Hawleyblog

An Update on Will and Mauricio

I just texted Will, who replied that they're about a hundred miles from New Orleans on their way back home. He heard from a neighbor that two sets of shutters were blown off, some window panes were broken, and the bathroom AC unit got blown into the tub. And he's not happy to be contemplating the rotting food in the fridge.

Will was so bored on his "hurrication" that he started a blog. The url he gave me a few days ago still isn't working for me. I'll post a link when I can access it.

And here's another UPDATE from Will via e-mail at 11:30 p.m., with the subject "back home":

The kitty is very happy.

We spent a few hours doing quick-fix repairs so we could sleep tonight. The fridge is cleaned out, and we've swept up all the broken glass. The vase of flowers you photo'd in your blog was blown into the sink and broke.

I guess it feels good to be home. I've already applied to FEMA to see if I can get a few pennies out of them. We'll see how that goes. I don't have high hopes.

More Photos From New Orleans

Here are many more photos from my New Orleans trip, starting with a pic of Will and Mauricio's cat.

They'd had the cat for only a couple of weeks when I arrived, and they hadn't settled on a name. But one day while I was there, I think Thursday, Mauricio declared that his name was Coco. Will had been calling him Poo Poo. I think they should call him Brownie, in honor of me. Or Poo Poo, in honor of me. :-/

W&M's living room

The kitchen

Their bedroom

The bathroom

W&M at Lüke, next to a piece of furniture Will was coveting

Chefs in motion at Lüke. We were seated in the back room, which was odd considering the front room wasn't at all crowded. It did give us a chance to see all of the activity in the kitchen, though.

And now some shots from the Insectarium:

My sentiment exactly. If by " 'em," we're speaking of delegates at the Republican National Convention.

I'm always getting asked that question. It's a burden I've learned to live with.

And speaking of large objects, this big, mechanical spider lurched out of the wall in an enclosed area about life in the ground. It made me jump. I think it must be activated by motion sensors.

A metallic frog beetle

A beautiful butterfly in the butterfly room. There were several of this kind, with pink on the wings. It took me a while to find one that would sit still for a while, though.

In addition to the live insects and other invertebrates, the museum featured some gorgeous display cases filled with pinned-up dead bugs. Here are three of my favorites. I think the middle one contains only moths, even though some of them are as pretty as butterflies.

Banana slugs are the second-largest slug in the world.

And how's this for a segue? ...

A dwarf banana plant blooming in W&M's bathroom

A flower on a nondwarf banana tree in the French Quarter

Here it is again (or most of it, at least) from a different angle, with some bananas to give you an idea of its size.

And now, some scenes from the farmers market:

Cute and fuzzy author Ian McNulty was autographing his book A Season of Night: New Orleans Life After Katrina. I may pick it up, though I didn't that day at the market.

And speaking of cute and fuzzy, here are W&M classing up the joint at Meauxbar Bistro. If I remember correctly, Mauricio had made the breast-cupping motion unprovoked, but I asked them both to do it for the photo.

A Shortened Visit to New Orleans, Part III

On Saturday morning, starting when I got back from the bars, I checked the Continental Web site every so often to make sure my flight was still scheduled to depart at 2:50. And it kept saying the status was "On Time." I was still a little nervous, though, about the prospect of getting to the airport and finding out that it had been canceled.

And of course, I was feeling anxious for Will and Mauricio. I didn't want them to have to go through the days of worrying about their home and the hardship of evacuating. And I especially didn't want them to have to start over again on their house. As I left, the prospects weren't good for the city. Gustav was predicted to hit land somewhere near New Orleans as a Category 4 storm.

When I first got up on Saturday morning, I had some coffee, packed, printed out my boarding pass, and helped W&M do a couple of things around the house to get ready for the storm. Then we went to breakfast at the Cake Café & Bakery, where we ran into Joshua, a handsome and friendly go-go boy who's a regular at the Corner Pocket. If I'd known someone who looked like him was going to be there, I might have gone with the fellows to the CP the night before. Ha cha!

Then W&M drove me to the airport. At two different intersections on the way out of the city, we saw a wig and a chunky-heeled shoe. Will said you could create a whole drag outfit just from what you find in the middle of the road. Hah!

We saw Meauxbar Bistro being boarded up and a good many National Guard vehicles driving around. That was a relief to Will, who said he thought he was as afraid of looters as he was of the storm. We also saw a hooker walking down Airline Highway, which Will said is where Jimmy Swaggart found his whores.

