The Orange Ninja and Friends: Land o' Plenty

Salt Point to San Francisco-
We awoke around 6:30 to the revving of the motorcycle engines at the campsite next to us. Imagine having an alarm clock that you can’t hit the snooze button on…it was kind of like that. With everyone being awake we decided to go exploring down by the beach since we heard that tide pools were in the area. After making sure that the raccoons didn’t run away with anything from the night before, we headed down to the beach. It was right between tides, so we found lots of cool things in the rocks from sea anemones, starfish, kelp crabs, and abalone. The fog started rolling in and we packed up and headed towards San Francisco. After about a 2 hour drive, we passed under the golden gate bridge (which is amazing) and entered into Japan town where we were staying at the Hotel Tomo. It was like we were staying in Tokyo with all the rooms having different themes..needless to say it was awesome, and I’m sure Brionna felt like she was at home. After unpacking, Mickael had an appt at Thrasher magazine to be shown around the place, so we headed over there to see what the inner workings of a magazine were all about. I was amazed at how small the space was for 3 magazines under the same roof. Thrasher, Juxtaposed, and Slap were all in the same area that was about 1600 square feet. We then headed down over to the Tenderloin area where all the art galleries were along with all the homeless and drug addicts. In about 5 minutes we were offered crack, morphine, and oxy cotton in the broad daylight. I’m glad art galleries always seek out the seediest parts of town to set up shop. We went into White Walls, Shooting Gallery, 111 Minna, and the Luggage store which all had pretty cool shows, but we were all impressed by Mike Maxwell’s stuff at the Shooting Gallery. We even got a chance to check out the SFMOMA, which had some cool special exhibits on Richard Avedon and Georgia O’keefe. Starving, we headed back to the hotel to eat in the downstairs restaurant called Mum’s where we had some shabu-shabu. It’s basically Japanese fondue and it’s delicious. After we refueled, Cody, one of Mike and Brionna’s friends from high school came by and took us out to Haight Street for drinks. The bar that we went to was called Molotov’s and the best part was that dogs were allowed inside. Cody’s girlfriend Julie stopped by and joined us telling us some great stories, and after a few hours we headed back for a good night’s sleep.