A few years ago I was walking through an exhibition of Claes Oldenburg in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1969, if I'm not mistaken, and everyone was smiling; how can you not? - it's so whimsical, fun and outsized. Well, there's a bow and arrow on the Embarcadero in SF that evokes just that sort of smile which I passed on the way to lunch at
The Waterbar on the Embarcadero. It's a stunning setting and I realize you can't eat the scenary and it's probably seen by locals (who by my count were 78.63% of the customers) as "touristy," but I needed a seafood fix and on a perfectly sunny day, looking out on the Bay and Bridge, why not?
The front-room lady presented me with three menus, two of them booze-oriented, one "Brunch" and I gasped - "Brunch, in a seafood place? on a Saturday?" Well, not really, "they just call it that," said she, "I've just started, so I don't know a lot about it." My charming waitlady, Katie C., though, cleared up the deal. Oysters, about $4 each, except the specials of the day - $1.05 apiece from Quilcene, WA, "medium sized, blah blah blah." Me, a Boston out of Ontario boy, usually snear at West Coast bivalves but ordered up a dozen which were wonderful and with their "best bread of the year anywhere [my opinion]" made for a beautiful beginning.
Then I had fish 'n chips, not your usual Georges Banks' East Coast cod but line caught off Bolinas; beautifully beer battered with great house-made rough-cut tartare and awful house-made rough-cut fries which even some vinegar could not improve.
With a half-bottle of wine, no bottled water, no dessert but a double espresso, the bill comes to $51.80.
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So, it's a beautiful day and I decide to go to Alcatraz (which I never seen unless you count the Birdman of Alcatraz book and movie) to see the show by Ai Weiwei, yah, the Chinese dissident who gets thrown into jail by the Chinese autorities for throwing pots on the ground. Informed I am, but also naive. It's sold out; big lines - STAND-BY says one - "I can do that," says I, "No you cannot, Sir, until tomorrow." Ouch! No broken pots today but website shows it all I think.
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