By Thanksgiving, our Martini March was a wine - soaked memory, so we cast our gaze forward to the Italian Cookie Walk. The Saturday after the turkey stuff-a-thon, Ira, Harald, Jeneva and I met up at Union City BART and headed (ha!) up to San Francisco to pre-cookie the route. We have realized that the pre-whatevering is really important to our HEAD events what with the early closure of one of our burrito joints and the fact that bakeries sometimes have weird hours.
We had a lot of fun on our pre-cookieing but we commited several tactical errors. The first goof we made was to eat lunch before eating cookies. Don't get me wrong - lunch was delicious - we ate at Cap's Corner, a historic restaurant near Beach Blanket Babylon, but it was muy estupido to eat lunch before visiting eight bakeries. The second mistake was visiting eight bakeries. Even though we just had a nibble at each stop, we were barely able to waddle into the Comstock Saloon and beg for help from Lindsey, an alcohol therapist and dispenser of digestives. Those things really work! We felt good enough to walk the rest of the way to BART and get our flabby butts home.
Armed with the results of our pre-cookieing, we pared our list of bakeries down to four. We figured we'd only visit the places that were historically significant and made their own pastries. Also, they needed to have a specialty. This time, we met Bruce and Pam at BART and headed (ha!) up to the City where we walked up to the Comstock - and guess who was there!!!? Lindsey, Doctor of Boozology and the Official Bartender of the HEAD Society. At the bar, we met Nancy, Bob and Sharol and a whole bunch of people dressed like Santa. There were Santas all over the streets, on BART, everywhere! We were intrigued, because we thought WE were the coolest group in SF that day, but the Clauses were giving us a run for our money - just with sheer numbers!
We settled down at the bar to wait for Steve, who was still on BART. Lindsey made us some Pisco Punch, a cocktail invented during the Gold Rush in San Francisco. Its really good - kind of a Mikes Hard Lemonade from the Barbary Coast era. We heard from Steve who had arrived in the City and was starting to walk toward the Comstock - just about the same time some of the Santas clued us in that in 45 minutes they were going to try to break the Guiness Book record for naked Santas in Washington Square Park. We told Steve and ordered another round. Seconds later, Steve entered the bar. I had no idea he could move that fast! After we finished our drinks, we bade farewell to fair Lindsey and headed for our first bakery, via Washington Square Park...
...Where we encountered thousands of people dressed as Santa. Key word here is "dressed". There were a few brave, naked souls, lots of women in thongs, some people from Sharol an Bob's church and even a Waldo, but we got tired of waiting around for the group trou dropping and headed for the Italian French Bakery for a little macaroon action. We found out later that we had stumbled into Santacon which will be a HEAD Society outing next year. Second Saturday in December. Mark your calendars.
The lady at the I&F bakery was charmed by us, but really wanted a report on the naked Santas so we clued her in. Fact is, the only naked Santas we saw looked a lot like Ira and me before the diet. Question: Why don't the pretty people get nekkid? Anyway, we snarfed our macaroons, bought some killer bread, and headed to Mara's on Columbus for canolli. Canolli are, to my mind, a perfect food, combining fried deliciousness and creamy goo, Plus - these ones had chocolate on them. Canolli are said to be a fertility symbol in Italy. What a horny bunch of people...
Next, we made it over to Stella Bakery for sacripantina. It means "sacred little bread" I think it should mean "oral orgasm" because, honestly, its that good... *Sorry, I drifted off there for a minute. After we finished licking the plate, spoon, fingers of the server, and anything else that came close to the sacripantina, we swooned over to Victoria Pastry Company on Vallejo. We chose this place because all of its cookies are wonderful, they serve coffee and they have a bathroom. My favorite cookie at Victoria is a little brown blob that tastes so good you could plotz. They have sacripantina, too!!!
By the time we left Victoria, it was a few minutes after five. We stumbled over to Kearny and Tomasso's Pizza. Tomasso's is the oldest pizza restaurant on the West Coast, it opens at 5pm, and when we got there at 5:15, it was full. We found out why when we got our pizzas - sausage and mushroom and a buratta cheese, cherry tomato, and basil. OMG - that was some delicious pie!!! By the way, buratta cheese is a mozerella enriched with cream.
The walk back to BART was uneventful, but pretty what with the Christmas lights and all, and we motored back home with our leftover cookies, a loaf of bread and a few drunken Santas. It was a really fun event and we're in the middle of planning our next outing. Keep an eye peeled for HEAD trip announcements - we'll see you there! Wherever "there" is!
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