My room in the Mark Hopkins has gold silk-washed wallpaper and melon-colored organza curtains. There is a long hallway with a bend in it from the door to my boudoir. Last night I lay in my gold and melon colored room, wrapped up in wool socks, sweat pants and a seatshirt, and watched Tootsie (with Dustin Hoffman) on television, drinking a beer and eating the canister of jumbo cashews from le minibar. It was wonderful. I could see the rose window at Grace Cathedral from my window. Before I'd come in to watch TV I had sat in the park in front of the cathedral on the top of Nob Bill and watched the American flags on top of the tall buildings whipping in the "marine coastal" wind. The flags on top of the Mark Hopkins are always blowing straight out -- the wind is always pretty strong up here. The park is built on the grounds of Mr. Croker's old house. He was a railroad attorney (how ironic) and his white wooden mansion burned down in the 1906 earthquake. His wife gave the land to the City and retired to
Washington, D.C. Now it has a nice group of fig trees and a fountain called the tortoise fountain, and is place where Chinatown residents come in the morning for Tai Chi.
The rest in the park was necessary because I'd walked home from work which meant I had to hike up Nob Hill. It's only 9 blocks from the office but it's an almost 45 degree slope straight up.
Everyone who walks up the hill does pretty well until about block 4 -- then you see folks stopping to gasp for breath -- and hanging around a little extra at the cross street intersections -- which are flat for a few steps. I was wearing my nylon black topcoat and slung my briefcase across my body so my hands were free and cranked up the hill in my 3 inch loafers. I had the brains to leave my laptop in the office. I looked like a bicyle messenger by the time I got to the top, half an hour later -- hair askew, clutching my briefcase that had turned into a saddlebag.
This morning -- after arranging with the Mark Hopkins concierge for a rental car for the weekend -- I walked right back down the hill. Walking down is actually harder -- there are these little muscles that apparently attach your legs to the rest of your body and they get very tired. Also, walking down a 45 degree slope in 3 inch stack hills is just plain old hard. Your thigh muscles never relax and you are constantly pitched backwards. I did the hands free approach again. The good part about the walk up and down is that it goes right through Chinatown which is a very interesting place. There is a Cathay Pacific restaurant on California street in Chinatown that spans a whole city block -- the front door is un the uphill part of the block, an when you get
to the back of the buliding on the downhill side of the block, the floor where the front door is four stories off the street. That's how dramatic the incline is.
My deposition today was the resumed deposition of the other side's CEO. The other side unilaterally decided they would only stay for 3 hours, so after three hours they got up and walked out. I refused to go off the record and kept the video running (I wanted the record to show a blank room where the witness should have been), which put the other side's lawyer in an awkward spot.
He had already committed to leaving, but didn't want to leave while the record was running (for obvious reasons), but also wouldn't sit back down and let me continue asking questions. So he did all sorts of foolish thinks in front of the camera for 10 minutes or so -- like ask me what I was going to say on the record after he left (response: "nothing"), and like leave the room and call out and day "I'm gone!" and then leap back in and say, "now I'm back -- are we off the record?" (response: "no, tape is still running") -- until the tape finally ran out and It took pity on him and let him leave. Amazing. Another first for me – these Califronia lawyers do have a novel approach to the adversarial system. Also, a summer associate was watching the whole thing, which somehow made it all better.
Then Jones and I went to the Mandarin, of all places, for a drink. There I met the Mandarin bartender and his parents. Lovely people. They live in Morro Bay, down near San Luis Obispo, which as it happens is a place I have been several times. We discussed all the euphemisms for "fog" and "clouds." It turns out the bartender's parents had worked in Riyadh for a while, so we traded stories about the Muddle East and being an American in a Muslim country, etc. They gave me pointers on where to go in Mendocino, which is where I'm headed tomorrow. I ate some lamb and drank a Cabernet. Now I'm all excited for Mendocino.
Then, I walked out of the Mandarin and decided I couldn't face walking up Nob Hill. Out of nowhere, a normal car stopped and the driver -- an aging hippie with a short haircut and very raspy voice said, "do you need a taxi?" I said, "yes, but you don't look like a taxi..." He said, "my taxi -- which is really a Lincoln town car -- is broken, but I will take you to the Mark Hopkins in my TLC-registered SUV here for $6 bucks." On the way, he gave me a rose and told me all about which hotels I should stay in on my next trip. He's convinced me that the Fairmont (also on Nob Hill, across from Mark Hopkins) should be my next stop because he says they pay their staff more than union wages which means they have the best help in town.
We turned into the one flat parking space in the Mark Hopkins driveway and I said, "do I get to keep this rose?" He said, "Of course. I don't give roses away and then ask for them back." I gave him a big tip. He was like a magical, imaginary taxi driver
from heaven.
posted by Anonymous @ 10:43 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home