San Frandrinksco.

San Francisco mostly ended up consisting of a tour of Pat's favorite local drinking establishments, including...

...this place, which I don't remember the name of - but hey, good beer!

...this place, which I do remember the name of, but apparently you're actually not allowed to take any pictures in the bar or in the beer garden because the whole place is copyrighted [which just seems very unfriendly to me], so it's probably best if I don't mention the name right under a picture I may or may not have taken of it and which could very well have been taken in pretty much any Biergarten in Germany, so the whole copyright thing is very suspicious to me. But hey, good beer!

...and this place, the local wine dispensary, also known as Pat's kitchen.

But I also managed to get some self-edification in - I met up with my boss, who also happened to be visiting San Francisco with his kids, at the Exploratorium, a "museum of science, art and human perception" at the Palace of Fine Arts. It's pretty much a big hangar with a bunch of little interactive experiments and exhibits to teach about light, color, sound, shape, plants, animals, life, death, and more [I'm serious about the "life and death" part - one of the displays was real live maggots feeding off a real dead mouse].

No cow eyes down the drain...or else!

This is just outside of the Exploratorium - I guess part of the Palace of Fine Arts.

I had been to San Francisco when I was younger and therefore didn't feel a great need to see the traditional sights, but it was still fun to see them from afar on my way back from the Exploratorium.

Alcatraz!

Probably, you know, that one bridge.

And one evening, after Zeitgeist [which may or may not be the name of the beer garden mentioned above], we went to a bar / art gallery / performance space, where a lot of artists were sitting around drinking PBR and sketching. I guess the deal is that you have to be officially invited to sit at the official sketching table, but there's a lot of space around to just sit down and go to it yourself - and if you have no artistic talent, like me, you get to walk around and ogle the ones who do and ooh and aah at their work. It's like an artist zoo...with PBR!










Speaking of artists, a friend of Abbey's who's now living in San Francisco, Adam Ziskie, is, in my opinion, an awesome one. Check him out nooooow!