I left my pint in San Francisco

This past weekend I went to San Francisco and had the fortunate oppurutunity to watch the Phillies lose twice in a row. Now I was hesitant about seeing a sports game in San Francisco. I pictured fans at the ball park not being allowed to drink unless they brought their own bottle of wine from the Napa Valley with them to the game. Instead of Hot Dogs I imagined some sort of hippie subsitute, like Leaf Green Spincah Rolls on a stick. However, the most suprising thing about San Fran, other than getting a tan there, was that it was very friendly and very up to date in the world of Beer.

The first thing that shocked me was that on game day, bars were open at 8am. Since moving to the West Coast, I found sports cities to be...how should I say, pussyish? In Philly or in New York when it was game day, you could tell. People would be walking around rocking jerseys, tailgating, being obnoxious the whole shibang. This was something I had not yet seen in LA,Phoenix or San Diego. The Lakers are the number 1 team in the NBA right now and you would have no idea by looking at anyone on the streets. Well lets just say, San Fran held up.

My friends and I were on the prowl for a bar named Vesuvious which we heard opened at 8am. After walking for about 10 minutes we realized we were lost. Upon asking a 42 year old lady on how to get there, she informed us that we were nowhere near by, but that Fishermans Wharf had a bar that was open at 8am. How a random 42 year old lady knew this was beyond weird to me, but she pointed us in the right direction, and in no time at all we were tailgaiting in bars. The best part was fans were already starting stuff with my friends for rocking Phillies Jerseys. We were trash talking in a bar at 8:30am, for a game that was meaningless. Good times. After that we stumbled from bar to bar on our 2 mile trek to AT & T park. And we would find that more than one bar was open and ready for business.

It was only when I was about 2 bars in did I remember that San Fran has many good breweries nearby. Anchor Steam was the main one, but there was also Speakeasy ales, and then my favorite of them all; Bear Republic. All of these beers were served very fresh and with much dedication. When you are in a bar at 9am, the bartender doesn't really have to do much to keep you happy, so it was really nice to see the bartenders still watch the pour instead of just running the tap and walking away. I got the feeling that people appreciated beer there on the same level as wine, maybe the city got so bored of being wine connaisseurs that they redirected their attention to beer, as is evident with the recent uprising of breweries.

And the beer love goes beyond the sporting world. At night we went to a trendy spot in North Beach, and found that beer was very much alive there as well. While it seemed all the restaurants advertised Wine Wine Wine, there were some bars that were big into the beer and spirits. One I can't remember, but I think it was called Tonka. It was a neat Soda Inspired Bar and there was a good mixture of cocktails being made and beer being kicked out. Across the street from that was the Vesuvious we were seeking ealier. It had a great feel of just a socializing place where you could kick back with a drink and just chat. I gave San Franscico less credit than I thought, thinking it was going to be this prententious wine town, I found that its a lot more laid back, in a non hippy sense.

There is one thing I must warn you about San Franscisco though. When you get there you realize you can walk around the entire place since its built like a city in the east. Bar Crawling becomes a possibility, unlike in LA where you would always have to hop in a car afterwards, making it very hard to bar hop. Now, like all bar crawls, the walk back is always the harder part of the journey, normally because you tend being near to piss drunk. In San Fran, this is murder. If you are ever there, and you decide to bar crawl, just remember your route. Those pretty hills you walked down on the way to the bar, you will now have to walk up, and when you have been drinking since 9am, walking up the hills can easily be the hardest excercise you will end up doing in the year. So people with Beer guts, know that San Fran is open to your folly, but the gut doesn't help anything when you have to walk back to your hotel.

On a side note, I am taking a two week vacation and heading back to the Land of Beer. I'm going to be hitting up the pubs in the U.K, and then travelling to the holy land of ales, Belgium. So be on the lookout for the Perishing Thirts International Tour of Pours!(How lame was that?)