After I said my good-byes to W&M at the airport, I looked up at the TV with the flight information and saw a flight to Newark marked as cancelled. My heart sank until I saw it was the one after mine. The 2:50 was still listed as being on time. Phew!

After a delay in boarding and a further delay while seated on the plane, we finally took off at about 4. I've never been so happy to get off the ground in my life.

I kept in contact with Bob, who said he'd make a late dinner of beef shish kebabs for me. And it was late: We ate at about 11:20. I had had to wait about a half an hour for the next NJ Transit train to arrive at the Newark Airport stop, and it had taken a while for a 2 or 3 train to show up at the Penn Station subway stop.

I talked to Will after I landed, and he told me that he and Mauricio had decided to go to Jacksonville, Florida, with their friends Chris and Lewis to try to make a little bit of a "hurrication" out of the experience. Will sent me an e-mail on Sunday night saying that Lewis, who's a pastry chef at Arnaud's, had made a fantastic dinner for Mauricio's birthday: "grilled salmon, veggies, pasta puttanesca, and a homemade peach tart with filo, caramel, and ice cream."

Thankfully, Gustav was only a Category 2 storm when it came ashore west of the city. Yesterday, Will told me that someone had told him the house was fine but tonight he said he heard that at least one shutter blew away and several panes of glass were broken. At this point, he's mostly bored. I'll keep you updated on W&M's return to NOLA.

A Shortened Visit to New Orleans, Part II

Friday was all about the Country Club. I always have a good time there. I arrived, via Will's bike, about 10:30 and claimed a primo chaise lounge in the shade of a palm tree. Since there were so few people there, I lay down in a second chair in the sun until it started getting more crowded and I'd had my share of purposeful tanning.

I spent the rest of the day jumping from the pool to the hot tub to the shower to the shade, applying sunscreen liberally and being careful not to get too much sun, especially in places that don't usually see it. ;-) And for lunch, I had a nice flatbread pizza, which Will had recommended, with fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, and, unfortunately, garlic. And I drank a couple of refreshing frozen passion fruit daiquiris, which came in non-environmentally-friendly-but-fun plastic buckets.

I caught up with supersexy Dirk from Minneapolis, whom I'd first met at the Country Club two years ago. He needled me about being chicken for having changed my flight to Saturday and claimed forecasters had no idea where the storm was really going yet. I told him to shut the fuck up and get back to licking my parts.*

My palm-chair seat was next to ones settled in by Rick and Dwight, two fellows from Tennessee who'd driven down for Southern Decadence. I also met a nice guy named Maurice who told me about his experience fleeing Hurricane Camille back in 1969. He said people were complacent as Camille approached because they'd already had to evacuate twice that summer. He said "we" (maybe he and his partner, whom I met, or some other, unknown person) fled in a compact car with a rag top after they noticed the patio furniture had blown away. Enough wind-driven salt water got into their car to kill the radio, and Maurice had to promise his traveling companion that taking back roads through the woods was preferable to being stuck in traffic on major highways.**

After I'd had enough fun for the day, I rode back to Tremé. Both the ride to the Country Club and to the Insectarium had been pretty easy. Take St. Philip into the French Quarter. Then turn left onto Chartres for the Country Club and take that to Louisa. Or turn right onto Decatur for the Insectarium and take that to Canal.

For dinner Friday night, W&M and I went to Meauxbar Bistro, where I'd had a memorable meal last year. The food was just as good this year, though I agreed with Will that it was odd for Meauxbar to have already switched to its fall menu. The menu wasn't completely new for the new season, but it seemed a little early to be featuring some made-for-fall dishes.

To start, we all got French 75 cocktails. I had the Roasted Beet Salad with Pear, Toasted Pecans, Red Onion, and Crumbled Goat Cheese for the first course. W&M split—and I tried of forkful of—a frisee salad dressed with a sugar cane vinaigrette. Both salads were delicious. For my entree, I got the Spaghetti Bolognese with Red Wine, Bacon Lardons, Beef, and Pork. Like my day at the Country Club, it was satisfyingly meaty. Heh heh.

We skipped dessert because one of W&M's neighbors had dropped off a chocolate chip cheesecake for Mauricio's birthday. I'm usually not one to get excited about cheesecake, but my mouth is still watering at the thought of this one even today. It had a chocolate chip cookie base, and it was super.

