My friend Pedro emailed me the other day telling me I’d be a good fit for a new start-up he was working for called Vayable. It’s a company where you offer your knowledge as a local to someone who is visiting and wants to do what you’re offering. I checked out their website and it seemed pretty cool so I “created an photography tour/local cultural experience” around 11:30pm. 10am the next morning I got an email saying a guy named Sheriff wanted to take my tour. We started off by grabbing some food at La Boulange in Hayes Valley. I had a a cauliflower tart and some french onion soup. Yes…a cauliflower tart. Shit was bomb.

Then we walked past the BRIGHTERFASTER mural on Octavia on our way to the mission. We perused the organic greenery in the Hayes Valley community farm before popping in the Zen Center on Laguna to get a tour of the facilities and introduction to Zazen. We stopped to take in the murals in the lower haight before walking down Market to the Castro. We popped in the Castro Theatre. They were showing a double feature – Samsara and Beau Travail. We walked down 18th towards the mission and ran into Christa Hill from“Hey, Cookie!”. I think it was the only time I’ve seen her not selling cookies. She’s still just as happy though. We made our way thru the mission, walked down Clarion and I realized it was time to take some pictures. You know, to get a record of how Sheriff was feeling (see picture to the left). We came out of the alley on the Mission end so Sheriff could see the difference in class, culture and race that exists in a 1 block radius in San Francisco. 

After walking down Mission for a few blocks we made our way back to Valencia for a chinese style tea ceremony tasting at Tokyo Futons and Tea. After plenty of puerh, we stopped in Carte Blanche to see some fine art photography. We finished off the tour at Viracocha SF, cause they have really cool shit in there. They have secret shows in the basement too but that’s a secret so you can’t tell anyone I told you. As we were leaving I asked Sheriff what he thought of San Francisco. He said, and I quote, “Wow.”

Anyways, if you want a “tour” too you can book one at http://www.vayable.com/experiences/4444-photography-tour-of-the-city

 

Dijon

January 11, 2013