friends

San Francisco Day 2

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I dont know why our friends thought we might wanted to drink beer for breakfast, but we got to sit outside and have breakfast in the sun, and the banana pancakes were awesome!

It always fascinates me when beautiful sceneries gets destroyed by ugly wires – why not place them underground instead? It’s all part of the charm though I guess.

We walked up the Corona Heights peak after breakfast, great views! 

Downtown San Francisco.

I’ve been to San Francisco many times before but never visited the legendary Haight & Ashbury until today.
It was by Haight and Ashbury that the whole hippie movement started and there’s now a bunch of commercial stores combined with a lot of second hand and tourist trap stores in the neighborhood. 

Lunch at Magnolia before heading back home to Los Angeles.

San Francisco

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Headed up to San Francisco for the weekend to visit friends.
Driving in to the city over the Bay Bridge;

A couple of our friends live in Castro, which they say is “the gayest part of the gayest city”.

When you walk around the neighborhood you can come across windows with dolls in them, cute you may think at a first glance…

Before you realize they have their pants down. This is apparently totally normal.

We walked from Castro to the Mission district to grab brunch.
San Francisco have these cute call boxes on the street corners in case of a fire, I love them!

Chocolate Pudding for brunch, what else?

We kept on walking around the Mission after brunch and checked out a bunch of cute stores and sights. This building used to be the Levis Strauss factory, before I assume, they moved it to China or Taiwan…

Santa Con (people dress up as Santas and go bar hopping) was in San Francisco this weekend, so we saw a bunch of Santas on the streets. I wish I knew about it and I would have bought my Santa hat.

After a couple of hours of more walking, it was time for an afternoon beer break.

“What? No, we’re just hanging out on the street corner.”

My friends thought it was time for some coffee and so I had my very first freshly roasted and brewed cup of coffee.

High on caffein from my first ever cup of coffee, I was not ready to go home and stopped at about one million places to take photos. I love San Francisco though, it is very photo friendly!

More Santas on their way home from the pub.

Ice Skating

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It’s become a tradition to go see my friend skate his Christmas Recital every year.  I don’t know much about this kind of ice skating but it’s fun to look at all the good kids. It’s difficult to take pictures of a sport you’re not familiar with as you don’t have a clue of what move comes next, but it’s still fun to try.

These guys were really cute and really good!

My friend did good, he said he missed a jump, but I was not able to tell.
 
I saw this guy last year and he made me speechless, I was happy to see him again this year!

Beer Calendar

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We had the beer exchange for this years beer calendar tonight. Here’s how the beer calendar works; (works best if you are 6 or more people who are in on it)
Everyone buy 4 six packs or beer each, plus an optional Christmas Day beer for yourself. Holiday Editions, rare beers, beers from a country you’ve never heard of, beers you’ve never seen before, beers you have seen many times but have never had a chance to try, beers you think are the best beer you’ve ever tasted and are pretty certain not a lot of people know about etc are encouraged to buy. 
Once everyone bought their 4 six pack of beers (24 beers) plus your optional bonus beer, you wrap them all in tin foil. Try not to mix your beers, keep the six packs separated. Set a date and time that works for everyone when you can exchange the beers.
It’s eight of us doing it this year which means you wont get to try all the beers. We use a deck of cards to determine who got to pick their beer first. Everyone got to pick a card and the lowest card get to pick their beer first. Once everyone have their first beer, we draw a new card from the deck.
When we have collected all 24 beers for our calendar we wait patiently until December 1st when we get to open the first beer, and then one beer a day everyday until Christmas Day! Fun!

Marukai Market

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Grocery shopping in a Japanese market is not always that easy…

It’s good to know someone who knows japanese!

A friend of a friend of a friend open up a shaved ice cafe right off Sawtelle and tonight was the soft opening. I am a huge fan of ice cream, but I am still to get used to the idea of shaved ice. To me it’s like eating snow and a little bit of a culture clash.

Marukai Market

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Grocery shopping in a Japanese market is not always that easy…

It’s good to know someone who knows japanese!

A friend of a friend of a friend open up a shaved ice cafe right off Sawtelle and tonight was the soft opening. I am a huge fan of ice cream, but I am still to get used to the idea of shaved ice. To me it’s like eating snow and a little bit of a culture clash.

Halloween on Shaefer St

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I never cared too much about Halloween until last year when I got to experience handing out sweets to trick or treaters. I thought it was so much fun that I invited myself over to Shaefer Street again this year.
We spoked out the house so the kids know were home.

I feel bad when the small kids get scared, but if they have an older brother or sister by their side, they can usually not resist a big bowl of candy!

Michael Jackson stopped by as well!

Saturday

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We had no real plans for the day but headed over to Fandy’s for brunch. My second attempt to drink a bloody mary – still not a big fan.

This may be one of the best chocolate bar in the world.

Winnie and Leo had a couple of pieces in a photo exhibition so we went to check it out in the evening.

Las Vegas

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I have friends in town from Sweden and we decided to go to Vegas for the weekend. We stayed at Bally’s Resort & Casino, this was the view from our hotel room;

Getting ready for a night out!

Paris!

TV on the Radio at Hollywood Bowl

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There were actually quite a few bands playing at the bowl tonight. TV on the Radio was headlining, but there were also Arctic Monkeys, Panda Bear, and my favorite Smith Western. 

Drinking wine out of plastic cups, so classy!

We used to drink this wine all the time when we were in Chile 7 years ago (wow!), the locals laughed at us cos they did not consider it being a great wine… I have not seen it since, but someone bought a bottle tonight!