19/10/2006 San Francisco, 2nd last day.

Hello again, well, last night was a roaring success. Slim's is a pretty good venue, about 10 minutes or about 7 bucks in a cab from here. Three bands were on last night. Doomriders were up first, not bad but pretty run of the mill. Acid King were next, a three piece sludgy doom metal band headed by a female guitarist. They had a psychadelic light show projected onto their backdrop, very effective. The band were fantastic, very trippy and very heavy. Of course the best was saved until last, the mighty Japanese doom juggernaut...Boris. These guys (two guys and, again, a female guitarist) are sensational. They were extremely heavy and at times beautifully melodic, slow, grinding riffs as well as more thrashy pacier offerings. This tiny japanese chick on guitar was amazing and the drummer was heroic...loved it. By the end of the night I was pretty well liquored up and so I stumbled over to my cab and came home a happy man. I do remember being quite chatty with the cab driver. Can't remember what the hell we spoke about but he was cool. Today, naturally started out slowly and I didn't get out of my "crib" until about 12:30. Another beautiful Californian day greetd me as I made my way to the Coit Tower...funny name, it was built by Fanny Coit or something. Anyway, i took the bus through the nightmare that is Chinatown and ended up in Horth Beach where i proceeded to walk up Lombard street which is VERY steep. there is a bus that goes there but I couldn't work out where to catch it so, up I went, almost a kilometer until I reached the tower. It cost 4 and a half bucks to ride the lift to the top but the view was great and so i took out my camera and ( now here's something i never thought I'd say) took a few shots in the coit. So a lot of effort was expended to get this view (and use that line) but it was worth it. The tower is on Telegraph Hill which is a moneyed section of town, quite exclusive it seems. Lovely homes overlooking SF bay. Very, very hilly though. Out in the parking lot, a bus pulled up. I know going down hil is easier but I had my pass with me so I hopped on. this took me to Washington Square and Union Park where people were enjoying the lovely day just swanning about in the sunshine. I had a bite to eat and read my book for a while before heading home. It's now about 4:30 in the afternoon so i'm going to go up, freshen up and go for a walk before dinner time. Tonight I will be experimenting with packing. I think I should be OK with the weight, just have to distribute carefully. So that's about it. Tomorrow will be a time killing day so i might see a couple of movies to take me to airport shuttle time which will be at 7:30. I'll update tomorrow evening probably. Cheers, M.