Anyway, Sunday began with a visit to church. No, we weren't in a rush to be forgiven. It's just that San Francisco is home to the Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church, a small storefront church in a fairly new home in the Fillmore Jazz District (after I snapped this, they asked that we not take photos, so this is all you get). The church has been going since 1971, founded by a couple who underwent a spiritual conversion after seeing Trane perform in 1965. Every Sunday they hold services through music, the liturgy set to "A Love Supreme" (among others - they were just launching into "Impressions" as we were leaving). It's wall-to-wall music with an open invitation to bring your own. We stayed for about 90 minutes of the promised 3-hour service, and at any moment there were up to six saxophonists up there (including the archbishop and co-founder, Franzo King, along with his son and grandson), plus the rhythm section, five singers, and a pair of old-hippie tap dancers. Plus there were tambourines readily available for anyone to pick up and play along. It was quite an experience, the music being overwhelming - a holy blower church. You could see how someone could be spiritually moved. The playing rarely moved beyond amateur Coltrane imitations, but it was heartfelt and powerful. This makes the second vacation involving church services for us (the first being Al Green's church in Memphis, though the Rev was regrettably absent that day). I'm still a determined atheist, but I've enjoyed listening in.At this point we had something like ten hours before our flight and thanks to a confluence of circumstances - a check that hadn't arrived when expected, another cashed before we'd hoped - we were, effectively, broke. San Fran isn't the best place to be without money, so we just wandered a bit, first checking out the Castro District, the pioneering gay neighborhood, and Haight-Ashbury, the pioneering get-high-and-ask-for-change neighborhood. Here's Jenn standing at that famed corner:
We then headed up to Russian Hill, where we'd found a good, cheap meal a few days earlier at Polker's Gourmet Burgers, and grabbed a quick Indian buffet before calling it a trip and heading for the airport. Probably a good thing we were broke, as the airport's wine store (yeah, they have 'em everywhere) stocked some good names and we may have wound up carrying home a few extra.Then an overnight flight, with me sleeping for most and Jenn taking in Blades of Glory (with sound this time) on the first leg and finally passing out after a McDonald's breakfast at O'Hare on the Chicago-Philly flight. We touched ground at 10am local time, tired and poor but carting three cases of wine (with one more on the way).
All in all, a fantastic trip. We had fun, tasted some phenomenal wine, and enjoyed fantastic weather (though apparently there was an earthquake in San Fran during that time, but very small and we were up in Napa then anyway). As for that weather: when we woke up on Thursday, it was slightly grey and overcast and was very lightly raining - barely a mist. By noon it was sunny and 80 again, with no evident there had ever been any adverse conditions. But all anyone at the wineries could talk about for the next two days was the rain - "Were you here for the rain?" they all asked. That's how consistently beautiful it is out there.
Thanks for following along on the blog. Not sure what will become of this page now, though it will certainly be reactivated the next time we journey for vino. It may become an occasional personal blog for Jenn and I, may not - we'll see. In the meantime, check it out in a few days and I'll post a link to a Flickr account with even more pics from the trip.
Cheers.
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