The Painted Ladies of Alamo Square, San Francisco

Okay, so remember when I said that San Francisco is pretty but lacks a visual punch? I totally have to eat my shorts words, because would you just LOOK at these STUNNERS?! 

These homes are known as the "Painted Ladies": they're Victorian and Edwardian homes built between 1849 and 1915 and painted in three or more colors to enhance their architectural details. These houses are truly some of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, and holy smokes, are they huge! Although each house was originally home to just one family, they have since been divided up to create multiple apartments to serve San Francisco's growing population.

Dan and I spent some time walking around the neighborhood, and I swear to you, there is some serious real estate porn going on there - and we weren't the only ones watching: tour buses come through regularly, slowing down to point out more famous houses (Mrs. Doubtfire was filmed in one of these! And who remembers the Full House opening credits?! I do!). Just gorgeous. If we ever moved to San Francisco, it would be straight into one of these beauties. 

 

Scenes from Life on the Road

Just a few snaps from my (new and updated instead of old and crappy and crotchety - hooray!) iPhone from the past few weeks of traveling. This latest leg of our trip has been superb: I got to hula hoop in the sunshine, catch up with an old friend (hi Liz!), enjoy the plethora of happy hours that Portland has to offer (you had to know I was gonna drop cocktails in here somewhere), and - LISTEN TO THIS - ride a tandem bicycle with my favorite fella in the whole world. Uphill, even! A well-oiled machine, we were/are. 

Also: BREAKING NEWS! I got a freelance contract gig doing some travel writing! It requires me to be back in NYC, which is the reason for the drought of posts we've suffered in the past week: basically I've ignored pretty much everything so that I could soak up the last precious moments of being on the road with my dear Daniel. I flew from Seattle back to New York on Tuesday (insert me being a weepy mess at the airport. Until then, nothing ever made me cry except the monthly newsletters the North Shore Animal League sends out about rescuing abused animals. Those stories get me every. Damn. Time.) and had to start right away, which has been both thrilling and exhausting at the same time.

I'll be sure to share more photos and stories soon! In the meantime, have a drunk happy weekend!

From left to right, starting at the top: 

Sitting in Alamo Square Park in San Francisco // Dan catches the rays in his new sunnies // My favorite boy and his favorite treat (ice cream sundae, natch!) // Handmade ice cream truck seen in Portand, Oregon // Me and my rose colored glasses // A mossy tree looks awfully pretty up close // Caught in the act (of photographing - get your mind out of the gutter!) // The Salvation Army Harbor Light in Portland, Oregon // Rowboats on the Willamette River // The most beautiful sunset ever // A pretty pink frock catches a gentleman's eye // The Andy Monument in Union Square, New York City

(Psst! If you liked these photos, you can follow me on Instagram to see more: @ofrevolt! And you can catch Dan on there too, at @dan_coyle.)

San Francisco: Hyde St. Pier

Soooo . . . guess what I had for dinner last night?

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES AND A $2 BOTTLE OF WHITE WINE!

Hells to the yeah.

In other news, we've arrived in San Francisco and it's totally GORGEOUS and I LOVE IT. (Sorry for the egregious use of the caps lock button. I'm just having one of those totally stoked moments. Flow with me.) During the last few weeks, I said over and over again how I had a really great feeling about San Francisco, and how I just knew that I would adore this city. Dan, in his ever-boyish ways, laughed at me, ignoring my lady intuition.

San Francisco, as I so delicately mentioned earlier, is a beautiful city. Though it lacks the visual punch of cities like Prague or Paris or even New Orleans, its loveliness creeps up on you in soft and subtle ways: the cool blue tones of the sky meeting the sea, the romantic fog that silently sweeps over the city at dusk, the sweet nautical details that dot Fisherman's Wharf and the Hyde St. Pier.

See for yourself:

If San Francisco were a color, it would most certainly be blue. Cerulean blue.

Signs & Wonders: Hollywood, California

It feels almost blasphemous as a lifelong East Coaster to say this but I'll go ahead and say it anyway: I kind of dig L.A. 

There is a little more grit and a little less plastic than I thought. I mean, don't get me wrong: there are freaks aplenty, especially the hapless creature at Whole Foods whose collagen-filled lips puffed all the way up to her nose and who, by the by, took no less than 17 minutes to "help" me with the 99-cent cupcake I wanted to purchase. (By 9 minutes, I knew I was in it for the long haul. I was going to have that cupcake if it killed me. Dan: "There's a reason why they call it La La Land, and SHE is IT.")

It's just that there's a definite sense of hopefulness in the air: people sing along - loudly - to their iPods, in what I'm guessing is a passive gesture of hoping to be discovered. And when a kind of simple optimism is the default emotion of a city, well hey, that's kind of neat, right?

