new actual chicago address allison and i will be receiving all your mail at:

1628 w. ohio st. apt #3R
chicago, IL. 60624


since being back in san francisco felt so much like coming home, the blog was quickly forgotten, catching up with friends, tons of time in dolores, (two) bday celebrations, and all the rest.
upon arrival, allison bought a new bike, we visited east bay bike polo before it happened, and caught the end of neil's potluck.
saturday was hectic: we headed out to golden gate park after some unfortunate mechanical mishaps to watch the cross race, fixing further mechanical mishaps at the bike kitchen, we caught bart to east bay for the final EBM race beginning at eli stoner time: 3:30pm.

we mis-routed at the offset into piedmont cemetary and promptly spent the remainder of the race goofing off, taking pictures, tasting the watermelon beer mansur had procured for me that morning and, stopping to chat with friends we ran into on the street. we finally finished for some serious hanging out and bbq-ing in mosswood park.

more people trickled in and out. damien, casey, chas and travis finally arrived up 4 hours late from the bar up the street. we finally headed back to sf around 7pm, ate dinner at golden era and headed over to the dovre while people stopped in to help celebrate our bday. i had a ton of fun seeing so many good people: augie was still in town and helped get everyone else all rowdy. lots of good chats and playing soccer in the street at 1am (by playing, i mean chasing it after james kicked it as far as he could). headed out a bit before bar close down. apparently the awesome bartender thanked james as she was so confused why there were so many younger people actually there on a saturday night. honestly, the bar was super awesome though. good times.

sunday we slept in an went out to bugaloos to breakfast with neil. rode out to fort mason to see the box dog riders off and rode back into the haight to get coffee at tori's work and play a serious scrabble game.

hung out in dolores park and got falafel with oliver before heading over to thieves while the riders returned. hung out until after prizes and as the tired racers began to disappear. james and i went to sparkys for some late night coffee and then over to the rite spot to see a friend of his play. headed back to neil's early to get some real sleep.

tons more hanging out throughout the week: actual bday celebration at cassanova on monday night after a day of maggie mudd treats, watching weird science at jenn's, followed by dinner and visiting sf bike polo (it actually happens, i saw it!). a much mellower night that i thoroughly enjoyed, martini mondays blown up.

tuesday night we went and saw noah's furniture show with lots of tasty snacks and met up to ride to tiburon. it felt so great to get an actual ride in and was a lot of fun to actually get to ride with evan, chas and cristos. ended up at bender's after with dave + rob and matt and fried vegan wings. i slept real well that night.

wednesday, i headed back to santa cruz to pay my red light ticket and pick up some things i left at rigg st. got to visit with sam and hiram for coffee, ate asian rose, stole music from seth, hung out at the ocean st house and mike had me stay so he could cook me super yummy indian food. i drove back to oakland to meet up with allison and mike. mike's fork had broke, so i drove us all out to rudy's to for sweet potato fries and have some food with max. stayed in east bay and met up with ilya for vegan french toast and kittens in the morning.

thursday! phew. south park for an "extended" (read: 3 hour) lunch as people trickled in. visited the freight shop and stopped by the bike kitchen to figure out the bike!bike! schedule. bernard met up with us to deliver some goods! (less expensive, warm, awesome north face jackets) so i could sit in dp with shorts and a big waterproof jacket. ha. met up with mike for coffee at atlas before heading over for fancy dinner at millennium for one last bday celebration (monday bdays=you are entitled to stretch it out all week long) with diego, dave, and ray. sheesh, such amazing food, i was really impressed. dave, allison, and i headed over to cassettes after but could only stand the scene for an hour or so and headed over to damien's to sleep.

friday i woke up and attended bike!bike! workshops and then met up with allison and james and mike for late lunch. i rode out to fort mason to go to the huge booksale and meet up with ilya and rosie. the book sale with a huge room and seriously so awesome: i wish i wasn't planning on moving and traveling or i would have bought way more. more DP time for the cyclocide bbq and beginning of the poker run. i wish i had a picture of casey in the hotdog costume: amazing. headed over to a show on valencia that got started super late. hung out on the sidewalk, met up with steveb and heard stories about interbike. dave, neil and i split only to be shut out of a closing papolote and have to seek out burritos else where. found a spot on 24th, to then hear that people were being kicked out of the show, so we re-met up at the parkside, which apparently had a $7 cover and too much drama. finished up the night with a couple drinks at the uptown and headed back to neil's to sleep.

