Bay Area | May, 2023
May! A.k.a. wedding month, when we had our wine country celebrations. More on that at some later time, but here’s a look at the rest of the month in the Bay Area.
Mom is in town! I took her to eat lobsters and to visit the Apple Park visitors center. They give you an iPad so you can have an augmented reality look at the model of their campus.
Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, on a quasi-rainy day.
I made a box for the mahjong set we bought last time in Healdsburg. Its case was broken, so I just got a perfectly sized cardboard box and wrapped my Taiwanese fruits wallpaper around it. And in the second image, we went over to Amy and Mike’s place and got introduced to these green onion biscuits with nougat inside from ChiaTe… Very strange texture choice, but it’s pretty tasty, I think?
Chop chop, before & after!
Wedding projects, before and after! Used some leather paint and made my own floral shoes.
Mahjong night at the Garrisons’
Rooting on the Warriors in the playoffs!
Knitting at the ballpark; this is drawstring bag #2 of 3, meant to hold our wooden mahjong set pieces. One bag for the plastic chips, one bag for the tiles we don’t use (since it’s an American set, they have jokers and extra flowers that we don’t use), and one for the main set of tiles that we do use.
And Warriors watch party at Chase Center! Unfortunately we lost this one and ultimately bowed out of the playoffs. We’ll have to wait until next year!
Peach Blossom Spring book club with Leona and friends!
Took the ferry from San Francisco to Alameda to go back to the Alameda Point Antiques Faire! This was great, I would definitely bike to the ferry again– as long as you’e not buying big furniture, it’s definitely more pleasant than fighting the car traffic in and out of Alameda island.
Got the duck pins set! Just for decoration, I’m not sure what we’ll do with it, haha.
Did not purchase this mahjong set, although I did reorganize all the pieces for them. But we really should have purchased it so we could move on to the mahjong & vinyl record dealers phase of our lives.
Biking around the streets of Alameda is very interesting. Many potholes, many streets under construction, lots of abandoned-feeling spaces.
But over at Almanac, they were having a little record fair!
I had two amazing finds from Highly Curated Vintage at this record fair: this Yokohama, California record which was recorded in San Jose in the 70s as a tribute to the Asian American Movement.
And the very first Taiwanese record I’ve ever seen! Taiwanese songs recorded in the 60s! Wild.
Got some very cute license plate cacti back at the Ferry Building too.
Date night with the Valentes at Cavaña.
They have one of my favorite cocktails, this kiwi drink. However, it was so loud that we blasted out our eardrums and no longer have hearing. Would not advise sitting inside on a live music night.
Fun event at the ballpark where they fed us some snacks and let us hang out in Triples Alley before the game, and then we got to walk the warning track over to our seats.
We are such regulars at Oracle Park, we’ve already walked the field at least 5 other times, but it’s still fun every time!
Meanwhile, wedding preparations… creating chaos by trying to photograph my own flat lays ahead of time.
And sneaking in a quick gathering with some accountability ladies and babies before heading up to our wedding weekend.
Fast forward through the wedding, which I will share someday… hanging out with my family afterwards! My friend Vijay was kind enough to gift us a more portable record player from our wedding registry, so I brought the player and my Taiwanese record (and a few others) to play for my mom and aunts. It was a hit.
Check-in with Kait
And check-in with Cassie, Courtney, and Do-Hee. I cannot remember what Cassie is reacting to, but looks surprising, haha.
Whole-family outing to the baseball game for Alex’s dad’s birthday!
And climbing at Benchmark Berkeley with my cousins.
Free fireworks night thanks to the Giants… you just have to prepare for San Francisco weather in May, which requires full winter attire. Plus my fruitqueen box, with specifically curated fruits. I had not really seen mulberries around until this year, and now it seems like these mulberries are everywhere. Not complaining, I like them!
More gifts from the registry, including this fancy knife we saw in a shop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming– thanks Amy & Mike! And our first set of Hasami mugs, purchased from one of our favorite shops over in Los Alamos, California, Campover– thanks Kristen! Also not pictured, our first pair of legit wine glasses, Gabriel Glas, thanks to Alicia.
Getting our splash hit bobbleheads and visiting the little fish tank at Oracle Park. The total number of splash hits (home runs hit directly into McCovey Cove by the Giants) had been stuck on 99 for a long time, but in June we got three more in quick succession, so they’re already on #102 now.
Cheeeese
And an AnnaTifftime check-in too.
Bye, May! You were a good one!
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.
