Bay Area | May, 2022

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May recap! Starting with a lovely sushi dinner at Nara. 

Lots of bread projects this month from the Mooncakes and Milkbread cookbook by Kristina Cho.

Red bean buns!

Back on that gel nail polish train.

Sunnyvale Farmer’s Market, followed by a french dip sandwich from Adamson’s.

Miso corn buns! And dinner at Ramen Nagi, which Alex stood in line for so that I could just walk in, perfectly timed, after my photo session at Stanford.

Kamikaze fries from Koja truck, followed by Happy Lemon with Cassie & Do-Hee.

An interesting beer find, plus dinner at Hawker Fare.

Dinner with Alex’s family! And back at the Sunnyvale farmer’s market again.

After forever holding out as an Android user, I finally switched over to an iPhone! Big moves in March!

 

Tea time with Dan & Jeri. We appropriately made a big boba order and then played the Sabobatage card game. Very cute.

And Alex smoked a whole tri tip. Very tasty.

The best thing on facebook is the Buy Nothing group that I’m part of… I asked if anyone had a mahjong set they were willing to part with, and I got this beautiful, complete set! Now we just need two other people for me and Alex to play with. And in the second photo, beginning to cut pieces to make quilts for Cassie and Courtney.

Catch-up dinner with Amy, whom I haven’t really seen in the last couple years. Plus, takeout from Pushkin, San Francisco’s only Ukrainian restaurant.

Paint Club is also back! We had a paint date in Pamela’s garden with little Pinto supervising.

Meetup with Whitney while she was in town.

Checking out the newly revamped Valley Fair mall. And a voluptuous daikon at the Cupertino Farmer’s Market.

Happy Birthday Alex! I got him this print by local artist Thirst & Thrive featuring nine San Francisco breweries. And then we embarked on a mission to visit all nine within the week, which took some interesting turns.

First brewery stop, Fort Point on Valencia, easily the most beautiful of all the breweries, and with the best food and non-beer menu too.

While we were at For Point, Alex’s friend Monica and called to see what we were doing later that day. She had courtside seats to the Warriors game via work and was wondering whether we’d be interested in joining her. DROP EVERYTHING, We’re going to that.

But first, we might as well hit up the next brewery, Harmonic, next door to the Warriors at Thrive City. We watched Duke in the NCAA tournament, eagerly hoping for a win so that they too would be coming to Chase Center later that week for the next rounds. Success! Duke wins! It’s Alex’s birthday week!

On to the Warriors game! Fourth row seats, courtside, with lounge access. They even have Warriors-colored cupcake sprinkles. Alex also got a (free!) beer from Magnolia Brewing, checking off another brewery from the list.

It’s a weird angle on the Jumbotron from down here. Actually kind of hard to pay attention to the actual game, with the action zooming back and forth and the score so high overhead. But not complaining. Alex’s birthday week magic is just getting started. He even caught a t-shirt after I stared down the guy throwing it. I guess that’s easier when you’re right in front of them.

Klay so close.

Thanks again Monica for the awesome seats! We’re available any time you want to bring us again. :P

Book club. First we talked about Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection. Now we are reading Burnout together. I so appreciate getting to connect with these women every other week.

Continuing Alex’s birthday week, I booked him a birthday dinner well in advance without telling him where we would be going. As we were approaching the restaurant, we saw a couple examining the parking meters outside. Then the realization slowly dawned that it was Bobby and Jacq, Alex’s good friends who live an hour away from the city. Completely unplanned, they just happened to book the same time at the same tiny sushi restaurant, with the two seats next to us at the chef’s counter on a weekday… because it was their ten-year wedding anniversary. Seriously, Alex’s birthday week. Magic.

The meal was wonderful from beginning to end. This wasn’t even all of the little courses we had.



Afterwards, Bobby and Jacq went with us for a quick beer at Seven Stills, checking off another of the breweries from our list.

Then it was off to the newest rooftop bar in SF, Kaiyo Rooftop. The views were nice, the crowd was very loud and rowdy and overbooked, and the food and drinks were only ok. But I would come back during the day. I feel like that would be more my vibe.

Later in the week, checking off two more breweries: 21st Amendment and Black Hammer. For those counting, that meant we had finished six of the nine.

Then it was time to see Duke come to us in San Francisco for the Sweet 16 at Chase Center! This was the first time the NCAA had been hosted in SF (besides on Treasure Island in 1939), and chances were actually pretty slim that Duke would end up in in the West region to here, plus they had to actually win the previous games to make it to the Sweet 16. So basically, we were extremely lucky to have them come to us and for us to be able to go, together with Dan & Jeri!

When we bought our Sweet 16 tickets we weren’t even sure which teams would be playing, but you do get to go to both Sweet 16 games on the same day on your one ticket. So Dan, Jeri, and I went early to watch the Gonzaga-Arkansas game first, while Alex was still in work meetings. Then the prime time slot went to Texas Tech vs. Duke!

We got a picture with the Blue Devil!

Spotted on the selfie screen: Tim Cook of Apple. Also a Dukie. And after a close game, DUKE WINS! Birthday week!!

Next, Cassie and Michael joined in on the birthday breweries celebrations! They were very sweet to bring birthday decorations too. Hats, kazoos, and birthday glasses, haha.

 

Barebottle was very crowded and had so many group parties going on. Laughing Monk was super quiet and calm by comparison. We played a few rounds of Spades, and then we were going to finish up the entire tour with Speakeasy…

Only to discover Speakeasy already closed at 8pm and they were closed for the rest of the weekend for private parties. Sooooo frozen pizza and beers at home was the consolation prize. Birthday week would have to be extended to birthday month for a later completion of the last brewery on the tour.

Next, a very ambitious Saturday, as we had already planned to hang out with Dan and Jeri again, bringing them up to our wine club pickup at Reeve in Healdsburg. We always love the wood-fired pizza that comes with our wine tastings.

We even stopped by Lioco, another wine tasting room in Healdsburg, and walked around town a bit.

We took this picture outside Duke’s since we were all wearing our Duke gear… and then shortly after we started reading about the accusations of drinks being drugged at Duke’s. Not good! Glad we didn’t actually drink there!

Anyways, we kept our Healdsburg short, because we wanted to hustle back to the city (1.5 hours away) to go and watch the next round of the NCAA Tournament. Duke in the Elite 8! We decided not to pay the big bucks to go inside this time, but went to go watch for free from the Gott’s right outside the stadium. We even snagged the best seats when I chatted up an older pair of Duke alums who were sitting here but getting ready to go inside with the tickets they had just purchased. 

And DUKE WON AGAIN! Very fun. We had Dan and Jeri over to watch the other Elite 8 games, but then the rest of the tournament didn’t go as well for us, so we’ll just skip over that part. :) But in addition to watching basketball, we also had craft day! Jeri made this adorable hand-sewn donut pincushion.

I worked on Courtney’s quilt, and Cassie worked on her own quilt!

Day two, more quilting, fueled by Greek food.

I went ahead and finished the whole quilt top the next day. I definitely made some mistakes, but it has character!

Another fresh manicure, and an everything bao! Like an everything bagel with the cream cheese stuffed on the inside.

Wow, this was a full month. One final set of photos, looking at some beautiful cherry blossoms just tucked away in a random neighborhood!

And on to the next month! Grateful for such a wonderful time of hanging out with friends again.

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.