My first SF earthquake

This morning at 7:47am, as I was debating whether to get the late or super-late bus after a bit of a late one with LTJ Bukem at the Independent last night (awesome), my decision to jump out of bed was made for me as my apartment shook me out instead.

As long as they stay at around 3.5, I can handle that as a “feature” of my new city!

My top 5 (+) SF places so far

I reckon a month or so is long enough to have a reasonable opinion on some Good Places To Go in the big city of San Francisco.

1. Mezzanine: grungy electro club, small but perfectly formed, no pretentiousness and lots of fun. Good for local and global DJs, who all seem to enjoy playing out here judging by the shapes they throw behind the decks!
2. The Crepe House: loving it, mostly because there’s one right on my local corner. Awesome sweet & savoury crepes any time of day and my place of choice for takeaway tea!
3. Thai Spice: decent spicy Thai food, and again I’m a fan because it’s close – there are also some great places on Fillmore, but this one is local, cheap, friendly, tasty and fast!
4. Rex Cafe: brunch is my favourite meal of the week, so finding the ultimate brunch spot is an ongoing mission. This place is on Polk St (notice a trend here? ) and is a nice chilled venue, decor is colonial style, all high ceilings and dark bold colours. Great food but portions big enough to share, which cuts on costs!
5. Foreign Cinema: being in the Mission, this is a bit of a schlepp for me, but well worth it. It’s not a weekly option as it’s a bit pricey, but the food is good and the breakfast cocktails are fabulous (one menu dedicated to bloody mary options and some delicious champagne cocktails make it a great start to any weekend!).

Notable mentions: Zeitgeist (funny how this is under the “divebar” category in Yelp! Great for lazy weekend chilling in the sun as it has a large beer garden out back, and watch out for the legendary Tamale Lady, a local hero who you can also follow on Twitter); Kozy Kar (also apparently a divebar. Guess this means something different here, although maybe not. Go here for unique decor – seating made up of old vehicles, PBR and the occasional random porn flashback on the video screens).

• See the map of all these awesome places

Funny People*

2 Very Funny Things happened this week:

1. Rob Deering at The Audience Club’s new comedy night in Kings Place, London: I would highly recommend this weekly Thursday night. Rob’s malleable face (his normal face looks exactly like Chief Wiggum off of the Simpsons) and awesome musical skills made this headline pretty amazing (I normally hate musical comedy, with the notable exception of Flight of the Conchords). We nominated songs and then Rob improvised his own twisted take on them, which was truly brilliant; mixed up with several politically incorrect jokes about Buddy Holly, Amy Winehouse, the Queen and Austrians (literally no-one is immune). Also the compère Ray Peacock kicked the night off hilariously for everyone, apart from one late couple who were on a first date and got heckled badly – I’m betting they wished they hadn’t stopped off for that beer before entering (Ray Peacock has a free podcast available on iTunes with his comedy partner Ed Gamble: The Peacock & Gamble podcast).
2. The Muppets do Bohemian Rhapsody. Nuff said.

*Random reference to the Adam Sandler movie which I also saw this week, which was a mix of gratuitous biopic and uncomfortable introspective but mainly just a bit too long …

Bonkers

 

Pryda @ The Warehouse Project 09, 31 October

It’s taken me a while to recover from this enough to want to write about it, but I went to The Warehouse Project in Manchester last weekend to see a set by Pryda, AKA Eric Prydz, and friends – which constituted Seb Léger and Paolo Mojo amongst others.

 

Hot: Almost everybody making the Halloween costume effort, awesome cinema room where they played Halloween- themed movies all night with popcorn too, and the venue itself in a car park is pretty cool (think Strawberry Sundae at Cloud 9, Vauxhall in London when it used to be under the railway arches).

Not: The music – which is kind of the most important thing – wasn’t so great, Prydz played a slightly monotonous techno-oriented set without many of the funky house tracks he featured in sets I heard him play previously this year at the UK’s Global Gathering and Wonderland closing party in Ibiza. And it was too blimmin’ loud! The hard surfaces of the car park walls and floors made the beats bounce right back in your face from every direction, making it hard to hear the music properly, and I swear my ears buzzed for 3 days afterwards.

When are they going to start giving out earplugs in UK clubs like they do in other countries? No wonder Britain’s youth are so angry, they probably all have tinnitus.