Tag: San Francisco

66 good things from 2024

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I’ve written up my favourite movies, books and theatre from 2024, but here’s a dump of everything else I enjoyed, in roughly chronological order.

  1. The stunning architecture of the Alcázar, Seville
  2. Tapas at Eslava, Seville
  3. Antony Gormley, White Cube, London
  4. Parfums d’Orient, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris
  5. Mark Rothko, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris — possibly the best exhibition I’ve ever seen?
  6. Salt & pepper Dungeness crab at R&G Lounge, San Francisco
  7. Riding a Waymo, San Francisco
  8. Giant redwoods, Santa Cruz
  9. The aquarium at California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco
  10. Seeing the Northern Lights on a return flight from San Francisco to London
  11. A custom made LEGO minifigure of me
  12. A Palestinian art exhibition at Darat Al Funun, Amman
  13. Learning woodturning
  14. Ustad Noor Baksh, Southbank Centre, London
  15. Getting a Curzon Cult membership
  16. The Art Institute, Chicago
  17. Watching the eclipse while eating Culver’s, Indianapolis
  18. The Tiffany dome at Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago
  19. Architecture boat tour, Chicago
  20. Listening to The Dark Knight soundtrack while driving down Lower Wacker, Chicago
  21. Buying an inflatable boat to use on the canal
  22. Rothko Chapel concert, Southbank Centre
  23. My friend’s very good exhibition Paper Cuts, Peltz Gallery
  24. Taylor Swift, La Défense Arena, Paris
  25. The windows at Sainte-Chapelle, Paris
  26. Monet’s waterlilies at Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris
  27. Lunch at Oktobre, Paris
  28. Olivia Rodrigo, O2 Arena, London
  29. Burgers at the Chuck’s popup, Carousel, London
  30. Sampha, Justice, Mdou Moctar, Ustad Noor Baksh, Rimski’s Yard, and a million other things, Glastonbury
  31. The unbelievable House of Uncle Cornelius escape room, Geneva
  32. Dinner at Opheem, Birmingham
  33. My friend’s two beautiful weddings, London and Mysore
  34. Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
  35. Art of Noise, SFMOMA, San Francisco
  36. Musée Mecanique, San Francisco
  37. Half Price Books, Berkeley
  38. Tavares Strachan, Hayward Gallery, London
  39. The flower market, Bangalore
  40. Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore
  41. Karavalli, Bangalore
  42. Blossom Book House, Bangalore
  43. Vijay Vitthala Temple, Hampi
  44. All the monkeys, Hampi
  45. Royal Enclosure, Hampi
  46. Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace, Srirangapatna
  47. Dosas at Old Original Hotel Vinayaka Mylari, Mysore
  48. Searching for shells on the beach, Bekal
  49. Lunch at Quality Wines, London
  50. Sunsets, London
  51. Philip Glass Ensemble, Barbican, London
  52. Rug tufting, London
  53. Takeaway sushi from Haseya, Ealing
  54. Learning how to draw Islamic geometry, Harrow
  55. Classical Indian music workshop, Barbican, London
  56. Watching people dangerously set off fireworks, Shoreditch Park, London
  57. The Silk Roads exhibition, British Museum, London
  58. Making Nick Bramham’s tuna melt recipe
  59. The Electric Dreams exhibition, Tate Modern, London
  60. Humongous dinosaur skeletons at Museo Paleontológico, Trelew
  61. All the penguins, Punta Tombo
  62. Watching ice fall off a glacier, Perito Moreno
  63. Hiking Laguna de Los Tres, El Chalten
  64. The architecture of Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires
  65. Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires
  66. Dinner at Roux, Buenos Aires

San Francisco / Berkeley, August 2024

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment
  1. I was underwhelmed by almost all the food on this visit. Thanh Long’s garlic noodles aren’t as special as one is led to believe (and certainly not worth the price); Rose Pizzeria is fine but doesn’t hold a candle to basically any pizzeria in NYC or Chicago; La Taqueria and Hang Ah Tea Room are both fine but nothing special; and Tartine’s cakes are actively disappointing. At normal prices this would all have been tolerable; at SF prices it feels like robbery.
    • I thought Escape from NY, Woodhouse Fish Co. and Las Cabanas were all decent and not ridiculously priced, though.
  2. The big exception to this is the superb Arsicault. My friend described their pain au chocolat to me as the most delicious thing he’s ever eaten; it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. The croissants are superb, too.
  3. I’ve been to SF MOMA before, but enjoyed it even more this time round. The Visitors is particularly special — I went in expecting to stay for 5 minutes, and ended up remaining for over an hour.
  4. Berkeley has some really excellent book shops. Half-Price Books has, as the name implies, very good prices (especially by American standards), while Moe’s has an exceptional selection of second-hand film books (an oddly small history of technology section for the region, though).
  5. Golden Gate Park is absolutely stunning. Smells great, too.
  6. If only the same could be said for Market Street, which is still an absolute disaster. 
  7. Waymo taxis, now omnipresent in the city, are very obviously the future. A faultless journey, aside from the end: it dropped me off down an alleyway next to someone high on fentanyl, which sounds so absurd I’m sure you think I made it up.
  8. The De Young is a pretty middling museum (certainly not worth the admission fee), and it ought to be criminal to own a Turrell Skyspace but not allow access at sunset.
  9. The Musée Mecanique, on the other hand, is an absolute delight — an obvious labour of love, and a fascinating one at that. Cheap, too!
  10. It continues to be very odd that a broadly quite average city (at least in terms of museums, food, theatre, transport) is the most important place on earth.