San Francisco and Oakland: The Antidote to S.A.D.

Ever since I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I’ve heard about seasonal affective disorder (SAD) , which the National Institute of Mental Health defines as “a type of depression that comes and goes with the seasons,” usually during the winter. People up here in this seasonally dark, misty, and dreary corner of the US often invest in sunlight lamps, load up on vitamin D, or—if they’re extremely lucky—spend the winter months in places where the sun actually shines more than a day or two in a row.

But I never experienced true winter doldrums until this year, when Seattle hit a record 30-day stretch of rainy days, and had one of the rainiest days on record. Besides the rain, this winter has brought a mist that never seems to lift—the kind of foggy shroud that makes you open your blinds, close them again, and leave them that way all day. Why bother? You know what’s out there. 

I’m not of an income class that uses “winter” as a verb, but I have found a substitute for the second home I’ll buy just as soon as I’ve bought and paid off the first one: California! The light is perfect, the fares (from most of the Western US, anyway) are reasonable, and there’s a good bet you’ll get sun at a time of year when you may be starting to give up hope that winter will ever end.

The city has changed dramatically since I first visited as a teenager and headed straight for North Beach and the City Lights bookstore—as clichés go, still better than eating chowder from a bread bowl at Fisherman’s Wharf. I’ve had family in the city since the early ’90s, so I’ve visited many times, watching neighborhoods evolve, gentrify, and change complexion in stop-motion time: 1990, 1995, the 2000s, now. My own experience of the city changed, too, as I grew up, started drinking, became a problem drinker, and quit.

These days, I love San Francisco for its bright sunshine, explorable neighborhoods, and endless variety of places to eat (tired of tacos? Try Sri Lankan food, or gluten-free baked goods, or reimagined banh mi, or vegan tortas…) than its bars or 3am dining options, though I was thrilled during this recent trip to discover that both bars and restaurants are starting to catch up with the “sober curious” trend by featuring grown-up nonalcoholic cocktails and even credible 0.0 beers.

Here are some of my favorite recent zero-proof experiences in the San Francisco-Oakland area:

•  Visit the bakeries on—and I can’t emphasize this enough—a weekday.

It’s been almost four years since Bon Appetit named Arcisault the best new bakery in the country, but god damn if the lines aren’t still around the block on weekends. I’m not a person to wait in line, so we came back on Monday, grabbing a chocolate almond croissant and a kouign amann, a pastry whose spelling I had to cut and paste because I, the opposite of a Francophile, had never heard of it. Both were divine, especially the koign amann, which was like a cross between a palmier and a croissant topped with a crackling, mildly orange-flavored glaze.

We struck out at Tartine Manufactory because the guy in front of us bought almost every single pastry in the case—bye-bye, flaky tahini babka, it’s off to the startup retreat for you—but hopefully you’ll have better luck. If not, console yourself with a soft-serve swirl (blood orange and vanilla, on our February visit) and a crispy rye-flour chocolate cookie while you wander around the adjoining Heath Ceramics factory, trying not to drip on any of the richly glazed dishware or leave crumbs on the cozy lambswool throws. (On second thought, finish your ice cream and then go price out a five-piece set of the same dishes they use at Chez Panisse.)

Also recommended: b. patisserie, Acme Bakery (in Oakland).

Also, don’t forget to spend some time in Golden Gate Park! Just don’t feed the geese, even if they ask you nicely.

•  Hit the farmer’s markets—yes, even in the winter.

February in San Francisco can be hit or miss, but when it’s nice, there are few better places to be than one of the off-season farmers’ markets. The stalls are less crowded, the sellers have more time to answer questions, and you can actually get a taco or two (I loved the fish and carne asada tacos from Cholita Linda, which has a brick-and-mortar spot in Oakland) without waiting in line for hours. The Ferry Building, though touristy, is a great place to wander and snack; in 15 minutes, we wolfed down pizza slices from the Slanted Door, pork buns with pleasantly springy buns and generous chunks of barbecued pork; and nitro coffee from Blue Bottle, which (for my fellow northwesterners) is like the Stumptown of San Francisco. I also noticed that the shrub craze seems to have hit the Bay Area; multiple stalls and shops offered drinking vinegars for sample and sale,