saturday morning, i headed out early for more workshops. met up at piccino to visit tori and heckle her while she learned the "proper" way to pull blue bottle shots.

finally got a papolote burrito after the previous nights fiasco and ate in the park. i headed out to one more workshop while allison grabbed coffee with alex and spence. more serious park hang outs before grabbing amenities for jessica's game night at whole foods to visit tara and meet up with grey for my round of coffee. finally headed over to jessica's where a less than genuine attempt was made to play balderdash. 3 hours later, we had played 5 rounds and had a lot of fun being super rowdy. played catch phrase, and i made fox come deliver me a streets and maps guide despite my departure from sf. around 1am after casey had been encouraging us to go make last call, we left and headed to the uptown to meet up with travis and co. reluctant to end the night, we headed over to the precita house and hung out for a while longer. i eventually began trailing off when i began doing a people magazine crossword, i knew the night was over.

sunday morning, tara, derek, james, noah, allison, and kelly! actually all woke up to go get breakfast at saint frances before derek had to head out to work and we could head back south. despite much confusion and an unhappy waitress, i got to catch up with kelly and have last good byes with everyone. made a stop in slo for a couple hours so allison could chat with some friends. finally made it back into thousand oaks around 8pm. real end to the trip.

as i write this, i keep remembering more and more hilarious, weird, random things that occured this week, but i already feel as if i'm rambling and exhausting. really: sf always rules and i always am reminded how many amazing people there are there that somehow want to hang out with me, you guys are all fucking incredible. come visit us in chicago.

chicago, i will see you on wednesday afternoon.

how the time does fly. we're in portland right now after some fun adventures with fischer up in seattle and boise. the rest of omaha ended up being really fun. we went to brother's, a neighborhood bar a few blocks away from laura and finished off the night by going back to her place for some youtube classics: tim and eric, george washington, dan deacon lizard and sang some third eye blind. dietz knew every word. man after my heart. haha.


driving all the way across western nebraska AND wyoming proved to be quite the arduous drive but saw some of the craziest landscape i've ever seen in my life: enourmous skies, vast expanses of flat, barren land and gorgeous clouds. we stopped in SLC and met up with one of steve b's friends, justin, and watched tons of arrested development. so good. followed only by one of the best vegan breakfasts i've had all trip at vertical diner. yum.


next stop was boise for some basement show action. all the kids were super nice and there was some awesome pop-punk happening and trampoline action. jason and ilya played hella video games and we got entertained by a wizard. i went to sleep on the couch early, amidst burrito making and linux chatter. indeed.


onto seattle the next morning where we met up with justin and jason clackley at their nice apartments and watched saved by the bell episodes (jessie singing "i'm so excited"? check yes!) the next day was their tacoma show, so after hanging out at jason's work, elliott bay (rad coffee shop/book store in pioneer square) we left to eat sandwiches at quickies (seitan awesomeness served by a man with the most incredible dreads ever) and then went to the viaduct for the show. it was kind of a shithole but there was a drawing of jason clackely in the bathroom (which trelayna freaked out about so we had to take a picture) and it was still a lot of fun to see every one and hang out on the couches.


after being harassed by jason's cat, revolver throughout the night, in the morning we all made breakfast and watched can't hardly wait (which continued to be referenced throughout the day. most amazing 90's soundtrack. hands down) after much dawdling and some more coffee, we headed down to the re-opening of the zine library and ate tons of free food (mighty o!!) there was a park across the street so we proceeded to watch the crazy gymnastics and huge chess board (why can't they use their hands?) in the perfect weather. shortly after we headed down to their show at the holy mountain which was a far cooler space and got to hang out with noam and giel on the porch of the bar next store and talk about (compare, swap stories) about all our travels. got some good chat time in with mambo (did you know they make pbr lite?) and the dudes from zann and everyone seemed to be in far better spirits. we heard a lot about the bainbridge show the following day and the promises of the pool party but had to regretfully decline.


