Guess who went and got herself sick on a Monday, y’all? THE TOMBOY. The day started well enough (boydiditever), but by 3pm she was down for the count with body aches, a sore throat and head congestion, and when I got home from work she was in bed napping.

I’ve been trying to nurse her back all night long, with potato soup and soft, sweet French bread and jasmine green tea (alright, let’s face it – a little bit of bourbon with lemon and honey), and she’s currently buried under the white, 100-lb. knit Ralph Lauren “hospital blanket” on the couch. Wish her well soon, would you? She needs it!

These pictures – if you can’t already tell by the brick – were taken on the same day as my Bric-a-Brac post. I love the casual-but-dapper vibe she’s rocking here, especially when you’re hard-pressed to find a fancy dyke wandering around SF on a Saturday (and especially rare in North Beach). The fact that she rocked those bright yellow socks still kills me. So brazen, so excellent with the bowtie!

Linen pants: H&M
Dress shirt: She has no idea. There are many.
Sweater: Calvin Klein
Shoes: Aldo
Bowtie/Socks: Ralph Lauren

PS. She made me title this post like this because her hair, above, looks like soft, fuzzy handsome baby chick hair. Fur? Feathers. You get it. CUTE.

BREAKING NEWS FROM SNAIL KITTEH!

Autostraddle hand-picked yours truly for this year’s hot 100! Hooray! Check the whole shebang out here – there are lots and lots of smart hotties and hot hotties and talented hotties and who knows what else hotties, all for you to peruse at your leisure. The emphasis this year was on REAL GAY HOTTIES, so I’m honored and in good company and happy to see some friends of FFAF there as well!

I love the bric-a-brac at thrift stores. I usually make a beeline for the dresses, but wandering around the aisles of mismatched, completely random, bizarre bric-a-brac is another beast of awesome. Where else can you get battered but perfectly usable clipboards, watering cans, vintage kitchen gadgets, and gorgeous antique trays made of silver that just need a good polishing? I use those to keep my toiletries neat and fancy, for displaying pretty bottles of perfume, or to have somewhere to collect my jewelry when I remove it at bedtime.

Why am I talking about bric-a-brac, anyway? Oh, yes. Look at all this brick! In shaky old San Francisco! Be still, my yearning-for-Boston heart! (Aw, that reminds me of this song.)

Where one corner of the Financial District meets the tip of North Beach’s triangle lies a lovely little private label wine bar, Barrique. It’s one of those quiet, tucked-in places in the city where you can find rock star parking in the middle of a breezy, sunny Saturday afternoon. We gathered there to meet some friends, and because my riding lesson ran over, making the rest of the afternoon run over, we were late and most of the crew was already roaring drunk by the time we arrived.

NEVER FEAR. We caught up in no time at all over a fine cheese plate and champagne, and then we moseyed over to Comstock on Columbus for cocktails and grub. It was so so windy in this brick-ish alley! Let me tell you something about this dress, as it’s a love/hate thing:

1. It’s been SO LONG since I’ve bared it all in a strapless, and damn it felt good. Real good.
2. After all the glory of the boning and the bare shoulders, it falls kind of flat.

This is one of those outfits you have to be a little nuts to wear. There’s a whole lot going on here, but that’s why it was so fun to wear. I think the dress will have to go back to H&M, but the tomboy and petite got me a few for Mother’s Day (a seriously Charlotte York halter deal and a va-va-voom shimmery number the exact shade of NARS Orgasm), and I have a new cerulean blue confection from Tibi to show off, so it’s NBD, really.

I want to talk about makeup! I mean, who doesn’t want to talk about makeup? (Butches, look away.) I’ve recently discovered the joys of Shiseido foundation, Elemis skin care, MAC’s original Viva Glam lipstick (where has it BEEN all my life, honestly?), and I am completely and totally in love with the brush set I got for under $25 at Costco. I have super dreamy brushes from MAC and Jane Iredale and old, beat-up trusty brushes from God only knows where that I’d rather bleed than part with, and all but three of like two dozen of my pre-existing brushes stand a chance against these new ones. If you can, I highly recommend that y’all GETCHUSOME.

Run, don’t walk! You’re welcome, I love you!

