Days of Wine and Sharks, Vol. II

Part the Second.

I’m still on Eastern time internally, so I wake up fairly early. First things first: coffee. There’s no coffee maker in the room, so I throw on some clothes and walk down the block to Café Trieste. The coffee’s not bad, but not necessarily great either. It’ll do.

I decide to do some more walking around before the city fully gets going. Again, I’m struck by the fact that although there are people headed to work and going about their business, the city doesn’t seem rushed. It has room to breathe. I like it.

I walk over to Chinatown, which is eerie when it’s deserted. I walk past an alley that looks exactly like the one in Big Trouble in Little China, then realize that it might well be. The grocery stands are setting out their fruits and vegetables for the day and the junk stores are setting out their cheap souvenirs. I don’t need any of it, but I take in the cheeseball atmosphere and kind of enjoy it.

I walk around taking a few pictures, something I didn’t do yesterday so as not to be too touristy in the middle of the afternoon. I get some pics of Kerouac Alley, which is a really nice little space between Vesuvio and City Lights with poetry quotes on the ground and some incredible murals on the walls. I do some more walking around, getting a couple of pictures of the cityscape. Heading down by Washington Square Park, I see a lot of older Asian women doing tai chi. It’s pretty fascinating to watch. I briefly consider standing with them and doing the robot. Then I think about how many other wiseasses have already pulled this joke, and I decide to skip it.

Running has been a big part of my life for the last few years, and I’m quietly thankful for Atlanta’s relative flatness while I’m walking around. If I’d taken up the hobby (can’t make myself call it a sport) in the middle of these hills, I don’t know if I would have stuck with it. Looking at the cars parked on the streets, I realize that these surroundings are exactly why emergency brakes were invented.

The original plan was for me to take the train over to Berkley mid-day to meet up with Cary and his family. He calls me and tells me they’re going to head straight into San Francisco, which will make things that much easier. I grab breakfast at a little café next to Hotel Boheme and then go back to the hotel to get ready for the day and check out. The hotel would be a little expensive to stay at for more than a couple of days, but I’m glad I had a night here, and I know that I’ll be back.

Cary and Karen pick me up, and we head down to meet their daughter, his parents, and his sister at Fisherman’s Wharf. I only get to hang out with Cary and Karen a couple of times a year at most, but given that he and I email throughout most workdays, it usually feels like no time has passed, and today is no different. I went through some pretty grim times over the last year and Cary was one of the people I leaned (still lean) on pretty heavily.

Fisherman’s Wharf is giant tourist spot. I have mixed feelings on this kind of place. Totally artificial vacation spots (Disney, I’m looking at you.) make me feel pretty disconnected from the people around me and from myself, and I wonder where mankind went so very wrong. It just seems so completely separated from any kind of real, natural experience.

I’m well aware that overthinking stuff like this is why people usually end up rolling their eyes at some point when they talk to me, by the way.

But Fisherman’s Wharf has one foot in reality, with the gathering of sea lions and WWII ship and submarine docked there, so I’m able to stop with the pretentious thinking and enjoy myself. We grab lunch at a restaurant overlooking the sea lions sunning themselves, and I annihilate clam chowder in a sourdough bowl. Our waitress is totally cute and has a Russian accent. Cary is able to convince me that it might be a little early to propose to her.

We walk around for a bit, stopping long enough for me to grab some sunblock. When I go out in the sun, Geiger counters start to tick and explode if I don’t cover myself, and a sunburned scalp is the ongoing nightmare of the bald man. Once I’ve procured what I need from Panama Jack, I grab a couple of souvenirs for my niece and nephew.

Our group splits eventually, with Cary’s parents and his sister going on a bay cruise while Cary, Karen, Lily and I go for a tour of the Jeremiah O’Brien, a Liberty ship permanently docked at Pier 39. I get my biggest laugh of the trip when Cary explains to his daughter that he lived on a similar ship when he was in the Navy, and then has to clarify that no, it wasn’t exactly like being a slave.

Touring the ship is pretty interesting, and I try to imagine how shit-scared I would have been leaving on a ship like this in WWII. In the days immediately following 9/11, I more or less assumed that things might get bad enough that the draft would go back into effect, mostly because I was as panicked and confused as anyone. I wondered how I would handle military life. I might be able to get used to it, I guess. It would be just like McHale’s Navy, right?

After the ship, we head over to what turns out to be my favorite part of the afternoon. There’s an old penny arcade, with all these great wooden automations from the early part of the 20th century. Several of them have little scenes that animate when you put a quarter in, like The Opium Den that has skeletons jump out from the sides into a den scene, or old movieola machines marked “Adults Only” that show women from the ‘20s in their bloomers. I love this kind of stuff. There’s also another machine that terrifies me to my very core. Please see picture for explanation.

From there, we head out to Berkley. Cary, his sister Kelly and I will be staying here before our dive tomorrow, while the rest of his family heads on back to the condo they’re staying in. As we get to Berkley, I’m very happy that I chose to stay in San Francisco the night before. Berkley seems nice enough, but there’s not much happening in the area where we’re staying. It doesn’t really matter, since we’ll pretty much just be sleeping here and then leaving very early in the morning.

We all get checked in, and Cary and I head back over to San Francisco to meet up with a friend of his that he worked with at DIMP. Mike turns out to be a great guy who schedules his own 24-hour horror movie festival every year. The three of us have a few drinks back at Vesuvio, get an insanely good Italian meal across the street (calamari pasta for me) and grab one more beer at a dive bar before calling it a night.

Back at the hotel, I go through my equipment for tomorrow. I haven’t worn a diving mask since I was a kid, so I sit around wearing it for a while getting used to breathing through my mouth.

Yeah, it looked as ridiculous as you’re thinking.

I check my email, get everything set for the morning, and hit the light. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.