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Ever since I was a young child, I’ve been somewhat of a “hoarder”. Not quite the packed-from-floor-to-ceiling, almost-buried-alive kind of hoarder, but more like one of those sentimental fools who can’t bear to get rid of anything…a “clutter bug”. I’m always keeping little things here & there from my childhood, calling them “collections” & whatnot, but what those things really are, are sentimental mementos eventually collecting dust as junk. This new “collection” of mine is slowly building, but at least they serve a function. I can actually use them around the house. They are drink coasters. I’ve got a tiny collection going, & I’m kind of proud of them. They not only serve a purpose, but they also show the places I’ve been to & the things I’ve done. Let’s take a look.
Brew Dog beer is one of my all-time favorite brands of beer (originating from Scotland). I was very surprised to find one of their taprooms during my trip to Hong Kong earlier this year. I had a great time eating Shepherd’s Pie & drinking pints of their Hardcore IPA. I “borrowed” these 2 coasters as a souvenir to mark my 1st experience at a real Brew Dog Brewery taproom.
Belga is an incredibly delicious Belgian-ish style restaurant in San Francisco. Every time I’ve eaten there (which is three times), I’m always blown away by the interior decor. The first time I sat at the bar counter, I fell in love with this drink coaster. First of all, I’d like to note that I am a big fan of typography & graphic fonts. The text on this coaster is so cool & perfectly matches the decor & taste of the restaurant. Secondly, I love the background. It reminds me of antique tiles, yet it’s still able to look simple & clean.
I can’t, for the life of me, remember where I picked up this drink coaster. It was probably from one of the many bars I’ve frequented in or around the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m not too sure why I had chosen this drink coaster other than the fact that I’m an avid whisk(e)y/bourbon drinker & I like Tullamore Irish whiskey.
Earlier this year, my family & I took a small weekend trip to San Diego. On our way home, Jian & I stopped by the Stone Brewing Co. taproom at the San Diego International Airport. Jian is a huuuge fan & avid drinker of craft beer, so he was over the moon when he saw that Stone Brewing Co. had their own bar at the airport. Since San Diego is California’s epicenter for amazing craft beers, I grabbed one of these drink coasters as a sunny souvenir.
This is another one of those drink coasters where I have no clue where I got it from. Yet again, it must be from one of the countless bars Jian & I have visited in or around the San Francisco Bay Area. This was one of the first drink coasters I’ve ever kept from a bar. Way back in the day, Jian used to like drinking Lagunitas Brewery IPA, so I saved this coaster for him. He doesn’t drink this beer anymore, but I still kept the drink coaster.
Coedo Brewery is one of my favorite Japanese craft beer brands. While we were visiting Hong Kong, I happened to stumble upon the Coedo taproom while searching for restaurant listings on Yelp. (Yes, Yelp works just as well as Open Rice in Hong Kong.) After a long day of subway rides & walking in the hot humid weather, we enjoyed a few glasses of ice cold beer & Japanese izakaya snacks. I kept this drink coaster as another souvenir from my trip to Hong Kong. I love how the coaster says “Beer Beautiful”, & I love the font & simplicity of the design. That’s Japanese artistry for ya!
Mortar & Pestle is one of the few cool, hip bars in my city. The mixologists who work there are always friendly & the cocktails are pretty tasty. I feel like I’m getting a slice of the San Francisco’s craft cocktail experience right in the downtown of my bland & quiet hometown. I saved this drink coaster because it had a recipe to one of the bar’s signature drinks on the back, & was hoping that Jian would be able to spin his mixology magic & recreate that drink.
Last year, I attended the 150th Scottish Highland Gathering & Games in the Bay Area hosted by the Caledonian Club of San Francisco. It was an amazing & overwhelming Scottish (& partly Irish) cultural festival. I had so much fun sampling Minced Meat Pies & Scotch Eggs, & watching bagpipe teams perform. I also got to sample loads of scrumptious whiskies from all over Scotland. Two of my friends that went to the festival with me got to sample some Crabbie’s ginger beer, & they saved me this coaster. I don’t like ginger beer, but I saved this coaster anyway as a memento of the special Scottish & Highland festival.
