Yesterday. Was. Epic.
So, I'm in San Francisco for a couple days. Sunday was Teatro ZinZanni and today I have something planned as well. Yesterday, however, I had a bunch of ideas, but no real plan. Time was, if I didn't have something planned to do for the day, I'd just sit around on whatever couch I was crashing on until the next day and watch TV or play video games. Since my couch, also delightfully known as Jeff, had class all day... I had to decide whether to stay in and play the aforementioned video games until he got back or go out and experience the city. Guess which one I chose?
So, you may have gathered by now that very little of this entry is actually going to be about the mirror maze. You would be right. We left at the same time in the morning and went to lunch before he went to class and I went.... wherever the day would take me. I spent a good portion of the day over at Pier 39, buying Christmas presents for people because, well, when the heck am I going to be in San Francisco again? But I didn't take a cab there. No no. I walked it.
That route doesn't look too bad...
Oh right, San Francisco is hill country.
So, just for the record... it was insanity. I walked up that hill. It was about, I'd guess, half a mile from bottom to top. Also, you see how steep it looks in the picture? Twice as steep in person. I noticed, at the top of the hill, that there seemed to be a lot of really fancy hotels. Then I remembered - rich people like good views. Its common knowledge.
I kept walking until I hit Chinatown, but now I was on the downhill, so that wasn't so bad. I walked to the San Francisco Trolley Museum and, given the free admission, I figured I would check it out. The thing that's cool about the Trolley Museum is that its less a museum and more a working trolley station that they let people come look at. The actual cables that run the trolleys all around San Francisco were running in that building while I was there. The museum itself wasn't so much a museum as a lookout point, but still worth stopping in - especially if you like mechanical stuff and engineering.
The part of the trolley no one sees
I went from there down toward the water. Where I ended up was around Pier 3. Now, the piers are numbered in order, though they do skip some numbers. That being said, if you assumed that Pier 3 and Pier 39 are no near each other - you would be correct. By this point, my little out-of-shape legs and feet were NOT happy with my plan, but I knew if I could get to Pier 39 (the tourist area) I'd be able to find something new. So, I just kept walking. Then I saw a sign.
Since chocolate is found in nature, is this a sign from God?
I think it goes without saying that I had to stop in for a bit. They are a full, working chocolate factory, but they don't run tours yet. They will soon. There was a small store attached to the factory where I was able to go in and find out what this hulla-balloo was all about. Apparently it is a company called Tcho that only produces natural, organic, dark chocolate. They have a variety of flavors, produced not by adding flavor to the chocolate, but by finding beans that have a natural flavor like what they're looking for. I thought they would all taste the same, but I could definitely taste the difference in the flavors. It was pretty impressive.
"Chocolatey" Chocolate was kind of a cop-out though.
Now that I had a little AC, a small amount of chocolate and a brief rest in my system, I felt a lot more capable of heading the rest of the way to Pier 39. When I got there, I started to get a little worried. I've been there a ton of times and I've done most, if not all of the things there. They have one of those 3D ride/movie experiences - done that. They have a ton of shops - I've definitely shopped before. They have several restaurants - most of which I've eaten at. So... I decided, since I still had about four hours at that point, to just walk around and enjoy the Pier and take a cab somewhere in a little while to do whatever I decided would be my daily thing.
First stop was the Pearl Factory. I don't know if you've been there before, but it isn't just a jewelry store. You actually pick out an oyster and they crack it open in front of you and take out the pearl. Then you get that pearl or you can choose to have it mounted on a piece of jewelry. I found a white pearl that was beautiful so I got a very simple charm mounting for it. Then I hit it off with the woman working there briefly and she offered me another go at an oyster - just to see what I got. That time I got a silver pearl. That is a fairly rare pearl to get - only about 5% are that color. So, I'd say that was a good day.
As I was about to leave Pier 39, I noticed a new attraction - a Mirror Maze. I've walked through a couple mirrors in a tunnel before, but never through an actual mirror maze - so I had to try it. Besides, there was cool music playing and the guy running it totally looked legit. I kid, but in all seriousness, he built the place and hired people to paint each pole exactly alike. It was darn near impossible to find my way around - which was exactly the point, I suppose. The whole thing was beautiful, then impressive, then really frustrating, then beautiful again. He called it Magowan's Infinite Mirror Maze and boy did it definitely feel infinite. I got to where I could see the exit about six times, but it was just a reflection.
Pictured: Beauty
Pictured: Mild Frustration
I thought it was beautiful and, having done my thing of the day, I decided it was time to head back to the proper area of town. I had about an hour and a half before Jeff got done with class and I figured I'd spend it musing on the day at a Starbucks or something. You know, because I'm an individual and that's what individuals do - go to Starbucks and muse. I hopped a cab back to the Market St. area, listening to the radio as I looked out the window. It had been an eventful day. The station the cabby had on was saying something about a Muni protest meeting at the end of the Powell line and marching on City Hall. I didn't pay close attention.
Then we pulled up on the place I'd asked him to drop me off. Turns out, the end of the Powell line and the spot along Market St. that I wanted to go to were, well, the same place. I hopped out and faced a decision. Join a protest on an issue I know nothing about, solely for the experience and random conversations or walk to the nearest Starbucks and curl up with a mocha-chino-latte-half-calf-no-whip-espresso-rama? Needless to say, I headed over to the protest.
They seem upset about something...
Turns out, a lot of people ride the Muni (municipal transit system in San Francisco) and they're upset because the rates are going up and routes are being cut. Over on the other side of a line of policemen were the Muni drivers. They were semi-counter-protesting the situation. I say semi-counter-protesting because they were upset that the rates were going up and the routes were being cut too, but they were not pleased with the potential "take a pay cut" solution that some of the Muni riders were offering. Both sides wanted executive pay cut... that was a lot of what they agreed on. For they most part they were protesting against each other.
That was not something I knew or understood when I walked up to the protest. All I knew is that there were a lot of people with brightly colored signs and I'm like a moth to that kind of light. Bright colors and people upset about something? Sign me up. I started looking around for someone to talk to about the protest and stumbled on a couple people with signs that said "I'd rather go nude than ride the Muni".
They were men of their word
Now, the way I figured it... if they were willing to walk around naked in the middle of a busy city, they were probably pretty open to conversation with people. You know, the type of person who didn't hold much back? So, I went over and talked to one of the "I'd rather go naked" people about why they were protesting. He was quite knowledgeable on the subject of the protest and, as I suspected, quite personable. I thought it would be a lark to march with them all to City Hall, but found myself choosing to do something else after a little while. The reason for this was two-fold. The first is that, quite frankly, as a Michigan resident, I'm not sure I honestly care about the Muni rates.
Pictured: Pure evil... apparently.
The second reason is that something so ridiculous happened, I had to just walk away. Now, it goes without saying that it would need to be pretty darn ridiculous for me to walk out since I'd just wrapped up my first ever randomly-naked interview. There was a woman walking around the crowd with a petition asking people to join a Muni-rider's union. That's right. The Muni customers were trying to unionize. That, as Jeff pointed out later, was like Best Buy customers saying they were going to band together and demand more sales days. There's something just... not right... about that. When I saw the petition to join the Muni-rider's local number 1 (I guess), that's when I walked away.
So that was my day in San Francisco without a plan. I was able to find something new to do without having thought about it first and I stumbled on to some delightful insanity on the way home. It was definitely a fun day.
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