Juliana Says...

This weekend I trekked to San Francisco to visit my girls C & E out there. I stayed with E in her brand spanking new pad that she just bought… Yup, yet another new homeowner! Everyone around me seems to be at the age where they're ready (& able) to make commitments to pets, partners, kids, real estate or a combination therein… yet I can't seem to even decide on a plant! Anyway, I've been to SF a bunch of times already & have seen the sights, so now when I go it’s just to hang out with my girls who I only get to see for major holidays or weddings these days. I headed out from lovely JFK super-early Friday a.m. in order to get more QT with them. (BTW, have you guys noticed how generic JFK feels? It only took them 30+ years to semi-finish it and basically they’ve left it with this whole-generic-airplane-hangar-that-could-be-in-any-city-feel to it…I mean it seriously reminds me of the one in Bs. As! Jeez.)

Didn’t do much Friday besides hang out with my girls and catch up. However, the next day, after we woke up super-early (because I went to sleep like at 10PM night before!!), E & I went for a 3-mile walk around Merritt Lake which is this huge lake in the center of town. It’s lovely – I mean it literally sparkles! Be forewarned, however, like all bodies of water in highly-populated places, it’s filled with geese and their droppings. You had to skip about in the grass not to step in it! Anyway, after we got back and got ready, C met up with us and we headed out to San Fran via the BART (their subway, which compared to New York’s is a luxury) to check out the LOVE FEST.

Leave it to San Fran to have something called the LOVE FEST. Basically, it’s this crazy parade of DJs on floats that all end up in front of City Hall where everyone converges to party & dance... it was pretty wild. No joke, dirty old men were walking around butt-naked with cock-rings, stroking themselves... ugh. It was nasty. I still get ill just remembering... Otherwise, everyone was dressed up in outrageous outfits – some of them cute (guys dressed in bunny costumes with their naked butts showing – gives a new meaning to getting some tail), some not so cute (see dirty old men reference above) – doing a lot of drugs & drinking... in front of City Hall... with the cops looking on. Interestingly, house and trance music seem to still be really big there (there wasn’t anything else) so each DJ float had its own version of it. It was pretty cool to see actually, since everyone there just seems to let it all hang out –- although not always necessarily in a good way -- and not care. At least our freaks here are usually under the radar & semi-discreet. Did I mention that this was IN FRONT OF CITY HALL?? It was sponsored by Heineken & Red Bull so folks were drinking beer and cocktails (myself included), “smoking” up a storm (none for me) and just getting lit (maybe from some 2nd-hand contact high). Anyway, I’m bad at guess-timating numbers of people, but there had to be definitely several thousands – which, you could totally tell from the Porto-Potty usage (good god those things are nasty!)

After several hours of drinking, dancing and chatting with folks (we met up with a couple of the girls’ friends) we headed off to dinner at this cute place in the Mission and then headed home since some of us (not me) were not feeling well at all. Alas, it was another early night for moi, which actually was fine because no joke, all weekend I was nodding off by 10PM (jet lag SUCKS as you get older!) Sunday we just hung around lazily and then headed over to C’s lovely house overlooking the SF Bay (yup, yet another recent homeowner) where she made us one of her spectacular meals (the girl can COOK! I always tell her she should open her own place, but she says she doesn’t enjoy it… with talent like that, who would’ve thunk it??) And then it was back to SFO for an incredibly uncomfortable and seemingly interminable return red-eye flight back to good old NYC. My trips to San Fran are always short weekenders – but I always end up feeling like it’s more than enough time. I’m not that into SF (and granted I stayed in Oakland this time, but even when they used to live in San Fran proper I wasn’t impressed.) Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely city and the people are super-nice (which, honestly, is part of the problem for me – I find the friendliness freaky) but there's something just too chill and laid-back for me… I’m always happy to come home to NYC to its neurotic speed, constant background noise and true grime. I guess I am a NYer after all.