It is gallery time again. I love Tara's prompts, they give me little seed ideas that occasionally crystallize into multifaceted blog posts.
My dear friend Stan took this picture of me last week, up on the roof deck of Medjool, a bar in San Francisco's Mission district. This neighbourhood is "La Mission" of Benjamin Brat's enticing new film. A film that in my younger days I would have already seen, I'm sure, but now that I am no longer an urban hipster I will have to wait to see on DVD. It is also a neighbourhood full of constant, yet constantly evolving ever hipper, cooler and tastier bars and restaurants. A place full of great memories.
Although it was taken recently this is a picture of who I used to be. Girl about town, frequenting those bars and restaurants. I love my life today, a life of work, kids and responsibilities, but I'm glad that I came to it a little late. Happy that I had those halcyon days between student hood and true adulthood when I was answerable to no one but myself, and there was time to form friendships and opinions over cocktails and long meandering conversations. When I could while away a weekend browsing through the Mission thrift stores, take a nap, then head out in a newly acquired outlandish outfit to a bar we had just read about about in the SF Bay Guardian.
I feel old and frumpy when I go out in the Mission now. I look with fondness at the twenty somethings laughing away, so carefree in their achingly cool denim, one of a kind T shirts, fancy facial piercings and tattoos, safe in the knowledge that some day sooner than they think they too will be trying to negotiate a stroller up and down the hills.
Of course shortly after that photo was snapped, giddy at being out and about unencumbered by children, I tried to recapture my misspent youth with red wine and vodka cocktails. Lets just say I felt even older the next day!
