HALLOWEEN

Yesterday there were big parties everywhere in the US... Halloween is probably on of the most important days of the year for a lot Americans.

Actually I can understand this.. it's pretty fun to dress up and do some weird stuff you usually wouldn't. Nearly the whole class came already dressed to scholl, highlights were definetly the followning costumes: Elvis (oh yeah, looked awesome!), a cow (sooooo cool), a sailor, Rocky Balboa and more. (At this point I won't say anything about my coustume...)

In the evening there was a party at our school, but just until about 9pm. Nevertheless it was a lot of fun and the place was really crowded. There were a lot of really good and creative costumes, fact is that our class provided some of the best. The sailor won the prize for the best costume and I got the prize for the funniest costume (no I won't tell you... not yet)

It was also really entertaining to walk through the city afterwards and see all the creative and cool, but often also just standard costumes. Everybody seemed to be dressed up for Halloween and just wanted to have fun... it was great.

Unfortunately I haven't got some good photos yet, as I didn't take my camera with me, but I'll update this probably as soon as I get some nice pictures.
(I just have some pictures from the morning, which aren't that fun... but maybe I'll post these if I can't get the other pictures soon)

NBA: Warriors - Hornets

Last Thursday we went to our first NBA game in our life, the Golden State Warriors against the New Orleans Hornets... the game took place in Oakland, just over the bay. It was easy to go there by BART.

As it was the opening game of the season we all received a mice yellow Warriors opening shirt for free. This was pretty cool as a lot of fans wore the shirts and the whole viewer area was in glaring yellow.

The game was (in my opinion as basketball noob at least) pretty cool, although we had quite cheap seats. It was a pity that the Warriors lost the game... final score was 108:103 for the Hornets.

Enjoying a NBA game live was really fun and for everybody who isn't familiar with basketball: it's really worth seeing it once!

I took some pictures, as a reminder: click on them to enlarge.

  

Devildriver & Death Angel @ Regency Ballroom

Yesterday was another concert. I had bought my ticket already weeks ago, just knowing that Devildriver were going to play... Last week I found out (to my surprise)  that Death Angel was scheduled as support... awesome!!!

I arrived early (by bike of course)... I wanted to be in the front. Actually there weren't that much people there when the doors opened, so I had time to check out the merchandise stuff and talk with several people who also wanted to be near to the stage... it was very entertaining.

The opening act was a band called "Straight Line Stitch" with a women (!) growling and singing the lyrics... but it wasn't the kind of music I really like... it was too colorless,  several riffs were quite similar and all in all nothing seemed to be quite innovative. Nevertheless they played a solid show.

Death Angel, who were playing next, were fucking amazing! Their show had power and full of energy, the setlist was awesome and the solos (most of them) fantastic... and very important, the sound was perfect (although, the vocals were quite low... but I really didn't care about this).

What's interesting to know is, that this band roots in the beginnig of thrash metal and actually comes from Daly City (as far as I heard) which is really near to SF. They still have their very own, old-school style... I love it.

Death Angel...

...performing a fucking cool show.

Setlist of Death Angel (thanks to the girl who got it and let me take photo)

I've seen Devildriver in Switzerland before... they played an awesome show in the Rohstofflager in front of just around 250... 

I really like this band for their groundbreaking guitar work and also the great drum play.  Unfortunately the show yesterday was really disappointing. Although they had a great setlist (see below) and a nice performance (all in all), the sound was absolutely awful. You couldn't actually here the guitar... at least not when the drummer was playing (and else it was everything else than loud). 

I have no idea what stupid soundman they have, but it was very frustrating... it could have been such a cool show, with all the great songs they performed. (Actually I don't know what the sound was like farther away from the stage (there were other boxes for the back), but I can't imagine it was better.)

Nevertheless it was a cool evening, especially because of Death Angel and their cool show.

Noiseless Devildriver guitarist (I guess his monitors worked, so he could enjoy the show...)

Devildriver's awesome Setlist

Fire!!

Oh yeah... finally some action. Today we had a fire alarm in the building where we have our accommodation... Don't worry, it was a false alarm, but I couldn't figure out yet who or what caused it. As the horn sounded, one of my first thought was: "Oh, no way, the Spanish morons can't be in the kitchen at this time... must be a false alarm."

As soon as we were in the lobby it was confirmed that there isn't a fire or anything similar anwhere... I just told to Angelika "Let's wait a minute here... the firefighters must arrive in a second." Barely said so, they arrived with siren wailing and blue light flashing in front of the building.

Always prepared, I had my camera in the pocket and took some pictures. It was quite amusing seeing the firefighters running into the house and coming back disappointed some minutes later.

(I've no idea how many false alarms there are in SF per day, but it must be frustrating for the guys.)

(As always... click on it to enlarge)

Weekend review - Sunday

The day after the trip to Santa Cruz, the fog seemed to have reached San Fran... (for the first time since quite a while). Nevertheless we decided to bike to the Kezar Stadium, respectively to the Golden Gate Park (which is far away from the GG Bridge) to do some sports /learn for school.

Arriving at the Stadium I had to realize that I was unlucky again... there was a Football game of some kids and I couldn't go into the stadium to do my track & field stuff... Exactly the same story as last friday, when I wanted to practice in the afternoon. I hope I'll be lucky tomorrow.

As we couldn't excersise and it was too windy too hang around in the Park and learn, we decided to drive though the city with our bikes.

We ended at Fort Point, just under the Golden Gate Bridge and our way home lead us once again up the whole Hyde St.! I've never seen such a steep street before... it's unbelievable. The most amazing thing is that the street is dead stright.

On the top, the intersection point with Lombard St. to be exactly, there was a Cable Car standing just on the crossing... so there was not a single car driving down the crooked part of Lombard.

It's self-evident that I snapped this chance and that I turned left (illegaly) and drove down the famed twists of Lombard, without having a car on the street... really cool :D

Some impressions of the day:

The Golden Gate Bridge in the fog with some kite surfers and normal surfers

Hyde Street (it's even steeper than it looks)

It wasn't foggy everywhere... (s)nob hill had quite good wheather and blue sky all day long...

The reason why Americans must have BIG cars

I was wondering since I arrived in the States about the use of the usual size of cars Americans have... then in Santa Cruz last Saturday I finally found the reason as I saw the car pictured below...

*click on the picture to enlarge*

I wonder why i didn't strike on the idea... I mean it's obvious that there must always be some space left for the quad bike!

Weekend review - Saturday

It's monday - time to mourn after the weekend... On Saturday we went (together with some guys from school) to Santa Cruz. "Went" maybe isn't the best way to describe this... we actually took the Greyhound Bus (ca. 2.5 h trip).

Leaving San Francisco behind us, we also left the blue sky behind us... Although it was quite warm and agreeable in Santa Cruz, there was a lot of vapor and fog. (Take a look at the pictures)

We had some relaxing hours at the beach, throwing around a football (not soccer) which isn't that easy at all, as I realized, and checking out the stores there. (The whole village is of course very touristic, but it was fun.) 

After some late-night shopping in the town (I found some awesome, second-hand and very cheap guitar songbooks in a crazy bookstore... ) we got back to SF with the Greyhound at 10, arriving at 1 am.

Arriving @ the beach... the fog in the neck.

Hangin' around... lazy in the vapor :D

Waiting for the Greyhound bus back to SF