Thursday, June 30, 2011

Everyone Loves a Parade

When some people think about parades, they picture a few floats and marching bands, perhaps a beauty queen and her court, and a local politician or two waving at the onlookers. Something like this. Being from San Francisco, however, means that when I think about parades, I think of huge strings of firecrackers, dancing lumberjacks, Shriners in fezzes, drag queens, and tens of thousands of people. Here are a few photos that I've taken at recent parades:

This dragon closes every Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco

Shriners in their tiny cars at the St. Patrick's Day Parade

My favorite marching band, the CSU-Humboldt Lumberjacks. 

The Pride Parade wouldn't be complete without these ladies...


...or this gent.





Now this is my kind of float (at the Italian Heritage Parade).
But of course, my all time favorite parade was the
2010 Giants World Series Champion Parade. 

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Baseball Season is Here!

It's baseball season again and many of us here in San Francisco are hoping the Giants make it to the World Series for a second year in a row. I remember how excited I was when the Giants were in the World Series in 1989 and last year's win made me feel like a kid again.

Here in the Marina, Giants-fever is particularly strong. (Of course, it's even easier to get excited when one can walk by Tim Lincecum on the street, as I did a few days ago.) What better to match the excitement and my childish glee than a Giants cupcake from SusieCakes?

Nothing.


Thursday, March 31, 2011

New Focus

Two years ago, Yelp was one of my favorite websites. I had written so many reviews the previous year, that I achieved "Yelp Elite" status and was incredibly proud of it. However, the site started receiving a lot of negative press and I started wondering if maybe the critics had a point. I continued to write reviews, but at a much slower pace. It's now been over nine months since I last wrote a review on Yelp, but I find that I miss writing about the places I visit. Therefore, I'm going to transform this blog—which clearly hasn't received much of my attention recently—into a place to write about local businesses, post some pictures and the occasional video, and keep track of my favorite San Francisco goings-on.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Another Attempt at Revival

I made an attempt to revive this blog in August 2010 (see below), but as my solitary post shows, that attempt failed. I'm back to try again. 


Growing up in San Francisco, I learned to always be prepared for earthquakes. The 1989 Loma Prieta quake affected me in only small ways—my mom had to work late at the newspaper and my favorite TV show shut off a few seconds into the shaking—but the destruction it wrought on the San Francisco Bay Area was tremendous. Almost everything has been rebuilt now, but I can still look around the city and see the changes brought about by the quake.

Over the years, I've watched as numerous towns and cities around the world have had their own disastrous earthquakes, and was particularly shocked by the devastation in Haiti last year. And then when I started hearing news of a huge quake in Japan, I felt the sadness begin all over again. The tsunami and troubles at the nuclear plant made everything even worse and I began looking for ways to help.

There is a large Japanese community in San Francisco, and many, many Japanese restaurants. Two of my favorites, Hotei in the Inner Sunset and Chotto in the Marina, are running promotions designed to raise money for earthquake relief efforts and many others have collection boxes. My boyfriend and I have dined at these two restaurants and have plans to visit others in the next week.

I hope the people of Japan are able to rebuild and recover quickly and that my small contribution is able to make a bit of difference.