Week of January 10th 2011: Beach Blanket Babylon and Bocce Cafe

And instead of catching up, I am officially over the one-month-behind mark. I feel weird being so far in the future compared to my posts. While it's nice to think back on what I did, I hope I'm not losing too many of my memories... then again, I tend to ramble so maybe forgetting some details isn't a bad thing.

Anyways, I've been really excited for the next few posts, starting with this one. The story starts even earlier than a weekend in January 2011 though. I am extremely close with my Tia (Aunt) Rutila. She's my godmother and she's always been an important part of my life. For a number of years when I was in college my Uncle and her told me that they would come up to San Francisco when I turned 21 and take me to Beach Blanket Babylon and then out for a night on the town. However, we constantly crossed wires and for years we never had our night out, until now...

Beach Blanket Babylon is a very famous play in San Francisco. It's the story of Snow White looking for her prince charming... in San Francisco. The show has been going on since the 70's, but they constantly update the show to reflect new political and pop culture references. The coolest thing was hearing them make fun of something that had just happened a couple of weeks earlier. Also, if you're familiar with the play, you know that it's well known for the outrageous hats they wear. It's definitely worth checking out and seeing the several hundred pound San Francisco skyline hat. The show is really difficult to describe, but I'm already looking forward to seeing it again someday. I really think the best part of the show is the fact that I can see a completely different Beach Blanket Babylon in 5, 10, 15, or 30 years.

After the show, we walked over to Bocce for dinner. Bocce is tucked back on Green St., just a few short blocks away the show. Being off-Columbus keeps the restaurant from having that touristy feeling that some of the North Beach restaurants. Unfortunately though, they didn't have a band playing that night like my uncle thought they would.

The experience at the restaurant was great though. I tried Cioppino for the first time, and the three of us enjoyed a lovely Malbec while my Tia and I talked about some of our favorite memories. It's funny how people connect sometimes. I've always felt that my aunt and I had a special connection. She taught me how to paint, and got me interested in reading and nature. She's a big reason I like a lot of the things I like and I am the way I am. So, at dinner when she said that she thinks we were sisters in a past life or something, it really meant a lot to me. I've always known my aunt cares a lot about me, it's always nice hearing that someone feels the same way about you as you feel about them.

At the end of dinner, my aunt and I struck up a conversation with our waiter. Apparently, I'm not the only one who takes an interest in where people come from because we quickly learned about how he moved here from Turkey in order to study engineering in the United States and was working as a waiter to put himself through school. My uncle got a little impatient with us, but as we were leaving our waiter gave us a complimentary tiramisu for being so friendly.

Week of January 3rd 2011: CSSC - Blue Bottle Coffee

I mentioned in my New Year's post that I wanted to simultaneously maintain this blog and pass the CFA level II. Those of you who has spent time with me between January and June the past two years, know what a conflict of interest this might be.

My solution was simple, try to go to as many different coffee shops in the city as I could. That way, if my studying prevented me from having a big crazy adventure, I could at least have an adventure in coffee and explore that side of San Francisco (not limited to the city, but there are a ton of coffee shops here). So, I decided to start the Coffee Shop Study Challenge (or CSSC for short). 

The basic idea of the CSSC, is to rate different coffee shops along a variety of categories (for consistency) on a 1-5 scale:
Taste
Buzz (caffeine level, basically)
Ambiance
Food (If applicable)
Selection
Study
Novelty
Presentation
Overall (not necessarily an average of the above categories)

So, to kick off my Coffee Challenge, I decided to go to the SF mecca of coffee. For months, it was hard to escape the murmurs and local articles about Blue Bottle Coffee, so I had to check it out. I decided to go to the Mint Plaza. It took me a while to find it (even though it's across the street from the 5th St. entrance to the Westfield mall, this place is freaking hidden), and the sign didn't help it stand out too much either.