After we changed from our dinner clothes to our bar-hopping clothes (which are 75% sluttier), we went to the French Quarter to, duh, bar hop. We started at the 700 Club, which I found to be all sorts of fun on this second visit. There was a nice mix of people, including a group of boisterous hairy guys, and the music was terrific. When I got back home to Brooklyn, I bought a few songs on iTunes I'd heard at the club: blast from the past "Rock the Boat" by Hues Corporation, which I remembering hearing on the radio while at the beach in Ocean City, New Jersey, as a kid; "I'm Really Hot" by Missy Elliott, which I would have gotten the video for had it been available; "How Many Licks?" by Lil' Kim featuring Sisqo, which I bought the video for without realizing it was the stupid "clean" version (The word thighs is erased! Sigh.); and "Wind It Up" by Gwen Stefani, whom Will described as one of the most underrated divas.

I got to meet a bunch of Will and Mauricio's local friends at the 700 Club. After a while, W&M and their entourage moved on to the Corner Pocket, which generally features young, skinny, and hairless go-go boys. That's not usually my type, so I stayed at the 700 Club for a while longer before wandering around the Quarter a little.

In the entryway to Cafe Lafitte, I ran into a young otter who'd chewed on my nipples at the Country Club like they were made of rawhide and he was a schnauzer. He said that he'd left a bag of his stuff in the hotel room of a bunch of guys he'd been hanging out with at the Country Club, and now he couldn't remember where they were staying, so he was hoping to spot them. He said someone had told him he'd seen them at a certain bar, but he was waiting until that place was no longer charging a cover to get in. If I'd been in a more giving mood, I would have given him 5 bucks and told him to go find them already, but I wasn't. My nipples still hurt a little!

At Good Friends, I got to second base with Steve and Stewart, two sexy longtime friends from California who were hoping to be able to catch a flight to Denver on standby the next day. Then I took a cab home to W&M's place, in anticipation of my own flight out the next afternoon.

*That part of the conversation may not have actually taken place.

**In a related conversation, Will told me that he and Mauricio kept sane while stuck in traffic fleeing Katrina by singing Whitney Houston tunes with made-up lyrics since they didn't know all of the words.

A Shortened Visit to New Orleans

I flew to New Orleans on Wednesday for Southern Decadence. I stayed with my buddies Will and Mauricio at their beautiful but still-in-need-of-work-post-Katrina home in the Tremé neighborhood, about a dozen blocks from the French Quarter. I bet you can see where this story is headed.

As regular readers of Hawleyblog may recall, I've been friends with Will since SD 2006,* when we hit it off at a pre-parade party. He lent me a hand with my chocolaty and nutty brownie costume, and we've been friends—and he's been calling me "Brownie"—ever since. 

Katrina took off a good deal of the roof and damaged two exterior walls at the back of W&M's house. They'd been renting an apartment on the edge of the French Quarter while a neighbor stayed in the upstairs of their house. They moved back into their home in October 2007.

Will picked me up at the airport and then gave me a tour of their house. He had thoughtfully put out lots of reading material for me in the guest bedroom. (To read the "Generalissimo Nagin" article, click here.) On top of a tall dresser, he'd placed the fans** that we carried in last year's parade.

For dinner Wednesday night, we went to Lüke, a restaurant I'd read about in this article in the July issue of Food & Wine magazine. I tried a sip of Will's French 75 cocktail, which consists of cognac, lemon juice, and champagne. It was delicious. W&M both prefer red to white wine (as do I), so we shared a bottle of 2005 Louis Jadot Bourgogne Pinot Noir with our dinners.

I started with the Salad Lüke: bibb lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, and beets in a buttermilk dressing. For my entrée, I got Lousiana Pan-Fried Redfish Amandine. The waiter said it came with only haricot vert, so I got a side dish of spätzle. The redfish actually came with potatoes and carrots, too, so I didn't really need the spätzle, but they were good. And the fish was delicious, as was my peach cobbler for dessert.

On Thursday, I worked on my blog in the morning and then rode Will's bike to the Audubon Insectarium. It was fun—and educational. And I'll now pass some of that larnin' on to you!

I learned that insects represent more than 75 percent of known animal species. And as you may be able to read in the photo at left, the total weight of insects on the Earth is 50 times that of the humans.

