fireballs & tsunami

Remember the glory days of Fireballs and Tsunami? Like, 2001-2005, when I wrote phenomenally witty posts to accompany my photos? Due to a hasty switchover in Wordpress, my rudimentary knowledge of HTML, and my frustration with robot blog spammers, blogging has fallen to a lower rung on my priority ladder. This site has become, for all intents and purposes, a lazy, quasi-dormant photoblog.

But now, I’d like to change that. I long for the olden days when I blogged daily and posted pseudo-funny captions. Yeah, I said it. My end-of-summer resolution is to revive my blog and make this site more interesting to visit.

I’ll start with this post about my July trip to California. I flew to San Francisco to attend a film festival, where one of the documentaries I produced this spring was competing for Best Short Documentary. The good news? Our film won! I accepted the award on behalf of the film’s director, who was unable to attend. The bad news? The California air triggered a massive sinus attack. Despite my sinal misery, I managed to snap some shots.

The lovely Roxie Cinema in San Francisco, where the festival took place.

I stayed at the Hotel Bijou, in the heart of the Union Square district. I somehow lucked out and ended up with a room on the top floor, which provided a sweet view.

I loved the hotel’s decor!

Each hotel room was themed after a film shot in San Francisco. I ended up in Nine Months!

The Chronicle headquarters, around the corner from my hotel.

Union Square.

Fishermens Wharf! The clam chowder (not pictured) and bread were excellent.

Shady bastard.

Skyline from the boat cruise I took of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.

THE ROCK.

This thrift store was pretty amazing.

A few random shots of establishments I passed.

I can honestly say this was one of the best slices of pizza I’ve ever eaten. If only I could remember the name of the pizza shop (which was about a block from the Roxie Cinema).

I took the train to meet my friend Andrew (who was in California the same week for his sister’s wedding) from MTV. We met up in Sunnyvale…

…where I enjoyed my very first In ‘n’ Out burger!

Then Andrew and I drove through the mountains to Santa Cruz, also known as the beach town where The Lost Boys was shot!

I’m not afraid of heights, water, or rickety bridges, but walking across this railway kind of freaked me out. It was very much like the scene in Stand by Me. Only I didn’t lose my comb. Poor, poor Vern.

I like to take photos from moving roller coasters. Haven’t lost a camera yet!

That’s me.

In conclusion, it was a great trip. It was the first time I’ve really traveled alone long-distance, and I’m proud to say I didn’t get lost, or bored, once. I even learned the public transportation in San Francisco very quickly. Next stop, Southern California.

See ALL of the photos in my Flickr set!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Random, Film, Festivities, Photography, Food, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.