The Larger Picture

Anthony Bourdain's travel guide app The Layover refers to San Francisco as possibly the best drinking city in America, and most of its travel tips are about bars (Anthony sounds like he has a bit of a problem, if you ask me).  As a result, most of our early sightseeing in the Fran has been preoccupied with local watering holes.  Early on, our bar crawling introduced us to San Francisco's waste-no-time mentality:

There were Li Po and Bhudda Bar in Chinatown, the claustrophobic Mr. Bing's, the 50's diner Lori's, the 1960's Kerouac shrine Vesuvio, and the olde-tymey Comstock Saloon, the latter three eclectically running the gamut of today's rather non-specific addiction to nostalgia.

They actually have a piano player at Comstock 

Li Po

Apparently dazed by the Vesuvio

But before you go thinking that our time in Franc Town has just been a The Sun Also Rises-level bender, I should point out that there have been no debilitating dick injuries (touch wood).  If you liked that parenthetical, we could be friends.

Besides liquoring up, we've been mou'ing down--

Maoing--

and meowing--

As well as taking lots of inspirational photos--

Patriot

Seagull: the national bird of America

The only thing cooler than the city is the weather (zeugma bitches!)--

The rain has definitely been a little disappointing, what with everyone telling us how much better everything we're seeing is when it's sunny-- "It's never like this in San Francisco!  Why, this is a once-in-a-century week of rain.  End of days!"  All of this can make it easy to feel a little trapped by the weather--

However, with the right mindset, and a little effort, even the dreariest conditions can be made to feel a little more comfortable; even luxurious...

And even from the remote, rainswept desolation of Alcatraz, you can step back and see the larger picture is still pretty beautiful.