Dress: H&M
Blazer: Free People
Tights: Betsey Johnson
Shoes: Miu Miu
Bag: C0-Lab by Christopher Kon

All jewelry is gifted, which is sweet.  (Oh, except for the cocktail ring, which I love and got from ROSS of all places.)

PS. Props to the tomboy, who is getting crazy good at snapping these.

This will have to be so, so fast! I’ve been terribly occupied with my new occupation as a bona fide travel editor, and to top it all off the tomboy and I have at last booked our trip for a much-needed Spring Break! In just three short days we’re off to very tiny little island in Mexico, where we intend to drive scooters all around, frolic with baby turtles and sharks and monkeys, lounge on pristine white beaches and eat and drink local deliciousness until we burst. We’re so excited and I cannot wait. The weather here in San Francisco has been lovely lately – balmy Spring days until tonight’s rain came from out of nowhere – but it’s no match for the Caribbean sun and sea!

What are your Spring Break plans?! If you haven’t got any, where do you wish you were going?

Note: The above photos are from nearly two whole weeks ago, when we lunched in North Beach on a pretty Sunday afternoon. Pizza calzone!

Bonjour! It’s been awhile! We were very busy touring the tomboy’s niece around San Francisco over the weekend, and with exciting new goings-on, to be announced shortly.

Japantown in the rain!
Shopping at Bloomingdale’s downtown!
Introducing the young one to Thai food and soju cocktails for the very first time!
A gorgeous, light-filled break in the rain at one of the city’s prettiest, best kept secret vistas!
Hanging out with glamorous lesbians (and some much less glamorous) at a new girl party in SF’s Mission District!
Cocktails with chocolate pot de creme and an insanely good sheep’s milk cheese plate with fig cakes and walnut bread in Hayes Valley!

And that was only Friday! Phew!

Saturday was filled with shenanigans in the Castro and the obligatory drive up to Twin Peaks (since the skies had cleared but left a mean chill in the air), then onto Ocean Beach through Golden Gate Park’s incredible tulip gardens next to the old windmill, and a tour of the Presidio topped with an incredible Central-South American tapas dinner where the Mission meets Market Street.

Sunday brought a mellower pace, with walkabouts through North Beach on a gloriously sunny day for a late lunch, and through the Mission for the murals and, of course, Secret Breakfast ice cream.

Nouvelle Vague’s cover of Dancing With Myself came on while M snapped all these pictures, so I’ll play it here for you in case you haven’t seen it yet (for it is highly watchable and will make you feel like dancing or smoking or both!):

I love my city!

CONFESSION: Brews On The Bay was so much fun. Going on Sunday meant that it was much less crowded, and the threat of another thunderstorm was minimized ever so slightly. Instead, we got this bizarrely muggy weather, overcast with some blue patches of sky peeking out here and there, and a slightly damp warmth. It was pleasant! The ship rocked to and fro a bit, and a drizzle came and went from time to time, but we got to sample tons of tasty brews from SF breweries with my comrades and it was a good time. I rang the bell. I didn’t mean to! Well, I did. In fact, M suggested I should, and I only rang it once, but boy was it loud. Checking out the quarters for the captain and sailors and engineers and whatnot was exciting! The only thing I wasn’t fond of was the non-stop U2 cover band. Them, I could have done without.

Afterward, we trekked through the vintage arcade (which we have pledged to return to many times), through Fisherman’s Wharf and a horse-drawn carriage all the way into North Beach,  where we stopped at a Sicilian restaurant for an early dinner. Despite the fact that rain had begun in earnest, it was still warm out, so we took a table outdoors and enjoyed the passerby and sweet rain smells enjoying our bellinis and Sicilian Sangrias, respectively. It was a delicious, romantical meal. We caught a cab home in the rain and do you know something? That asinine Postal Service song about waiting since birth to find a love that would look and sound like a movie didn’t cross my mind, not even once.

I consider this triumph in both authenticity and the raw, undone edges of true love.

So, here’s some (boozy) ship action and M would like it very much if you knew that she took great pleasure in finding that half-broken watermelon resting atop a newsbox in the rain. If you’d like to read about the beer itself, you’ll just have to go here. Oh, and the morning of I let M cut off a whole bunch of my hair (a compromise from the night before, when I was struck by the urge to shear my locks off at 2AM, after we’d both had several cocktails). She offered to use the leveler to make sure it was perfectly exactly straight, and it was one of the most adorable things she’s ever said. Ha!