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San Francisco: Castro, Mission

We woke up and took the bus to the Haight. I hadn't rode a bus since I lived in Pittsburgh, and, as always, it was full of suspicious characters. We grabbed breakfast at Kate's Kitchen, and walked around the neighborhood in an attempt to see what all the fuss was about. Most of the Victorian houses were impressive, but the area overall seemed a bit seedy.

We walked into a few stores, and then hit Amoeba Music for awhile. The place was overwhelming, and it was hard to think of things to look for. Orchid? Blood Brothers? Botch? Don Caballero? In terms of musical taste, I'm kind of "in between bands" lately, so I'm not really sure what type of stuff I want to buy next.

We walked up some large hills, then down the other side into the Castro. This is supposedly the gay part of town, but I somehow avoided conversion -- my heterosexuality was successfully defended against these activist lovers.

We then moved into the Mission District, where we found some interesting graffiti, mostly in a single long alley. It felt a bit unsafe walking through there, although it was broad daylight. A few homeless guys walked through and gave us strange looks. Amy was also very disturbed by some human feces that she spotted. Whatever. I asked her if she would have preferred them to just hold it in.

We took a l-o-n-g walk to Union Square. It was approaching rush hour, and Market St. seemed a bit shady. Lots of hustler types were circling the crowds like vultures. We stopped at a corner to look at Amy's street map. Some guy approached us and asked: "hey, do you mind if I ask you guys an honest question?". I reponded: "yeah...... we're kind of busy right now... trying to figure some things out. sorry." He gave me a very pissed off look and walked away. Probability that he wasn't going to ask for money: 0%. Plus, I hate it when people ask me if they can ask me something. You're already wasting my time, asshole -- at least have the courtesy to provide something other than metadata.