Taste: 4. It was delicious. I'm one of those people that has some coffee with my cream and sugar and I didn't have to add a lot of sugar to my latte. I really want to try the siphon pot coffee next time I go there. I would tell you what siphon pot coffee is but I'm not really sure so I'll let Wikipedia and Blue Bottle's website do it for you.

Buzz: 5. I had a nice caffeine buzz going for hours afterward. In fact, I cleaned the whole apartment and stayed up until 2 am. That's only happened one other time and it was before I was a regular coffee drinker. This stuff has a kick.

Ambiance: 1. When I go into a coffee shop I think of dark stained wood and cozy chairs. Maybe I've been in too many Starbucks, but I don't expect a coffee shop to be in a high-ceiling, white washed location with big cold windows and tiny bar style tables with tall stools. The whole place just felt cold and unwelcoming.

Food: 3. I got a little gingerbread loaf which was really tasty. It had a bit too much gingerbread for my personal tastes but then again, the most experience I have with gingerbread are the person shaped cookies at Christmas time so maybe that's how it's supposed to taste? There were also several brunch type dishes that looked really good and I didn't see any plates go back with uneaten food.

Selection: 4. There weren't 25 types of coffees but I felt like all the basics were covered. Plus, the rare addition of the siphon pot was nice. The menu had what it needed and nothing more.

Study: 2. I got about 20% of the chapter I was reading done during the hour I was there which is a better pace than usual. However, because of the small space and cold atmosphere I didn't feel like I was welcome to stay and study after my coffee was done. I don't know the protocol on that, but if I need to find a new study spot every hour or drink 4 lattes, then this isn't going to go so well.

Novelty: 4. The coffee was amazing, and the siphon pot seemed really cool. Although the atmosphere sucked, it was really fun to watch the siphon pot in action the 2-3 times someone ordered it while I was there.

Presentation: 4. This is kind of a silly category, but I was really excited by how pretty the swirls in my coffee cup were.

Overall: 3. I think as a coffee shop, this place is great. There is good food, great coffee and it's in a central location. I think next time I go on a weekend shopping trip, I'll stop here for a pick-me-up. However, as a study spot, it was terrible. I could hardly fit my book and notebook on the little table and I didn't feel like I was welcome to study there. Since this is a study challenge, I have to knock the overall score for that. Now if this was a drink-coffee-apartment-cleaning-challenge, Blue Bottle might have gotten the elusive 5.

Week of January 3rd 2011: Coach Sushi

...and now back to our regular programming. Sorry for the light reading lately, it's been busy at work. Unfortunately, I seem to be getting further away from my goal of staying within a month of present time, much less catching up. Anyways...

For a couple of weeks, Eddy had been telling me about a sushi restaurant in Oakland that had an endless sake special for $3.50. It seemed like a fun way to hang out with some friends and get dinner on a Friday night after climbing.

The story behind Coach Sushi is pretty cool. It's not a place to go and get trashed on inexpensive sake. It's a fun social, experience in a restaurant where the owner wants his guests to have a good night.

When you order the sake, the servers bring around a little cedar box for each person in your party. Then, Coach comes around and explains to you that sake is supposed to be drunk out of unfiltered cedar boxes. He then fills your box, instructs you to put a little bit of salt on the corner of it, and that your first drink must be taken hands-free.

Oh, and Coach never lets your box get empty... but we'll get to that later.

Once the rest of our party arrived we ordered food. Unfortunately, this wasn't the highlight of the night. I ordered the Coach Roll and the Dancing Bonito Roll. Both were rather little (for the price at least, which kind of counteracted the good deal on the sake) and smelled/tasted rather fishy. I love fish, but that fishy taste is the last thing I want to experience at a sushi restaurant. My two rolls left me rather hungry so I ordered my favorite, salmon sashimi (which in retrospect, probably wasn't the best choice if my other two dishes were fishy) which turned out to be pretty good when compared to what I'd already tried.

Once we'd had our fill of sushi, we thought we'd take a peek at dessert. Eddy had never tried tempura ice cream. He told me he like green tea ice cream but just had never tried it with the whole deep-fried-and-covered-in-chocolate thing. "Eddy," I asked, "what doesn't get better deep fried and covered in chocolate?" He didn't know. "Nothing," I said. Needless to say, I think he enjoyed it.

