Bay Area | January, 2023
What a lovely start to the new year! It’s time to recap our January around the Bay.
First, a little outing on the brand new Central Subway, which takes you right into Chinatown! For Japanese American brunch at Cassava.
A little walk around North Beach
Digging for records
And happening upon a lion dance! Happy New Year!
New Year’s Day Chinese banquet feast with friends!
A small collection of the super weird weather throughout the month…
And a glimpse of our thank you cards, made from the flowers by Amanda Vidmar Designs from our December ceremony!
A look back at my 2022 bookshelf.
Back to running, since we signed up for a February 5k/10k. And shopping for art supplies for my craft day birthday party!
Dinner at Chome, a cute little Japanese spot in the Mission.
Dinner with TAFers at Benchmark Climbing, which is co-founded by some TAF friends! The first of many visits to Benchmark for us!
I love a good behind-the-scenes tour, and it’s been three years of waiting for this one to return! A tour of the Giants’ stadium, now being offered again for the first time since the pandemic. Cassie, Michael, and bebe L joined us for the tour.
We’ve seen most of the ballpark at this point, but this was our first peek into the Tony Bennett suite!
We also got to see some lawn-mowing Roombas roam around the field, unmanned. If you look closely, you can see two little black dots on the grass, haha.
Then, we hopped back onto the Central Subway to have lunch in Chinatown! Happy Year of the Rabbit!
The little one’s eating solids now!
Year of the rabbit, not subtle. Got a few decorations for our houses!
Love.
Meeting with Zha Zha, hiring her officially for our spring wedding!
So much rain this season… this barely trickling creek has become a roaring river. Our pom-pom alpaca friends look on.
The reservoir, which looks nice and full.
Lunch at Bluestone
One of Alex’s crafts for my craft day birthday party was craft beer! I got a free IPA kit from someone on facebook, and we decided to give it a try. Speaking now from the future, I can tell you that it turned out great! I don’t actually like beer, but I thought it was pretty good too. We also made a visit to a local brewing shop to get the bottles and a whole intro into the wide wide world of home brewing.
(Amateur hour) quilt school is in session! Following my birthday, Jeri came back for a couple more craft sessions.
Dan with the quilt of his Duke shirts that Jeri made! And me with my Duke quilt that I made years ago.
And another quilting session later, Jeri finished her Stanford quilt too! So good!
Then it was time to celebrate Lunar New Year with family!
A followup meal of dumplings from the newly opened Dumpling Club brick and mortar in the Mission, SF.
And more climbing! Vince made me my own dedicated “spectator membership,” which is not a real thing, but it’s so I can come and scan in but not actually climb, just watch other people climb, haha. Thanks, Vince. Mayyyybe one day I will try climbing, but for now I’ll just let Alex enjoy it while I knit or something else. :)
Watching the Niners lose afterwards, wompwomp. And – a catchup lunch with Amy!
Lunch with Rebecca at DishDash, and a pink ball pit at the crazy instagram-trap boba place that we happened upon down the street.
Our very first Mahjong club gathering! I solicited a free mahjong set from a very kind person on facebook a year ago but never actually got around to playing (you need four people, and it can take a while, so it’s hard to just happen upon it). But here we are! Making a dumplings & mahjong gathering happen!
Alex actually knew exactly how to play, and how to explain it clearly too. Pretty great! This set is so nice, especially since someone so generously gifted it to me for free too.
A Berkeley day! Visiting the mega record store, Amoeba. And the Berkeley location of Benchmark Climbing.
After climbing, pizza dinner and Everything Everywhere All at Once with Vince and Justin. This was the last month for this theater before it shut down permanently! Berkeley has zero public movie theaters left now.
It’s also time for the inaugural cookbook club! Basic concept: it’s a potluck, but there’ s a cookbook theme, and everyone makes and brings a dish from that cookbook. For the first one, it’s The Woks of Life!
We were super ambitious and made four dishes total. It was definitely too much food altogether, haha. First, a potato salad.
Second, a mifun; third, egg drop soup.
And fourth, a classic sesame chicken. All dishes were great, but the sesame chicken was definitely the fan fave.
Over to the Valentes’ for dinner!
SO MANY delicious things. Everyone did a great job, and as I mentioned, it was way too much food.
Wonderful food and wonderful company.
And finally, it was time to bottle Alex’s beer!
Bye, January! Thanks for a wonderful start to the new year.
Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.
