B2B weekend re-cap

The 99th running of the Bay to Breakers race was last weekend in SF and it was a crazy, busy, fun weekend that was kicked off on Thursday afternoon with a good baseball game at AT&T park. The Giants-Padres game was one of the fastest I've ever seen - just over two hours. We only had time for like one beer it was so fast. We made up for it the rest of the day and during the ensuing weekend.

Here's the beer summary for the weekend:

• Tasty beers at the 21st Amendement - a few Golden Dooms (Belgian Strong beers), Gigantes IPAs, and awesome Rammstein (strong dunkel weizen).


• Denied beer at the new Social Brewpub because they close at 10:00 pm due to a stupid provisional liquor license.


• A quick stop up in Headsburg at the Bear Republic Brewpub to down a Hop Rod Rye (great double IPA with Rye - nice subtle spice), Ryevalry (another double IPA fermented with Belgian yeast), and a small sample of Racer X (yet another big IPA).


• Half a can of Red Oval Classic Lager that cost me 50 cents and was stolen by a rouge SF cop who could have instead been doing something useful like arresting pot-smoking hippies, un-licensed food vendors, public urinators, and ugly naked people.


• Some homebrew.

Outside of the beer, we made it to a few good restaurants, too:

• Waterbar - after the baseball game, we stopped in for $1 oyster and happy hour cocktails. It was an excellent pitstop.


• Zuni Cafe - Great 'comfort' food and great service. Probably my favorite restaurant in SF


• La Mar - Awesome Peruvian food. Some of the best ceviche and the most tasty small plates I've ever had. This place is near the top of my list for seafood in SF.


• Home Cookin' - I split a pork tenderloin, stuffed it with chopped basil, garlic, dried chilies, and a couple of thick-cut pieces of bacon, and then grilled it. I done did good with it!

Bay to Breakers was full of the usual craziness. Lots of good costumes, good music, scary naked people, and the occasional really odd sight. I didn't get many decent photos. Here's a couple of the more interesting:
The Pimp-looking dude on the right side may or may not be in a costume.

Youngest drummer of the day - he looked at the oldest 5

A squadron of Star Wars X-wing pilots

Artistic Beer

We just returned from the 19th Annual Hunters Point Shipyard Artists Spring Open Studios and Sale (www.shipyardartists.com) and it was rather mind-numbing. Several hours of looking at about 70 artist's paintings, photos, and sculptures just left me wanting some beer.

There were a couple of artist that incorporated beer into their work:

• Irene Hendrick was showing a few paintings focused on old men drinking beer in pubs. One can be viewed here.
• Judy Reed had some large photographs (like 3' x 4') of crushed Budweiser cans. It was a bit odd.
  

My discerning eye always finds a few gems.