Yesterday we got up in Gregorio's house and the fellas got showers while I abstained since I had one the day before. We jumped in the van and went to the Mission district for breakfast/lunch. I made a poor move and bought coffee and a chocolate croissant at a coffee shop. And then I saw the donut shop next door, so shortly after, I went in and bought an apple fritter and a maple bar. So delicious!
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| Donut shop is literally behind me and I missed it. |
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| Excelsior Coffee. |
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| Ducks. |
We walked into some shops on that strip, including a Chinese trinket shop. So many things in there and Simon bought himself a handful of vintage post cards for $1.00. We then found a post office to mail them out to his girl.
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| Simon buying post cards. |
Peter has been obsessed with the grocery store, Sprouts, because you can get a sandwich for $5.99. He's been talking about it for the last several days, so we found a Sprouts, went in, and bought a turkey sandwich for $5.99. Not bad.
Eventually, we went to the Haight area of SF, where we had booked a last minute gig at the Milk Bar. I drove the Behemoth, which wasn't too bad, just a little floaty on the steering. I parked in front of the place and we loaded in. The room itself was long and had a wide, but shallow stage at the end. Jumped in the bathroom to get washed up and prayed I didn't have to do anything but pee and/or wash my hands.
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| No privacy bathroom. |
Since we were there at around 4 and didn't actually play until after 10, we sort of just hung out. I did some job hunting/applying; we walked across the street to Amoeba Records (that place is huge!); we walked down the street to a park and had some photos taken by a member of the other band playing that night; we talked to a street vendor that was next to the club. There was a lot of time to kill, that's for sure.
Friday nights at the Milk Bar include a free comedy hour. As showtime drew near, people started coming in. There were a bunch of attractive women coming in, so we got our hopes up a little. And then the comedy started. A kid jumped on stage, all of 23 years old, and gave a really lame performance. It takes balls to do that and so I give him credit for that, but it seemed that at 23, he didn't have the stories to tell, so instead, he did jokes with bad punchlines. It was rough. An Indian kid followed the first kid, and that was pretty bad as well. They were young and likely quite new to the scene.
The next few comics were actually pretty good. I sat in the crowd and listened to the rest and left a small tip (though I think I may have inadvertently dropped a $10 into the bucket :/) from the cash I had to buy donuts with. Sort of bummed about that!
Peter's friends Matt and Richard came up from Big Sur to open the show. Peter booked the show 2 days ago when the place we were supposed to play canceled on us. So with the late booking and 0 promotion, we didn't know what to expect.
Unfortunately, though there was a nice crowd for the comics, most of them moved to the bar area when Matt and Richard started playing. They set up about 20 lamps all around the stage and played some pretty basic melodic rock. Not bad, but nothing super exciting.
When they finished, we jumped on stage to all of 4 people. Two of them were Matt and Richard, so really, two people, and I'm told they were two of the comics. So we pretty much just treated it like practice on a stage. Earlier in the night, when we finished setting up, we practiced a few covers, including Take It Easy, by the Eagles, which I'd never played before. Fortunately I've heard it a million times, so I hacked my way through it just fine. We also did some Neil Young and country covers, which are pretty easy, and we were able to work through those on stage as well.
Performance-wise, I felt pretty good. A few more mistakes here and there, but I'm realizing I need to trust my knowledge of the tunes and not to key off of vocal cues that aren't leading to where I think they're leading. Peter is not changing the song structures on the fly, though his vocals may sound that way. The stage was pretty tight, too. We set up horizontally due to the previously mentioned shallow stage. Miles was in the corner, then Peter, me and Simon. We were tucked in there pretty tight, but it wasn't much of a physical show.
The night ended and we packed out and headed to Albany, about 20 minutes away, to stay with Peter's old mate, Kyle. He had a small apartment where we crashed in his tiny living room. I got the couch, so there's that. A place to stay and a super nice host, it's all good.
Quick notes:
- Lots of driverless cars in SF. I don't think they're mapping the place, but training their driving AI instead. It's sort of weird to see cars w/o drivers.
- Speaking of cars, I'm seeing Fiat 500s everywhere. It only matters because we have a Fiat 500.
- SF was COLD yesterday. Sunny and windy, in the mid 50s, with mist/fog coming in at night. I didn't bring a jacket, but luckily have a hoodie with me.
- The Mission district was cool, sort of a multi-cultural area, reminded me of the ID at home. I busted out my Mandarin with the old lady that ran the donut shop. We got to talk a little bit; she said I didn't appear to be Chinese.
- Sleeping good enough at night, but waking late is weird. I feel like I should be up earlier, but the young bucks sleep late. With nowhere to be until later in the day, I guess it's OK.
- Diet was not great. I ate the following: Costco protein bar, chocolate croissant and 2 donuts, half a turkey sandwich at lunch, the other half for dinner and another protein bar. Let's see if I can do better today.
Next up: Make Out Room in San Francisco. Hopefully we have some people in the crowd tonight.
