Haight Ashbury (Continued from Golden Gate Park)

Immediately after exiting the east side of Golden Gate Park, I found myself surrounded by homeless people again. It felt just like exiting the subway station on Mission Street, except these bums were actually standing and discussing things instead of screaming random shit into the air. I passed this groups as quickly as possible and walked down Haight street. There were more bums as I walked along and another type of entity I couldn't quite pin, they seamed like backpackers, they looked like they probably slept on the street, but they were more organized and less deranged and smelly. As I took a photo of one of the land marks, one of these walked up to me and demanded to see the photo I'd taken, she then went onto carefully explain that she didn't tolerate people taking photos of her and that I could take the picture again without her in it. I wasn't quite sure what to think about this but my best guess was that this chick was on the run for murder or something so I gladly deleted the photo while she watched.

I'd been walking now for approximately 4 miles and was in desperate need of beer if I was going to survive any longer so I went into Trax Bar and grabbed myself a seat. The bar tender her was odd to say the least, his head seamed to wave back and forth while we spoke and he seamed to stare in random directions instead of making eye contact during out conversation. As a trailer for the new Transformers film played on the tv behind me, he went into a long tangent about how he couldn't wait for this film to come out and then reached into a plastic bag and pulled out a cookie. "Unfortunately this doesn't have any weed in it but here you go" he explained as he place the cookie on a napkin in front of me. After one bite of this thing fear overtook me as I began to wonder what might be in it instead of weed, I wrapped the cookie in the napkin and threw it into the nearest trash-bin as I exited.

outside Trax Bar

Mysterious cookie at Trax Bar

corner of Haight and Ashbury

other corner

random smoke shop

Now that I could think again I quickly became aware of my next objective, food. Magnolia Gastro Pub and Brewery seamed like it would be a good fit for my taste. This place was fairly packed and I was lucky to get a seat at the bar. I ordered myself their custom brewed Cole Porter and some fish and chips, my heart sank when the people next to me had a tray of sample sized beers delivered to them. This is what I should have ordered, but at this point I had miles more to walk so I had to restrain myself from ordering this in addition to the porter I already had. The porter was more on the bitter side, but went well with the fish and chips which I'd smothered with malt vinegar.

Magnolia Gastro Pub and Brewery

beer selection

porter

fish and chips

Marlowe @ SoMa

I've noticed this place Marlowe a couple of times walking around SoMa, so I decided to pop in the other day and see what it was all about. Marlowe is kind of  a hole in the wall located across the street from the train station, however it offers a compact bar area with a nice selection of beer and wine. Due to my lack of ability to properly schedule my daily activities, it was already about 3pm when I got here and I still hadn't eaten a thing. Unfortunately I'd arrived too late to eat off of the normal lunch menu so my choices were limited, I settled for the Marlowe burger and waited as patiently as a starving person can. The burger was slightly compact and didn't seem very special to me, which it should have considering how starving I was.

Even though I wasn't impressed with my first experience, the lunch menu still drew my interest. I decided to go back during lunch hours and give this place another shot. The pork belly sandwich was a a bit spicy compared to most pork belly preparations I've had, but this made it unique and it turned out to be a nice improvement over the burger.

Golden Gate Park

As I've looked over the maps of San Francisco on Google, more and more frequently a large green rectangle has been screaming to get my attention. Zeroing in on this area I found a brewery on the west side of it and decided I could begin my conquest from this point. The Beach Chalet as it's known, is located on PCH and can be spotted next to a large windmill. Inside you'll find a lot of activity, a fairly normal menu for San Fran and a selection of  Beers brewed on the spot. I tried the Dark Side Foreign Extra Stout and was satisfied with a sweet malty flavor with a bitter finish, which hopefully would give me enough energy to make this journey. 

East of the brewery I found a main road to travel along and many trails going out into the wilderness along side. I tried to take as many of these side trails as possible in order to see what this place was all about, however these were pretty limited, walk more than 10 minutes in either direction from this road and you hit civilization again.

After about a mile or so of walking I discovered a fenced off area housing a family of buffalo. There wasn't really much action in this cage, just the occasional sip of water or bite of grass. However I wish I had started my hike at this location and skipped the first mile.

Venturing on from the buffalo cage I passed a lake being used as a race course for remote control watercraft, several grassy open areas surrounded by trees, a small waterfall which probably ran from a sewage line and a native of this area smoking some pot on the sidewalk in plain view of everyone around.

Three miles into my hike I came across a Japanese Tea Garden. Being a non-resident I had to pay 8 dollars to get into this park inside a park, but after walking this long I figured this might be my last chance to get some worth out of this hike. Inside I found a garden cut to match the cartoon look of an early 90s Nintendo game, although anyone can cut up plants to look a certain shape, this artistically carved environment provided some relief from the failed natural look of the area outside.

From here I continued through the last leg of my journey through this artificial landscape, where I witnessed a standoff between a dog visiting the park with its owner and an innocent squirrel trying to live its life here in peace.