What: A day at the San Francisco Green Festival + and a post-fest evening on the town
When: Saturday, November 15
Where: South of Market district, San Francisco
Why: For work + for play
The Scoop: I like the Green Festival. It's a fun opportunity to taste a ton of new "green" food and drink (the elderflower kombucha by Kombucha Botanica is my new favorite), to get to meet and greet fellow green-media folk, to become acquainted with green conservation leaders, and to learn more about such things as socially responsible investing, renewable energy, and green technology. Never mind that there was maybe a little too much patchouli oil floating around, that I probably ate way more than my fair share of Clif bar samples, and that I spent more time working when I really wanted to be eating even more samples. It was still loads of fun, and not just because I also got to see a lot of friends and acquaintances who popped by our booth to say hi.
Lyndsay Orwig and Aurelia d'Andrea workin' it at the VN booth
This year, I was paired up with Lyndsay Orwig, VegNews' editorial-intern-turned-office-manager, to work the Saturday afternoon shift at our swanky double-wide booth. Together, we busted our behinds selling subscriptions, fielding queries, and distributing free copies of our current issue. After several hours-worth of shilling for a good cause—and for enduring an hour or more of tantric dance maneuvers provided by some random attendees who thought the space in front of our booth would make an ideal "stage"—we figured we earned the right to relax and have fun.
After retrieving my bike from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's valet parking station, Lyndsay and I headed toward 7th and Folsom Streets to Brainwash, a cafe-slash-laundromat, where Cult of Sue Todd—one of the many bands featured in our July+August Music issue—was scheduled to perform. When we got there, we didn't yet see anyone we knew, so we decided to pop in next door to Terroir, which totally resembled this place in my old Paris neighborhood that I adored, and which, therefore, led me to assume it would be a cozy wine bar. It was, but it wasn't until we'd committed to a glass that we noticed the not-very-vegan-friendly menu. I won't tell you what was on it, except to say that it included animal parts that many in the animal-rights movement are fighting to ban the production of. Oh well. Now I know.
As soon as we'd polished off our Malbec, we headed back over to Brainwash where VN Editor-at-Large Jennifer Pickens awaited us, as did The Traveling Vegetarian Yvonne Smith, VN Volunteer Extraordinaire Paul Saccone, and a few other friends we hadn't seen in a while. I was starving at this point, so after perusing the menu, I decided on a big ol' plate of French fries. Nothing like a spot of grease after all those healthy Green Festival nibbles. They were really tasty, by the way, especially when dunked into barbecue sauce. Yum!
Yvonne Smith, Paul Saccone, and Jennifer Pickens do "cool" like nobody's business
After rocking out to such classic Cult of Sue Todd hits as "Closer" and "Tampa," the band busted out a stellar rendition of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." Even if you, like me, were never a fan of San Francisco's most famous musical hometown heroes, maybe you just couldn't help but wish you had a lighter to flick in the air for this one. When the musical segment of the evening ended, the motley lot of us migrated across the street to a really funky restaurant/bar/swing-goth dance club (really) that just isn't worth mentioning the name of, but let's just say the ambience didn't matter as much as getting to hang out with a cool gang of veggies for one warm November evening.
4 comments:
Good times indeed. :)
Very nice overview of a great day...but you had to be there...
Paul
I LOVE your blog!! Im so glad I found it:)
That Journey reference really took me back ... Now I'll be playing that darn song in my head all day. Oh well, I might as well embrace the cheesiness. Don't Stop Believing SF!
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