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So, i’m not really a big, pouffy white dress kinda bride. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a part of big weddings for friends and family, but for my own? Not so much. So I was really inspired by the Glamour magazine ‘Smitten’ blog, which has lots of great wedding ideas, but seems pretty low-stress and emphasizes doing your wedding, your way. Even if you don’t follow the yellow brick road all the way to Vera Wang.
The blog’s Genius Weddings section has a ton of amazing weddings to inspire a slightly more low-key bride to be, and includes this quite beautiful picture of a happy couple at San Francisco’s City Hall. Just wonderful isn’t it? I hope they don’t mind me sharing it with another new audience. This picture led to me tracking down the same photographer for our wedding – let’s hope we get a nice result!
San Francisco wedding
Credit: SJ Kim
Great fun today – we discovered a free Lindy Hop lesson and dance in Golden Gate Park. Lindy In The Park! It’s just one of the things that’s so great about San Francisco. Gatherings of people who come from all different walks of life, coming together randomly to share moments.
We’re still total beginners though, even three months into our adventure, so it was a little bit scary to get out there and mix it up. But, we threw off our reservations and got into a cheeky Charleston!
It’s beautiful weather here in San Francisco right now, so, battling a slight hangover after a night of dancing, I was determined to get out there and enjoy it early, before the Sunday walking crowds descended.
8:00am found me, dog in tow, running shoes and big sunglasses firmly in place, striding down the streets of Laurel Heights. This is near my house, and a gorgeous way to enjoy a quiet, sunny Sunday morning. The streets are tree-lined, views are fabulous, and houses are the stuff that much wistful day dreaming is made of!
But even with all of that going for me, I still needed a little extra motivation to handle those not so mean streets, so my iPod, even more constant companion than boyfriend or dog, once again came up with the goods! Here’s a selection of what i listened to: a mix of French house music (that I have a peculiar soft spot for), 80s classics, including a Hall and Oates number made famous again by the film “500 Days of Summer”, and a few ballads to daydream with. Wish I could insert listening samples here!
1) Cassius 99 – Cassius
2) Signatune – DJ Mehdi
3) D.A.N.C.E – Justice
4) Good Luck – Basement Jaxx
5) Love is Gone – David Guetta
6) You Make My Dreams – Hall & Oates
7) Everything She Wants – Wham!
8) P.Y.T – Michael Jackson
9) Golden – Jill Scott
10) Gravity – Sara Bareilles
Hope you enjoy!
One of the things I love most about San Francisco is its unique take on the ‘neighborhood’. Even more so than London, where I lived in my 20s, SF never fails to charm and amaze me with its raggle-tag collection of districts, cultures, flavors, sights and sounds. Traverse the city and you could cross from Mexico to France to Italy to Russia, all in one afternoon.
It’s hard to pick a favorite, although my current happens to be where i live – a slightly off center section of lower Pacific Heights, near the wonderful street that time and Twitter forgot, Sacramento. Here you can still find Italian food with avocado and prawns as key ingredients (sooo good though!), shop a high-end consignment store for designer cast-offs of the seriously wealthy, and end up with the chicest cocktail of the day, a Fresa Fresca (basil, black pepper, fresh strawberries, cranberry juice and premium tequila – oh my!), at the beautiful restaurant, Spruce. All while walking your dog down a quiet oasis where strangers still say hi to you, you can hear the birds singing and you still kid yourself that you live somewhere with a neighborhood movie theater that only plays one movie at a time (the wonderful Vogue). It’s not trendy, but it’s a welcome respite from all the hipster-ness on display elsewhere and is a great anti-dote to high octane city living.
It seems as if San Francisco bible, 7×7, shares my love of the SF ‘hood. Its most recent issue is dedicated to all things neighborhood and is a great read, especially readers’ love letters and photos to their own particular piece of the city. I submitted mine (see if you can spot it!).
Ok, i admit it, you can often find me emptying the contents of a tin of Nescafe instant coffee into a mug each morning. If you start work at 8:00am, you definitely need some rocket fuel, and you don’t really care what it tastes like.
But come the weekend, you can find queuing with the best of them for a Blue Bottle cappuccino at the San Francisco Ferry Building farmer’s market. Or begging my boyfriend to brew something nice in our little coffee machine.
That’s why i was so delighted to come across The Roasterie, where you can answer a fun quiz to decipher precisely what type of blend suits you. Fruity, spicy, bold, smooth – whatever you like in life, they say, you’ll also like in your coffee! Then, you can customize your coffee packaging, right down to the label, with your own photography and brand name, and have it delivered.
