I left my favorite state for a week
And all I got was a good time | September 2025
I’ve been caught up in responsible things like filing paperwork and grocery shopping and writing podcast descriptions.
It was time for fun.
I just needed a little reason to open an escape hatch. When I saw that my fave cooking person Samin Nosrat was going to be joined by her Home Cooking podcast co-host and all-around-delight Hrishikesh Hirway in San Francisco, I bought a plane ticket and decided I’d figure out the logistics later.
(If you know who Samin is, you understand. If you haven’t have the delight, schedule a few hours to watch her joyful, smart Salt Fat Acid Heat mini series and pull up the Home Cooking podcast STAT!)
I spent a whole week in the other SF, because if you’re going to California, you should stay and enjoy it a while.
Trips by yourself are luxurious in their looseness. I scrabbled together a satisfactory itinerary by searching ‘San Francisco coffee shops reddit’ and reading interviews with my own personal Bay Area guides: Samin and author Robin Sloan. The rest, I’d wander into.
Here’s what I loved!
High NRG
First, I happened upon the Clement Street Farmers Market and ate a giant tamale and sweet, glossy strawberries while watching babies dance to street musicians.
Then, I popped into little vintage stores and a shop selling stacks of colorful art books. And then I realized I was near High NRG, a coffee shop I’d put on my list but thought would be too far away.
I’m glad I was wrong. It turned out to be my favorite coffee of the whole trip. Decaf espresso with milk, brewed by the friendliest dudes, all with a DJ spinning vinyl in the background. It felt so cool, in a non-intimidating, comfortable way.
Made me want to: buy a record player and host friends for chill dinners.
You can listen to their DJ mixes on Soundcloud, because of course you can.
Jenny Pennywood Top
I had an existential thing going on with my outfits on this trip. The practical layers I brought felt all wrong, and for the first half of the trip, I worried that wearing my backpack would make me look like a tourist. Never mind that this is the backpack I wear to my actual real life job every day and tote around every weekend.
You don’t become a new person on a trip, but the new types of friction can reveal things that have been lying low. For me, it was that I’ve been pulling on clothes that aren’t my favorite, under the guise of practicality (I already have a light jacket, why would I get one just because I feel better in it?)
At an artsy (let’s be real: touristy) shop in the Ferry Building, I fell in love with the Jenny Pennywood booth. Everything was so pretty to look at, and then when I touched it? I was a goner. Such beautiful fabric. Linen, hemp, cotton, all screenprinted and overdyed in juicy colors. I selected a bright red top that slid into my travel wardrobe and made me feel right again. (I also got over the backpack thing and toted it everywhere.)
Made me: buy two vintage jackets at a pop up market when I returned home. I love them a lot and have snuck them into outfits even though it’s really too warm for layers.
Margaret Kilgallen Show
Another of those happened-upon delights. I was browsing Instagram when I saw California artist Wyatt Hersey post about getting down to an art show with a big Margaret Kilgallen installation.
I wonder if that’s anywhere near me? It was.
One $10 ticket later, and I was immersed in Kilgallen’s beautiful mix of sign painting, iconography, and materials.
Margaret Kilgallen is one of my favorite artists, with work that feels both familiar and so exciting to me. She died young, back in 2001, so it feels extra special to see her work on display.
The SFMOMA was across the street, and I went there too, but nothing there stuck in my gut like Kilgallen’s work.
Made me: Embroider words on fabric back in my tiny rental place.
You can watch her in action in this Art21 feature.
Passionfruit
I went to the incredible Ferry Building Farmers Market and crammed my backpack with fresh fruit. You can just buy figs and passionfruit and avocados directly from farmers? A dream. I wasn’t sure of the featherweight, paper-skinned passionfruit would be any good, but when in the Bay Area, you have to try things. I now understand why all those fancy beverage brands use the fruit as a flavor. Tart, bright, and filled with crunchy seeds, it felt alien but made me wish it was in my normal rotation.
Made me: Bring one home on the plane for my brothers to sample.
Public Transportation
You can hop on a bus for like $2 and get pretty much anywhere! It took me a little while to catch on (if you’re able-bodied, sit in the back/pull the cord to request a stop/Google maps is useless at telling you how to get in between stops on your route) but I had plenty of time to figure it out, and another bus was always en route if I got turned around and missed the first one. I loved loading up my Clipper card and tapping in with my phone like a city regular.
