san francisco

San Fran Vacation – Sea Lions, Jails and Cable cars

Not sure if you have ever been around a large group of Sea Lions like this one in the San Fran bay sunning themselves, but not only are they a rowdy bunch (constantly biting and barking at each other) but they smell like a combination of dead fish and a cow lot. In fact a cow lot smells better.

We rode an open air cable car to the Tonga room, I can’t believe it made it up the hill after a busload of senior citizens jumped on with us.

Fagatron and I making our best Escape from Alcatraz faces, this is on our fairy ride from Sausalito to San Francisco.

San Fran vacation – Creepy Masonic Temple

This place was a trip. Our friend Jay who we stayed with in San Fran works in this old Masonic. They still rent out the halls and office space. The above picture is the ceiling of the concert hall / ballroom. They put on a lot of rock shows there.

The building also has a manual operated elevator in it. There is only two of them still in existence in San Fran. The elevator operator is Union and has his own little office by the elevator. You have to ring him. His only job is to operate the elevator.

This below picture is one of the party rooms, complete with creepy red velvet wallpaper and dark stained wainscotting. I know you are jealous Zed – what a perfect place to do a ZombieWalk party!

Back from Vacation

I would like to thank all my contributors for holding the fort down while I was gone on vacation. A small group of us went to visit a friend in San Francisco, it was good times and I will be posting pictures once I sort through them. I also will be telling you about the new musical sensation ‘Tittycorn’.

I was pretty much disconnected from the internets and TV while I was gone, BUT did get to see the SNL episode of Palin in a hotel room in Big Sur – so that was cool (she can’t dance).

While I was gone we noticed a great ‘cost of living’ myth that South Dakota likes to sell to it’s residents as an excuse to pay lower wages. We noticed that though apartments and housing are more expensive in San Francisco, other stuff is about the same price, like food, going out to eat, drinks, etc. And the public transportation system is amazing, and dirt cheap. There is approximately two different train systems, buses and cable cars that run everywhere in San Fran and they are usually faster then by car. Bicycling of course is the main form of transportation in San Fran.

I have always been suspicious of the quality of life, cost of living myth our political leaders try to sell us here, and it has been confirmed. Not only is San Francisco a reasonable place to live, it is fairly clean and and a Hell of a lot warmer.

Don’t get me wrong, it is still nice to be home to the sleepy town of Sioux Falls.