Last weekend I was in San Francisco once more, showing my friend Simon from England around the parts he might otherwise jave missed. I also told him not to call it ‘San Fran’ or ‘Frisco’. I love going down to sketch in the Mission district; he found a coffee at Philz on 24th which aparently took twenty minutes to grind into perfection (I waited outside and drew a parking meter; I don’t do the whole coffee thing), we checked out the murals on Balmy, and then devoured burritos from a taco truck at Garfield Square. It was called ‘Goza Goza Goza’ (made us think about Gozer the Gozerian). Burritos were invented in the Mission, and I think it’s the law that you have to eat at least one. I do, anyhow. I sketched my friend sketching on a piece of airmail envelope I had in my bag.
After perusing the knick-knack stores on Mission and the independent bookstores on Valencia, we grabbed another coffee at trendy looking Cafe Dolores (rather, I had a mango smoothie and tried to look all hip, but I’m more of a pub person). I sketched from the slopes of Dolores Park while pit-bulls tried to mate chihahuas behind me (don’t try to think of what the offspring would be called, please) and took us up Church street, into the Castro area. I sketched the corner of Church and Market while my friend browsed Aardvark Books, and the far less trendy Safeway, where he looked in vain for a 3-day Muni travel pass (which I told him, correctly, he wouldn’t need; he found one anyway, at a news kiosk later on, which also sold lots of magazines showing cover images of men who looked exactly like Cristiano Ronaldo, but which had nothing to do with football). Tired from all the walking, we caught the F streetcar back to our hotel. Sketch-touring is a great way to show people around my favourite parts of my favourite cities.
par Pete Scully