Devouring culture and creativity in San Francisco

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Unexpectedly, I ended up in San Francisco.

I had planned a trip to see my parents in Arizona. Also, unexpectedly actually. I was trying to figure out when I would see them this year and how, when, on Mother's day, while talking to my mom on the phone, I said hm, what if we joined you on your vacation in Arizona? Of course, with the added fact that I said this on Mother's day, there was no going back and our fate was decided, a 2 week trip to Arizona and Vegas to join my family on their vacation. We immediately started planning and were getting more excited for the trip, and started looking at flights for October 2, so we could be there and get back to Denmark for October 19. Out of seemingly nowhere, IdemoLab got a job offer and were hired to run a workshop in San Francisco on September 28. This was perfect timing and I was lucky enough to be selected to go, so here I am, in San Francisco, sitting in a beautiful little cafe where I just had the most fantastic french onion soup and goat cheese portobello mushroom sandwich, after a day of biking through the different districts and visiting a hackerspace.

I spent Thursday - Sunday on the business part of the trip, but in all honesty, it was completely interesting and fun. My boss and I spent the hours not working exploring San Francisco, with him acting as tour guide since he's been here several times before. We walked through Union Square and down to the Marina and all along the piers and had dinner at the Slanted Door, an asian fusion restaurant with excellent food. We were completely jet lagged for the whole 4 days and had fun comparing stories between us and the other company we were working with of who woke up at 3 or 4 to start their days. The first night I went to the gym at 5am out of complete boredom and it became a theme to see how to get work done, relax, or get some exercise during the night until we all met for breakfast around 6 or 7.

We also explored Pier 39, Chinatown and Japantown and had a perfect afternoon of wandering through Chinatown, finding a great bakery (Golden Gate Bakery) selling Chinese New Moon Cakes, and finding an Anime festival at Japantown where we sat to enjoy our iced green tea and new moon cake. For me, it was a bit of home sickness therapy and simply reminded me of Richmond or Vancouver. We of course, rode the cable car and got some prime seating on our way up to Japantown, scaling huge hills on the edge of our seats with nothing between us and the cars except a running board, which occasionally held more crazy people than us who hopped on and off the cable car. The workshop we did went well and it was a wonderful weekend of being over tired and giddy and exploring the various districts of San Francisco and learning about how the variety of this city inspires creativity. It's like a breath of multicultural crazy people on every corner artsy fresh air. It's strange and intriguing and oddly compelling. It combines the curiousness of Berlin (complete with our high end hotel being overrun by Leathermen suddenly at the end of our business trip as they ventured out to the Folsom street festival) with the mulitcultural west coast feel of people getting along and being nice to one another, with the artistic hipsterness of Copenhagen. It's a really intriguing place.

After saying bye, I continued on to The Embassy, an amazing space in the Hayes area of San Francisco. It's a huge mansion, three floors of beautiful classic house, and full of creative amazing people who are from all walks of life. Last night we had a group dinner, and it was incredible. I helped cook and clean and had some great conversations. Everyone was eager to talk to share to inspire and be inspired. Everyone had something unique that they did (the first guy I met was recording his whole life through audio and video recordings and had the problem of having lost a lizard that he placed in his hair somewhere in his hat). Everyone was excited and enthusiastic and the energy was so amazing. People were ready to collaborate and share and make the world a better place and they were all just willing to start right away. It was a great experience. The house even has a bowling lane downstairs! One of the guys from illutron has been living there for two months over the summer and was the one to recommend it to me. It's truly inspiring and I feel like it's helping to guide me in the next part of my life, where Dzl and I are buying a house. I can easily see us hosting dinners; and trying to aim for something like this, gathering creative people around subjects and trying to create something new out of it. Two guys I talked to last night do similar things. One who focuses on creating Sunday dinners for all his friends to bring them together and one who creates mini salons of topics for people to discuss over dinner. I like the idea of doing this and having my home at the venue for such collections of creativity energy.

I also was so fortunate to reconcile with my friend Rina. We went to the same university and were friends for years before I moved to Sweden, and she's since lived in Japan, and moved to San Francisco and started a family. It was amazing to meet her again after all these years (thank you Facebook) and to say hello to her beautiful daughter, Leila. It was a really intriguing conversation, because we haven't spoken in a long time and we had a short time (just an hour) to catch up, discuss our lives, and be happy for each other.

I was also lucky enough to book an hour's lesson with the burlesque star Dottie of San Francisco. I hired her for a 1 hour private lesson where it was mostly conversation and tips; a great experience to hear and learn from someone who's been doing it for 10 years in New York and San Francisco and just a unique experience that I'm happy to have had.

Today, after a breakfast at "Stacks" a classic American breakfast place where I had Eggs Louis (crab eggs benedict) and a single delicious banana macademia nut pancake, I rented a bike and biked around the Mission District and Haight Ashbury, not stopping, but biking slowly and just observing. I went through Golden Gate park and had a great time in the Japanese Tea Garden. Just as I arrived, they were starting a tour, care of SF Free walking tours (I can highly recommend them) and I got a really great insight into the gardens. I've wandered around Japanese gardens before but have never known anything about the plants, the choices, the history, or even what a pagoda was used for and today I learned all of that. Some simple and beautiful things like, there were some very steep stairs, which apparently should be difficult to climb so you stop and meditate on the way to the Pagoda. There was another lovely moment where there were some statues of cranes in the water and as the tour guide (a nice old lady from New York) was trying to tell us about the statues, she was startled and started saying something about a new statue suddenly being there and then realized that an actual bird (a heron, not a crane, but near close enough!) was fishing in the water in the pond. Everyone was surprised at this since apparently they don't get herons or cranes around here. Finally, the best comment of the afternoon was an explanation of the Ginkgo Balboa trees. Apparently there are both male and female trees, and typically, only male trees are planted since the female trees have berries which smell badly. Apparently, only male trees were planted in this garden, but at some point along the way, the tree decided to give itself a sex change and become female. The tour guide explained this to us and said "well, I won't say anything more about that, but, well, it's San Francisco after all". That was pretty much the awesome highlight of my afternoon and I giggled about it over my cup of Jasmine tea after the tour.

I also stopped in at Noise Bridge, a hacker space here, which was an interesting experience. I had to think to myself, what do people think when they come to illutron? For me, illutron is a bit rough around the edges, but systems are in place and we have done some truly incredible projects. I felt like, upon entering Noise Bridge, that it was more private hideaway and less artist space. Maybe it's more of a classic hacker space. Some fun little screens and whatnot on the walls, a panel of 3d printers, and well organized electronics components and scrap finds. I was really excited to visit and unsure of what I would find and I'm still not sure of what I did find. Maybe because it was Monday morning (illutron on Monday morning is deserted, so...) but the energy just wasn't there that I could see. I have heard a lot of good things about them though so I think I'll keep on checking out their website and see what they're up to now and then. Maybe I am just spoiled by the energy from last night from The Embassy and all the people I met there.

Next up... a possible dinner tonight with more of these lovely people from The Embassy, and then off to Sedona tomorrow morning! Whew, a whirlwind, I'm looking forward to relaxing....

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