Bachelorettes on the Bay

Judea picks me up and we tool north to Russian Hill to gather Sally up for her bachelerette fest--her wedding is coming up in December. We are all too hungry for predinner cocktails so we end up first at Mangorosa: a newish & fine fancy restaurant in North Beach. Everything we get is wicked delicious--mixed green salad with goat cheese and polenta/cheese fritters, fried calamari, lambchops, halibut, gnocchi with mushroom & creaminess. And a wee warm center chocolate cake (ooooohohohohohoihoiho)-- that turns out to be on the house to toast Sally's impending nuptial condition.

That's (more than) a mouthful, and thus an appropriately celebratory feast. We then go to Romolo's for the deferred cocktails which are now playing the role of aperitifs. Then it's down the street to Enrico's, our appointed spot to meet our other bachelerette compatriots. But Enrico's is boarded up. No one home. We ponder this turn of events. The companions will never find us. Oopsie.

"Didn't you say they still have a website?" Judea asks. Sally nods emphatically.
"Absolutely!" So we end up at Crowbar farther down Broadway. It is a friendly bar with a fun, punk-centric jukebox and pool tables. We meet Eddie from Wales who takes great exception to Sally calling him English, and as he was already touchy about complying with her demand to take off his hat if he wanted to sit at our table, he soon wanders off. We make new friends soon enough at the pool table, as we play game after game of spectacularly shoddy eight ball. We meet DJ who is on business from New Jersey. When he hears that Sally is soon to be wed, he edifies her with the "recipe" he and his wife used to conceive on their honeymoon, stressing that is it failsafe. These guidelines mostly entail limitations to the male's "output", so that the maximum amount of sperm, and promotion/ protection/ implementation therof are ensured--no hottubs, no pot, etc. And conceive DJ & wife did indeed (however, he admits the accuracy isn't dependable: they had a boy even though they were trying for a girl by only having sex right when his wife ovulated, and other techniques that suppposedly encourage a female fetus. Spare the seed and spoil the zygote...or store the seed, rather). We play more dismal pool and Dj, who is clearly a pool shark, nonetheless humors us good-naturedly. We mingle with other friendly and drunken faces, many rounds are bought for Sally, a fight almost breaks out & the bouncer somehow masterfully defuses the tensions (we need this be-mohawked man with the piercing blue eyes in foreign policy!), and soon it is time for the properly inebriated bride to get her beauty sleep, and we slip out into the autumn night.