Part III: Berkeley Crunchy

Last night after the conference, I rode the BART to Downtown Berkeley. It felt a lot like Somerville; lots of geeky places with goofy names (some store called "Change of Hobbit" or something) but a really, really hippie vibe everywhere. I met up with pixiesnakes (yay!) and we went to dinner at a place called Cafe Gratitude. The cuisine was mainly raw vegan, with a very cult-like hippie staff. Every item on the menu was pretty crazy unique (though many of them included almonds, which I have to avoid). I had some delicious guacamole and tapenade and a curry cauliflower soup.

Afterwards we just hung out and chatted by the bay, talking about the terribleness of strip malls and the insular quality of suburbs, historical strip clubs in the area, and just anything that came to mind.

The server at the cafe asked us "the question of the day" which was: what do you contribute to the world?

And my answer right away was: "Good karma."

Part The Fourth: Party Party

I had no idea how much of a social event the WWDC is. It's basically a week of partying all over San Francisco, in all kinds of locations. I've met a lot of good people and feel like I'm absorbing a lot of info; I'll be developing for the platforms in no time! Tomorrow is my last solid day of learning, then I've got one session on Friday I really want to hit, and my trip will nearly be over.

I met up with gilko and his lovely wife post-conference today, and we drove into the heart of SF in search of comic books and dinner. We found ourselves at Isotope Comics which is easily the coolest comic book store I have ever been in. The proprietor is James Sime, The Comic Pimp, and cameo star of many, many comic books. The man literally appears with his trademark mustache and hair alongside such characters as Batman, Death, Invincible (where he plays a villain called Isotope), and even as a dead-ish guy in The Walking Dead. I got to meet James and purchase comics from him, and to take pictures of the many toilet seats which have been drawn on by fabulous comic artists. Isotope is apparently the hot spot for comic events and after-parties, and Brian Wood began the draw-on-a-toilet-seat tradition after a particularly spectacular night of carousing.

For dinner we went to a little Neo-American place called Q's, and I had a tasty cheese plate and a pork loin entree with yummy apples and a yam latke with greens. We proceeded from there to a place called Tommy's Mexican Restaurant, which happens to be the premier tequila bar in the U.S. and maybe even the world! This place literally has cases of $1200 bottles of tequila in storage. They have a masters and a PhD program in tequila, which involves drinking certain numbers of shots of various brands and bottles. I was served a shot of a tequila that was six months home-aged by a certain infamous Apple engineer, who happens to have achieved tequila "demigod" status at Tommy's (which basically means achieving the masters and PhD, and then traveling with the proprietor to Mexico for a week to tour distilleries).

Apple people really know how to party. It's incredibly impressive. Tomorrow's bash at Yerba Buena ought to be amazing...