Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

When Kitty awoke us Tuesday morning, my sister and I both swore we were never going to drink like that ever again, or at least, not today.

Since we had done so much on Monday, our goals were less ambitious, if more focussed. If you know me, you know I have some issues with my health. My sister wanted to see if she could help with some of those issues by directing me towards a decent pair of shoes. There were two stores she wanted to go to, both in the Inner Sunset. One was On the Run, and the other was the Z-Coil store. Since the Inner Sunset is a fun place to be with cool coffeeshops and bookstores we thought it would be fun to start there, and then work our way back towards Cole Valley, Haight, Golden Gate Park, etc. And perhaps check out the German restaurant in Lower Hayes Valley that the bartender at Mad Dog in the Fog had mentioned. We also were going to be walking and taking buses through other neighborhoods as part of our tour.

With all the walking we’d done the day before, even in my walking shoes, I was developing one of my limps. Standing is the worst as when I stand I tend to lean on my left side and that’s the ankle that’s never quite healed. So Morgan spent some of our trip to the Inner Sunset reminding me to lean on my right side and sit down when I had a chance. She had been to On the Run before and gotten some decent walking shoes there, but we wanted to try the Z-Coil shoes first as they were new to us and intriguing. She had called ahead when we were planning this escapade and had found out that if we did stop in and decide on a trying on shoes to allow for about an hour since these are shoes that are custom adjusted for each wearer.

So, after we stopped in at a coffee shop to have our caffeine fix, we wandered to the Z-Coil store to explore our options.  For anyone who hasn’t heard about these shoes, they’re shoes that come with a metal coil in the heel and a firm orthotic in the shoe itself. The orthotic in each shoe can be adjusted in the store to the wearer’s foot (like more flat for flat-feeted people, for example). The coils are also adjusted. The sales person watches how you walk in your regular shoes to determine your gait (do you pronate, lean in, or suppinate, lean out, your feet, for instance). He then gets your size in the shoe styles you want to try on, finds the closest to your size and then has you walk in them again. If it’s something you think you want to buy, he custom fits everything to your feet. It’s a spendy shoe (most styles are over $200), but they last.

When we walked in, we saw a couple of people ahead of us who were waiting to replace the heels on their shoes. That’s the thing. There is a lifetime warranty for fixing and adjusting the shoe itself. And the heels can be replaced (about every year and a half) for $35 each. That’s doable. The people ahead of us were their own walking testimonial. The man had had these shoes for a couple of years and his back problems had disappeared and he’d lost weight because he could walk more. He swore by them. They are supposed to help improve your gait and posture (you take them into the store for periodic adjustments as you get better walking, etc.), and also offer a 50% energy return in the heel, so you get tired less quickly.

So, I decided to go ahead and at least try them, see what I thought. This is the style I picked out:

There were other styles I tried, too, but my instep is high, and I have a weird foot so the best thing is a sturdy lace-up shoe.

They look funny – like funky, high-heel Fluevogs without the class.  But they felt great on. A little wobbly. You have to get used to the fact that there’s always a little movement while you’re in these shoes, kind of like being on a ship. There’s a ramp and steps in the store so you can practice going up and down ramps and steps, which were a little bit of an adventure for me at first. I needed a sturdy coil and to have the orthotic adjusted for me, but these shoes felt so good on, it was incredible! During the course of the day (because of course I got a pair and wore them out the door), I was not only able to keep up with my sister, but the pain in my ankle and my limp disappeared. And since our plan was to tramp all over (and I had secret plans for walking all over the panhandle of Golden Gate Park), having these shoes on was a godsend. I have since decided to even wear them while doing the dishes since standing there washing dishes is one of those standing still times when my ankle goes out.

I know. It’s weird. Just deal with it.

There was a trainer in the store at the same time who wanted to try out the shoes to see if it was something he could recommend to his clients since some had physical problems.

There are some problems with them. Because of the coils, you need to be careful about putting heels on barstools and walking around cords and climbing ladders and stuff. You also shouldn’t used them for lateral sports like basketball or tennis. And since they make you a half-inch taller, you need to remember and adjust the seat or change your shoes before you drive. And they are a sturdy shoe. So, as comfortable as they are at the beginning of the day, by the end of the day, like any sturdy shoe, you’re ready to take them off. But, on the whole, I am very happy with these.