Temescal Farmer’s Market, in Oakland on Sundays, is a good excuse to get across the Bay if you’re staying in San Francisco; while you’re there, visit the shops in Alley 49, drop in at Pegasus Books, and brave the crush at Rockridge Market Hall before heading to the most unusual place on this list…

• Get lost in the Chapel of the Chimes

A mausoleum (technically a columbarium) may not be on everyone’s top-ten list for places to spend a sunny afternoon in California, but if you’re the kind of person who makes a beeline for unique or historical cemeteries when you visit a new city, the Chapel of the Chimes will be up your alley. A maze of chambers connected by intimate courtyards and terraced gardens houses the ashes of thousands of former Oakland residents, many of them interred in book-shaped urns displayed in glass-fronted niches that go up to tall ceilings. Skylights, softly dripping fountains, and mosaics and sculptures clad in shades of turquoise contribute to the parklike setting inside a semi-enclosed, quasi-Moorish

• Duck into Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon

This one isn’t exactly a recommendation, but I found it fascinating, and a little chilling, to drop by this spot on Jack London Square and read the inscription on the door of the bar where London spent many of his evenings, and which he memorialized in John Barleycorn, an extended justification and romanticization of his own alcohol dependence. London, who believed that Prohibition would rid him of the ability (and thus the urge) to drink, died an alcoholic death at the age of 40. Heinold’s memorializes London with a plaque, which reads in part: “Jack London met many seafaring and waterfront characters which he later immortalized in his adventure novels. Heinold’s is referred to several times in his book John Barleycorn.”

Mural in Balmy Alley, Mission District, San Francisco

• Eat all the foods!

I’m not gonna lie: San Francisco can be an expensive place to eat out. The good news, though, is that it’s hard to get a lousy meal here, and there are plenty of fairly affordable options if you can stand to skip the spots that show up on annual best-of lists, like (looks at Google map of all the places in the Bay Area I want to try one day) Mister Jiu’s, AL’s Place, Liholiho Yacht Club, State Provisions Foreign Cinema, Chez Panisse…

We did splurge a bit on one meal, at Zuni Café, about which I will say two things. 1) It was totally worth it (get the chicken, skip the shoestring potatoes) and 2) I was thrilled when I saw nonalcoholic drinks listed RIGHT THERE ON THE COCKTAIL MENU, almost as if they belonged there instead of on a kiddie list, next to “apple juice” and “Coke.” I had a Clausthaler NA beer (thank Maude for an option besides the insipid, ubiquitous Bitburger Drive) and a “Chinotto cooler,” made with the bitter Italian soda that seemed to be on every bar and restaurant menu in San Francisco, charred grapefruit tonic, and grapefruit bitters. It takes so little to add a few sophisticated nonalcoholic options to a long cocktail menu, but so few places bother; I hope bar menus in San Francisco are a sign that this is about to be a nationwide trend.

Another worth-it splurge that I have experienced, although not on this trip: The a la carte menu at Chez Panisse Cafe in Berkeley, the slightly more affordable upstairs counterpart to Alice Waters’ temple of California cuisine.

Other great options, with much lower price points:

Mamahuhu, a hipster-casual interpretation of “Chinese takeout”  from Mister Jiu’s chef Brendan Jew (on the menu: “elevated” versions of sweet-and-sour chicken and fried rice, plus a memorable jasmine tea soda)

Tortas or tacos in the Mission District. Want tacos? Hit up La Taqueria or La Torta Gorda. In the mood for a sandwich? Try the Cubano or the carnitas torta at Tortas Los Picudos. Want a burrito? Sorry, we can’t be friends.

Cafe Bunn Mi: Silly name, amazing (if a bit pricey) banh mi. Get the five spice chicken or the crispy duck.

Burma Superstar: The one place where I broke my “no standing in line rule,” to stand in line for … a stupid amount of time, ignoring the pleas of a dining companion who kept pointing out that B Star, another popular Burmese spot just a few doors down, was practically empty. After spending an hour glaring through the window at a group that had finished their dinner but needed the table for just 100 more Instagram shots of themselves, we made it inside, forgetting our frozen extremities as soon as the plates of fermented tea leaf salad, curried chicken with dal, okra with chiles, and coconut rice arrived at our table.