Even better, the Web site and packaging is all very retro, Art Deco cool, which is a particular little design fetish of mine. All in all, a win! And such a small thing that can deliver big amounts of pleasure. And caffeine.
Again, thanks to one of my favorite (if way too infrequent!) bloggers, Anh-Minh, for finding me the perfect transitional coat. Hardy enough to deal with the San Francisco summer – remember that alleged Mark Twain quote? Yeah, it’s true by the way), classic enough to last, light enough to wear as the Indian summer kicks in next month, and frou-frou enough to appeal to all my girlish whims.
Here it is, from J Crew, a store i never visit, as i always forget they have a store in San Francisco. They have such a preppy, East Coast sensibility about them: http://tr.im/v6VN
Hmm, perhaps it can form part of my new ‘cost per wear’ ratio?
Sometimes it seems as if even your free time is highly regimented. This blog is called Life Beyond The List for a reason, as it’s my attempt to chronicle some of the ways even an anally-retentive, list freak like me can chill out and enjoy the good stuff. BUT, then i find myself with a to-do list for weekend activities! This weekend, it went something like this:
- Spend quality time with boyfriend (yep, this actually made it onto an actual list – and yes, before you say it, I feel sorry for him too;)
- Go to gym twice, so i can kid myself those two Specialtys cookies last week won’t make it onto my hips
- Go to grocery store, so i can buy some healthy food for the week and not resort to take-out tacos from the hole in the wall on Divisadero Street, near our cottage
- Cook said food in advance for the week, knowing that there won’t be time to cook all the luscious-looking veggies and fish when i actually need to eat them
- Harangue myself for buying the same old things at Whole Foods, that are easy to make, taste good and fairly healthy. I always want to cook new recipes, but just never have the time. Turkey chili and roasted squash it is then
- Call my Mom back in England, for a weekly dose of local gossip, swine flu update, and progress report on my brother finally moving out, aged 29…
- Set up my new laptop, so i can transfer my ridiculous number of photos and have a proper repository for my blog materials
- Research a potential Fall trip to Chicago, only feasible if United points can be used. And we all know how easy and intuitive it is to book flights with miles…
- Wonder aloud for the hundredth time why my herbs (Italian Basil, Thyme and Sage if you’re asking) won’t grow any taller, but be grateful that at least they smell amazing
- Wring my hands in horror at the damage snails have wrought on my baby squash plants, and consider kind ways of torturing them
- Try and train an 11 yr old dog in the basics of obedience
- Walk 11 yr old dog for an extra time during the day, ’cause the sun is shining and i feel like a bad person if i don’t
- Facebook my friends that left me messages three weeks ago
- Finish and order my first Blurb book, of our new cottage, for my Mom back in England
- Buy frames for two prints that are begging to go on a wall, somewhere
- Work out new ways of preventing dog from going upstairs and chewing through baby gate, without damaging the look and feel of our cottage
- Decide on a theme (with boyfriend of course) for each room in cottage, so we can finally make some more progress in the decor dept (note to boyfriend – posters of classic Sci-Fi movies do not a country-style cottage make…)
- Sort through photographs to start planning the photo wall that Anh-Minh inspired me to create
- Visit a new restaurant or new bar (in this case, Press Club for delicious wine, and Lolo for quirky, amazing food), so i can at least kid myself my boundaries extend beyond SPQR and Delfina Pizzeria
- Try and walk past Gap without buying some new floral print item of clothing (oops, failed – take a look: http://tr.im/u7rt)
- See the new Harry Potter movie, because, you know, it has to be done. (Very good by the way. Nice and dark, which always appeals to me)
- Practice Lindy Hop before our two hour, Monday night class
Yep – sounds sooo relaxing doesn’t it?? And the sad thing is, this didn’t even involve hanging out much with my friends, something that definitely needs to be remedied for next weekend (luckily, August is full of good times ahead in that dept, so a little calm before the Margarita storm was actually kinda welcome this weekend).
BUT – the good thing is, it did involve hanging out with my boyfriend a lot, which, as he works every Sunday, was a good deal. It also involved one of the best massages i’ve had in a long time at Uncoiled (try it, and say i referred you – discounts in it for you and me!), and some old-fashioned, zero cost, zero stress, sitting on a chair on my porch, in the sun, and with a very happy dog, just the flowers, butterflies and wind chime for company. Lovely.
View from my back yard
It’s a constant battle of mine to actually switch off completely and relax. I’m not that great at it, and sometimes, it isn’t even that great for me. In fact, sometimes (and as noted with the Lindy Hop trials), it’s actually more therapeutic to engage my brain in something different and challenging, then just lie around, feeling wan and apathetic. But, i would like to feel less pressure to complete all these different personal projects, that can sometimes feel overwhelming. Even a three day trip to Calistoga has required military-style planning, and don’t even get me started on a Christmas trip to the UK. I guess i need to remember that sometimes, a day spent in the sunshine, listening to nothing but peace and quiet, and stroking a very chilled out dog, should be at the very top of my own, personal, to-do list.
