Almost two weeks ago now, wow, I was at brunch in Noe Valley. The server was wearing this gorgeous elephant pendant on a chain, and I couldn't stop staring. I really liked it. And so I told her.
She leaned over and said under her breath, "I got it at Walgreen's." I laughed because the last time I was there a different server was wearing a thin, worn-looking Def Leppard sweatshirt hanging off of boney, inked shoulders. "How long have you had that thing?," my partner asked. She laughed and said she recently got it at H&M. We were shocked. It looked a million years old.
I told the woman wearing the elephant necklace about the H&M sweatshirt after she revealed her drugstore jewlery purchase. She fingered the animal on her chest. "Is this really something you would like and wear?" Totally, I told her.
She disappeared for a minute or two and came back with one just like it. She handed it to me. "Here," she said. "I said the next person who remarked upon the necklace would get one, so here you are."
I am wearing it for the first time today. It feels like good things to come.
I was going to write about how I went in for a manicure on Saturday and happened upon a crime scene. About how two, maybe more, Hell's Angels gang members jumped a man while he was getting a pedicure. One of them had a gun.
But that was Saturday. The details are fuzzy. The bite of the story is all toothless now and soggy.
Ruined.
As anyone who has the misfortune of following me on Instagram is accutely aware, I am participating in Fitnessista's Summer Shape-up fun time extravaganza. I've been reading Gina's Fitnessista blog for YEARS. It's the only "fitblog" that I read consistently. Thumbs up for Gina.
Right. So: Summer Shape-up. I'm going to do this thing. I've been carrying around too much extra weight for too long, but more than that I am ready to FINALLY--now that I'm 35, and it's high time--make exercise something I do. Like, for real. Regularly. And not just something I do, but something I enjoy, because I do like it...later. I mean, I'm dreading tomorrow's circuit training with the intensity of 400 fires, but I know that I'll feel all tingly in my body and happy in the brains afterward. And that I'll have an extra swish in my step when I walk home because that happens when I work out. I feel jaunty and shit.
I started back into exercising regularly with the boyfriend with whom I split up (*sniff*), but it was mostly long city hikes and quick jogs and yoga. All of which was perfect precursor to this, which is--at least for me--pretty strenuous shit. (There was a move called the banana that she prescribes in which you V up in a crunch and then roll over onto your stomach and lift your arms and legs and then roll back over onto your back and then repeat this 20 times. Hahahaha, yeah, no. I tried one, and my limbs were so splayed that I feared I would kick the poor woman planking next to me. Or end up in the ER. Or both.)
The Summer Shape-up fun time extravaganza is not about losing weight, but I am charting what I eat and trying to stay under a low but totally doable number of calories. This is where my real test of discipline lies. So far, so good, but it's only Day 2. And this is a 4 week affair. If I can abstain from a burrito for a month I want some kind of prize. A write-up in the Chronicle. And then a burrito.
So, yeah. Summer Shape-up. That's what's up.
To say I had a shitty weekend last weekend is really underselling it. And Friday is always the toughest day for me at the office job in terms of workload. Add to those things a little dash of payday, and I knew it had to be done: I talked my girlfriends out of yoga and into the wine bar.
It was not a hard sell.
What happened next is something that never happens: I went to the Marina. On purpose.
For those unfamiliar with the San Francisco neighborhood, here's a brief primer: The Marina is a gorgeous part of town that is clean and smells nice and not at all like pee like so much of the rest of the City, but it is also filled with very rich young people who migrated north after graduating from Stanford. Collars do get popped. Here, I'll just tell you the story my friend Sarah told me as we were making our way to our Marina wine bar destination:
Once Sarah and her boyfriend went to a store called Shoes and Feet in the Marina so Sarah could get shoes appropriate for waiting tables. Her boyfriend was wearing a brown zip up fleece shirt. Out of no where a man accosted him. "Is that the new Patagonia shirt? In chocolate brown? Because I was going to order it online but they changed the name of the brown, and I wanted to make sure it was the right brown."
So, yeah. That's the Marina. I never go there because it is far away from where I live or work, and so I always assumed the shade thrown at those who live in the Marina was overdone and unnecessary. Are Marina guys really awful bros and are their female counterparts really that skinny? (Here's another tell: There is a restaurant in the hipster-drenched Mission District that sells tacos. They also have a "Marina Girl Salad." I'm surprised it has cheese.) All things told, could the Marina really be that bad?
It's that bad!
We went to the Marina because a friend of Sarah's works at a wine bar there. It was a brilliant move, because he greeted us with sparkling rose and truffle popcorn. Did this man get some kind of cheat sheet prior to my arrival? Those are all the things I love! I also loved the outdoor area with the fire pit and the lovely weather, but then there were the people.
These people looked like they were kidding. A woman was wearing a seersucker short suit. Let me say that again: A woman was wearing a seersucker short suit. Not one, but TWO unironically popped collars were spotted. It was such a sight to behold.
My friend Leo joined us after we'd staked out a little corner by the fire. I could see his wide eyes as he entered the place. "Where are we?," he whispered upon arriving, and we nodded knowingly.
During the course of our wine consumption the topic of the Power Shower came up: the cold beer in the hot shower thing. Everyone's done it--after a sweaty run or a long bike ride or when miserably hungover. At least I thought! But Leo has never drank a beer in the shower. Not only that, but he'd never even heard of such a thing. My mind was blown.
I was two glasses in when I leaned over to the butter blonde with immaculate highlights and said, "Have you ever drank a beer in the shower?"
This woman had no idea what to do with that question. She looked at me as if I'd slapped her.
"I'm gluten sensitive." That is what she said.
Leo recoiled in horror. "Don't try to make friends," he mouthed. And so I wisely went back to my white wine and cheese plate and stopped pestering the locals with low-class questions.
Got my passport stamped. Not sure when I'll travel back to the Marina, but if I do I may try to rustle up a seersucker short suit.