Pro tip: Burma Superstar uses Yelp for its waiting list, so you can follow your position on the list from anywhere. If you’re at the one in San Francisco (as opposed to the outpost in Oakland) I recommend settling in at High Treason, a bar down the street with a comprehensive wine and beer list for drinkers and a creditable list of grownup options for nondrinkers, including that ubiquitous Chinotto. (No shoutout at all to another bar down the street, where the nonalcoholic options were not only limited to what comes out of the soda gun (not my favorite, but I can deal) but where, when I asked the bartender if he could make something nonalcoholic, he looked at me like I was a lunatic, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “No?”)

• Visit—and spend money—at independent bookstores

I can’t visit a city without stopping into at least a few bookstores, and buying at least one book or tchotchke to schlep home in my suitcase. This trip, it was Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm by Isabella Tree, which I picked up at Pegasus Books on Oakland’s College Avenue, paying cash because the power was out from a windstorm. Other notable book shops in San Francisco include Green Apple, The Booksmith, and Omnivore, which features a breathtaking range of books about food and cooking in a price range that goes from “maybe I can afford that” to “mortgage payment.”

And, if you’re around North Beach or Chinatown, why not duck into City Lights? Bring your Portable Beat Reader and dig a little deeper into the catalog.

 

Note to readers: San Francisco, Oakland, and many other cities up and down the West Coast are facing tremendous challenges with increased housing prices, homelessness, and displacement. Visitors to either city should be aware that the Bay Area is an area struggling with rampant inequality, and that the historical residents of gentrifying neighborhoods like the Mission are fighting to hold on as their neighborhoods change around them. Another point to keep in mind: Homeless people are residents of the city, too, and they have as much right to be there as any tech worker standing in a Sunday brunch lineup for $18 eggs. Homelessness is direct the result of inequitable allocation of resources, so please be respectful, not afraid, of the people America’s wealthiest cities have left behind. If you don’t think you can do that, stick to the tourist areas; you’ll find maps of those areas in any hotel in the city.

A Mission Statement

If you’re reading this blog, chances are that you’re a traveler who doesn’t drink, for whom drinking isn’t the main point when you travel, or who travels with a friend, partner or family member who doesn’t drink and are looking for a site that goes beyond the usual “10 places to get in trouble after midnight” content found on even the best conventional travel blogs.

I started this site not because I think nondrinkers need bumpers to protect us from the world, but because as someone who loves to travel and to read about other people’s travels, I started to notice that travel sites tended to portray travel as little more than an opportunity to drink in a different language. Just now, as a quick experiment, I took a look at just the most recent post on a few well-known travel sites I read regularly. Here are some phrases that jumped out: “Epic cocktail menu!” “A guide to our favorite craft beer bars.” “The truth is hot wine makes every experience more magical.” “Wine lovers visiting the City of Lights will no doubt want to learn a bit more about the masterpieces that are French wines during their trip.” (That particular writeup of Paris mentioned wine more than a dozen times). A guide to Montana says a trip to the state wouldn’t be complete without visiting some of the local distilleries. The Economist’s (!) business (!!) travel guide (!!!) offers “the best travel tip ever”: filling quart baggies with mini bottles and taking them through TSA checkpoints. A mega-popular travel site aimed at women lists dozens of places around the world where you can have “an unforgettable night out” with your girlfriends. It is a list of bars.

And hey, I get it. Boy, do I get it. Before I quit drinking five years ago, I couldn’t understand the point of going out, much less traveling to another country, without at least a couple of drinks, although the number I actually preferred was “as many as I can drink before I pass out.” And even for people who don’t drink problematically, travel is seen as a time to let loose and relax, and what better way to let loose and relax than sampling the local wine, beer, or nasty-tasting digestif (hand to heart, I never had a shot of Jager until I went to a wedding in Munich and I felt like I was really connecting with the culture as I grabbed a shot off the dirndl-wearing waitress’s tray, then another, then another). Drinking is how many people celebrate, and that’s okay. But it isn’t how I celebrate, not anymore, and it isn’t how I travel, either.