Gitane is a very special restaurant that will always hold a special place in the hearts of Jian & myself. This is the first restaurant in San Francisco that we frequented so often that we became “regulars”, & practically everyone knew us there. The Iberian food & the cocktails were so good at this restaurant, it kept us coming back for more. Not only that, but we built solid friendships with a lot of the mixologists & the general manager of the restaurant. Eventually, a lot of the staff that we became friends with moved on to other restaurants or open their own bars, & we followed them as friends & loyal customers. This drink coaster symbolizes our “golden time” spent at this restaurant, making lasting friendships.
One of mine & Jian’s favorite bars in the San Francisco Bay Area is ABV (aptly named after the phrase “Alcohol By Volume”). At one time, this bar had a city theme on their drink coasters. These 4 coasters were the only cities we were able to find &/or collect during the last time we visited the place. I was pretty excited about these coasters because all of the cities represented places I want to visit at least once in my life, & so far I’ve already been to Tokyo, Hong Kong, & New York City. I would seriously love to visit Ireland at least once & do a whiskey crawl. That would be epic. The best part about these drink coasters are the different ways to say “Thank You” in each region’s native language. Although, I don’t understand why they would use the Mandarin language for Hong Kong when their native language is Cantonese (& sometimes we get a little butt-sore over people mixing up our dialects). I find it utterly hilarious that NYC’s saying is “Fuck Off”.
Well, that’s pretty much it. This is the end of my blog post. I am seriously going to try & cut back on my collecting of random things next year. Really. I’m getting sick & tired of myself having to cram little knick knacks & tchotchkes into every drawer & buying more storage boxes. I want to simplify my belongings & really de-clutter my life, but until then, cheers.
Today’s song of the day:
As promised, here is the blog post about my recent vacation to Portland, Oregon. (I am typing this while I am snacking on my Glico「サラパスタ -トマトサラダ」’Sala Pasta’ tomato salad flavored cocktail crackers.)
- DATES: August 1-5, 2014
- CITY: SFO to PDX
- HOTEL: Residence Inn by Marriott, Pearl District
- ROOM: #415
- TRANSPORTATION: Public Transit (We mostly did not rent a car.)
Almost every time we travel together, my travel buddy & I try to stay at a Marriott (or Marriott-affiliated) hotel. My buddy is a gold-status rewards card member at Marriott, so we are usually able to get free nights at our hotel with all of the points we save up. On this trip, we were able to score one free night of stay. That’s surely a nice way to start off our vacation. We didn’t check-in to our hotel until around 11:30 at night, & we were starving from a lack of dinner. Most of the nearby restaurants & bars were already closed (& had no idea there was a 24hr Subway deli just 1 block down the street from us), so we ended up eating 2 crappy Lean Cuisine microwave dinners from the hotel snack shop.
The next morning we woke up, bright & semi-early, ready to take on PDX by foot. Yes, we were brave foolish enough to trek the fair city of Portland just by walking, & it was the best decision we ever made. It really forced us to look at the city in ways we never could if we were merely gazing out of a car window. Sure, we can travel farther by car, but everything we wanted to see & do was within reach from our hotel by public transportation.
We took the bus & street car/tram only once during our entire trip; the rest of the time we walked. Only on our second-to-last day did we actually cave in & rent a car. We were planning on exploring East Portland & knew we couldn’t cross the bridge & explore that part of town in one day alone, so we rented a car for one & a half days. We had originally planned on using the car rental service Car2Go, but had no way of signing up + retrieving our membership card within the duration of our stay, so we rented a car the traditional way through Dollar Rental. For those who don’t know what Car2Go is, the easiest way to describe it is like a hybrid between a car share & a car rental. Check out their website for a video & the complete rundown of how this all works (They might be in a city near you!). Car2Go only uses Smart ForTwo cars, which I can understand because Car2Go is owned by Daimler AG, which is the parent of Mercedes-Benz, which is the parent of Smart.
Our Car2Go membership card arrived in the post after we came back from PDX.
Just as I had predicted (& planned), my travel buddy & I mostly ate, drank & spent time at the parks. I was hoping to go shopping (possibly for some Danner &/or Pendleton goods straight from the source), but the most shopping we did was for coffee beans. We also bought 2 coffee mugs, one from Barista Fine Roasting & one from Heart Coffee Roasters, to match our exisiting Stumptown Coffee mugs. We visited a different coffee roaster everyday & definitely got our caffeine fix, but we didn’t visit as many beer breweries as we had originally planned. However, we did indulge in quite a bit of beer during our PDX stay.
