Officially the first day of the ASLA conference, I went on two tours yesterday. The first was an exploration of Yerba Buena Gardens and how it came to fruition over several decades and dedication by the city, several developers, and various city stakeholders. It’s a pretty cool amalgamation of public and private spaces, including a great lawn, performance space, a memorial waterfall to Martin Luther King, Jr., a kid’s play area, bowling alley and ice rink.

Shawna and Grammy spent the morning shopping at the SF Centre, and along Market Street. We met to eat lunch (well, they already ate b/c I was running late) at the Metreon. My lunch was a bust: I decided on a chain noodle joint because everywhere else had a wait, and chose poorly. I got the “Lahksa Luck,” which was an Indonesian/Thai themed, coconut milk based soup with rice noodles, 1 quail egg, 5 shrimp and 4 cubes of fried tofu. I swear it sounded good on the menu! In actuality, it was not seasoned very well at all. After Bad Lunch, we rode the carousel a couple of times at Yerba Buena. Shawna had to drag a crying and screaming Grammy back to the hotel, and I went on a second tour.

My second tour was to Treasure Island, a man-made island that was created for the SF expo celebrating the completion of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, but was taken over as a naval base during the second World War. It is currently being redesigned as a sustainable development–the core of which is absolutely interesting–but won’t actually be constructed for another 10 or so years. We went on a bus tour–got out momentarily at Yerba Buena Island to get some great views of the bay–and then spent about 10 minutes on Treasure Island itself, which had an eerie ghost town feeling to it. Leftover statues from the expo in the 20s, bad housing development, and a seemingly out-of-place yacht club made it pretty surreal.

I met them back at the hotel where we waited for the guys to get in from LA. We waited and waited and waited, until we finally decided to just walk up toward their hotel. It was quite a hike–we walked all the way from Folsom and 2nd to Sutter and Mason, to the Hotel Rex. They had just gotten there, so we spent time catching up, pooping, and refreshening the gays. Apparently they all swear by Secret for women as their deodorant of choice–they say it works the best and has a powder-fresh smell! All the while I was worried that Graem was going to crack, seeing as it was around 10:30 EST.

We finally decided to find food nearby. The lady at the front desk suggested Sear’s Fine Food as a “family friendly” and “inexpensive” restaurant. A couple of hours, two bottles of wine, escargot, Kobe beef and a $225 tab later–we decided that it was neither family oriented (Graem was very well behaved) nor inexpensive. But it was a great meal. Shawna had the kobe flank steak; I had a pan-fried salmon on cilantro rice with spinach; Alex had steak frites (ribeye); Matt the new gay (not newly gay, just new to us) had lambchops, and Dom had the filet mignon. We had three appetizers, one of which was comped because they messed up the order: escargot stuffed mushrooms; shiitake mushrooms in some kind of reduction; and Thai chicken wings. Shawna’s flank steak was very well seasoned, and crusted perfectly. My salmon was acceptable–it needed something to contrast the creaminess/subtlety of both the salmon and the cilantro rice. There was some achiote oil sprinkled on top, but I don’t think it really added anything to the dish. We had two bottles of a Napa cabernet sauvignon–and I felt like hell this morning!