I also learned that there's one species of leafcutter ant that's native to Louisiana and Texas. (I had thought they were only in South America.) Soldier leafcutter ants, which defend the colony, have mandibles that are sharp enough to cut leather. I'm pretty sure the display about the ants at the Insectarium said that leafcutter ants are the only known animals other than humans that grow their own food. But this Wikipedia article says ambrosia beetles and termites also purposefully grow fungus to eat.

Ooh, and I also found out that what we here in the U.S. call the German cockroach is known as the Russian roach in Germany and the Polish roach in Russia. Hah! It most likely arrived in Europe from Southeast Asia.

I'll post many more pix from the Insectarium in an all-photo post later on.

Before I hopped back on the bike, I called Will to let him know I was headed back to the house. He said he had more work to do for his gardening clients than he'd anticipated, so I needn't hurry back. We were going to go to a small farmers market not far from his home that afternoon.

When I got back to the house, I read a post about Southern Decadence on Joe. My. God. "Numerous JMG readers have reported that their hotels are telling them that an evacuation of New Orleans may begin long before Gustav's landfall is known," he wrote. "You can still get there, but you may end up getting evacuated far from the city and out of reach of your return flight. Things look slightly more dire than they did yesterday." I read the comments, and they, too, gave me the distinct impression I needed to arrange to get out of NOLA before Tuesday, the day I was scheduled to fly home.

I called Expedia, whose customer service rep told me to call Continental directly since I'd already taken the first part of my round trip. The woman from Continental I spoke with couldn't have been nicer, though she initially had bad news. I'd asked about flights out to Newark both the next day (I was perhaps panicking a little) and Saturday. There were two seats available the next day, but there'd be an $800-plus charge for changing my flight to a day so far in advance of my scheduled departure date. She then initially told me I could expect the same thing for Saturday flights, but once she got deeper into the process, she said, No, actually it would be only a $150 charge. She had two flights available: one early in the morning about 6-ish and a 2:50 p.m. one. I gratefully snagged a seat on the later one since I didn't want to have to get up so early or make Will get up so early to haul me to the airport.

I've been wondering what I would have done if the $800 additional charge had also applied to the Saturday flights. Would I have taken a wait-and-see attitude in the hope that the hurricane would have changed course the next day or that I'd be able to get a ticket at a more-reasonable cost, assuming there were still seats available? I'm generally not a wait-and-see kind of guy, but the exorbitant price hike might have given me enough pause that I would have put off my decision by a day. And it might have cost me my escape route. So I'm very glad it didn't come to that.

When Will got home, I told him what I'd done, and he was understanding. After he washed up, we went to the market, which he'd warned me in advance was pretty small, so I shouldn't get too excited about it.

ARROHK,*** I loooove farmers markets. This one was, indeed, somewhat small: only about 15 one-table stands. We headed first to the seafood stand to get some lump crab meat. Days before, Will had suggested making crab cakes while I was down, and I told him I'd be up for that because I'd enjoyed crab cakes before even though I'm not a fan of shellfish in general. (Above are some truly jumbo shrimp that were on display at the same stand.)

We also bought a couple of tomatoes and, from a rather talkative woman, a container of cheese grits. The Alabama peaches looked wonderful, but Will already had some peaches in the fridge that we had talked about making a crisp with, though we quite understandably never got around to doing that.

We then went to a nearby wine store and tried a flight of wines—two whites, a rosé, and a red—none of which were must-buys. I instead bought a bottle of the 2005 Trapiche Broquel Malbec (Will is a big fan of malbecs, too) to have with dinner, and that turned out to have been a good choice, though a white would have been a more "correct" choice, of course.

Next, we went to the supermarket to get some crackers that would be broken up to serve as a base to hold the crab cakes together. The store was busy, and people were stocking up for and talking about the coming storm.

Our homemade dinner turned out to be fantastic, and Will commented on the fact that I was gladly eating a meal that contained both cheese and shellfish! I really enjoyed the broiled crab cakes, which Will had spiced with dried mustard and Old Bay Seasoning. The grits were also delicious (we'd tried a sample at the market, so we knew they would be good), and we had the tomatoes on the side, with some basil from the garden and a drizzle of olive oil. For dessert, we had a nice flan that Will had made before I arrived.

