Evidence that Sam has picked up on my neurotic need to be organized:
He eats his food from right to left; nice and neat, never in a rush. We’ve been trying to use his intelligence to our favour to teach him how to make us gin & tonics but he can never get it straight. Marc says it’s because he has no thumbs and can’t reach the freezer for the ice.
One of the best things about staying here in Dreamville (aka. Berkeley) is its proximity to überDreamville. Just a quick trip on public transit across the bay and we’re in within reach of the Ferry Building Market.
This is the market to end all markets; big, crowded on the weekends, expensive, touristy and overflowing with delicious, pretentious food- my favourite. First things first, though: if we were going to make a trip all the way across the Bay, we were going to first visit Marc’s all-time favourite coffee place, the Blue Bottle Company on Linden. A mere slip of a place, it serves coffee and espresso-coffees from freshly roasted and ground-to-order beans. We made quick work of finding it again and slurping down a delicious macchiato and cappuccino. (Sidebar: it turns out that there is a café 5 blocks from our house that sells this very coffee, about which we knew nothing until last weekend. We plan to be regulars.)
From there, it was a long-ish walk down Market street to the Ferry Building so we stopped, briefly, at Crate & Barrel – just briefly- just to see what they had on sale. An hour later, we continued the journey, with nothing to weigh us down but a mental list of all that we saw that we “needed”. Seriously considering starting an heirloom cast-iron frying pan.
Finally, there was the Ferry Building. We needed lunch, we needed oysters, and we needed to browse the food stalls and kitchen store. Lunch was most critical so we ate at the first place we saw that wasn’t – for the moment – overflowing with customers, Lulu Petite. Marc ordered a duck confit and arugula sandwich and I had a ham & provolone melt with truffled honey. We also had some sort of extravagent sparkling pomegranate juice and it was all extravegently delicious.
Next, we tried to visit Hog Island Oysters for a little oyster sampler but it was egregiously busy and there was a waiting list to sit at the bar, so we walked over to the seafood company and ate two each, raw, barenaked and juicy, from the kid selling them at the little table out front. Even that kid was busy, taking money in between his concentrated shucking.
The food stalls were a little too busy to peruse, even for us, so we instead inspected all of the products on offer at Sur La Table. Unfortunately, we could not justify buying all the things we wanted – what with the fact that we are leaving in a couple months – so settled for just an oven themometer and a promise to return if/when we can really do some damage.
We have arrived. Twenty two hours of driving landed us at the front door of our “home” in Berkeley for the next few months. The route was long and hot – especially the Nevada part. No matter how wide we opened the windows or how we rigged the towels to cast some shade into the rear of the car, Sammy was inconsolably hot.
The border crossing was entirely uneventful, unless you count all the whining in the back seat, and we merged easily off the highway and onto the freeway. It was immediately evident that we were in America because the CBC stopped working as soon as we were across; it was somewhat ironic that the hour before the border was spent listening The Current do an interview with Andrew Cohen about his new book on Canadian identity titled The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are. On that topic, I might argue that there is nothing like a quick trip to the States to remind a person what it means to be Canadian. For example, after passing no less than three enormous, privately-owned American flags, we pulled into the Loaf ‘n Jug gas station in Great Falls where we filled up with gallons of gas and bought a small coffee that was 16 oz (473.17ml). The enormous trucks parked next to us had yellow ribbon stickers on them that read “Support Our Troops”. (In hindsight, I think that might have been just a Montana thing because we haven’t seen any of those on cars with California plates. I have seen a few “Impeach Bush” bumper stickers, though.) As we put The North miles behind us, more things reminded us of where we were, like, Jimboy’s Tacos, the motor homes pulling SUVs pulling boats, the cafe offering “homemade grub”, the 4x4s pulling 4x4s and, my favourite, a billboard that displayed nothing but a website: www.idontfeelsogood.com. Even if I overlook the poor grammar of the URL, I can’t miss that it is an ad for medical insurance.
Eventually, we made our way into the Bay area where even more local idiosyncrasies evidenced themselves. At the local Starbucks on “Gourmet Ghetto” next to the gourmet burger place and across the street from the gourmet take-out place, we saw a fluffy, white Pekingese dog slowly nudging his owner along the sidewalk, an old man with a gray beard wearing a cap and a red sweatshirt that said ‘Stanford Judo’ across the front. Besides the gourmet and/or organic and/or expensive everything, we’ve come across the All Souls Church that welcomes dog friends and the sign down the street that actually reads “Drug Free Zone”. (Did they mean drug free or free drugs?) One of the best things about Berkeley so far is the fantastic view we have over the bay of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.
