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.