Will was too tired to go out that night, so Mauricio drove the two of us into the Quarter, and we first hit Good Friends, at my request. After a while, we split up, and I hung out mostly at Cafe Lafitte in Exile. Mauricio had said he'd be heading to the newest bar in the Quarter, the 700 Club, which is owned by a former neighbor of W&M's. I ended up there eventually, but I left after a couple of minutes because the bartender was ignoring me and the crowd was mostly a bunch of twinks. I took a cab home not long afterward.

*That was back when I wasn't very sophisticated about sizing and placing photographs on my stupid blog. Not that I'm incredibly sophisticated now. :-)

**Last year's SD post was sadly photoless because Ralph, my boyfriend for the weekend whom I'd met at my hotel's pool, said he'd e-mail me photos he took. After Decadence, I kept bugging him with e-mails, but he only sent me a handful, with the excuse that he was very busy at work, and I finally gave up. Since I was anticipating getting his photos, I got lazy during SD and didn't take that many photos with my iPhone or camera, and the ones I did weren't all that great. Sigh.

***As regular readers of Hawleyblog know.

San Francisco Photos, Part III

Here are the last of my favorite photos from the San Francisco trip.

I love the sign. And that girl's outfit. I'd like a shirt in the pattern of her skirt.

A display in Madonna Estate's shop

 

An alcove in Viansa Winery's storage room. If you climb these steps and go to your left, there are stairs leading to the tasting room.

The front of Viansa's property, near the parking area

A cluster of grapes at Viansa

Viansa's main building, shot from the side

A boar sculpture at Viansa

A duck sculpture commemorating Sam and Vicki Sebastiani's setting aside of 90 restored acres of wetlands on their property. (The name Viansa is derived from their first names.)

While we were at Viansa, a painting class was finishing up its work on capturing the phenomenal view.

One of my fellow tourists had some fantastic pecs. I thoughtfully took a picture of his torso while waiting for the Viansa tour to begin so I could share it with you, dear readers. At the Cline stop, this guy asked how much a barrel filled with wine weighed. Our guide said 480 pounds. I should have remarked to this guy that it was much too hot in Sonoma that day to wear even a T-shirt. And I should have suggested that we bench press a barrel to, you know, impress the ladies. (He was touring with two women, who seemed to be his girlfriend and her mother.) And then we'd do a chest bump to celebrate our pumped-up-ness. Boo yah!

A lovely pond at Cline Cellars' estate. If I understood the tour guide correctly, the Clines were the first to import carp to America, with the intention of raising them for food, so we should blame them for all of the carp in waterways throughout America.

Gorgeous flowers at Cline

Grapevines and trees at Cline

A beautiful rocky coastline view near Pigeon Point Lighthouse

An otter swims by at Monterey Bay Aquarium

And last but not least, the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog

San Francisco Photos, Part II

Some more of my favorite San Francisco photos, including roughly 80,000 pictures of jellyfish.

The interior of one of the F-line trolley cars. I didn't take a ride on one of the traditional-looking cable cars. I thought the F line cars were cuter, though, so I don't feel like I missed out on anything. :-) It's like, why would I lament having never done it with him when I've had him?*

This house in the Castro was covered in some kind of viney branches. And the fence was covered in what I presumed was grapevine.

A cartoon above Heather's desk

Another cartoon above Heather's desk. This one dates back to our time as municipal reporters at that crappy newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.

Some goofy magnets I bought in S.F. The only one that might not be readable is the second Jesus one. It says, "Stop Using Jesus As An Excuse For Being A Narrow-Minded Bigoted Asshole." Actually, I'm sure you could read that if you enlarged it. Do I have to do everything around here? :-)

Dykes on Bikes, in Sunday's parade

Giant bell jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Blue jellies

Mediterranean jellies, in closeup

Spotted jellies

Moon jellies

 

A crab in the kelp

Fishes amongst the kelp

A photo Bobby took of me, with (I believe) Alcatraz in the background

*In my mind. Only in my mind. Sigh.

