oh! i miss being on my californian adventure! not just the room service and the whole ‘holiday’ thing, but just being in amazing places like san francisco. i could quite easily just move myself into one of those brain-meltingly expensive pretty doll-houses and live happily ever after. who knows, maybe i could even learn to like sourdough bread? it’ll be tough, but i bet i could do it.
while in san francisco i got to meet up with the unspeakably gorgeous alex from strawberry lemonade, who along with her (also unspeakably gorgeous) family gave us a v.i.p-extra-special-insider’s tour of their lovely city. the first important thing to note is just how cute we looked:
alex, and pilgrim – photo by mr alex
the second thing to note is just how cute we look in a photo booth together. see, alex is so cute the camera couldn’t take it all in, and she looks a bit blurry. i promise, she’s not blurry in real life: she just can’t be captured on film. too much awesome.
after being picked up from our hotel, we were whisked away in the ‘strawberry-lemonade-mobile’ to the amazing musee mechanique at pier 45, fisherman’s wharf. swoon. i think i could’ve spent weeks in musee mechanique. it is a huge private collection of coin operated amusements dating from the 1800s to the 1980s. most of the amusements only cost 25¢, so you can spend a little money but have a lot of fun. there are tasteful antique music players, mutoscopes (early moving picture displays) and fortune telling machines. and then there were the morbid and macabre attractions such as the drunkard’s dream, the various simulated execution dioramas, and the ominously titled ‘inquest’ (two bisons investigate a dead body. hilarity does not ensue. doesn’t that sound like the start of the worst joke ever)? here is a sampling of the treasures on display:
beautiful carved french kinetoscope casing
detail from the casing of a fortune telling machine
i love that the ‘h’ is in a red circle in this palmistry machine. it also featured an amazing chrome wing motif at the top but my camera missed it!
too busy swooning over that ‘magic’ script i didn’t notice what this was! oy, design geek, much?
the oldest attraction at the musee, a skipping girl zoetrope
detail from a miniature fairground
detail from a ‘weight & fortune’ scale (yeah, that’s a “thing”)
the opium den, featuring shivering addicts, pop up skeletons, lurking dragons etc
and finally, a shot of color! courtesy of a claw machine full of gumballs.
it was so great hanging out with alex and family, and we were so grateful to be given such super special treatment. it makes traveling so much richer when you have a local to show you around and our impression of san francisco is that its a swell town full of gorgeous people!
if you enjoyed seeing these pictures, why not take a look at the whole set on my flickr photostream. you’re welcome to add me as a contact if you’re on flickr too.
Leave a Reply