What about you? What’s top of the personal de-stress list, and do you have enough of it in your life?
Rick and I have gone up in the world! Now at level 2 of Lindy Hop at the Cheryl Burke School of Dance, we are starting to learn how to turn our disjointed steps into more of a fluid, connected routine. However, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the first week of level 2 was bit of a rude awakening… Level 1 and Level 1 plus were just so, comforting, so fun, so “we don’t know what the hell we’re doing yet, but hell, neither does anyone else”. We had a lot of fun, received a lot of critique (yes, it won’t surprise anyone that knows me to learn that i had a few problems learning how to be a good follower…), had a few arguments with each other (hmm, not really the intended effect, but there you go), and learnt some basic steps. At the end of seven weeks of hard graft, sore feet, and lots of bumping into each other and apologizing to anyone else we had the misfortune to dance with, we could do the basics.
I’m still not sure whether our teacher was just being kind when he told us that we were ‘ready’ for level 2. Two weeks in, and it’s now slightly less terrifying and horrifying, but we still leave after two hours thinking, “how did we manage to muddle our way through it??” Everyone else is just so good, we are always running to catch up. And when we heard we’d be doing moves called the ‘hammerlock’, and ‘saw-kicks’, I think we both wondered if we’d inadvertently stepped onto the set of Psycho, rather than onto a dancefloor.
To make matters worse, the classes are on a Monday night, from 7:45 – 9:30pm, which, after a nearly 12 hour day at work and no time for dinner, is a bit of a super-natural feat. Add in the fact that classes are in the middle of nowhere (otherwise known as Potrero Hill…), and that having no car of our own, we need a cab to get back home in one piece and before midnight, you might wonder why in the world we bother!
Well, it turns out that dancing isn’t just good for the body, it’s also very good for the soul. Talk about work/life balance, I’ll tell you that when you’re standing on one foot, grabbing onto your partner for dear life, and then executing a double turn for the first time, all to a very fast 8 count of music, there’s really NO room in your head for any work-related stress. In fact, there’s no room for anything else in your head. Period. Everything gets focused on the steps, the hold, the count, the rhythm, the technique, even the odd piece of flair! I’ve had multiple massages in my life, gone to a zen retreat and done hours of yoga, yet nothing has ever managed to still my mind quite as much as this. It’s total concentration first, followed by total performance (that point when actually manage to stop thinking about the steps and just dance, is quite a revelation), and for me, it’s become an essential and enjoyable way to switch off. I tend to relax most when i’m still engaged in doing something, preferably learning something new, and having fun while i’m doing it. So Lindy Hop is perfect for me. I’ve danced before, but never this style, so I have to un-learn old habits and focus on how i can continually improve and learn. Then I get to see the results pay off in the fundamental and elemental pleasure i get from the dancing itself. Strikes me as a rather good practice for other areas of my life too, both professional and personal. Focus, learn, improve, enjoy. Simple!
So, if meditation, bending like a pretzel and being kneaded into a pulp just aren’t cutting it in the relaxation stakes, try cutting it on the dance floor instead. It’s a crappy movie, but the look of pure joy on Richard Gere’s face in “Shall We Dance”, when he masters a tricky ballroom move, is the same one i have plastered on every Monday night. And with moves like the ‘eggbeater’, ‘yump’ and ‘bellyslide’ promised in the coming months, it’s a sure bet that there’s more joy (or at least, confusion, followed by ‘no, i can’t do that’, followed by ‘ok i’ll try it’, followed by joy) in my Monday night future.
I haven’t even touched here on on the cool culture surrounding swing dance and Lindy Hop, not least, the fabulous styling that accompanies it. But i will, just as soon as i master that hammerlock… In the meantime, if you’re in San Francisco and want to know what all the fuss is about, check out this list of Lindy events, and enjoy this video of people doing it properly (i.e. our teacher!)
(Thanks to Boston College Lindy group for this great image!)
Happened upon a great little corner of the Fillmore St Festival today. Watched the Lindy Hop Championship and got very jealous of everyone’s mad skills! Suffice to say, I’m a few years away from that level, but i can dream! Enjoy this pic, which i like, because it captures the joy of motion:
Mainly of the view from Lyon St Steps. I took these way before the blossoms came out, so would be fun to go back and do a re-shoot in full bloom. 