San Francisco Photos

Here are some of my favorite photos from my San Francisco trip that I didn't use in earlier posts. It took me a little while to get these all developed. ;-)

Heather, George, and George's cat, Sabrina

Chinatown

An entrance to Buena Vista Park that I passed on my walk to Haight-Ashbury

The Orpheum Theatre, now home to The Drowsy Chaperone

The Pacific Ocean, shot from the bus on the way to Monterey

Daylilies Siberian irises in a parking lot in Sonoma

Sea lions on the waterfront in San Francisco

The Transamerica Pyramid

Redwoods in a park next to the Transamerica Pyramid

The F line trolley stop in the Castro

Coit Tower

San Francisco Pride, Part IV

I went on the wine country bus tour by myself because Heather decided she'd rather, um, sleep. Because she had a lot of stories to write in the near future, and she wanted to rest up. When I got back, I teased her that, besides me, it had turned out to be an all-butch-lesbian group on the tour. And they had asked me where Heather was. :-) I also teased her that I had been counting on her to help dissuade me from making rash wine purchases while buzzed.

I did make some wine purchases at the first stop, Madonna Estate, on the Napa side of the Carneros region, but I don't think it was a rash decision. I enjoyed the Madonna wines I tried, and they're available only from the winery itself. And I admired Madonna's traditional-farming methods: They use no pesticides or man-made fertilizers, and they don't irrigate either. The tour guide said Madonna relies on a thick layer of clay just below the topsoil to provide the moisture the vines need during long periods without rain. The resulting grape clusters are smaller, but the winery believes its methods result in more-concentrated flavors.

Madonna also offered a discount for people on the tour plus free shipping. So I made like a good tourist and shopped! shopped! shopped! I bought a half case consisting of the chardonnay, pinot noir, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, reserve cabernet, and riesling. Dad, Jean, and Granny can try the riesling with me the next time I visit South Jersey or they come up here. The reserve cabernet was $50, which is $30 more than I usually like to spend on a bottle of wine for myself. But I was on vacation, so what the hell.

The next stop on the tour was the town of Sonoma. I intended to get lunch at an Italian restaurant that bus driver Bill had recommended, but I couldn't find it. I was pretty sure I went down the right street, the one he drove the bus in on, but I never spotted it. I ended up eating at, sigh, a Whole Foods store in a shopping center on the edge of town after sitting down in and then leaving a diner that had a terrible selection of lunch offerings. It was the kind of place that listed a "diet" meal consisting of a hamburger patty plus cottage cheese and a salad. By the time I walked over to the Whole Foods, I just wanted to get something fast and get back to walking around the town. I had some tasty cheese ravioli in an oniony tomato sauce that included smidges of wine and cream, with some grilled vegetables on the side.

I didn't bother visiting any of the wine shops in town because I knew I had two more winery stops ahead of me, and I didn't want to get burned out on the vino. Or, well, trashed. I bought some delicious orange, mint, and blackberry truffles at Wine Country Chocolates instead.

The next stop was Sonoma's Viansa Winery, which specializes in  wines from traditional Italian grape varieties. I enjoyed the wines I tried there, including the strawberry-filled 2006 "Pacomio" Aleatico I ordered at the wine bar and the spicy 2006 "Farneta" Primitivo we were able to try for free. And the grounds and views of the estate were gorgeous. I'll include several more photographs from Viansa in my photo-only San Francisco post(s).

The last stop on the tour was Cline Cellars, which is probably most well known for its zinfandels. I wrote about the 2003 Cline Ancient Vine Carignane here. We were able to try five wines for free outside under the trees and even more inside the tasting room. I enjoyed hearing about Cline's history and its production methods. The tour guide, who's shown at left pouring the wine samples, said Cline powers its entire operation using solar panels and started investing in solar technology 40 years ago. (It also grows its grapes organically.) The tour guide said the company expects its solar infrastructure to have paid for itself in another two years; it's been selling power back to Pacific Gas & Electric for a while now.

Bus driver Bill took a different route back to San Francisco, one that went over the Golden Gate Bridge. I did some yoga in Heather's room, the only deliberate exercise of my entire trip, though walking up and down the city's hills was no picnic. Then I treated George to dinner at Blue; Heather, who'd eaten earlier, joined us for tea. I had a terrific Chicken Pot Pie after a satisfying salad of mixed greens and, for once, was too full for dessert.

The next morning, Heather and George dropped me off at the airport, and I somewhat sadly said goodbye to them and to a great city that I'll definitely return to again soon.

San Francisco Pride, Part III

On Sunday morning, Heather and I took the Muni to the Civic Center stop for the Pride Parade. I took this picture of Heather looking all prideful, with City Hall in the background.

We splurged on $35 passes for seating in a special area. I don't think we would have been able to see much otherwise.

