What I ate last Friday

What I eat at work varies by the day. Sometimes it's pretty normal, healthy even - a sandwhich at noon, a banana sometime later, that kind of stuff. Sometimes it's less than healthy, like handfuls of candy from various buildings. More often4 than not it's like this:

10:31 - I'm riding up Columbus to the Getty Residence and I really have to pee. Away from downtown in a touristy area like Northbeach is bad for that. Grimy-ass restaurants that wouldn't look up if I ran in figured out a long time ago to put up "out of order" signs to keep out the vagrants. Nice restaurants are a coin toss - the fancier the place, the nicer and more interesting the bathroom, but the harder to get in. Anyway, I took a gamble with this place here:

Something about the scene at "Vietnam Restaurant" made me feel like a jerk if I didn't buy anything, so I ordered a Vietnamese Sandwich, a personal favorite. In the picture above, you can see the lady actually grilling my grilled pork after I ordered it. Wow. While I waited, I stretched. Then I threw the banh mi in my bag for later and was ghost.

10:59 - I've picked up the Getty and dropped the 3800 Washington. I'm starving so I break out the sandwich before checking in. I eat half, check in, and am told to call back in 10. Perfect. I eat the second half. The meat was good, but the bread wasn't all that. Saigon Sandwich is still my favorite. Sitting on some random steps way out in the Marina I see Christoph, a messenger from Western ride by. Unusual to see other messengers this far out. They're out here, working other company's longboards, but it's rare to run into one another, which made it weirder to see Fastboots at the end of the block ten seconds later.
11:41 - Perrier! After standing by in the Marina for 20 minutes holding one package, nothing comes up. My dispatcher tells me to move in and clean up. I drop off the Getty tag at Vallejo d Investments in 1 EC and being Getty-afflilated, I get laced up with fine French(?) water. I'm not really into it, actually. I prefer Evian in the bottle.


11:44 - Cookie! I hit up First Republic Bank, known (by me) for their free cookies. I've looked into it, and they actually make the cookies in the branch. I used to love these things, but now, much like candy, I've kind of od'd. But they will do in a pinch. Chocolate with pink m and m knockoffs. Kind of a borderline hifi combo. The one branch that doesn't make cookies in-house gets them delivered by our company daily from Tom's Cookies in Macy's. Love that bank.

13:32 - Yes, my clock is in military time. I am a nerd. After eating that last cookie, I'm given lunch. Not hungry of course. My dispatcher is nice enough to let me ride over to the DMV where I've been meaning to register this 1986 RX-7 I bought for $700 after seeing it on a flyer in Japantown during a lunchbreak last week. Hopefully I can flip it for around 2 g's. Surprisingly, the whole affair, riding there, waiting in the wrong, then right line, followed by more waiting and paperwork takes only 45 minutes. Hoping for a De Young tag since I'm right by it, but am told to head downtown to Tom's Cookies for a Fort Mason. About once every 1.5 months or so, I deliver a big bag of brownies to the Magic Theatre. Yeah, I don't know either.

Before heading down to the basement at Macy's in Union Square, I start chatting up the hot dog vendor1 parked in front. I used to work for the same company a few years back. The four of you who regularly read my blog might remember me mentioning that here. This is the owners website, I kid you not. A side venture for him, to be sure. I loved that job too. Anyway, she hooked up a free dog. After two summers of 2 - 5 hotdogs a day, I eventually settled on this condiment combo:

Semen mayonnaise and ketchup.

13:34 - Wow, I'm using the photo timestamp on my camera to get these, which means I ate this in two minutes while walking downstairs2 to pick up the Tom's. At Tom's, they ALWAYS take care of me. But the lady below is extra nice. It was my third day there that week so instead of the usual free cookie, she gave me four and a bottled water. I saved these for later, gave two to the girl at the hotdog stand on my way back3.

Notice the large, red bag. That was full of brownies. I told the girl at the Magic Theatre box office that I'd put her picture on my blog, so here it is, taken at

14:28 -

She said "thank you muchly" which was kind of cute, but also kind of theatery.

15:55 - I head back downtown and pick up three extra longboards. One from the YMCA at 653 Howard over to the YMCA on 1601 Lane in Hunters Point. Yes, that's hella far. It was the first beautiful blue day in a while, so it was a pleasure. I got a two great skitches on 3rd street. Glorious. Anyway, at the HP Y, they gave me this slice of Hawaiin pizza. To be fair, I saw the box and asked. I felt bad when as I was leaving, I overheard some poor employee excitedly breathlessly ask "where did he get that pizza?" It was good though.

16:08 - RMR Construction at 2424 Oakdale always has various treats. I've dogged candy in previous posts, but I still have love for NERDS.

I grabbed some peanuts too.

And some of this:

They also gave me some bandaids for the blisters on my heels from not wearing socks. The ladies at 220 Channel gave me some earlier, but they came off, as did the RMR ones not long after.



