San Francisco - The Hip

The Tragically Hip aren't that popular in the states. Most people haven't heard of them, so when they came to play in San Francisco, the tickets were pretty cheap. Trish, Brian and I decided we would go to the concert. We got talking to people about it and Derek and Julia decided they would join us. Julia's a girl we met at a Trews concert a while back (again, nobody here has heard of the Trews).

Anyways, so the idea was that Derek would come by our place then we'd go pick up Julia, then Brian and then meet Jennifer for supper. Jennifer wasn't going to the concert, but she wanted to join us for supper. And so that's how it all started. Someone once said, and I quote very loosely here, that "Even the best laid plans turn to shit".

Trish and I were running a little late, and Trish asked Derek to grab her some Starbucks on the way over. At the Starbucks, Derek realized that he forgot his ticket at home!!! DOH! Now he was at the Starbucks right by our place, so he delivered Trish's coffee, he had already ordered and paid before he realized the ticket was missing. So he stops by our place and we make plans to meet at Brian's place in an hour.

Trish and I take off and grab Julia at her place. Julia lives on a busy street, so I wasn't able to go in the correct direction when pulling out of her driveway. But she assured me that if I kept going straight I could grab the highway and we'd be going the right way. Well, that turned out to be true eventually. But the ride was rather long. In the end it didn't matter because we got to Brian's before Derek, but still. I mean, it's true that we can do a U-turn 5 miles down the road, but why not do it right now seeing as we're driving in the wrong direction. Oh and if you ever read this Julia, I hope you're not too offended. You have every right to be offended, but really, it won't do much in the long run. I wrote it on the Internet, so that makes it 100% true, even if you're offended.

On the ride down to Brian's place, we learn a bit about Julia. Seeing as this was the second time I talked to this girl, there was a lot of stuff I didn't know. Not that I really know her that much now, but I know her better than I did. Turns out she's a chemist working in pharma who doesn't really enjoy her job and wants to move back to Canada. She wants to go to Ottawa or Toronto and find a job there. This reminded me of another person, Brian. Brian is a chemist working in biofuels, who wishes he was working in pharma who currently doesn't really enjoy is job. He moved to the states from Ottawa to get a job. When there's 5 people in a group, what are the odds that two people do practically the same job? Especially when that job doesn't involve programming computers, because everyone and their dog does this in silicon valley.

We get to Brian's and wait for Derek. Derek arrives not much later, we pile into the car and take off. Construction or not, there should not be any traffic on a Saturday at 6pm. But this is San Francisco, so of course there's traffic, why wouldn't there be? Stuck in traffic and running late for your supper appointment, what do you do?

Step one, text message your contact at the restaurant. In our case this was Jennifer, who was already sitting at a table for six. It started out as a table for eight, but two people had already texted her that they were bailing. She ended up alone at a table for six.
Step two, go online and find the menu. The restaurant we were heading to had an online menu, so we could read the menu on a phone.
Step three, figure out what everyone wants to eat. This sounds easy, but we were heading to a French restaurant that was obnoxiously snooty enough to have the menu be in french with a crappy English translation. This would normally not be a problem since most of you know that I am fluent in french. But I was driving. Reading a menu on a cell phone and driving on a traffic filled highway is not recommended by the Surgeon General in any circumstance. So I didn't. We did eventually figure out what people wanted to eat.
Step four, text your contact at the restaurant your final order so that she can pass it on to the waiter. This was apparently quite amusing to the waiter, who thought we were all crazy.

So we finally got there and found parking. We parked in a construction zone that said no parking until 6pm, it was 6:30 so we parked there. Quick walk to the restaurant, and on to our table. Turns out that ordering online didn't really save us time cus I'm 100% sure that they didn't start cooking until after we arrived. It took a good 15-20 minutes for our food to arrive, and no, cooking filet mignon does not take 30 minutes.

The food was really tasty, but the portions were very much on the small side. For $25 I expect to have a decent amount of food. I wasn't expecting a 6 ounce filet mignon with a thimble full of diced veggies and four fries made of chick peas. After supper Trish and I split a chocolate fondue which was pretty good as well. It was tasty, but I don't recommend this place, not that I could recommend it, because I don't remember what it was called. So avoid the french restaurant near the Fillmore at all costs! Unless of course you already ate before going there.

