I’ve often told people there are only two places I could live other than Boston. One is Washington, D.C. The other is San Francisco. I took one great business trip out to San Francisco during the late nineties (could have been 2000, not sure). I know the photo I’m using here in the intro is one of those typical San Francisco photos that you see everywhere. But I have to tell you that there is nothing quite like driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning hours. Instead of staying in a hotel during this trip, I stayed in a condo in Tiburon. Millipore had just purchased a life science instrumentation company (don’t ask me the name; I don’t remember) and I was tapped to work on the new literature and communications plan. I had been friends with Linda, who was the Director of Marketing, so I stayed with her. It was so much better than a hotel. On the way into the city, I had a great view of Muir Woods, and the fog over the bridge as the sun rose was just unbelievable.

I remember that the meetings I was involved in were really irritating, although I can’t remember all the details. But I do know that I had one sweet time in San Francisco. One of Millipore’s best graphic designers, Lisa, had fallen in love with an engineer named Bill. They had moved out to San Jose together and were living in an artist’s loft. She was the first person I contacted when I learned I’d be making the trip. I decided to get there on a Friday, before the weekend. It worked out well because Linda and Lisa also knew each other, and it gave them a chance to see each other again. I had rented a car, so we met near The Presidio and just hung out watching the old Italian guys playing Bocci. Then we all had lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf (and pretty much managed to get trashed in spite of the fact that we were eating).

On Sunday, Lisa and I planned to hook up again. I drove out to her place in San Jose. Not only was she a designer, but a painter. The whole top part of the loft was just filled with huge half-done canvases. I remember thinking this would be the perfect outlet for me; that one of the things I came close to doing when I returned to Boston was give up my apartment and get myself an artists loft somewhere in Cambridge. It never happened, but it was tempting. After we hung out for a while, she said, “Come on. Let’s go. We’re taking Bill’s car today.”

I remember thinking that I couldn’t figure out why, but I was about to find out soon enough. First, we took a trip down Lombard Street, or the Crooked Street, whatever you want to call it. That was interesting enough. But then, Lisa drove to the top of this incredible hill that just had dips in the road all the way down. “Ready?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I knew instantly what she was going to do.

“We’re taking a risk here,” she said, “but I haven’t been caught by the cops once yet.”

“Yeah,” I said, “with our track record, Lisa, today could be your lucky day!”

She started laughing and just gunned Bill’s car. We must have gone bouncing down that hill at about fifty miles an hour, bottoming out his car like there was no consequence.  Apparently she did this with everyone who came out to visit and, clearly, Bill didn’t mind.  More testament to the fact that love makes you stupid.

We were hanging out at their loft later in the day and I mentioned that the one place I had to get to on this trip was The Castro. I had friends who had lived there before. I also had friends who lived in Provincetown, even though it’s positively desolate in the middle of a New England winter, and friends who summered on Fire Island.  The Castro, however, was the stuff legends were made of.

The gay comfort zone

The Castro is like no other gay mecca on the planet. I had left Lisa’s late that afternoon and decided to go right in by myself. After I broke up with Miss Headcase, I took a week long trip down to Provincetown by myself to clear my head. Going to The Castro alone was not a problem for me. It’s incredibly comfortable and everyone is incredibly “out.” It’s a great feeling. Is it a shame that there have to be places like this? Yes and no. Everyone in America should be able to feel comfortable with his or her sexual orientation and gender identity. Honestly, however, places like The Castro and Provincetown are also cultural meccas, and that’s an important thing for the LGBT community…just as the North End of Boston is a cultural mecca for the Italian community, and Southie is for the Irish. How cool is the Castro? My political favorite, Rachel Maddow, grew up there and went to Castro High. Harvey Milk, one of my heroes, was known as the unofficial mayor of Castro Street.

Anyway, I hung around the Castro most of the day checking the area out and I thought it would be absolutely amazing to live there. The one place I absolutely had to go to was Twin Peaks, undoubtedly one of the most famous gay bars ever. It was the first gay bar in the nation with fully open plate glass windows. No hiding. That’s what I liked most about it. It was like telling the world this is the way it is. If you’ve got a problem with it, it’s all yours. The people hanging there are a bit older (as is the staff) and, instead of the pulsating video bar music, it’s just a great place to sit and meet people, shoot the shit, and watch the rest of the world go by at the intersection of Castro and Market.

Ah, but all good things must come to an end. By about ten, I was headed back to Tiburon. I had meetings in the morning and certainly didn’t want a hangover.

One last highlight Yeah, the next three days were taken up by meetings and business dinners. Honest to freakin’ God, you have to wonder why how this company ever made money. Their ideas about how to spend their communications budget were absolutely absurd. Try this one on: They spent somewhere on the order of $30K to produce an ad — just production (writing, photography, films, etc). Then, they spent a mere $18K running the ad, which is a frequency of about three times. What was worse, they ran the ad one time in three different journals. What a colossal waste of money. Here’s the rule of thumb: If you can’t run the ad at least six times in one journal (but preferably 8-10), don’t bother running an ad at all. It’s like pissing in the wind.

They were really irritating me. I’d listen to them. Then, I’d say something unbelievably sarcastic. Then, Linda would reach over and pinch my leg. I don’t have much patience for stupidity, and I really have no patience for these marketing clowns who think they understand marketing communications just because they have marketing in their titles. And I know Linda knew I was right because she had her hand over her mouth and was laughing while she was pinching me.

On my final day there, I was free all day. There was one other place I absolutely had to visit, and that was Haight-Ashbury. Somewhere in my vast collection of sixties memorabilia were several posters from The Haight. This was another one of those places that stood out in my mind from the sixties. I wanted to see what it looked like thirty years later. There are still some places reminiscent of that flower-power,  acid-dropping, ganja-smoking era…places like Pipe Dreams and The Love of Ganesha. However, much has changed. A lot of the old shops have been replaced by high-end boutiques, Internet cafes, second-hand stores and trendy restaurants. I would much preferred to have visited thirty years ago.

I stuck around for an early dinner at a place called The Citrus Club. It was basically an Asian noodle shop, and I love that stuff: Simple food, reasonable prices. It reminded me of a place I used to love to go to in Harvard Square called Ma Soba. When Thalia was really little (still being carried around in a Kelty Pack), I used to take her there and she’d eat the hottest freakin’ noodles you could give her.

After this day of walking around, I was pretty wiped out and headed back to Tiburon. I was flying out the next day so that I could be home for the weekend. I felt like I had been gone for a long time.