stories have taken to reporting areas where women should go to seek out male companionship.
*recent research found 90 people homeless on the streets of Melbourne. The city response is Must Act Now. seems so refreshing coming from the bay area.
*the movie Wall-E was released here just 1 month ago.
*news of an earthquake in New Zealand showed damage at a local bottle shop (liquor store) but not of any homes. shows priorities in this neck of the woods.
*speaking of, a 6 pack of budweiser here will cost you 17.99. a 700ml bottle of maker's mark costs $48. guess i won't be having any bourbon 'til i'm back home.
*i've found that people here who wear cologne/perfume tend to load it on. unfortunately it isn't the good smelling kind. jay reported the same finding on friday when he could smell bad perfume for a solid 3 minutes after the lady was out of his sight.
*great ad campaign from the Australian government encouraging a new blood test for prostate cancer: "no fingers. no bum. just a little prick."
Well kids, i have a date tomorrow. Jay too, tho i think he is seriously hiding his excitement. You see, it's no secret that holding Button (the koala) was a childhood dream come true. Now i'm on a quest to supplement my Australian animal photo series. As of tomorrow, i expect to have one of me holding a wombat too. After much research and help from a couple of friends, i've located a place where one can 'cuddle and pat' a wombat. It's just a 1.5 hour drive on the left hand side of the road away. Since Amy was gracious enough to leave us her car and Jay's up for the driving....... Wildlife Wonderland, here we come!
Friday has come in a blur. As I mentioned earlier shifter dan has hooked me up with a pretty sweet rig for poking around town. It’s a rigid Redline single speed with a gearing that I assumed was purely for the street.
Yesterday, dan invited me to check out some local trails. I gladly accepted, however, I knew the gearing wasn’t going to work at all. Normally, I ride a very climby 32x17 for California trails. My setup was a 36x18. Usually this would make for a painful day. The trails we were going to ride were situated north easterly of downtown, still in city limits though. As far as the trails, I was picturing something close to what you find in Golden Gate park; groomed single track that hug either side of the park. Well, that’s pretty much what they are but on steroids. Miles and miles of super twisty, technical whoops and berms. Mini climbs. Some tree bridges, etc.
Dan and I were joined by Spud, one of the guys from the shifter warehouse. We rolled out straight from shifter, cut through some side streets and within five minutes we were on a dirt road rolling into a park that was bisected by the Yarra river. Immediately, we were dropping in on some fast rolling single track. We were cutting across paved foot paths and back onto more great single track. At one point we railed by a set of doubles, but I was focused on keeping dan in sight so I didn’t go for my one hander-harry leary-look back-table top. After about an hour or so, i realized the gearing was perfect for this place. Danshift steered me straight once again.
Sadly I didn’t bring the camera on this ride, but now that I’m familiar with the trails and how to get there I’ll take lots pics for the next post.
A few months ago my lady, tina b, learned she was being called to her employer’s Melbourne office for some “we can only get this done with you here” type work. She flew down for 4 weeks, yet there was still more to do. She booked a flight down and I conspired to tag along for the five or so weeks. I packed up my mobile product development-er-ator and we jumped on the BART to catch the 18ish hour flight.
I had already loaded up the ipod, picked some good long-read mags, and scored some meds to help with the sleep. Knowing all too well how uncomfortable it is to sleep in one those airline coach seats, not to mention a flight to the other hemisphere, we resolved to buy those funny looking neck pillows. We were about as prepared as you can get, when…
Suddenly we were paged to the podium while waiting in line to board. “T. Bilger party of 2. Please approach the ticket counter prior to boarding.” We looked at each other, but didn’t dare say what we thought. The guy in charge looked at us seriously and said, “I don’t mean to inconvenience you, but…” Ugh…. Knew it! We were getting bounced. The man continued, “It’s an awkward offer. We can upgrade you to business class, but you will have to sit a couple seats apart. We need your seats in coach for a family.” Remember that scene in Willy Wonka where Charlie peeks into his chocolate bar and then looks back up at gramps? Yeah, kinda like that.
Upon taking my seat, 8D, decisions had to be made. “Champagne or Juice, Sir?” I then chose chicken off the dinner menu and at some point felt we’d crashed the party. I won’t go into further details of how you become a completely different citizen when sitting in this slightly different part of the plane. I’ll just say that we were well rested upon landing in Sydney.
Once in Sydney however, we fell asleep at the wheel a bit and missed our connector. We sat down where we thought our gate was only to get to the correct spot as the plane was pushing back. The kindly “Sheila” at the jetway briefed us on our dismal situation. We would have to wait til tomorrow for a rebooking or catch a flight on another carrier. A few stressful situations later, we found ourselves with a Qantas ticket and another 10 hours to kill. tina b happened to have a complimentary guest pass for one to the VIP lounge. A smile and wink later, we were both in the comforting arms of leather armchairs in the Qantas lounge. Such amenities included: A robot barista. A mini sammich maker. A metric toilet; so precise it has indexed flushing. My particular contribution required 2.5 flushes. A kick-ass private shower room. Did I mention free food and complimentary beer and wine? Ow!
After finally making it to our apartment, we were toast. When I finally got into bed, I took a deep breath in preparation for the next day. Thanks to Steve Smith, we’d be hooking up with Melbourne’s own Shifter Dan.
Saturday came like that. It felt like I slept 30 seconds. Tina and I got up, did some quick unpacking and set out to do a little exploring. On our agenda, was to do some food shopping. Tina being familiar with Melbourne knew exactly where to take us. Me being a devout meat worshiper, was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to get my fix. Dumb Jay. We entered the famed Queen Vic market through the flea market section and found some sweet bootleg items. Pretty much everything sold here is a knock off. Except for the Uggs. They’re so lame that not even the bootleggers will knock ‘em off.