Since we were nearing the end of our meal, we started winding down our sake boxes. Unfortunately, this proved to be rather difficult. Since Coach would never let a box get empty, it was very difficult to come to a stopping point. We realized the only solution was to drink the sake box quickly, and then flip it over so that he couldn't fill it up again. This worked for most of our table but I got very involved in a conversation and next thing I knew, Coach was rushing over to our table with his sake bottle... Apparently, while I was distracted, Eddy took the liberty of flipping my box back over, but luckily our friend Matt drew my attention to it before Coach could fill it back up.

Overall, it was a really fun night. The restaurant also lets you decorate or buy your box and take it home if you'd like. They had plenty of back ups.

Going on a Little Trip....

Hello Readers!!!

As you can tell, this isn't my usual blog post! In a few weeks, I'm going to be going on a little trip and I wanted to get some feedback! I'll be traveling to London, Paris, Amsterdam (somewhere new!), and stopping over in Brussels (also new).

I know a lot of you are big travelers so I wanted to get some suggestions! I love Paris so I have a good idea of what I would like to see there, but I'm pretty clueless otherwise. I'm going to be in London for most of the trip and I'm going to have a lot of time to sight see so please give me some tips.

All suggestions are welcome :)

Week of December 27th 2010: Bridges Rock Gym

So the end of a very busy week brought me to Bridge’s Rock Gym in El Cerrito for my friend Matt’s birthday. Matt, as you may have guessed, is a friend through climbing so it shouldn’t be shocking that he wanted to try a new location for his birthday.

Bridges is primarily a bouldering gym so most of the routes are only about 10-12 feet high and rope free. Although I’m not the biggest fan of bouldering, it was still fun to be there and be forced into doing it. The whole gym had a much softer floor than the one I usually go to which made falling much more comfortable.

The best part of the gym though was that all the routes “topped out.” That’s when you can climb onto the top of the route. Typically, you can walk around to place with an easy down climb or steps or something. It makes it easier to stay out of people’s way and get off of the route when you finish. 

Another feature of the gym was a slacklining area. This is kind of like tight rope walking and is really difficult. Eddy and I had a fun time trying (and failing) to walk across the different lines that were set up.

Overall, the gym was really fun, but even if it’s closer it’s not a place that I would become a member of. I love rope climbing too much to go to a dedicated bouldering gym.

I love the fact that my rock climbing family is growing. Last weekend I went to the gym and just about all of my rock climbing friends (along with half of San Francisco) were there. I also love that every couple of months, I find a way to write a post about climbing…

Week of December 27th 2010: Tonga Room

Eddy and I had been wanting to go to Tonga Room ever since we found out it might close forever when they remodel the Fairmont Hotel. Since it was between the holidays and we both had a free weeknight, we figured it we needed to make it out there.


We decided to go on a Thursday night since they also had an appetizer buffet. For a small price, you got unlimited sesame wings, noodles, macaroni salad, etc.  While most of the food was kind of mediocre (not that that stopped me from piling up my plate as high as physically possible), the chicken wings were incredible.

Eddy and I also decided to get the legendary Scorpion Bowl. They don't let you even order it unless there are two of you. While it was a tasty, fun drink, it didn't quite live up to the hype in my opinion. I had better rum drinks at Rhumbar in Vegas (if you want a Scorpion Bowl, you have to try there's... it is HUGE and comes with atomic cherries). We decided to try the Lava Bowl as well. It was also good, but, well, it tasted almost exactly like the Scorpion Bowl.

The really cool part about the Tonga Room though is the rain. Every now and then, the bar will make thunder noises and then it will rain down in a pool in the middle of the place.

The Tonga Room is definitely a fun spot and worth checking out for the history at least. I would recommend at least going for the happy hour bar but don't stay for more than a couple drinks because it can get kind of pricey.