A Little Trip

Mark Twain once was reported to have said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."  I'm not sure if he actually said it, but it's an accurate description of summer in the City By The Bay.  We lived there for a few years and summer is truly cold, my least favorite season there.  The summer weather is great for the sweatshirt vendors.  Tourists snap anything with a hood made of fleece.  They look so confused, and are surely thinking, "I thought I came to sunny California".  This is NOT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, folks.  When the mist and fog come in (which is every morning), it's downright cold.  That's why you visit in October, the nicest month of the year.  We went to the Fall Antique Show at Fort Mason in the Marina, and the weather was perfect, the whole of the week.  Not a cloud in the sky.

Just look at the Red and White ferry which had just passed in front of Alcatraz.  The bay was calm, the sky was blue; no wind at all, which explains the absence of the ever-present sail boats. 

This was our lunch companion as we ate our lunch from Lucca, the best Italian deli in the Marina district and possibly all of SF.  He was so pretty, he got a crust of bread; which was brave (or stupid) of me if you could have seen the pigeons and seagulls, hovering around.  Does anyone know what kind of bird this is?  I haven't seen his kind before.







Looking up the hill toward our old neighborhood, Pacific Heights.










There is always something new to discover around the corner.

I had no idea this man had walked into the frame, I was so focused on the machinery.  I discovered this retail store a few doors down from Britex (5 floors of Sewing/Fabric Heaven).  It fascinated me and lured me in.  From the store windows, I thought it was a museum exhibit of antique sewing machines.  Since I own my fair share (and maybe your fair share) of sewing machines, new and antique (not sayin' how many, lets just say I have some), I hurried in.  Imagine my surprise to find that they were selling clothes; the machines in the window were just props, but hey, they lured me right in.  This is the best use of old machinery to display goods that I have ever seen.  It was wonderful; so industrial.  Couldn't tell you anything about the merchandise, but I LOVED the feel of the store.  It's like someone dismantled an old factory and transported it to downtown San Francisco, which is just about our favorite place to be in October.  It always feels like we've come home.