• The otherwise cool boutique selling vintage-stylized 1984 shirts.
  • The Keith Haring art on luggage.
  • How every Lyft driver we met lived outside of the city, in Oakland, Sacramento, or the mountains.
  • The parade floats, sitting alone (but together) on the pier.
  • The tiny little micro-bar, a maybe twenty-square-foot hole in the Mission. Too crowded to enter.
  • The dismal, narrow thrift store, more cluttered than they usually are, like every donation just gets plopped on top of the stuff that came before it, and its owner, an older woman who derisively refused to haggle with a calm dude for a hat (~$20 down to $8), “[I’d] never do that. Never do that.”
  • Walking past and peering into the evening services of Catholic storefront churches. The fluorescent overhead lighting, the bars on the doors and windows, the unattended drums and conga sets.
  • Watching a second-floor house show from the street. Looking for a door and a friendly attendee on a smoke break to let us in, but finding no one.
  • Seeking out the most Chicago-esque bars in the Mission (ones with regulars, without a schtick, with naturally occurring grime).
  • The older couple in formalwear—a three-piece suit, a dress—sharing a chocolate sundae at 11PM in the diner.
  • Eating tater tots and ice cream, packing for our 5:30AM wake-up.