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November 17, 2005
Late night in San Francisco with the DOMC
The trade show was starting to get to me yesterday at about 5 PM. I probably would have traded a day as a Sunni in an Iraqi prison for not having to spend the last few minutes wandering about. There were some highlights to the show since I found a couple of business opportunities but those happened today so I was despondent, weary, and feeling like a failed entrepreneur as I was driving back to the hotel to meet Falkoff. Something gave me a bloody nose as I drove and I considered writing an entry for the Bootstrap blog about what it feels like when you are sitting in the middle of the valley of death and the death of the business is looming all around you. Dread.
Whatever it was I managed to miss an exit that I would like to complain to the state of California about. The exit was for 237 and I need to get to Macarthur Avenue. When I reached the 237 exit and was about to get on the ramp I saw a sign that said “Macarthur Avenue – Next Exit”. I interpret next exit to mean that the current exit is not the exit to get off at since if it were the sign would say “MacArthur Avenue – This Exit”. This is a clear way to say get off now or you will spend hours spinning from California highway to highway until you finally spit out in Arizona or the Mexican border. Someone has to teach that muscleman governor enough English to get the signs right.
But the good news about being in San Francisco is that there are always some folks from my past floating around looking to enjoy an evening in a great city to cheer you up when you are feeling like crap. In this case the crew included DK, Falkoff, and Ilana. DK, as a longstanding food connoisseur chose a fabulous restaurant called “Tsunami”. The basic theme is to have a bunch of very attractive non-asian waitresses server you lots of top shelf Saki while some kick-ass sushi chefs work-up magical creations involving hyper-fresh fish and nifty things like jalapeno peppers. This was a meal to remember and up there with the Buddha bar in Paris in my list of must eat Japanese restaurants. We were sitting in a little dojo style lowered floor area where our lovely waitresses would kneel to pour our deep flowing Sake. The numbers on the meal came out to about $125/person but if that meal wasn’t what $125 then what is?
Our waitress Hana, “Goin’ down the road to Hana”, had a Hawaiian attitude and was having a good time serving and drinking the top shelf Sake with clever names like Satan’s girl, and sweet innocence. She had a tiny piercing in her cheek somewhere down and the left of her nose. We were all chatting with us and a neighboring lesbian couple that we absorbed into our group as the meal rolled forwards. We asked them where to go for trouble and they recommended a gay sex club where they have combined the peanut butter and the chocolate by allowing voyeurs to watch exhibitionists have sex where you pick which one you want to be and do your thing. We didn’t have a huge interest in that so after we kissed Hana goodbye and Ilana and Roc had arrived we stuffed the five of us into a cab.
The cab pulled in to the location of Larry Flynt’s Hustler club. Having recently watched the movie the people vs. Larry Flynt I thought I should drop a couple bucks in support of his cause. We had a nice odd time inside with our crew. Kilimnik got into trouble for asking an inappropriate question. Falkoff and Ilana started swing dancing in the aisle. Falkoff bought me a lap dance. A Russian girl came over so I bought Ilana a lap dance with her and Ilana got a twenty minute lesson on how to deliver a lap dance properly as well as the official stripper recruitment speech. We were continuing to drink, at this point tequila and beer. Ilana was hanging out on my lap because it was something good to do at the Hustler Club but the official tuxedo clad gentlemen with secret service ear jacks told us that we had violated the rule that each customer must sit in their own seat. At about 2:30 AM the place wound down and we wandered down the street for some Chinese food. I awoke with a mild hangover with Falkoff at 7AM this morning.
I considered avoiding the awful trade show blah but since I was already in town I give it a whirl. Things were going crappy and the hangover and lack of leads had me ready to slit my wrists with a PCMCIA card when I had a meeting with someone who actually wanted to pay Viapoint to do something strategic for both us and them. Hallelujah – the good karma paid off.
BTW: DOMC stands for dirty old men's club.
Posted by dhousman at November 17, 2005 05:53 PM