Traveling wasn’t something I ever thought I could do, certainly not alone, or on a whim, or without building in plenty of late mornings for sleeping off late nights and the hangovers that always followed. When I drank, I was afraid of the world—afraid of taking risks for fear that I might say stupid or get lost in a strange place, drunk, at 2 in the morning, or embarrass myself in front of strangers who I assumed were more sophisticated than me. When I got sober, I realized that I could do whatever I wanted and go wherever I pleased. That sounds stupid, but it felt profound: The boundaries I had put around my own possibilities were self-imposed. So I decided to travel.

And when I did, I realized a few things. The first was that the world wants me to drink. I’m not being solipsistic; they want you to drink, too. Unless you’re traveling to a country where alcohol is outlawed (or, in my case, visiting my teetotaling family in Mississippi), you’re going to encounter opportunities to drink and people who make you feel weird when you don’t take them up on those offers. Hotels offer free champagne or a complimentary wine and cheese hour every afternoon. Destination restaurants offer drink menus where the only nonalcoholic options are juice and water. And city guides don’t offer nighttime options for adults who want to do more than just sit in a bar and drink.

This blog is not going to be an encomium for sobriety, nor is it going to condemn people who drink. Most of my friends drink, my partner drinks, and I work in an industry where “let’s get a drink” is synonymous with “I would like to get to know you better in a professional sense.” I even go to bars, often, although I look forward to the day when they realize my money is just as good as the people ordering $17 cocktails and make nonalcoholic cocktails a regular feature of their menus.

Instead, this blog will give readers a sense of how I travel, as one person who stopped drinking and found that the world opened up to me. Whether you drink or not, I look forward to your company on this journey.

A Zero Proof Guide to New Orleans

For many people, the idea of traveling to New Orleans without drinking is anathema—drinking, after all, is the entire point of a trip to the city of laissez les bons temps rouler. And if getting hammered, for some reason, isn’t your goal, the city will remind you of what it thinks of your priorities at every turn. I’ve been coming to New Orleans since I was about five years old, but it was only when I quit drinking that I realized just how aggressively the city markets alcohol consumption as its most vital tourist activity, not just inside the Bourbon Street/French Quarter tourist circuit but from practically the second you step off the plane.

Case in point: Around Christmas, I stayed at the Old No. 77 Hotel and Chandlery—a perfectly lovely hotel in an old building in a slightly off-the-path section of downtown. (As I learned when I was searching for parking, the hotel sits in the shadow of the massive Harrah’s Casino complex.) The first items I saw when I opened the door to my room were the bottles of New Orleans-made Cathead vodka and rum; the second, when I opened the mini-fridge to stash my fizzy water, was more vodka, a bottle of Fireball, and cans and bottles of beer (Abita) and wine. All that might seem pretty standard, but wait—next to the bed, I found a flyer for a service that provides IV infusions (“Wake Up Feeling Not So Nice?”), and on the door, a hanger that read, “Let’s Just Say Things Got a Little Crazy Last Night and Leave It at That.” Outside, a club called Barcadia (creative!) sent bass thumps and shouts through the 12-foot-high windows until 4am.

But never mind—I wasn’t there to drink, or to sleep the day away. As usual, I was in the city on the way to visit family in Mississippi, and I had just one day to hit a couple of sights and stuff my face as full of poboys and gumbo as I possibly could. A rental car-related disaster (along with the aforementioned scream party going on outside my window) kept me in bed later than I wanted (whoops, I mean, “things got a little crazy last night”) but fortunately I’ve been to the city enough times that one foreshortened trip and a less-than-ideal hotel situation doesn’t diminish my desire to go back as soon as possible. Next time, though, I’ll probably stay at the Pontchartrain Hotel—a quaint, midrange charmer in the Garden District where you can step outside and onto the St. Charles streetcar, whether or not you chose to tie one on the night before.

Here is an absolutely idiosyncratic (read: totally non-comprehensive) list of some of my favorite New Orleans experiences. All are great for non-drinkers, but not all are kid-friendly, so check the venue to make sure kids are welcome before you go.

1. Beignets—at Cafe Du Monde or further afield.

Some of my earliest memories are of going with my grandparents to New Orleans and visiting the Jackson Brewery building for red beans and rice, followed by beignets at the famous, 24-hour Cafe du Monde and a stroll through the French Market, which I swear was bigger, brighter, and more exciting back then (but wasn’t everything?) Cafe du Monde is still frying up the iconic pillowy squares of dough and serving them to lines of hungry tourists 24 hours a day, but the last couple of times I tried to go, the line was down the block and I decided it wasn’t worth all the fuss to have.

