i'm missing san francisco a lot.
the rest of new york was a lot of fun: after exploring more of manhattan, we met up with nate and anne later in the day and visited a great beer garden and talked too much about how great san francisco really is. exploring. new experiences, i need them. so it goes.
oh yes. we all headed into lower east side for a show at the mercury lounge followed by an excursion to some creepy/hilarious bar called happy endings in smelly chinatown. oh man. allison and i rode to south brooklyn to yummy brunch the next morning with chris and jack, they were awesome at showing us around. we then met up with zack and brigham one last time and went out separate ways, weird.

philly was a non-stop surprise for me. i thought it was going to be way dirtier, scarier, and smellier (according to what most everyone had been telling us). we stayed with mia the first two nights at her classy apt west of city center. we walked a lot, ran into more familar people than expected and had a night out in downtown. over the next four days we: rode a lot (all though everything is extremely flat, so its so different) visited west philly (where i constantly had the fresh prince theme song stuck in my head) to see clark park and satellite cafe/fire house bikes, saw the philly bike church. ate amazing vegan philly cheese steaks at gianna's and govindas, added to our growing tape collection from many impressive thrift stores, visited the insanely bizarre mutter museum (filled with medical oddities) and made super good dinner with garrett and shea who were also in town with produce from the downtown market.
stayed with donovan the next two nights, a fabulous blur of bill and ted's excellent adventure on the big screen, skitching skateboards, magnum 40s, pretzel factory at midnight, surprisingly unsketchy bars, rittenhouse square, rites of spring on record, and lots of friendly, rad people. philly was a lot of fun.

after the longest, most arduous drive (ok, i'm lying. but it was long. and boring-ohio is all cornfields and i hate toll roads). we're in chicago now staying with brian, who happens to be moving in two days. we rode around last night and the skyline from lakeshore drive is incredible. today we looked at two apts in pilsen and humbolt park, rode all over chicago, scored (free!) chicago bike maps, fixed broken bikes and went out to some bar recommended by nacccs? a bunch of san francisco faces are in town and i can't wait to see more. it's humid hot here and i hope it lets up a little.

i've seemingly stopped taking pictures. i'll work on it.