Exchange Rate

The brakes on the minivan sounded terrible. I called the rental car company and was able to get a replacement in San Jose. We could exchange it for one that was exactly the same, other than the brake issue.

We did not have a show scheduled Wednesday so we spent the day walking around San Francisco. It was cloudy again today making the city feel more like an unexplored area of Seattle than a city in California. We took a bus down to Haight St. to get some breakfast and ate at a Mediterranean place that also had breakfast burritos. We stopped in Amoeba, the largest record store I have ever been in. It was a bit expensive, but the selection was outstanding. Scott and Zane headed off to get the rental car replaced. The rest of us walked up Buena Vista, a well trodden hill sprinkled with sketchy people. To be fair, we were looking a bit rough by this point in the tour ourselves. Devon climbed up a large stump and sang "I Believe I Can Fly". R. Kelly would have been proud. Or embarrassed.

Our next stop was a bar called Zeitgeist. It was a cool bar with a unusually large back porch area. You could not take pictures back there. It may have been that this operation is not totally legit, or that the patrons smoking pot may not wanted to be in photos. But I have another theory. Remember that crazy squiggly roadsign in Pee Wee's Big Adventure? The one they see right before they fly off the cliff in the convertible? Well, that sign is there. Or a damn good imitation. I bet they do not want people taking pictures of the way that awesome sign has been defaced.

We cabbed it back to Zane's house, grabbed the cars and the replacement minivan and headed off to Berkeley. It basically looks like the U district in Seattle but bigger. We went to Telegraph and got some food at an Irish bar. The bar had an amazing outside section that we could not sit in. The whole place was filled with college aged kids. There is a certain and constant anxiety that college students have. It makes a bar jitter like a Freshman pulling an all nighter on a pot of coffee. Not an ideal situation to chill with friends, but it sufficed.

We went to a hotel with a case of beer. Jared and Joe exchanged this, at whatever the current exchange rate is, for a nice drunk. With this came singing and wrestling and a knock on the door from the manager. With this fair warning, we slept.