Bay Area
It took me 24 years to make it to the West Coast, but in August of 2019, we turned one of Ellie’s work trips into a pseudo-vacation in San Francisco, followed by a long weekend with some Seattle friends in Napa. While Ellie worked during the weekdays, I was free to roam SF, armed with my camera, a backpack, and a highly detailed Google map that I had been working on maniacally for months in advance. After she got out of work for the day, we’d meet up for some of the sight-seeing we both wanted to hit, followed by drinks and dinner.
It’s been discussed in detail by many more informed on the topic than myself, but San Francisco felt like two distinct cities, insoluble, but together, like water and oil. The beauty of the bay views, palm trees, and rolling hills were in direct contradiction to what can be seen during an ill-informed stroll through the Tenderloin district. The stark contrast of million-dollar apartments and Twitter HQ, just steps away from the majority of the city’s homeless population.
Throughout our time there, I felt conflicted about capturing what I saw in the Tenderloin and ultimately opted against shooting any photography of the situation. It seemed insensitive to those who are living in what truly felt like a post-apocalyptic zombie movie. Indecipherable screams, constant shattering of glass, tents, needles, and human feces everywhere. It was confusing, heavy, and truly sad. You won’t see any of that here.
With five full days to explore the city, it would be impossible to cover everything we did succinctly, so I’ll list my favorites:
View: The panorama of the city from Lafayette Park.
Meal: Dinner at Angler. Oysters, Big Eye Tuna, Radicchio Salad, Glazed Quail. Everything was incredible.
Coffee: Sightglass Coffee.
Brewery: Cellarmaker.
Beer: Russian River Velvet Glow.
Bar: Toronado. Duh.
Experience: The Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar at the Fairmont. Thank you Bourdain.
We decided to extend our trip a few days and head up to the Napa Valley. Some friends who recently moved out to Seattle from Boston met us for the long weekend in wine country. I’ll be honest and say that I wasn’t super impressed with Napa, but totally understand the appeal. I tend to be drawn towards natural, biodynamic winemaking and there wasn’t much to be easily found there.
If big, bold California cabs are your jam, this is the place to visit. While expensive and not necessarily my ideal wine trip, the views were unbelievable and time spent with friends that we hadn’t seen in a while made it well worth it.
We had some hours to burn on the final day of our trip between checking out of our AirBnB and catching our flight back in San Francisco. With not quite enough time to check out the redwoods of Muir Woods, we were able to squeeze in a little coastal, cliff bluff hike at Muir Beach. Here we enjoyed some of the best views of the entire trip and I was able to capture some of my favorite images from our time in California.