Places we visted for coffee:
- Sisters Coffee Company
- BARISTA: Fine Coffee Purveyors
- Stumptown Coffee Roasters
- Sterling Coffee Roasters
- Heart Coffee Roasters
- Ristretto Coffee Roasters
Places we visited for beer:
- The Mash Tun Brewpub
- Pints Brewing
- Hair of the Dog Brewing Company
- Deschutes Brewery
‘Fred’ beer from HOTD; Sorry I didn’t get any other beer snapshots…
great advertising!
Eating in Portland is a very exciting experience, especially for foodies & food lovers. No matter where you turn, there will be at least 5 restaurants within 1 city block at all times. Trust me when I say YOU WILL NOT GO HUNGRY IN PDX. I could not believe how many restaurants, breweries, cafes & coffee roasters I passed by; I felt as though there were more eateries, roasters & breweries than there were retail shops & each place offered a different variety of food or drink. The popular trend in PDX: locally sourced, made-from-scratch & farm-to-table ingredients. We’ve got the same foodie trend happening here in San Francisco, but PDX really took it to another level making the food feel really homey & comforting…not upscale hipster & uppity like in SF. Even if it’s craft, or small batch, or hand-made, in PDX the food feels like small hometown cooking & the cocktails are anything but pretentious.
Places we visited for food:
- Clyde Common
- Piattino
- Grassa
- Salt N’ Straw Ice Creamery
- Boxer Ramen
- Ruby Jewel Scoops
- Lardo
- Le Pigeon
- Lovejoy Bakery
- Blue Star Donut & Coffee
Places we visited for alcohol:
- Clyde Common
- Kask
- Pepe Le Moko
- Living Room Theater
- The Heathman Restaurant & Bar
- Multnomah Whiskey Library
So, we didn’t just hang around the downtown city areas & stuffed ourselves silly. We also, as I had planned, visited many of PDX’s illustrious parks. I didn’t just want to sit around & drink coffee/beer all day. I wanted to do as the locals do & just chill at the park on a hot day, & boy were the days H-O-T!!! We hung out around a few of the smaller parks, but spent a majority of time at the Lan Su Chinese Garden, International Rose Test Garden, & Japanese Garden (& took the most photos there). The Japanese Garden & International Rose Test Garden were a bit far from our hotel, so we walked to Providence Park Stadium (home of the Portland Timbers MLS team), & took the free bus to the gardens. On the way back, we took the bus back to Providence Park Stadium, & from there, slowly walked back to our hotel’s neighborhood.
Parks we visited:
- North Park Blocks
- Japanese Gardens
- International Rose Test Garden
- District Park
- Tanner Springs Park
- Jamison Square Park
- The Fields Neighborhood Park
- South Park Blocks
INTERNATIONAL ROSE TEST GARDEN
JAPANESE GARDENS
LAN SU CHINESE GARDEN
Today’s song of the day:
“Hot Tonight” by Tokyo Police Club
I’m excited to get away for a few days. I don’t really live such a fast-paced, hectic life, but it still is good to take a step away from the everyday things & take some time to breathe & relax. It not only recharges one’s body, but it also gives one a moment away from the same ho-hum repetitive schedule. Next week, I will be jetting off to Portland, Oregon. It’s not quite an exotic locale, but I’ve been wanting to visit Portland for a long time, to really take some time to explore the city.
Of course, the popular IFC TV show Portlandia has increased my interest in visiting the city, but it’s by no means the main reason I want to go there. I’ve driven through this city a few times on my way to Seattle & Canada. I’ve even stayed overnight once, but I’ve never actually seen this city for myself. I am very excited that I will get the chance to do so, next week.
There are three main things I must check off my To-Do list while I’m in Portland.
1. Drink plenty of coffee
Although Srumptown & Sterling are my favorite coffee roasters, there are plenty of other coffee roasters to try. I’d say that over Seattle, Portland is the true city of coffee.
2. Drink plenty of craft beer
I’ve been watching Esquire TV‘s shows Best Bars In America & Brew Dogs, & those two shows really opened my eyes to craft beers. Portland’s got tons of local craft breweries that I can’t wait to check out.
3. Drink plenty of whisk(e)y
I am making my way to Multnomah Whisky Library. I am not leaving until I’ve had my fair share of fine whisky. Did I ever mention that I’m a pretty big whisky drinker? Oh, well…now that cat has left the bag…
Rabbits & Foxes 
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