SF trip, part 5: I got off the bus at the Castro, the city’s gay quarter, and pottered around bookstores and past sidewalk cafes, before placing stool on kerb and drawing, of all things, this rusty truck above. “You drew a car?” my wife exclaimed later when she saw it. It’s true, I do avoid drawing vehicles, but this one was so interesting, and I was inspired by other vehicular drawings I’d seen online. Time was pressing, so I had a (fairly unsatisfying) late lunch at the Bagdad Cafe before walking down 16th and finally back to the Mission. Last (and only) time I’d been was November, and I wanted to go back, if anything for a burrito, but mostly to sketch.

I sat myself on the slopes of Mission Dolores Park, listening to loud latino radio blasted across the fields where local lads played football (not a jumper for a goalpost in site, though), and art students nursed hangovers with beer, being all social and shit. The fog hung low over the city behind, obscuring many of the tall buildings downtown. A guy sat to my left tapped away furiously on his mac book while his dog asked passing strangers to play with him; further back, another group of people looked equally dangerous and uninterested; not far off, a bearded hippy wrote something negative about yoga. And I got my paint set out and sketched on the slope.

I wandered about on Valencia, looking in more bookstores and record boutiques, as well as the odd gallery, before a trip down Mission and into Central America, ending up at last at Needles and Pens to look through their vast array of indie zines (and purchase one or two). By this point I was ridiculously tired, and I had neglected to write down the train time back to Davis, so I forewent the burrito and hopped on the 14 bus.

I did draw the picture below, on a postcard, which I have subsequently mailed to a friend in the UK, who I think would have enjoyed going out sketching in San Francisco. I always do.