we left the next morning after having vegan cinnamon rolls at cafe flore and met up with crossett at his house in portland. after some switching and wrenching, i borrowed his cross bike and we headed up north to polo. it was nice to see casey and damian again (even though it'd really only been a few weeks since they left chicago... haha) and see everyone kill each other on the court. we rode down to the bluffs to watch the "trains humping" and then to the bye and bye for tasty vegan bar food. after a dirt section and a wrong turn, we made it back to crossetts and got through half of willow before i totally conked out.


the next morning we headed back to hawthorne for breakfast at cup and saucer and met up with damian downtown for some whole foods and park action. after checking out bike central, we began our trek to alpenrose to meet up with crossett and ride the incredibly banked track. it was totally deserted so it was fun just to mess around on it and take some pictures. after we were all
tired of riding, we went to albertsons for some bbq supplies and the longest line ever because of a new cashier. once we got back to the house, we listened to nick's new tapes from the bins (oakland soul, anyone?) on the boom box and bbqed on the tiny grill. charlie made us watch a christian rock video followed by some other terrible VHS at which we decided to head up north to meet up with casey for birthday 2.0 at the karakoe bar, alibi. Augie was back in town and
got serenaded complete with a lap dance from some dude singing tina turner. quite a few people made it out, crazy pictures were taken, me and christina butchered the shit out of paul simon's "you can call me al" (to which todd told us we did a terrible job at convincing him of paul simon's amazingness) and sang the entire "teenage dirtbag" song even though i wasn't up there. i thought the waitress was going to cut us off at some point as the pitchers didn't stop coming for 4 hours, but she humored us well in the face of all the rowdiness.


two more days left in portland and then BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO. east bay race. after party. the dovre saturday night. box dog race. theives. so much going on!! i can't wait.

birthdays

so many birthdays coming up, but one should be most important to you: ours. mine and allison's birthday is on september 22nd, that's right. it's a monday, so we will be celebrating early for all you people who aren't functioning on what i've been calling "playtime". saturday the 20th is the east bay alley cat eli is throwing. hopefully we will do some hard hanging out (bbq? in east bay?) after this most awesome event and then later on, we would like to go out back in san francisco. serious thought has been afforded to karaoke since we were so unsuccessful in chicago. recommend us some good, cheap, out of the way (aka: not overly crowded and obnoxious on a saturday night) and we will be stoked to see each and everyone of your shining faces back in sf.

our last days in chicago were stressful, but ultimately awesome. we crashed at rex's in andersonville for a couple nights, went and saw a double feature of forgetting sarah marshall and sex in the city(!) and it rained a lot. a lot. we finally signed the lease on an adorable 2 bedroom on ohio and paulina street in south ukranian village/west town. jason and ilya made it into town. and we did a lot of walking, ate amazing food at earwax, and went to the lawrence arms bar up north. ilya finally got in touch with the kid we were staying with--we arrived at his house and promptly squeezed allison, jason and i into the most comfortable bed and passed out. we all grabbed coffee in the morning at atomix and parted ways until boise. the driving's getting too normal, 8 hours seemed like nothing. when we stopped at burger king, the woman asked allison if she wanted "onion ring sauce" with her onion rings. allison asked, "what is onion ring sauce?" to which her only reply was: "zesty." so it goes.

we're in omaha right now, living out my high school dreams of saddle creek. saddle creek is, as eric said, just one big, major boring street that runs through the middle of omaha, but i've still been fascinated, picking up references all over. i lost my shit driving in from chicago when i realized nebraska's slogan is the good life, and i saw this while listening to the good life just as tim kasher wailed about council bluffs and we drove over the river from iowa, whew.
omaha is how i imagined: small town, indie amazingness full of kids in tight jeans, big glasses and sweaters. it became insanely colder since we arrived which is all so fitting. we ate at mcfosters last night, pierced ears, cut hair, and walked the 3 blocks to a house show. today was an overcast lazy day with coffee and exploring the downtown, watching brazil and making sweet potato tacos. we went out to slowdown, the saddle creek bar and saw dan deacon and forever flowers for free, and some how scored free ice cream (they even had fruit popsicles!). we tagged along with laura to her hilarious friend's house where we drank whiskey on their fine ass porch and listened to some elton john and rolling stones. oh nebraska.

