GDC2010: A Wonderful Blur, Fin.

9:31 pm Game Development

Wake up. Fully clothed. No click-clack today. Roommate is gone.

Overall a more pleasant morning than the day before. We’re supposed to meet Tom’s dad in a bit, but first I gotta check out of the hotel. Tom, his wife and sister start shuffling out of their rooms, but man, are they destroyed. Especially Tom. The women-folk for some reason are handling it like champs. Tom’s sister in particular seems unaffected by her hangover within a half hour of waking up. Her liver is like 10 years younger than ours and hasn’t been battered by multiple launch parties, E3s, GDCs, milestone celebrations and more. Four Barrel coffee takes care of Tom’s wife.

Tom. Well, he doesn’t recover for the rest of the day.

In the car, on the way to the hotel. I’m sitting shotgun and cursing at San Fran drivers and apologizing for my crassness. LA did it to me, and its one bad habit I picked up from living there for five years.

“GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MOTHER F**********!”

Tom’s sister joins in “FFUU***********CK!” I feel like maybe I opened Pandora’s box, but she informs me this is pretty common practice for her. And away we go!

Dropped off at the hotel as 11:45am, checkout at 12pm. Fastest shower I’ve ever taken, then check out a few minutes after 12. Sprinkling in a little politeness ensures I don’t get charged for being a bit over on my checkout time. I’m always polite to service folks anyway.

I’m informed that Tom’s dad is meeting with us today. He couldn’t change his limo time, something or other, so now we get to hang out all day. I feel a bit bad about this since Tom is utterly destroyed and really, he should just lay down. He’s hardly saying a word, shuffling from here to there, in a constant stupor. But I’m here to explore SF.

We head back to Tom’s sisters place and try to get some breakfast. We end taking a much needed walk to Tartine, which is one of the best meals I end up having in San Fransisco (yes, better than Andalu) in addition to one of the best brunches I’ve ever had. The line is insanely long, but Tom grabs some outdoor seating for us on this beautiful day and we go in and order for him and ourselves. I go a little overboard and order a chocolate eclair, lemon cream tart, earl gray tea and a hot pressed pecorino and almond sandwich.

The space is cramped and people look uncomfortable and happy at the same time. California in a nutshell. We head out and watch all kinds of characters go by. People watching in San Fran is some of the best you’ll get anywhere. For some reason lots of people have French Bulldogs.

The lemon tart beats everything by a longshot. Seriously, the best pastry I’ve eaten in my life. I still think about it to this day. I mentally apologize to my mother and wife.

We need to walk around some more. Dolores Park is nearby, so we head there, commenting on all the cool houses and buildings we see along the way.

Dolores park is jumping off. A large field, acres wide and deep, tilted on a 20 degree slope filled with people sitting around, people throwing Frisbees, dogs off leashes, people have picnics, parties. Its all happening at once right in front of me on a giant green field. Chaos.

We cross the street, enter the park and find a place to relax. We talk about what bands we’re into, where Tom is going with his game development, last nights escapades and so on. We watch a guy only wearing a pair of shorts, sit on top of and “alpha” his dog not 2o feet from us. If you don’t know what this means, too bad. I don’t want to describe it, but it looks very unnatural. This goes on for a while and is pretty uncomfortable to watch, but is probably the least weird thing that has happened in this park in the past five hours.

We end up talking more about music, finding tracks we like on our iPhones and playing them as loud as we can on shitty iPhone speakers until we get bored. We were thinking of going to the beach, but instead decide to look for a geocache or two. Honestly, this wasn’t my idea but I’ll never turn down geocaching.

We end up back near Tom’s sisters place and totally weirding out some people while looking for a cache and trying not to act suspicious. Cache ends up inside a newspaper dispenser, but we spend 10 minutes touching the outside and undercarriage of the stand as people watch us.

To the beach? Nope. On the way to the beach, we cross Haight. I mention I’ve never been to Haight and Ashbury. Tom’s sister who is driving informs me that H&A is very SF and we could totally go there instead of the beach. So we go.

After getting gas and appreciating more San Fransisco houses, we park and walk down Haight.

We stop in lots of stores and admire the craziness of all the headshops we see. There’s even a microbrew on the street which I tell myself I’ll hit up next time I’m in town.

After looking for more geocaches, going into tons of hipster clothes stores, book stores and more we end up at an authentic taqueria for my final San Fransisco meal. Pork quesadilla which I should have gotten without the pork. Ah well, not every meal here can be perfect. I ask the ladies at the counter for a whole orange to be cut up for me which they have trouble understanding, but I finally get my way, plus a Corona, both of which hit the spot.

We end up not talking much. We’re all pretty tired, Tom is still destroyed but finally perking up. We’re all just sort of enjoying our food, relaxing, and not talking about the fact that we’ll be apart pretty soon.

Back in the car, and to the airport. Tom’s sister informs me along the way that that building over there is where they shoot a lot of porn around here. Huh. I lived in LA though so I assume porn is shot all around me, all the time. Another bad LA habit I suppose.

Out of the car, go through security. Some alternative chick is wearing a top hat and getting bits of attention. Top hat in the airport? So edgy!  Wait for the plane. On the plane then out of SF. Until next time, SF. It was a great day and an awesome week.

To think, I used to hate San Fransisco until I left, well, the convention center.

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