Castro Street

This is Thomson Jaffe, coming to you from North Carolina, with a report on my last day in San Francisco.

As Queen of the Gays, no trip to San Francisco would have been complete without a trip to Castro Street. I can't report on everything that happened there, but I can tell you about some of it. We actually started the night in the Mission District, which had snapstickers, obviously. 

We went to the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen for dinner because... an entire restaurant dedicated to grilled cheese? Yes, please. I actually found out about this restaurant on my own back when Mandy was talking about moving to San Francisco. I told her that she had to go and a few weeks ago, she passed it (their second location, not the one we actually went to) and apparently made some very poor driving choices to get there just so she could say that she went there for me. I got the Mac N Cheese Grilled Cheese because well, duh. Have you met me? That should surprise no one. I did shock Mandy by ordering a strawberry lemonade. I don't think she'd ever seen me order something besides water at a restaurant before.

After we'd filled our bellies with molten, golden lava, we walked through the Mission District to Bi-Rite Creamery. This place came to us not only courtesy of The List, but also my cousin Sarah, who gave me her own list. According to The List and Sarah, the flavor to get is the salted caramel, so we did. Yes, I got something besides a vanilla milkshake or chocolate/vanilla twist!!! Ok, so one of my scoops was chocolate, but it's the scoop on the bottom, so if you look at the picture to the left of your screen, you're seeing nothing but their most popular flavor and something I never would have dared to try, much less purchase, a year ago.

We enjoyed our ice cream outside in Dolores Park (another suggestion of Sarah's) and then we walked to Castro Street. Being the more historically inclined out of the two of us, I wanted to go to 575 Castro Street before we hit any clubs/bars. Mandy had no idea why I'd want to go there, so I had to give her (and now you) the quick history of Harvey Milk, the mayor of Castro Street. 

575 Castro Street was the location of Castro Camera, which was the camera shop that Milk ran and lived above. It's also the location that he ran his campaigns from -- ya know, the campaigns he won that made him the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California. Since then, he's been called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States." Today, 575 Castro Street is the home of a Human Rights Campaign store, which is pretty perfect if you ask me. Mandy and I probably would have bought some swag there is we weren't going out.

I'll describe our night after that as being the most memorable night that we don't remember and that is all you're going to hear about that.

I left yesterday morning to surprise Whitney for her birthday! I got lucky and was switched from my flight(s) that would have meant I didn't get to NC until 11:50 to a direct flight, scheduled to arrive at 9:06pm! I mystically got even luckier and on this "sold out flight," there was one empty seat that happened to be next to me! Our flight was delayed slightly but I still managed to make it to Pfeiffer in time to surprise the birthday girl before she turned 22. She was in shock! It was awesome.

We celebrated her birthday this morning by getting some brunch at Waffle House in between her classes and this afternoon, we're headed out to get our very first, matching tattoos! Happy birthday, Whitney!!! 

P.S. In the past 11 days, I have been in all four US time zones, gone from the east coast to the west coast and back again.