sʃʃıɥ ǝɥʇ ɹoɟ pǝpɐǝɥ

I was downtown. My iMic blew up last night. Well, that’s not true, but it stopped working and I went to the apple store to replace it. I asked the guy at the genius bar to please plug my old one into the macbook pro they had and see if it showed up in the sound control panel. He happily agreed and indeed, my iMic was broken, and it didn’t show up anywhere. So I bought a new one and went to meet up with Kirk. Kirk decided to have an afternoon with his boyfriend, and not to meet with me (for which I didn’t blame him one bit) and I found myself with an afternoon to myself in downtown San Francisco.

I remembered that I only have two pair of pants, and thought about going to the Levi’s store for a look, when I remembered that I have a $100 gift certificate for Lucky Jeans and that there’s a Lucky store a couple blocks from the apple store. I walked over there thinking about how they stopped making style 6 jeans a couple years ago, and how much I’d loved them. My last couple of trips to the Lucky store have been fruitless. Nothing to buy, and no one to sell my gift certificate to. It feels creep to be lurking by the cash register in a store where there’s not too many customers asking everyone who approaches the register if they want to use my gift certificate and give me the money. It feels really creepy.

I was greeted by the sunny smile of Adele. A smile so warm and sunny that I felt comfortable enough to stop and tell her my tale of woe and regret over the now defunct style 6 and the errant gift certificate. Adele has a bit of a sideways way about her. Like you can’t quite tell if she’s being sarcastic or not, but she was fun and we tried to solve my problem.

First we covered the fact that I’m not into the 70’s and don’t want a $75 Led Zeppelin concert T-shirt. We also covered the fact that I’m not down with the whole tight jeans thing. Finally Adele suggested that I might consider simply giving it away. I thought that was an interesting idea. Certainly one I hadn’t thought of before. We stood at the door and watched for a deserving customer.

Everyone who came into the shop appeared to have it together. Moneyed, unpleasant, or both. Discouraged, I decided to split. Adele asked me what sort of clothes I do like. I looked around and then gestured to my clothes and said “I dunnoe, regular sort of sloppy clothes.” Adele didn’t look me up and down, or make any notable sign or remark and said “We have baggy jeans.”

She led me to the boot cut stack and found my size. I looked them over and agreed to at least try them on.

On my way to the fitting room I came upon the girl with the green eyes. I saw her the last time I was in the store. I remember because I had to look at her eyes three times. They were real, and deeply striking. She said “Why do I feel like I know you from somewhere?”

I explained my last visit, and how all that went [color=#777777]I was looking more directly for a cash reimbursement for the gift certificate on that visit and somewhat unhappy with being told simply “no.” as you might imagine.[/color] and she seemed to remember. We exchanged compliments, and then made my way to the fitting room and discovered that not only did the pants fit me, but I kinda liked them.

I returned to Adele with good news and bad news. She was calm while I reported that the good news was that she had succeeded in hustling me, and the bad news was that I loved the pants and was going to buy them. She smiled her curious smile which makes you feel happy and about three inches shorter, and asked why it was bad news. “Because now I have to stop coming in here and trying to pawn my gift certificate off on your poor customers.”

I am not entirely sure my sense of humor resonated with her, but we smiled and I went to the register to complete my transaction. Marissa (the girl with the green eyes) and Adele helped me fold the pants, put them in a bag, and we talked a little while about music, and San Francisco, DJ’ing and singing. They got of work in ten minutes and Marissa and Adele both wanted to talk more. So I hung around…

For what it’s worth, I had an adventure today. I walked from one end of SF to the other and back. I met at least 8 new people. I made what I hope will turn out to be at least two new friends. I replaced my iMic, bought a new pair of pants, and was taken to dinner by Gabriel and Bob. Now I’m home, listening to Tracy Thorne sing “The Paris Match” in my Genelec speakers, and feeling like howling at the moon.

I love San Francisco and it’s so wonderful to be home.