A Different Drummer: Embedded tourists seek Bay Area thrills

We’re pretending to be Bay Area tourists, Sue and I and some friends. It’s a way to push us out to do things. Each couple takes turns suggesting a Bay Area destination. We put it on the Schedule of Fun Calendar and we go, 2, 4, or 6 of us. We go by public transit when possible. The only rule is that the trip include something new.
We just started this tradition this year. We have no legacy. Our list of completed outings is short, but noteworthy. Our list of intentions is lengthy. Coming soon: Treasure Island Flea Market.
What we are doing isn’t much different than friends anywhere going out to have fun, except that we declared it to be a thing, and have breathed life into it, so now we are responsible for its care and feeding and must attend to it regularly or it will wither and die and that cold blood will be on our hands.
Our initial touristy outing was in February. It was a big success. We attended an underground San Francisco cabaret Speakeasy that required us to dress in 1920s costume, follow back-alley advisors and cryptic maps to locate the Prohibition-era nightclub entrance hidden inside an empty storefront behind a grandfather clock, descend dark stairs, enter the maze, and interact through the night with dozens of actors embedded in our crowd of 200 costumed revelers.
The consensus was this: “Let’s do that again.”
That outing gave rise to the social game we are now playing: The Embedded Tourists. I just invented that name, by the way. No one in the group knows about it but you guys.
Our next San Francisco adventure was my suggestion, and a big Meh: Visit Dogpatch and walk the Bernal Heights neighborhood. None of us had ever been that far down 3rd Street from the ball park, so we piled into a car and went cruising. We didn’t see a lot of pedestrian traffic on 3rd Street so our drive through Dogpatch amounted to window gazing.
We turned right on Cesar Chavez, drove the few blocks to Mission Street, turned left and parked: Welcome to Bernal Heights. Mission Street is about the same regardless of what neighborhood it passes through, so walking Mission in Bernal was wide, busy and grimy.
Once we turned east on Cortland Avenue, we got a better look at the Heights. We climbed a hill past beautiful tucked-away houses. Once we crested the top, we came upon several blocks of attractive shops and clubs with lengthy histories. They were nice enough, friendly, good food, comfortable chairs, napkins. In the end, they are simply clubs for the neighbors, same the world over, nothing extraordinary, plenty of local business, no need for tourists to go out of their way to visit.
Friends with benefits: Our friends Bud and Sandy Donaldson are time-share people. They book rooms in Hawaii, Tahoe, San Francisco, wherever just about. The next Embedded Tourist trip was theirs to choose. They booked us three nights at the Wyndham Hotel on Sutter near Union Square the weekend of Comedy Central’s three-day Colossal Clusterfest comedy show featuring six stages and 91 comedians including Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin Hart and Sarah Silverman.
Bud got us free rooms, not bad. On the next street over was the Elks Lodge, so I signed everyone in for free pizza and an afternoon of $4 beverages standing on the balcony overlooking the St Francis and Union Square. Free pizza, not bad.
The festival began at 2 p.m. at the Civic Center and Bill Graham Auditorium so Sue and Sandy were determined to get their walking steps. That led us serendipitously up Hayes Street to Octavia Boulevard.
Wow. What a fantastic neighborhood! So many interesting, crowded restaurants, clubs, and shops, it completely backhanded my thinking on exploring neighborhoods. We all had patented Smitten ice cream, made to order. We all immediately agreed to put this stretch of big-city entertainment onto our Schedule of Fun for a later visit.
Clusterfest ran from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. We got to walk through South Park Land and meet Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and the rest of the cast as human-sized cutouts along Main Street, near Tom’s Rhinoplasty. We laughed for eight hours, then it got too cold for jokes, and everyone went home.
Bud had a special late-night surprise for us, an 11:15 p.m. reservation at another speakeasy shrouded in similar mystery to the one in February.
Bourbon and Branch was at the top of Wyndham’s alphabetical list of interesting night clubs. That morning, we had walked to the address to check it out. Nothing there. Black windowless doors, locked. A small intercom. No sign reading Bourbon and Branch. Above hung an unlit shingle that read “Anti-Saloon League, San Francisco Branch.”
Two homeless guys in the next doorway clued us in. “Hey, that place opens at six. You guys can’t get in there, though, without a password.” That’s when I noticed one of the guys was wearing a clean sweatshirt that read “Anti-Saloon League.”
“How do we get the password?” I asked.
“Go to their website and make a reservation. They will email you a password later. I’m Logan.”
“Thanks, Logan.” We figured the proprietors were being nice to the local homeless in exchange for them watching over the building that has been a bar since 1867. The only reservation open for Sunday was 11:15 p.m. so we booked it. During the comedy show, we got an email. Password: tasty.
And then…