I think I shot my proverbial literary load with my last post which basically told you everything you would ever need to know if you found yourself in the peninsula of San Francisco. Honestly, read it - I think you’ll find it’s all contained in there. It’s like a free copy of the Lonely Planet without all the stuff about plants and birds that they try to fool you with as an ‘enjoyable’ activity to do whilst on holiday. Honestly, I know the guys that write those books, and they laugh in a really sinister way when they start writing the bits about the birds and the plants. Trust me. So, because I was so thorough it hasn’t left me with much to write about the actual show we played here. But because i’m so eager to please and I need the friends, i’ll endeavor to write about it so you will one day pronounce me as your king and bring me expensive gifts which I shall accept and then sell on for a profit via an online auction site.
After our time off in the city we reached show day and realised that we still hadn’t been up to the Golden Gate Bridge - if we didn’t do that then we’d be hunted down by the local authorities and forced to walk across it, or murdered if we refused to and hung off the edge of the bridge to warn other travellers to not be so callous. Rather than go through that whole rigmarole, none of us particularly wanted to end our lives being dangled off a big red bridge, we travelled up there before we had to load in and went to see what all the fuss was about. It was certainly red and impressive, I liked the Golden Gate Bridge. We were going to walk across it, but there was some debate about how long it would take. Barry thought it would take 15 minutes and Ross thought it would take 2 hours. This was quite the discrepancy. In the end we didn’t cross it and went to Chipotle instead. Chipotle is like crossing a bridge in a way - a really tasty bridge made of rice, beans and guacamole wrapped up in a tortilla. When you get to the other side of the Chipotle bridge you feel fulfilled and you didn’t need to spend that much money. The Golden Gate Bridge is free to walk across, but I don’t know if it would have tasted as good in the process. I realise that is very depressing that we went to a chain Mexican restaurant instead of crossing possibly the most famous bridge in the world.
There was some more debate after lunch when Barry and Ross couldn’t decide if one of the tall ships stationed at one of the piers had sails on it or not. Barry thought they’d been taken off, whilst Ross thought they were just really tightly bound around the mast. I was on the fence, a classic Kneale point of view. It started to get slightly heated so we decided we’d just walk down to the ship and settle this argument before someone got killed. But the pier was closing so we couldn’t get close enough to definitively know the answer! In one last attempt to solve this potentially hazardous conundrum I asked a man who looked like he worked on the pier wether the ship had all it’s sails or not. His answer was as follows - “Some of them are on there, some have been taken off”. This was possibly the worst end to a conundrum that i’ve ever been involved in. Ross and Barry both left feeling unsatisfied with the outcome, and I had come across like a fool in front of a seaman. We left for the venue feeling strangely defeated.
Luckily, the gig more than perked up our deflated egos. We were playing a club night called Pop Scene at a venue called Rickshaw Stop, which looked like it was in the heart of the Governmental and Arts section of the city. I could be completely wrong, but there were two art galleries really close to the venue, and a building that looked like the White House that seemed perfect for Government officials to hatch schemes within. Pop Scene is a pretty famous club night I think, apparently Elton John came to it once and bought everyone there a car. That didn’t actually happen, but Elton John is rich. The show was pretty good, with club night shows there are definitely going to be people who don’t want to listen to a live band, but I was surprised by how many people were engaged by our set. There was a massive projection screen behind us, perhaps they were looking at that. Wait a second, I should be bigging us up... Everyone there had come to see us and everyone left the club the second we finished playing. Highly embarrassing for the DJ.
We drove after the gig and bumped into Elton John at a truck stop. He offered to buy us all some snacks but we declined because we weren’t sure if we could trust him. He had on platform boots and a sequined suit jacket with nothing on underneath it. No underwear or trousers either.
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