I have a confession to make, and it’s a shameful one.
I am a native Angeleno…
And I’ve never been to San Francisco.
Not once.
Now, this isn’t because I don’t like NorCal. I truly believe that the SoCal vs. NorCal mess is a false dichotomy designed to keep the entire state of California from uniting and schooling the rest of the Union on kale consumption, effortless dressing and fusion food.
And it’s not for lack of trying. I’ve tried no less than nine times since turning 18 and all of them ended with disastrous results. One involved feces of an unknown origin.
What’s that, you say? You want to hear about the time I didn’t get to go to San Francisco because someone mistook a friend of a friend’s car for her ex-boyfriend’s car? Gather ‘round, boys and girls, and let me tell you the tale of Sac State and the Dog Poop Incident.
Once upon a time, my close friend and fellow taco enthusiast Valerie took herself to Sacramento State for college. At the end of our freshman year, I caught a $180 Southwest round-trip flight up to our state’s capital to visit her. So one Friday I packed (read: shoved) a toothbrush and pants into a glittery cat-print Victoria’s Secret bag I’d gotten for spending too much money on boob-cages and took off for NorCal.
The plan was to arrive late in the afternoon, meet some friends and go to bed early to make the two-hour drive to San Francisco for a day trip.
Since finals had pretty much all but finished a few days earlier, we found ourselves hopping from party to party. If I recall correctly, at one point we embarked on a quest for hot wings. I couldn’t tell you if it was successful or not. I do know that we overslept our alarm by several hours.
Still, we were adamant about making it to San Francisco. So we dragged ourselves into showers, tried to mask our poor decisions regarding alcohol and greasy food with makeup and made our way out to the parking lot to shove ourselves into Valerie’s friend’s car.
Now Valerie’s friend, whose name has been lost to history, drove a very recognizable royal blue Mazda with manual transmission and a pretty cool sunroof.
It was such an uncommon car, in fact, that only one other person in student housing had such a vehicle. From what I gather, that other person was very good at two things:
1. Picking out kick ass cars.
2. Getting caught cheating on his girlfriend.
We realized that, at some point in our revelry the night before, the girlfriend had seen the car, thought it was her ex’s, and smeared what I sincerely hope was dog poop in and around the sunroof.
So needless to say we did not make it to San Francisco. Instead we made it to a carwash, Old Sacramento and a store that sold me more Saltwater Taffy than they probably should have.
I flew home the next day, my bags full of taffy and my heart full of disappointment. But this was hardly going to stop me from my quest to make it up the coast.
Some other notable attempts include:
*My car overheating no less than 15 minutes on the I-5.
*Faking food poisoning at the last minute to avoid driving the hills with my ex-boyfriend, who was a historically terrible driver.
*Planning an RV road trip with another boyfriend and his friends after a boozy Halloween party only to wake up the next day to realize that RV’s are not, in fact, “pretty cheap.”
But one day, San Francisco, I will see you. I will probably do a lot of walking and take a lot of very hipster VSCO-filtered photos of hills and flowers.
I will bring a light sweater.