We get to the Fillmore at around 8:15, and there's no lineup to get in. The place is like a huge gymnasium, and it's mostly empty. We head towards the stage and hang out with the small crowd there. The place started to fill up over the next 45 minutes, and by the time the band hit the stage it was crowded. The Hip played two sets with a short break in between. The music was awesome, loud, but not ear splitting loud. The show was really good, and we had a lot of fun.

The band was big, Gordie was singing and sometimes playing guitar. They had 2 other guys on guitars, one on base, a keyboard and a drummer. I don't really know the band members, mostly because I don't care, but I'm not sure if they were all the permanent fixtures that make up the Hip. Trish would know, so if you really care, you can ask her. I expected just your regular four man crew, so I was a little surprised.

Gordie was hilarious, making all sorts of pantomimes, like pretending to clean a window, or shoot buffalo and stuff like that. But dude does that guy ever sweat! He kept wiping himself with a white handkerchief and then throwing it into the crowd. But honestly, would you want a dripping wet rag that someone just wiped himself with? The answer for most of the people there was yes, my answer was "hell no". Dude looked like he took a shower with his clothes on and forgot to towel off. Sweat dripped from his face, and ran like a faucet at his elbows. It made for a pretty entertaining night, but still, I would not want his sweat rags, ever. Well maybe if I could e-bay them for millions.

The show was good and most of the fans were fun, but there were some exceptions. Why the hell would you get stumbling drunk if beers cost $12 a pop? Who knows but a lot of people did. During the first act, there was one guy headbanging to Hip music. If you don't know what kind of music The Tragically Hip play, you can stop reading now, and go listen to a track or two before continuing. So this headbanger was making an ass of himself and he headbutts a couple of people on accident. The first person moved away and the second person turned out to be a bit beefy. Beefy guy looked like he was ready to beat headbanger into the floor, but headbanger had an equally beefy friend. So they talked and headbanger was moved away by his friend. He continued to make an ass of himself but he stopped headbanging and started hugging people at random and dancing with them. That didn't go over well either. So he ended up just dancing by himself and bumping into people.

During the break headbanger disappeared, but sadly he was replaced by super tall jerk guy. This guy had to be 6'8" and crazy skinny, but he was also crazy drunk and jumping up and down. Trish traded spots with me because he was being a dumbass. I elbowed him in the back a few times when he started jumping too close to me, but he'd just start jumping forward. I guess I wasn't hitting him hard enough for him to get the message. He kinda moved forward in the end so he wasn't my problem anymore.

Then some drunk girls were hugging random people and each other. Dancing all over the place and acting pretty slutty. It was pretty hilarious (to me anyways) when they collided with super drunk lecherous guy. He just grabbed on to them and started dancing with them. And from where I was standing he was pretty much humping their legs. Especially when the girls started jumping along with the music... this guy pretty much leaned back and let the girls jump up and down against his crotch. Like I said hilarious!

All these idiots didn't deter us from having a good time though. The music was good, the band was cool, they even did an encore. Though it's kinda lame when you can see the roadies fixing up the stage for the encore. The band walks off stage and the roadies immediately started tuning guitars and changing out microphones. It was pretty obvious they were coming right back.

The biggest problem of the night was heat. Everything was hot, everyone was sweating, not just Gordie. Derek and Brian found a cool spot by the door after the intermission, so we had to find them at the end of the night. One thing that was pretty funny and a little gross was that My skin on my arms was kinda peeling from the sun. And because I was sweating, the sweat made bubbles of dead skin with sweat inside them on my arms. They looked a little like blisters, but didn't hurt at all when they popped. Like I said, a little gross, but kinda funny.

So anyways, we left and went to a Belgian style pub for a glass. The place was pretty cool, but the bathrooms were covered floor to ceiling with graffiti. The only spots unmarked were the sink and the toilet. Everything else, including the soap and towel dispensers were covered. I had a dark beer and only paid $3 for it... not sure if the guy gave me the wrong change or not because I didn't know how much it was. It was Moonlight Black Lager or something like that, and it was pretty tasty.

A couple hours later and we were heading back home. I crawled into bed at around 3am... Sunday I woke up late, played on the computer for a bit and then went to Safeway for food. By the time breakfast was cooked it was 5pm... strange day.

One last note, I was trying to type "shift-w" to get a W to type "Well that's it for now" or something like that. Instead I hit "ctrl-w" which is close tab in FireFox... interesting, but kinda crappy. Thanks blogger for auto-saving all the time!