February might not seem like the best time to hold a night time festival around San Francisco but its worked for Noise Pop for seventeen years so far. Maybe they wanna get a li’l jump on SXSW. Last year Fleet Foxes made their Cali debut here and this year there were all kinds of bands I wasnt familiar with. Theres always a few anchor headliners and this years top dogs were Antony and the Johnsons, Steve Malkmus, Bob Mould, No Age, Les Savy Fav, and Deerhunter, who played the opening night party. Bessie wasnt up for the drive this year so I took Bessita for her final cream slinging journey. The trip was only going to be three days and there was a lot of things to cram in.
San Francisco might be the toughest city to find ice cream in. Well.. actually, theres a ton of ice cream in the city (Double Rainbow and Mitchells are a few good examples) but if youre trying to load up an ice cream truck with pre packaged treats, you have to travel over 20 miles to the nearest dealer (Wonder Ice Cream in Newark). To makes things a bit easier I stopped by Long Beach Ice Cream and filled up with cream and dry ice then headed straight to Mezzanine on Tuesday night for the opening night party. Two years ago they kicked things off and it was good to be back because theres a large smoking area outside the back of the club and its a good place to park and sling. Everything was near-perfect and once the masses got into the free event, they slowly made their way to the back for their fix. It got so crowded back there that it took until Deerhunter went on before business slowed enough that I could close shop for a bit and get to rock a few tracks. Afterwards, we made sure all the bouncers and crew were set for treats then Paige and I caravaned down to Palo Alto and called it a night.
I knew Wednesday was going to be a good day because right after waking up I found out that Paige had a bunny, Hariett. She was hanging out in the dining room and I got to pet her for a bit before heading to Peet’s. The Bay Area is home to most of the most innovative business in the country. One of my favorite things to do while up there is to try to put together li’l ice cream socials at companies we like or are interested in working with. In the past weve stopped at Pixar, Sony Playstation, and threw a rather large ice cream social in South Park. This time around we had hoped to meet with Loopt, ustream.tv, eye fi, WIRED magazine, Twitter, Evernote, and a few more. Most of them actually worked out well and, as expected, everyone loves free ice cream!
The most fun was trying to get into twitter. I stopped by Jambase to hook up some friends there and Twitters offices are directly across the street. Andrew from Jambase and I had sent over a few emails seeing if theyd be interested in some goodness but never heard back. While giving away ice cream in front of Jambase on the street, Andy decided we should just load up a cooler bag and head over. As you might guess, its just not that easy to walk into Twitters HQ. First the front door was locked and the intercom to speak with the different businesses in the building was missing Twitter. I had given a ton of cream to folks that worked at ioda in the building so we hung out for a few minutes until one of their employees was leaving then snuck in. Once on the elevator we were stumped. No matter how hard we tried to push button 4, we werent getting there. I wasnt ready to give up that easily though, not when theres gotta be a stairway nearby. As we made our way up to the 4th floor Andy finally got a text message back from one of the founders who said they were really busy and now wasnt a good time. Bummer. Coincidentally, Andy also got a tweet from him around the same time that he was watching the Digg Town Hall meetinghmmm. Im thinking they were tracking us somehow and saw how close we were to where all the magic happens. I cant be the only one out there that thinks theres a great tie-in with free ice cream tweets.
We did have some luck slinging our second night out. Camino and I rolled up from down south and went straight to The Roxie theater where a Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison was getting out and the new Wilco movie was about to start. We got a great parking spot, gave away a bunch of cream, Camino got some great shots, AND I ran into a few friends like Jimmy the Rat. Next stop was the Great American Music Hall, one of my favorite venues. We got lucky again with a parking spot and slinging to GAMH workers, locals, and people on their way into the Stephen Malkmus show. I was thrilled to see one of my favorite locals up there, and possibly the best ice cream hype man around. If you ever hear Free at last, free at last, thank god ice cream is free at last both of us might be close by.
The night kept getting better too. We got some tickets to get inside, the Clippers beat the Celtics, and. over half of Steve Malkmus set consisted of Pavement songs. Im a fan of all his work but, being on the festival circuit, Ive got to see him quite a few times so I kinda was just thinking of this as a regular gig. I was still outside once he started and once I heard Starlings of the Slipstream I literally slammed the trunk and left Bessita in the loading zone and ran in. People were freaking out and it was cool to see Stephen happy at the overwhelming response he was getting. Some of my favorites were Range Life, Zurich is Stained, a brief cover of Love Train and Here. Damn, I hope Pavement gets back together again. Wouldnt they be rad curators for ATP New York? ed. note: Yes]
On my last night there Camino and I met up with Dameon and Jacob from [Jakprints to eat at one of my favorite restaurants, House of Nanking. Afterwards we tried to sling at a few venues but were having no luck with parking nor people to partake our wares. I popped into Bottom of the Hill for a sec to say hi and see if anyone there needed cream but had no luck. Camino lives in Santa Clara and we had an hour drive ahead of us so we just skipped out and called it a night. In the morning I stopped by one of my new favorite coffee places, Barefoot, then pointed Bessita back towards Long Beach and called it a successful trip. Once home I got cleaned, checked a few emails, then drove back up to Hollywood to rock Animal Collective at the Troubadour and sling after that. Whew what a great, and busy few days.
