It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.
Jack Kerouac, On the Road1
As someone who went to CMU and who now works in software, it’s naturally the case that lots of my friends are concentrated in the New York City and San Francisco Bay areas. Somehow, it’s been two years since I was last in the Bay Area, so it was about time for me to return to pay a visit to friends and family in the area. A few of us New York-based High Tech-ers had the same idea; this past weekend, Kyle, Ivy, Emily, and I flew over to San Francisco to see people.
The logistics for this trip ended up being a little weird: the others spent Thursday through Saturday in San Francisco, while I flew in on Thursday night but stayed an extra day, mostly because I wanted to head down to the South Bay on Sunday to see other friends and family as well. Overall, it was a good trip, though between this and Amy and David’s wedding the weekend prior, I think I’ve had enough socializing for a while.
My flight to San Francisco was delayed by two hours, but I can’t really complain, because the others had it much worse. I arrived at about 4am on Friday morning at SFO before taking a quick Uber to the AirBnB and getting what sleep I could before the Friday festivities began.
The AirBnB itself was small but decently pleasant; getting ready in the morning with five people to a bathroom2 was a bit of a tight squeeze, but nothing unmanageable. After being subjected to some torture unwanted skincare products, I started Friday off by grabbing lunch with the ever-elusive Eddie at a dumpling place near Golden Gate Park. The food was good, but I kind of wish we’d gotten the chance to talk a bit more, as Eddie had to leave early.
After lunch, I got to experience a true marvel of modern science: I rode a Waymo3 to meet up back up with the others at Fisherman’s Wharf! It was pretty surreal to sit in a car with no driver and watch the steering wheel turn on its own. The ride was pretty smooth, although the quoted transit time was noticeably slower than a typical Uber ride. I’m told this is because Waymo blacklists certain roads that are too hard to drive on, leading to suboptimal routing from a time perspective. Still, it felt way better than the autopilot in Eddie’s Tesla; he actually had to intervene a few times when it did the wrong thing.
Upon meeting back up with the others, we walked around Pier 39 for a bit, stopping for an impromptu photo shoot. I also got to experience more futuristic technology: I bought a matcha latte from a robot barista!4 The pier was good fun in general; there was fresh produce, lots of colorful signs, and generally just good California vibes. There was even a group of sea lions on a pier, although truth be told, they were kind of smelly in-person.
The next stop on our journey was Chinatown, where we walked through the streets a bit before stopping to browse books at the famous City Lights bookstore. We got popcorn chicken at some restaurant and tried to play cards there, but we soon got kicked out because they were closing, so we retreated to Moongate—a fancy bar with purple lighting—instead. Ivy took lots of pictures there before stopping to ask: “am I a good photographer, or am I just drunk?” I’ll let you judge that one for yourself; I’ve included her picture of me in the below gallery. (Nhi’s assessment: “he looks like he likes art.” I think that’s a nice way of saying that I look sad.)
We had dinner at Rintaro, a fun izakaya. Eddie and Hannah stopped by; I gave him back the decks of cards of his that I’d been keeping for quite some time. (I think I’d had them since at least graduation two years ago?) We ended the night by staying up late in the AirBnB and playing Nertz.
Our first order of business on Saturday was to vacate the AirBnB, after which we met up with Nelson, Yogi, Anna, and Bryan at a Vietnamese place. I actually quite liked the restaurant, but I was told that it was actually pretty mid by Bay Area standards, so oh well. One funny observation: I’m not sure why it is that across both my college and high school friend groups, those of us in NYC tend to hang out fairly often, but those in the Bay Area basically never meet up except when people are visiting.
Anyway, after lunch we walked around Golden Gate Park for a bit before getting some dessert nearby. I got a milk tea that was okay, although I will confess that I actually like Molly Tea in New York better. Here, we split again: Kyle, Ivy, and Emily headed to the airport to go back home, while I went over to Spark Social, a food truck area, to grab dinner with Caleb. I enjoyed that dinner a lot; we had a good conversation and walked around Mission Bay for a bit. (At least I think we did—my Bay Area geography is still a bit spotty.) We ended up at Oracle Park right as the Giants won against the A’s,5 joining the crowd as everyone exited the stadium.
Finally, the last thing I had to do in San Francisco was retrieve my duffel bag, which I had stashed at the AirBnB’s laundry room. This was a near-disaster, as the door to the room was unexpectedly locked, but fortunately, someone was inside to let me in. I then took the Caltrain down to Menlo Park, where I was crashing at Yogi’s place. I was actually quite impressed at how new and clean the Caltrain was—and the bathrooms were even usable! The NJ Transit should really take notes here.
On Sunday morning, I attended service at Redeemer Bible Fellowship in Mountain View, a church with a surprising number of connections to the First Baptist Church in New York, where I attend.6 I quite enjoyed the sermon on Psalm 32, as well as the Sunday school lesson afterward on missions. I also enjoyed lunch with Rachel, Kelly, and Tiffany—the latter two being current ACF/Central people who happen to be in the Bay Area this summer for internships.
I then had dessert at Melo Melo in Cupertino with a curious, rotating cast of ACFers, comprising (at various points) Caleb, Kevin, Rachel, Kelly, Esther, Kimberly, and Iris. As Francis once wisely remarked: whenever you try to get ACFers together in the Bay Area, it’s always an eclectic group of people. See previous comment about Bay Area friends never hanging out unless visitors are in town.
Sadly, I couldn’t stay too long, as I was scheduled to head over to my uncle’s place in Sunnyvale to get dinner with family. The dinner was delicious, and it was a good time catching up with them, although while talking to my grandparents, I noticed that my Chinese skills are noticeably rustier than they were as a kid, when I exercised them more frequently.7 As usual, my grandma stuffed my bags with more home-cooked food than I thought was physically possible to fit in there; I’m surprised that my duffel bag didn’t spontaneously collapse into a black hole given how much food there was in there. One full bag (and stomach) later, I was off to the airport to catch a red-eye directly into work the next morning.8 I would be a bit sentimental here, but I’m actually scheduled to go back to the Bay Area in July, so there’s really no point. Until then!
Apologies for the cliché, but every post on San Francisco has to come with an obligatory quote by a Beat Generation author. I tried to at least choose a good one.↩︎
For those keeping count, Nhi joined us after getting unexpectedly kicked out of her AirBnB, bringing the total up to five.↩︎
For those unaware, Waymo is a self-driving taxi company that currently operates in a select few cities, including San Francisco.↩︎
Okay, in fairness, there’s also a robot barista at the Muji store in New York’s Hudson Yards, so maybe that one isn’t a California special. Plus, the matcha latte was kind of bad.↩︎
I’m told that it was a particularly exciting game, although I wouldn’t really know.↩︎
I often comment that the coastal Chinese Christian circles are really too small.↩︎
Maybe I should start watching Chinese shows or something to practice more…↩︎
Wow, that was a miserable experience. I think I might be getting a little too old to pull these red-eye-into-work-the-next-morning trips. Although I will say that there was the confounding factor of my being a little bit sick, so maybe the healthy Eric still has it.↩︎
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