Results tagged “sfistjessica”

Now here's what we're talking about! This is what we call a motherquacking ghost tour. We, pointlessly clad in red fanny pack and Alcatraz t-shirt, blew our tourist cover because we kept running into friends and friends' roommates and waving, and paling noticeably, even in the dark, when the tour got a little too close to our house for comfort. Note: never do a ghost tour in your own neighborhood, unless you are prepared to walk past the same spot at least 3 or 4 times a day, thinking every single time: "Oh yeah, whatev, Charles Manson lived there. Across the street? Yeah, they have a little ghost girl that they buy dolls for. See, you can see them on the mantel. Not frickin' freaky at all. Oh no. What, you don't sleep with the light on too?" On a chilly Sunday night in front of Coffee to the People, we met our genial tour guide, Tommy, an honest-to-goodness ghost hunter, There were only two of us on the tour, but that didn't phase him. Us, a little at first, but we got over it. And most importantly, he had goodie bags for us. With candy, a book of the tour, and fun goodie bag stuff. Take notes, Chuck and Ingmar, take notes.

So, SFist Tourist has a bit of a confession: we went on the Chinatown Ghost Tour over a week ago and plumb forgot to write about it until we were watching Big Trouble in Little China last night. It could have been the misnomer in the name. Not that we thought a ghost would lead the tour, but you certainly don't go to a monster truck rally and not expect to see monster trucks. And really, what's a cockfight without cocks? A whole lotta disappointing, that's what.

Welcome SFist Jessica, our undercover tourist! The all-Alcatraz outfit was definitely a nice touch -- and we're still looking forward to the poignant watercolors she's going to paint of her time on the San Francisco Bay Quackers tour.

If it weren't for our life as an -ist, we're not sure we'd ever leave our apartment. Fortunately, to fully -ist, one must seek out the new, the fresh, and the unknown. Brand new, or just new to us, that's what we're all about this week.

"God, tourists!" We are all familiar with the shameful epithet meant to invoke images of pasty, overfed Midwesterners milling about Fisherman's Wharf, clad in SF sweatshirts and fanny packs, and desperately trying to locate the nearest Olive Garden. For the most part, being a Tourist is a bad thing. We avoid them, we don't want to be them and shun maps and asking for help, or even any type of activity remotely involving even the idea of a guided tour. But aren't most of us not from SF? The Midwest, even? Don't we become tourists anytime we travel to visit somewhere else? Should you have to go through a moral battle over whether or not to go to Alcatraz because, yeah, it might be cool, but that's what tourists do? How many of us have friends who come from all over the globe, begging to experience SF and once you send them to Alcatraz ten times, what the hell do you do with them?