Here's a photo of Cindy Lauper, one of several celebrity grand marshals. That morning, I'd gotten breakfast at Orphan Andy's, and a guy sitting on the stool next to me said that Charo was too ill to attend; however, no fewer than five Charo impersonators would be in the parade instead. Aren't our people great? :-) There was much speculation at the diner as to how old Charo was. Being a good nerdlinger, I was able to look her up on IMDb on my iPhone and let everyone know she was 67. I would have guessed 63 or 64.

Heather said it was a great parade to attend given the historic marriage decision that had just come down. We were able to applaud Mayor Gavin Newsom, at right, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who were both among the many city and state officials who contributed to that great victory for civil rights. The guy in the foreground at right handed out beads to everyone around him, including Heather and me, and he threw confetti on some of the marchers. He was shooting a confetti gun in this picture.

Some of the revelers had marriage-related costumes on or carried signs saying how many years they'd been together and how many days they'd been married. It was really quite moving and heartwarming.

And speaking of moving, something moved in my pants when a bunch of guys from Latin American countries marched down the parade route carrying their birth nation's flag and I caught sight of the adorable guy from Bolivia who was carrying an almost-as-cute dog. I was too busy flirting with him to get his picture. He so wanted me. I could tell. I can just tell these things. :-)

Heather treated me to lunch at Mijita in the Ferry Building. Riding into work on the train yesterday, I read in the July issue of Food & Wine that Mijita is owned by Traci Des Jardins, an incredibly accomplished lesbian chef who's most famous for her restaurant Jardinière. She was named an F&W Best New Chef in 1995. I really enjoyed Mijita's fish tacos; I wasn't crazy about my pineapple margarita.

On Heather's side of the long dining table, at the other end of the bench seat, was a woman I knew I'd worked with at my first job out of college, at Dow Jones. I couldn't remember her name, but I figured she had to be one of the three people I trained in that job. When Heather and I got up to leave, I asked this woman whether she used to work at DJ, and she said she had until she'd gotten laid off, I believe, last fall. We reintroduced ourselves, and she said that she was living out in California now and that she and her friends had also come from the parade. It's a small gay world after all. She asked me what I was doing, and she said she had applied for a position in my company's S.F. office. I hope you get the job, Shannon!

Walking along the Embarcadero got me thinking of Leather Tuscadero from Happy Days. I betcha Leather and her backup singers, the Suedes, were intimately familiar with each other's material, if you know what I mean. *raises and lowers eyebrows a few times* I told Heather that I pictured Leather and the Suedes in a triad relationship. Maybe living in San Francisco or the desert Southwest. I pondered whether Suzi Quatro, who played Leather, would show up as an out lesbian on IMDb. It turns out that she's twice married, the first time to the guitarist in her real-life band, and is still married to her second husband. Oh, well. I never claimed my gaydar was 100% accurate.

On Sunday night, George treated Heather and me to dinner at Mecca, which was where G&H had their first date. It's come under new ownership since then and is now emphasizing its gorgeous bar. While our table was getting readied, we had drinks at the bar. They didn't have the 2006 Crios de Susana Balbo Rosé of Malbec that was named in their wine list, so I got the 2006 Wild Rock Pinot Noir instead. I dug it. And I really dug the gorgeous Beet Salad with Orange Pistachio Vinaigrette I had for my appetizer. I would post a picture of it, but the stupid camera on my iPhone stopped working. (It still acts like it's taking the picture—it makes the little clicking sound and shows the closing-shutter image—but when you go to look at the photo you just took, there's an empty square there instead. Sigh. I'll have to take it to the Apple Store near work so they can tell me my warranty is up and it'll cost me a lot to get it fixed. I'm looking forward to that.) I liked my hanger steak entree OK, but it paled next to that salad.

G&H had mentioned that Eros was right near Mecca. (And as George had said earlier during my stay, in pointing out how San Francisco was different from other cities, "there's a sex club across the street from Safeway.") I had been thinking of going to Blow Buddies that night because Dan and Paul had said I should go there while I was in San Francisco. They'd had quite a good time there. I think they'd mentioned a Yahtzee tournament or something like that. ;-) Since I was literally about two doors away from Eros, I went there instead of making the many-block trek to BB. I met an attractive cubbish guy and, yadda yadda yadda, I was home in bed pretty early so I could get a good night's sleep before the next day's wine country bus tour.