So there you have it. That's what I ate on Friday. It was a beautiful day. I rode all over the city on the longboard.






1: some random flickr photo of the cart in front of levi's across the park. only one I could find in a pinch. man, i'm really getting all david foster wallace on this entry.
2: two sets of escalators actually, to the macy's foodcourt in the basement
3: actually, there were two people working the stand, so they each got a cookie. two people means either stan (my old boss) was expecting a busy day, or one of them is a rookie getting trained.
4: but not that much more. i'd say 35% of my days will see such varied food intake. 38% are "normal". what does that leave, 27%? 20% are stranger and 7% are extra-ordinary, like free sherry from Campton Place hotel (the one with the couch in the elevator on Post, next to Farallon) although that used to be a regular stop (free sherry for guests after 3pm or so) and steak.

March 6, 2008

Dang, staying up this late always fucks me up the next day. I've been working on my bike and had to finish. I took apart and cleaned the drive train. It was filthy and now it's clean. Just tested it out and it feels much better.

I've ordered new parts (chain rings, cassette, chain) through the Wilsons catalog (bike parts at wholesale prices, good deal) at work to replace my worn stuff so this will probably be the last time I clean it.

I wanted it to be in good shape for the alleycat this Saturday. I'm going to try to follow the winner then beat him at the end and don't want my chain popping off.



I ran into Fastboots over at 3333 California this morning:

Then again later on at 400 Treat St. This time he was holding two huge boxes of paper that must have weighed 30 pounds each:

He insisted that I try it on, and the shit was HEAVY to be sure.



I saw this painting in an office downtown yesterday. Looks like a Sunset district street:


And some of this:



To the three people that read my blog: The last post is messed up. I was going to write about what's in my bag, but I can't get the whole picture to show. As soon as I figure it out, I'll make it better.

California Cuisine

Getting to 720 California isn't killer, it takes just a touch of savagery if you want to get there with a quickness.

Looking out from 720 Cal:

Oatmeal with cheddar, cut up hotdog, sri racha sauce and avocado.

By the way, check out my friend FastBoot's blog: http://fastboots.blogspot.com/ He quit the messenger game to travel around for a while.

Back to work

That it now seems colder than it was in New York is a sign that I've adjusted to my return to the west side, packing NYC back in the realm of exotic, far away places.

Dangling from the basket of a messenger bike in Manhattan

I saw the Catherine Opie exhibit at the Gugenheim museum. She is tightt.

Now I'm back to job at the bike shop and I can't complain.



Fast Boots, a.k.a. "Blondie" doing a backwards, no handed track stand on VI's bike:

Ways to lock up your bike

At 205 13th last week:



Fastboots helped me build a new rear wheel the other day:



He builds a mean wheel. Not sure what to say about his sartorial decision making skillz though:

Court, a crash and finding drugs

This morning I picked up a court filing from a law firm out on 17th and Irving. Being on the longboard, legal filing isn't something I deal with much so I like it. I get paid for waiting, and filing papers in court usually involves some. It was also nice getting out of the cold and rain for awhile.

When I was locking up my bike, I noticed a huge ziploc bag of weed, like maybe half an ounce, lying in the gutter. Dude.

Before I got to court, I transfered it to my jacket pocket since my bag has to pass through an x-ray machine staffed by sheriffs. Actually they're sheriff's "cadets", and they all look high, but still. I ended up talking a lot to the clerk since there were a few problems with the filing. Everytime I leaned in to hear what she was saying through the hole in the glass, I got an overwhelming whiff of Mooters.

Jeremiah from First Legal/First Weasel/Barely Legal at court

Fastboots from Godspeed at court

On the way back out to 2880 Broadway for the third time today, I saw this:

I'm the worst kind of rubbernecker. I will shamelessly walk over to look at anything. One firefighter yelled at me when he saw me taking this so I headed out.

The victim was gone, but the firemen were still there on my way back. I apologized but the guy in the middle who gave me shit was totally cool about it, telling me he loved to look at pictures like that on flickr.

The bicyclist lost control going down Franklin and slammed into the back of this Lexus, leaving an impressive dent as his bike smashed through the back while he tumbled over the roof. He broke a few bones, including his shoulder but luckily he didn't [Christopher] Reeve out .

Adding insult to injury, (literally), the car has a fucking BOOT ON IT! What a double bummer for this Lexus owner.

Peter "Fast Boots" Taylor

When he first started, he wore big-ass boots and was fast, hence the nickname. He's still fast, but has graduated to Lake's, the same ones I wear. I copied him actually.

Fastboots used to work for Speedway (my company) but now rides for Godspeed, the bad-asses of the San Francisco bike messenger scene.

Peter's a solid chap and a solid messenger. As you can see above, he's a lanky, tall drink of water who has a soft spot for hats nobody else wanted to buy. I'm kidding, it's a nice cap. If you look closely you'll see that even at his part time gig at a bike shop he still rocks the messenger key loop on his right arm.

Godspeed, Fast Boots.