Well like I said, once we got into the actual market I was rapt with astonishment in how these people stock themselves with meat and food products available in every color of the rainbow. Each counter did at least one thing unique.
There were also barkers at most meat counters. They were just like the ones outside strip clubs back home. Enticing you in with a promise of fresh, mouth watering, intoxicatingly robustmeat…. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Queen Vic market rules.
After getting a bunch of treats for ourselves we wrapped up the shopping and headed over to Shifter Bikes to meet up with Dan.
Upon arriving, we were greeted with cold ones and met a group of kids (including misses shifter, Emma) and immediately hit it off. Eventually we got a little irritated by the noise from the pole dancing class upstairs, so we hopped on bikes and headed to one of the local pubs. We found ourselves on the rooftop beer garden at The Fox Hotel and made quick work of about fifty pots (glasses of beer a little smaller than a pint).
Not realizing a couple of hours had passed, we made our way over to the Tote, a bar/night club not unlike the storied Night Break. We sunk right into more tasty brews, chatted it up with some of Dan’s mates who joined us and got into some weird booze called chartreuse.
The bar had a sweet jukebox. I heard a bunch of Pogues amongst other classic shit. I could be at the worst bar ever (holy cow) and if the Pogues came on, I’d forget all about how crappy the bar is. Anyway, further into the night a little gewgaw hanging from a wall caught my eye. Looking closely I saw that it was a voodoo doll of Steve Smith of HTATBL fame. I knew it was a Steve voodoo doll because he was dressed like a pirate. The other thing that gave it away is that it was hanging next to Steve’s favorite band. I refrained from sticking pins in the voodoo doll on account that I left all my pins at home.
Towards the end of the eve, we made our way to the upstairs to check out the live music. Right about here is where I started losing the night to the drink. When I was fast asleep (passed out) on the bar, Tina made the executive decision to beat it. I supported that decision with my deadweight tumbling straight into a cab. First night out in Melbourne tucked nicely into our pockets.
Sunday went pretty much as expected. This day was going to be for loafing. Sweet awesome loafing. Lying about watching Bear Grilles survive his way out of this and that. A homemade prawn soup rounded it all out quite nicely.
Monday morning. There’s a bit of rain out. Kinda windy too. We were going to try and get over to Shifter to pick up some townies so that we would be a bit more mobile. But it doesn’t look good. Tina has to go into the office so I think I'll putz around and get what work done that I can. I’m currently working on a spring program for swobo and I need to work primarily through email. I do have skype and what phone calls I can make I will. That should save some time.
Dinner time. We’re roasting a chicken that we got from the market. Shit. The roasting pan that the apts owner supplied doesn’t fit in the oven. Fortheloveofsheeba. We managed to use a dripping pan that came with the oven and the bird turned out awesome. This will make great chicken salad. Oh yeah, can’t forget to boil the carcass for stock.
Tuesday. I really want to get set up with a bike so I can start riding. I’m going to hook up with Dan at his other “job” at Total Rush over in Richmond. This shop is so spotless you can eat off of any surface inside, even the workbench. I say “job” because his job description is basically to do what we should all do after riding our bikes. Give ‘em a little love with the rag and brush. A little lube. Give all bolts a once over and you’re done. I never do it. And if I had a great paying job I’d probably bring my bikes to Dan as well. But that would be gay. So I’m not going to get a great paying job. There.
I got there right around the end of Dan’s shift. Enough time to do a few tweaks to a loner single speed and take off to meet some more kids and drink some brews. We end up at some square where a few of Dan’s friends are practicing their fixie moves. I’m really terrible with names. I forget them all the time. I could be talking to you just after being introduced and listening to you while thinking in my head, “what the fuck is his name?” then you’d go, “you forgot my name didn’t you?” and I’d go, “nah. nah. I was just trying to remember where I met that chick over there. I’m going to go say hi.”
Oh, I should mention at this point, tina b. was feeling a little tie tie so she opted out of jamming around on bikes in favor of heading home to the sauna.
So, yeah. Eventually we decided to check out an art opening. When we made it to the small gallery, it was a little crowded inside. We opted to peer into the windows to look at the art and frankly it didn’t impress. One beer down and we said fuck it. Onward to the next stop. We jammed over to downtown and into some sketchy little alley. For a split second I thought I was going to get whacked, but I don’t have that exciting of a life. Into a tiny nondescript doorway, through a little bar and up some stairs I found myself in the strangest setting I’ve seen in a while. The bar was basically top floor of an old masonry building where some corrugated steel was just slapped down for a roof. Weird, but really cool. They served up Melbourne Bitter in a 750ml bottle. I thought they were delicious, but was quickly corrected that they were indeed “shit”. Well you are what you eat so I drank up.
After Sister Bella we made our way over to a fancier spot that claimed great mixed drinks. I would be the judge of that. I asked the bartender if she could make a cocktail with cilantro (which is called coriander here), ginger, cucumber and vodka. She didn’t flinch, but I could see by the expression on her face that it was an odd request. This concoction is one of my favorites. An SF bartender, Tawei, introduced me to it and I always have it if the bar has all the ingredients. I passed the beverage around to my associates and got a good response. At least one more would be in order.
Right abouts now we were feeling the hunger so I was promptly led to a late night Chinese diner. This place was also in some dingy little alley. It seems all the rad places are where you would only stumble upon them if you didn’t already know about them. We had some delicious oysters, some duck, some mushrooms. All kinds of shit. We killed everything.
After eating I was getting pretty tired and rather than totally shattering myself again I decided to pack it in. I was pretty sure of my whereabouts but none the less my counterparts felt it fitting to escort me home. Total class. If they weren’t dudes, I’d totally invite them in for a coffee. Off to bed.