Made me: notice people at Sioux Falls bus stops when I got back
Waymo
Driverless cars! I thought of Robin Sloan’s enthused review:
“Waymo’s robo-cars make the world more interesting, not less; they open up new possibilities — for the shape of daily life, for urban design, for architecture, energy … the list goes on — rather than foreclose them.
…I had the thought, several times while riding: ad-tech this ain’t. The people who worked on these cars accomplished something difficult and meaningful. I hope it feels like it.”
When I was tired and sandy after visiting the beach, a 40 minute bus ride no longer sounded fun. I summoned the robots and rode home with my own Spotify playlist blasting on the car audio.
Made me: Send a video of the eerie turning steering wheel to the sibling group chat because I needed a witness.
Benchmark Climbing
I crammed my climbing shoes into my suitcase for this. Not Benchmark specifically, but it was literally four blocks from my stay and had good reviews, so I walked over.
A climber struck up a conversation, we encouraged each other on some climbs.
At this point, I hadn’t really talked with anyone for a few days—a quirk of solo travel—and it was extra nice to have a chill hangout doing something I like a lot.
My new friend mentioned I could use his free guest pass if I wanted to climb the next day, too, so I did! I sent a lot more routes in round 2. (Probably because I asked for rental chalk instead of toughing it out with sweaty palms.) Benchmark had a sauna and the nicest bathroom/shower setup I’ve seen in a gym.
Made me: go through airport security with climbing shoes dangling from a carabiner.
Evening Showers
There was always a point in the day where I’d met my walkabout limit. I’d take a blisteringly hot shower and sprawl out in bed and watch something (climbing Youtubers, K-Pop Demon Hunters) while embroidering.
I avoided crabby toddler energy thanks to good rest!
Green Apple Books
Bookstores are actually pretty overwhelming. I don’t buy books on a whim very often. I love a vetted rec and the low-risk trial of the library. But once I just let the rows of books wash over me, I had a good time poking around.
I limited myself to four books, but took lots of pictures to pad my library holds list. The purchases:
Several Short Sentences About Writing: I’ve already read it twice. It was ~$2. I wanted to own it.
Black Klansman: Quick, interesting read in SF. Passed it on to my neighborhood Little Free Library.
A Wild Sheep Chase: I don’t think I get Murakami? There’s a lot of weird happening for the sake of weird in this detached tone. I stopped reading in the airport and switched to:
Hemlock Grove: A wild card that kept me company in the weirdly high-end airport Italian restaurant (the only place with pepperoni pizza). There’s a werewolf and gothic science experiments and I worried it might be too scary and then reminded myself I can handle a little creepy.
Airports are weird places to read books. Liminal spaces with slick seats and the vague threat of sticky armrests. There’s always a new person crossing your line of vision, but no one’s doing anything interesting, which leaves you distracted but bored. In the pizza restaurant, I was situated across the narrow dining space from this guy who kept looking at me. I guess I stared at him, too, when I count up all the times I saw him seeing me. It wasn’t one of those meet cute situations, just a room where there’s nothing else to see but what’s in front of you. And your gothic horror novel.
The funniest thing about a solo trip is all the people who ask “did you go with anyone?” as if I don’t do all the boring stuff in my life alone and crave some fun time, too. It was a joy to bop around a new city doing whatever I felt like.
Thanks for reading this month.
❤️, Ten
Elsewhere
Reclaimed stained glass as vintage car windows, swoon. “It’s not restoration, it’s resurrection.”
It’s nearly knitting season! I’m re-reading Knitting in America, a great collection of interviews and designs from 1996. I think Melanie Falick’s work is the best of craft books: beautiful to look at, married with meaty text.
Go watch Listers, the perfect, hilarious documentary that’s as much about brother shenanigans as it is extreme birdwatching. FREE WITH NO ADS ON YOUTUBE! What are you waiting for?
Good word: vituperation (definition from Google/Oxford Languages)
noun | bitter and abusive language. (“no one else attracted such vituperation”)
I just added this green (!) bookshelf with glass doors (!!) to my living room and love it.
Loved this! Thank you :)
Loved this! Glad you had such a nice time!!