naccc weekend

was absolutely ridiculous. i can't even began to describe how much fun it was. but i'll try..

thursday we rode to the gold star to meet up with some kids that were in town early and just happened to run into chas, will and sharkey who had just gotten into town from portland, dirty as shit and amped on life. it was amazing. we left after a bit to get food and ate the worst mexican food ever. do not eat at flash taco if you like real burritos.

friday came and we looked at a few more places and finally met mario's friend caitlin at critical mass and then headed over to mother hubbards for registration. total craziness--bikes locked everywhere and no one who worked at the bar had any idea why there were 300+ dirty messenger kids mingling in a downtown sports bar. some of us headed out to garfield park to check out the course but it was dark and pretty sketchy and we couldn't find polo, so we headed back to the Av-arie, a loft party where they were giving out tons of free beer, some prizes from the alleycat. i finally got to meet augie and talked to the seagull bag guys who said they would replace my sternum-cracker of a buckle for free. yes!

headed out to breakfast with some of the portland kids saturday morning and then to garfield park for the qualifiers. people were everywhere and of course start time ended up being two hours late. i ended up not working a check point and just wandering from checkpoint to checkpoint heckling people along the way and laughing at ridiculous antics people were pulling on the racers. stuffing boxes full of tree branches, writing lewd notes on packages, fireworks, banana suits, the usual. san francisco did really well and it was awesome to see every get out and just kill it, even though the course was real bizzare and people were flatting all over. freight's checkpoint was right next to this pool in the park and after the race, a bunch of the boys jumped in and were running around in their chamois. amazing.

everyone left dirty and sweaty and some managed to make it back to messenger prom looking suprisingly respectable. me christina and caitlin went out to dinner beforehand and ended up getting a free bottle of wine from the people next to us who loved the idea of messenger prom and wanted to ask us a bunch of questions. we headed over to the bottom lounge $2 tall cans, prom pictures and a really awesome back deck that was later used to scale up and sneak in when they stopped letting people in. it got that crowded! talked to a bunch of random people, caitlin did the worm on the exceedingly disgusting floor.


main race came on sunday and only about 50 or so people made it, so it was much more mellow and i ended up working a check point this time. so rad to see everyone out and the tricks and skids after were a blast to watch. we ended up back at the bottom lounge for prizes, where we took over the tables, casey lost his voice from booing augie so much and we witnessed fergus playing the air guitar on his new frame. everyone was in top form, so much fun.

monday we got breakfast with philly eric and steve at chicago diner, complete with in depth conversations about what roast beef looks like and locust swarms, and then headed over the the top of the cock (hancock tower!) for some drinks, running into will and sharkey on the way. after some great views and some dirty looks from the waitresses, we headed over to the bbq for casey's birthday. and then the madness ensued. i think we went through 6 30 packs, people were being attacked with caution tape, damian got his porkchops stolen by the dog and chas almost got a cooler dropped on top of him. we really wanted to do karaoyke after, but labor day weekend prevented it so we settled on the rainbo room, where we got major 'tude from the bartender for being "too cool" squished way too many people into tables, took photobooth pictures, watched the will arnett sex video on damian's iphone (to which i thought augie was going to die laughing) and basically just took over the bar until 2am, to which we realized we really needed to take advanage of the 4am bars here and headed to the continental. steve decided arm wrestling would be a great idea and the dj told us on no accord would he play paul simon or journey. everyone was just ridiculously rowdy and made for a great last night for most people.


phew. there's some more chicago that happened, but that'll have to come later. way too much right now. hope everyone is well, we miss the shit out of you. and california weather.

