Datenight: North Beach

Shilpa and I finally had another date night together. A little one-on-one "no work, no other friends, get gussied and go out for a nice night on the town" night. We were late getting started as I spent most of the day and night cursing Comcast for making us all go digital and having to wire new boxes to every input in the house, and only after several calls and some online research learned that the little boxes are designed NOT to work with non-Comcast equipment like TiVo or ReplayTV, and upgrading to their inferior DVR is another ten bucks a month.

But I rant.

Shilpa and I found a nice sushi place on Fillmore in Pac Heights that we had not tried before. Ten Ichi's spicy tuna wasn't so hot, but their Dragon Rolls were amazing, and their "Clay" (it's at Fillmore and Clay streets) might be the best roll I've ever had. Yum.

Jude had called us earlier and we made plans to hook up with him and his BF Keone afterward. We found them in North Beach at the Church Key, an intimate and charming bar with no liquor, but beers of the world, some bottles priced at $40 and up. Tasty though, and good lighting and great service.

Shilpa and I really needed a date night—a night to get into pretty clothes and get out of the Castro.

Jude's friend Erdmann joined us shortly thereafter. Jude is always much fun and really ratcheted our night up to a party level.

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Jude, you may recall, is a designer, and designed most of what he was wearing, including the hat. (Note to Jude: I want one.)

What really pushed the night into partytown was the late night venture into a closet-sized Chinese bar in Chinatown. It had two people behind the bar—the woman who I assume owns the place and another younger guy—and maybe two patrons, both Chinese. A trio of cute frat-ish boys joined us later, and a couple of cute (and drunk) girls an hour after that. The bar was pretty much ours, and we were having too much fun.

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The karaoke was hilarious. Most of the songs were in Chinese, with the older bar patron crooning out what I imagine to be "standards," mixed in with renditions of songs like "Blowing in the Wind," in Chinese.

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The background videos were equally hilarious, as they were either cheesy 80's videos produced to go with the song, or random footage of the Chinese countryside, fishing villages/markets, or military parades—regardless of the subject of the video. Just for Shilpa, I did my best at "Knock Three Times" with poorly transcribed lyrics and completely effed up video accompaniment.

But by this time, we were all having a blast. I really, really can't carry a tune, but in this setting, there was no shame.

At the end of the night, I was asked to sing backup (yipes!) for the girls' "Total Eclipse of the Heart." The lyrics were so poorly transcribed, at one point it kept telling us that "turn around Bright Eyes" was "apologize."

It was almost too much fun, and entirely tragic.