San Francisco Day 2: Sleater-Kinney?Oh yes.

Wow, today was almost certainly the best day ever.

When we got into town decided we were hungry, and decided to follow Kenny the Clown's advice and cruised on over to one of the seedier parts of town to look for this Vietnamese restaurant called Hunan. Sadly that was closed, but as we were walking by we noticed a club with the sign saying 'Sleater Kinney'. Their new album, which rocks immensely, only came out about 2 weeks ago and I've been loving it.

We were pretty hungry, though, so the group decided to keep looking for something to eat. We found a good little Indian food place on a corner with really inexpensive food. Once I polished that off Zach and I headed on over to where the show was.

Now, I guess it's a trend in bigger, busier cities to have rock shows end at midnight so people can get to work in the morning. So when we arrived there was supposed to only be another half hour left in the show, and since the tickets were $20, we turned and started walking away. This is where the gods smile on us once again, and a dude who apparently was in really good with the bouncer sold us 2 tickets for $10 each, and then spoke us in to the floor area where we weren't supposed to be.

Got into the show just as they were starting up the 13-minute long guitar jam / solo from their new album. Unbelievable luck at this point. I immediately go from tired from the day's driving and walking and wanting to sleep straight to rocking-out-like-a-maniac mode. The show was in a great venue, perfectly set-up and sound and lights at absolutele perfect levels. This is the way you're supposed to see shows. My PEI-raised heart was floating.

The band played a few more songs from the new album and went off the stage. Now, everyone knows if you don't hear certain songs by the end of the night that a band is saving them up for the big encore-we-all-knew-was-coming. It was just a matter of screaming your lungs out anyway, just to show the love.

I think I managed to get about 10 or so people to repeat after me whenever I'd yell something. That's all just a matter of anticipating a lull and catching it pro-actively to keep the momentum goiing. And of course when you're coaxing a band into an encore, you always have the Horton Hears a Hoo mentality, where you think that the one extra incremental effort that you could add to the noise level would be just the little pressure needed to break through and convince the band to come out.

Tonight their encore included all their best-known and crowd pleasing songs, I was air drumming away, rocking out like I always do without regard to what people think. Which is no problem in Charlottetown because I genuinely don't care a whit about the opinions of the people there. I'm glad, though, that the same holds true for the way-cool San Francisco crowd. Score one for actual convictions over contextually convenient ones.

Overall it was the best $10 I ever spent. And so far I have had the single greatest string of good-fortune imaginable.

I'll talk about our road trip in another post. Right now I'm too pumped about the show to want to think about anything else.