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.

huzzah, new york, new york. i haven't been here in years and had no idea what to expect. it has been crazy, crazy, crazy.

by the graciousness of a friend from santa cruz, we've been staying in williamsburg (brooklyn) in em's amazing loft space right off bedford ave while she is back in california. we arrived wednesday evening after an awesome breakfast by shea back in DC followed by a day of stressful, trafficked driving. we went out to free pbr hour (yes, it exists!) at a bar on s 6th and moved on to matches. pretty awesome to come into a town cold and meet so many new people.

yesterday we explored manhattan: amazing vegan food, strand books, central park, bleeker st, seinfeld restaurant facade, 5th ave at 5pm and cupcakes at babycakes. riding in traffic here is ultimately death-defying though. while exhilarating and skillful, also requires so much just to manuver one end of the city to another. a total trip though. after arriving back in brooklyn, chris led us out to queens for (cheap!) beer on jake's roof with a hammock (and fireworks?) and much talk of current rap and crystal-ly people.

today, the explorations took us farther south into brooklyn. sheesh, even brookyln is 4379348x larger than san francisco. &i had no idea it got so posh. prospect park was beautiful though, perfect for riding and reading and napping. finally made it over to food swings for disgustingly tasty vegan fast food. headed into manhattan to meet up with some kids at old towne bar. despite being insanely worried re: locking bikes in thief-ridden downtown, our bikes made it out whole. i just had a lot of fun riding with people who know the city well after too much map staring. we all rode back over the williamsburg bridge to visit the "peel sessions," (trick time under the bridge!) and then went along to finally visit the levvy, a much disputed bar. quite busy and loud, but still super laid back and had good vibe. chatted with even more new people, including one dude who ultra-reminded me of crossett. good times.

two more days in nyc, hopefully we'll see nate before heading out on saturday!

dc and richmond

time has been passing in bizarre patterns these last few days. we spent friday checking out a few museums down at the 'mall' in dc, riding our bikes around the city (it's so fun to ride in traffic again!) and then coincidently ran into colie, who neither of us have seen in about three years but were just talking about that morning. the world works in strange ways. we ended up going out with him and jill later on that night in adams-morgan (which was a total scene--i felt like i was back on higuera in san luis. weird) and talked until 2:30am about high school people i haven't thought about in ages.


the next morning we left bright and early to head back to richmond for best friends day--getting stuck in traffic reminiscent of la but still getting in time to meet up for the 8 mile ride out to havad lake. it was a blast to be riding through such beautiful countryside with a couple hundred kids, only to get to the water park and ultimately feel like it was punk rock spring break '08. rope swings, water slides, bands, beer and vegan tacos. way to be richmond, way to be.


we rode back into town around 8 and tried to go to a house show where ceremony and paint it black were playing, but ended up only watching part of the show as the house was so small i could only watch through the window. it was eriely like watching tv and we decided it would be better to leave for panda veg--chinese vegan food with a buffet (donuts) and had silly conversations about atom and his package and comparisons between duck sauce and dogshit (thanks garret :)

after thanking alison for putting us up for one more night, we began our trip back to dc and recuperated a bit before christina and i decided to ride down to arlington to meet up with rich for a thai dinner. it was nice to get out and ride across the bridge (even though seeing parts of georgetown reminded me a lot of the marina) and it was entertaining to hang out with rich and hear extensive stories from his running camp. ultimate lesson of the night: it's only awkward if you make it. but i kind of liked "no fronting" too.

we left arlington to go to the black cat and met up with garret for the port o'brien show. it was awesome to see all the san luis kids and they played a really fun set, too, bringing out the pots and pans for 'i woke up today' and bring some ridiculously excited girl up on stage for 'treebones' we stayed to watch bodies of water and then came back to garret's for the ultimate slumber party--they showed up at the house with a bottle of patron in hand (van citing marah carey as his inspiration) and it was just silly catching up, sharing travel stories and talking about people from back home. There were 18 people in the house last night and once we realized 10 of us were from california, it made me feel like i wasn't 3000 miles away from home.


today has just been breakfast, lots of coffee and a mini welding lesson. new york tomorrow! i'm excited.