Foodie Friday: The Best Barbecue in North Carolina

This post was made possible by Andrew Schmidt of the Greenville Tourism Board and Bruce Jones of the Skylight Inn - thank you for a very memorable meal!

The "Capitol" of barbecue: the Skylight Inn in Ayden, North Carolina.

I don't know about you, but nothing says "Come eat this crazy good barbecue" like fragrant coils of smoke rising from behind a slightly tilted faux Capitol building off a dirt road in a tiny town in North Carolina.

Here's the thing: the Skylight Inn doesn't just have good barbecue. It's not even "finger-lickin' good" or "knee-slappin' good." It could possibly be "crazy good" if it wasn't already six thousand times better than that. No, it's the kind of good barbecue that is so freak nasty good that you accidentally talk dirty to it as you're eating it. Mm hmm, oh hell yeah.

Welcome to Foodie Friday, barbecue porn edition.

Bruce Jones, proprietor of the Skylight Inn.

One fine afternoon back in March, as my dear Daniel slept off a mite of a hangover, I met up with Andrew Schmidt of the Greenville Tourism Board. Andrew and I set off for nearby Ayden (population: 5,000) to sample the pulled-pork barbecue that the Skylight Inn is known for. 

We walked into the low-lying brick building and immediately the air was filled with the scent of fire and smoke and roasted pig. Three burly fellows sat in a circle, gnashing their teeth against the crunchy bits of pork and draining their soda cups with the kind of fervor one might reserve for a creek found in the middle of a steaming desert. 

I felt like a woodsman. 

Once there I was introduced to Bruce Jones, the proprietor and son of the previous owner - in fact, this restaurant has been in the same family and in continuous operation since 1830. Bruce took me through the kitchen and into the wood-burning shed, where a fire that is about as big as I am stands burning 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Without any seasoning, the whole hog is cooked on the grill, including the head, skin, and jowl - only the hooves are removed prior to cooking, and that's because they curl up and get caught on the grating. (Insert mental image of the Wicked Witch's stockings rolling up underneath the house that killed her.)

The smokehouse is, indeed, quite smoky, so I have to scoot awfully close to the grill to smell the sizzling skin of the pig. My eyes water from the burn, and the man tending to the fire hacks and gasps and it's clear that he's been doing this for a long time.

Whole hogs on the grill.

Barbecue in the making.

This shed holds their supply of logs for the fire.

Once the hog has roasted for 10-12 hours it's taken to the kitchen, where a man with immense forearms cleaves the meat with an intense and precise ferocity. This is where the meat is also flavored with a special vinegar sauce - and here is where every resident of eastern North Carolina will stop and remind visitors that this is why their barbecue is so special: the pork sauce is vinegar-based, not tomato-based like those heathen westerners or - shudder - dripping in barbecue sauce like the rest of the country.

(During my youth in the Bronx, pretty much anything could be called "barbecue" as long as it was cooked outside on a grill and someone had slapped some barbecue sauce on it. I feel at once both shamed and enlightened.)

The special sauce is applied.

A dribble of vinegar.

After a nearly hour-long tour, Bruce offers to let me sample the goods. A scoop of pulled pork is ladled into a cheery plaid paper container, topped by a flat piece of cornbread, which is followed by a scoop of coleslaw nestled in its own little paper container: three-layer cake, Carolina style.

I dismantle the layers. With my fork I dip into the barbecue and . . . it sings! There is an occasional crunch and a definite flavorful zip. The savory cornbread is the perfect accompaniment and the coleslaw, rather than tasting like milky cabbage (which . . . ew), has just the right amount of zest to give the whole meal a lively tang.

I wash the whole thing down with a glass of sweet tea. Mm hmm, oh hell yeah.

The final product: pulled pork barbecue topped with flat cornbread and homemade coleslaw.

Backstage at NBC

Dan was on TV!

Thanks to the magic of Twitter, Dan found himself in the good company of a local Phoenix public relations expert (the wonderful Barb Harris), who just so happened to secure him a spot on NBC's afternoon news program, EVB Live. 

I got to hang out backstage and, I don't know, play with the pretend fruit? They had all kinds of fake fruit lying around in bowls on coffee tables, like grandmothers do at home on the tops of their refrigerators because in any grandmother's house, the bowl on the coffee table is reserved for individually wrapped Werther's candies. 

You know this to be true.

Anyway, it was surprising just how few people are required to film an hour-long television news program: there were just the two hosts, a weather woman, the producer, a cameraman, the director, the sound technician, and then me and Dan and Barb. On this huge set. 

Not really sure why I felt the need to tell you that, but there it is. Here are some pictures!

And then, when it was over, I ran up to the blue screen and screamed, "Take my picture in front of the eggs!" And the producer kindly obliged.