Back in San Francisco, this time on a short trip with the family to escape the atrocious Davis heat. We went to Japantown and had a look around, and then I had a little bit of time to myself heading back to the hotel, so I wandered up Fillmore, to an area I had not been in about fifteen years. I had a new sketchbook, a Stillman and Birn Alpha. Despite having used those extensively in the past, it has been a while, and so I’m still getting used to the different paper after a few years back in the Moleskines. On this day, I decided what I wanted to do was draw quickly in pencil with some light wash. There are some nice shops up that way; I popped into Paper Source, still a great little shop I used to love getting envelopes and things from. I found the Clay theatre; I remember that I had sketched this place once back in late July 2008, back when my son was just a wee baby. I recall kinda struggling with that sketch a bit. It seemed to be closed down now, but still there to sketch. I walked about a bit more, there were lots of nice looking cafes and shops around here, it’s quite upscale. I did find this little bookshop, Browser Books, which at first I thought was Bowser Books, that big dragon guy from the Super Mario world, with Thwompers coming down as you enter and highly pixelated fireballs moving slowly towards you, but thankfully it wasn’t like that. I had a good look around at some books, and then I drew the shop, again just quick pencil with a little bit of watercolour. I took the bus back to our hotel, and then before our evening dinner at Fog City Diner I found, at the hotel bar, Anchor Steam on tap. So I had my final ever Anchor Steam on that day. I’ve not found it since, and I’m probably not likely to. I like it up Fillmore though, I’ll come back this way, but maybe I’ll not leave it fifteen years this time.