This is probably blasphemy, but plenty of places in New Orleans make beignets that are as good as or better than du Monde’s, without a two-hour wait. On that list: The New Orleans Coffee and Beignet Company (more doughnut-hole sized beignets with a slightly denser texture), Cafe Beignet (a slightly crunchier, less-sweet variation), and Loretta’s Authentic Pralines, which offers sweet (praline) and savory (crabmeat and burger) variations alongside their creamy-style pralines. (Full disclosure: I haven’t tasted Loretta’s beignets yet, but they’re widely recommended, and their pralines are close to my Platonic ideal.)

2. Take a cemetery walk, or several. 

New Orleans’ historic cemeteries, with their ancient above-ground mausolea and languid, overgrown vegetation, have always felt more like parks to me than like places of eternal rest, and I’m hardly the only out-of-tower to gravitate to these peaceful, meditative places when I visit. Some of the most picturesque include St. Louis No. 1 (the city’s oldest cemetery and site of Nicholas Cage’s bizarre pyramid crypt), Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 (a mazelike, often crowded 1833 cemetery across the street from Commander’s Palace) and the eerie St. Roch No. 1 Cemetery, where visitors leave prosthetic body parts and other items to honor the patron saint of good health.

But I also recommend venturing slightly outside the city center to visit the Metairie Cemetery, which makes up what it lacks in picaresque charm with its sheer abundance of huge, flamboyant monuments to famous, infamous, and forgotten New Orleans residents. Walking or driving around this relatively massive cemetery, you’ll see the tombs of jazz great Louis Prima, Popeye’s Chicken founder Alvin Copeland, and the former tomb of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, whose remains were disinterred and moved to Virginia in 1893. But the graves themselves are the real draw—showy monuments to the city’s (and the Civil War-era South’s) ruling elite, they span the gamut of ostentation from weeping, prostrate angels to an enormous pedestal bearing a statue of Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

3. Make the drive to the Whitney Plantation. 

I’ve never been on a traditional plantation tour, but here’s what I imagine: A white lady in her 60s dressed in period clothes leads a group of white visitors through a lavishly restored antebellum home, stopping every few feet to comment on aspects of antebellum living, such as how pre-air-conditioning Southern architecture was specially designed to make life bearable for plantation owners as they lazed their way through the dog days of summer, drinking iced tea on the porch and taking in the breezes from the river.

Perhaps that’s unfair. But the fact that there’s still an entire industry devoted to white people’s Gone With the Wind fantasies, more than 150 years after slavery (officially) ended, should outrage anyone with even a passing knowledge of the legacy of slavery that continues to this day, from mass incarceration to the wealth gap to police violence against black and brown communities. The Whitney Plantation inverts the fantasy, telling the story of the plantation from the perspective of the people who were enslaved there. Over the course of an hour and a half, visitors learn the stories of the children who survived enslavement on the plantation, the dehumanizing caste system of “slaves” and “slave drivers” (whose roles were not dissimilar from those of Jewish kapos in concentration camps), and a quashed rebellion that ended when the plantation owners murdered the rebels and displayed their heads on stakes as a warning to anyone who might think of taking a similar desperate action.

I’m making this sound like a brutal experience, because it is, but it isn’t brutalizing. Instead, the hour-and-a-half tour is revelatory, the kind of can’t-look-away experience that will leave you angry and motivated to make sure the story of slavery isn’t forgotten or glossed over with gauzy narratives about a past that never was.

Here’s a New York Times article about the Whitney, published shortly after it opened in December 2014.

4. Stuff your face. 

Since one of the biggest challenges in New Orleans is deciding where to eat, , I’m just going to list some of my favorites—places I’ve visited at least once (in some cases, more times than I can count) that won’t let you down, whether you’re looking for muffaletta, poboys, gumbo, fried chicken, or turtle soup.

High-End

Antoine’s, Galatoire’s, Brennan’s: Old-school, white-tablecloth purveyors of classic, slightly fussy New Orleans fine dining. Brennan’s is best for brunch, where you can try many of the classics (as well as a credible eggs Benedict) for slightly less, accompanied by house-made soda.

