Blog - And then.....: March 2011 - Anne Muller Photography

a Walk About in Chinatown

Discovered a part of Chinatown today we had never known about...many many shops perhaps just a bit off the well worn path but nevertheless really chockablock with Stuff. The above shop was The Wok Shop, a tiny place with all sorts of cookery items that I conjured up ideas of smoky little kitchens and exotic, wonderful meals. There was also a big block sized park. It had a small area dedicated to a children's play area, the rest was ALL about serious card playing.

Sunday Nite Clubbing

Lauren opened out eyes to the 11th Street club scene this past Sunday night. Her very talented and overwhelmingly adorable friend, Heidi, was performing with The Wronglers http://culturemap.com/newsdetail/03-17-11-the-wronglers-with-jimmie-dale-gilmore-get-it-right-at-sxsw/ .

Along with other eager attendees we lined up outside Slim's on 11th St to get stamped and, well, squashed into a throng of folk, um, youngER folk, cheek to jowl awaiting the opener for the night, The Barbary Ghosts. www.thebarbaryghosts.com

With some help from a staff member we were gifted some stools in a space against the wall to the right of the stage. Getting a shot, especially of the hugely popular Wronglers was a challenge* that I pretty much gave up on although, entirely out of necessity, getting across the room through the sea of people to get to the loo and back proved doable. I discovered my Inner Linebacker.

Both groups were great, the evening memorable and all in all I am eager for more.

* above, an image of The Barbary Ghosts, is shot through a railing on the right of the stage. dark at the left of the image was a large post. Twas my personal best!

A Little Trip...

....up to Napa, beautiful in the "winter".

We arrived on a rainy day. Our reservation at Mustard's had been lost - no matter, we sat at the bar and were still awed by the meal. AND that we were last there in 2002.

We soon learned about the endless wineries, wineries that were so down every lane that the lane above, had a HY Dept. sign letting you know that this one, this Niebaum Lane had NO winery.

BUT.. the masses found all of the other lanes satisfying! back in '02 there was no charge for wine tasting. Now it appears that $10 - $20 for a tasting is truly enticing.
At least to all of the folk here pictured.

We checked into our hotel where we found further libational luring. ( sorry had to make that word up). I do need to "get out of the house more often" when I am awed by a small hotel lobby containing a equally small bar for Bloody Marys and Champange beginning at 7:30 am.I decided right then that Napa was, if you did not stray off the main street, an assault on tourist livers.

But our trip was of a different sort, not victims of an assualt at all unlees it was food and beauty. We induldged in amazing food. The clicher being the famous French Laundry...no pictures here but, were there to be it would be, after NINE PLUS COURSES - the plus being everything that was sort of gifted between the NINE courses - they would be of this totally sated twosome. French Laundry is
experience as much as elegant consumption. A one time thing that you wont forget and, at least for me, probably do not have the capacity for repeating. We do have the menu and consider it so special as to have plans to frame it and hang it in the kitchen. I had heard this sort of thing before going, that it is and experience etc etc. I could not imagine any dining experience being more than a very fine restaurant but this was. I have to just leave it at that!

SO, we ate and ate and ate at outstanding restaurants, picked Meyer Lemons from the door of the hotel and savored the other Napa, that of glorious walks in the country side. The picture below is from an early morning walk on what absolutely qualifies as a quaint country lane. Right up my alley...or lane.

Graditude....

... in this world with so much grim news, so much loss and heartbreak, for friends.
Above is a recent walk at Crissy Field with Amy, Suzanne and Sammy.