After landing in SF for the weekend - and catching up with my old friend Jim Quanci for a late-night chat - I woke up early at the Hotel Del Sol.
I headed to Chestnut Street to meet Jim for breakfast at his favourite hangout.
I had a lot of work to catch up on after a busy week offline - and a hectic week in Portland coming soon - so ended up spending several hours back at the hotel before venturing back out for Halloween.
I walked to Avila Street, which was closed off to welcome several thousand trick-or-treaters.
The early part of the evening was for the little kids, which was beyond cute.
Jim and family had bought 1,600 "doses". They all went (but only right at the end of the evening - perfect planning).
There were some great costumes. The lady below was a character from Hitchcock's The Birds (which I guessed correctly) but the gentleman was from Dumb and Dumber (which I didn't… I asked if he was supposed to be Jimmy Saville, who his wife had heard of, unfortunately).
It was nice to have a visit from The Pope.
Ghostbusters is always a solid theme for Halloween, but this was above and beyond.
This thing was huge.
Some houses focused more on the scary.
Kids were having so much fun. I had a blast, too!
As the sun went down the WNBA match between the Valkyries and the Dreams was projected onto a nearby home. The Valkyries - the local team - won the WNBA championship, which was pretty cool to see.
James Awe from the Tandem team came across to hang out in the Marina with Jim and I. We ended up at the Balboa Cafe, a property owned and run by Gavin Newsom's family.
Funny story: there was an hour-long queue to get in, but the bouncer waved us through. It was really surreal. Our best guess was that it was thanks to Jim's rainbow-sequined cowboy hat (very SF), but we actually have no idea.
It ended up being a late night - with some rain washing the streets clean, very handily - but I was still up very early the next morning.
Sebastian Casallas - an old friend from the Workshop XR team - picked me up so we could go for breakfast with his family out by Seal Rock.
It was a lovely time - I'm very grateful Sebastian took the time to hang out with me and introduce me to his beautiful family.
I was going to Waymo back to the hotel - out of pure curiosity as I still haven't taken an autonomous taxi - but the weather was so good, and my head still slightly fuzzy, so I chose to walk the 4 miles back across the city.
It was gorgeous walking along the edge of the Presidio.
I found this house to be particularly charming.
I popped by the Marina - just to see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance - before heading to SFO for my flight to Portland.
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