Herbsaint is a more under-the-radar upscale dining option that offers a prix fixe menu of flawlessly executed riffs on New Orleans classics; it still gets rave reviews (including from me) after 20 years in business.

Muffaletta

Central Grocery if you just want to grab the classic sandwich of cured meats, cheese, and olive salad and flee the crush of tourists in this narrow, crowded deli-market, Napoleon House if you’d like a break from the crowds in a 200-year-old building with one of the most charming courtyards in the city. If you can’t tell, I like Central’s sandwich better, but I prefer Napoleon House any time I want to take a break from walking and the relentless French Quarter crowds.

Po-Boys

A necessarily incomplete list: Guy’s Po-Boys (try the fried shrimp), Domilise’s (go for the fried oyster), Sammy’s (your order here is the fried trout) Killer Po-Boys (the menu seems to change, but everything I’ve tried was good)

Other Sandwiches

Turkey and the Wolf has gotten what may seem like more than its fair share of media hype. Believe the hype. Note: Lunch only.

Fried bologna on Texas Toast from Turkey and the Wolf.

Cajun/Creole

It pains me to admit that although I have eaten countless bowls of gumbo, red beans and rice, and jambalaya over the years, the only mid-range spot that stands out in recent memory (and therefore the only one that I’m going to recommend) is Coop’s Place, a packed, rough-around-the-edges place that serves some of the best rabbit and sausage jambalaya, shrimp Creole, red beans and rice, and seafood gumbo you’ll ever eat. Other places that I hope to check out: Bon Ton Café, Brigtsen’s, and Jacques-Imo’s.

Fried Chicken

Go with the classics: Dooky Chase or Willie Mae’s Scotch House, which doesn’t serve alcohol, if that’s important to you.

Everything Else

Bon Appetit described Marjie’s Grill as a “Southern meat-and-three inspired by Southeast Asia,” which is both a) wrong and b) too cute by half. Think of it more as a neighborhood cafe that serves an ever-changing menu of spicy, lightly Thai- and Vietnamese-inflected versions of Southern classics, including (at this writing) fried wild catfish with lemongrass curry paste; pasture-raised Mississippi beef cheeks with hot peach barbecue sauce and tomatillo relish; and Gulf prawns with Vietnamese lime and chile sauce.

The High Hat Cafe: Come for the heady gumbo ya-ya and pimento cheese burger; stay for the Mississippi hot tamales and broiled cheese grits.

Willa Jean: Homemade Pop Tarts, cane sugar-glazed cornbread, oatmeal cookies with dried apricots instead of raisins (!!), and chocolate-chip cookies so famous you can now order them from all 50 states.

5. Wander!

New Orleans is hot as hell in the summer, so if that isn’t your thing or if you just don’t feel like reapplying your makeup 47 times a day, I recommend traveling to the city before mid-May or after mid-September for maximum walking opportunities.

Dodge other tourists as you check out the galleries and antique shops in the French Quarter (put on your rich face and venture into M.S. Rau’s for a look at an original German Enigma cipher machine, used during World War II and cracked by a team led by Alan Turing, along with furniture, silver, and housewares collections that look like they belong in a museum). Walk at a leisurely pace through the Garden District, gawping at the elaborately gated, gabled houses and stop in at local shops like Defend New Orleans and the Garden District Bookshop. Stroll the length of Magazine Street, whose commercial district stretches more than 40 blocks and spans several neighborhoods. Catch some shade in Audubon Park, a 350-acre oasis in the Uptown Neighborhood. New Orleans (like most cities, in my opinion) is best seen from sidewalk level, which is also how you’ll discover your own favorite spots.

6. Check out a show

This is a bit of a cheat, because I tend to wander around people-watching or look for a bar where I can drink something delicious and bubbly and sit for a spell (the Hot Tin bar on top of the Pontchartrain Hotel has a lovely rooftop if you happen to be staying in the area), but New Orleans is a great city for music lovers, particularly those who love jazz and country. Here are some places I’ve heard great things about, and where I suggest you check out the calendar to see who’s playing when you’re in town: The Maple Leaf Bar, the Spotted Cat, and Tipitina’s, where I actually did see a great show (the incomparable Patti Griffin) earlier this year.