So, that took up most of the morning.

Then, because I had a new lease on my feet and felt all energized and stuff, we started walking. I still needed to take a picture of Trax (since I had missed that the night before), and my sister thought I might enjoy visiting the Sword and Rose (hard to find tucked away special maegickal type place) since I hadn’t been there in a long time, and I wanted to reacquaint myself with a couple of places in Golden Gate Park since I used them in some scenes I’m writing. (Yes, less ambitious than Monday, but still ambitious.) Then we got talking about my favorite date of all time and my sister thought she might know where that was (I never could remember since at the time I was more enamored of the boy in question and didn’t pay too much attention to where the store was, just that it was a cool store that the cool boy had taken me to).

So, we began walking and taking the bus in the direction of Golden Gate Park and the panhandle and such. I wanted a good pic of Uncle John’s Tree, which NO ONE seems to know anything about.

There’s a tiny bit about it on the web, but even the cranky volunteer in the MacLaren Building didn’t seem to know what we were talking about. We had to call it the Christmas tree for him to realize what we meant.

Above is the MacLaren Building and below is the door to the MacLaren Building.

At least I have a pic of the tree and the building and a sense of the space for the scenes I’m writing.

I also took other pics for the same reason. Nostalgia and to nail down the space and setting.

Above, heading into the park. Below, warning of cars ahead as you go from panhandle to park proper.

Above, a house I always liked on Oak. Below, a little grove in the panhandle I liked.

Above, you see those spires? That’s USF. I used to live right near USF and walk down to the panhandle and across to the Haight.  I took a whole lot more pics of the park, but you probably don’t need to see all those and they’re mostly for me to nail stuff down in my head about the scenes. But it was good to reconnect with the park again.

Then, we headed back up to the Haight to catch a bus somewhere else and my sister pointed out that the bookstore I remembered probably wasn’t too far away, if we just got on a different bus near the same corner, we might be able to find it after all. Since I was all bouncy in my new shoes and not out of breath, I decided, “Sure, why not?”

To fill you in, one of the best dates I ever had, in fact THE best date I ever had, began in this hole in the wall bookstore that sold nothing but scifi/fantasy/horror books (used and new) where the person behind the counter took cash only or checks if you pressed him. The date continued after we browsed and bought books as we stopped at a flea market, then went to a deli to get nibbles and nosh and beer and then back to my place where we sat quietly sharing the couch and space, reading our books and nibbling on our snacks. Like I said, it was the best date EVER!

Well, my sister thought she knew where it was, but couldn’t quite find it, so we stopped and asked some people and said, “Sure, if it’s open, it’ll be just around the corner.” I thought they meant, silly me, that it had closed down. Little did I know that they meant that it was only open three days a week:

You’ll notice it used to be four…

And yes, we had gone somewhere else, as it was ELSEWHERE BOOKS!

They have “VISA/MC” signs on the front door now. When I went to the store it was 1998 and looked like what it looks like in the City Search pic. According to an article in the Sunset Beacon in 2004, the murals above the door are recent. But, it is the same bookstore.  It was nice to see it again, even if I couldn’t go inside and browse.

By then we were HUNGRY and ready to high tail it out of the Sunset and down to the Lower Hayes Valley to check out Suppenkuche, the German place we had talked about the day before. Below is a cool dome building in the Lower Hayes Valley.

My sister had been to Suppenkuche before and knew what to expect. It’s got kind of the communal table thing going for it that Le Pain Quotidien has, but a little more German and less French. We began with a shared butternut squash soup and a mixed German salad with pickled cabbage, carrots, beets, potato salad and butter leaf lettuce. My sister had the stuffed portabello mushroom with feta cheese and spinach, and I had something that included really good stuffed chicken and potato pancakes. It was good food. And of course we had beer:

The little bottles next to the beer are bitters. They were in the aperitif section so we thought we were supposed to have some some before we ate and it made everything taste WONDERFUL. Then we had some after to help us digest all the hobbit and dwarf food we’d just consumed.

And then we went home to make a fairly early night of it as my sister had to go to work the next day and I needed to pack up all my stuff and get ready to spend some time with Dad.