Blunt Wit

So I’ve driven up to San Fran from waaaay down on the Peninsula like a million times. Some days you zip up there in the veritable blink of an eye. Other times it seems to take days. Predicting the traffic patterns is akin to anticipating a woman’s (or read here significant other’s) behavior: erratic (note: I did not say erotic) on a good day.

So the other day I headed up to one of those high power VC soirees on the Pier by invitation of a friend, the Philmeister. Wouldn’t you know that on this day like some latter day Moses parting the red sea of traffic, I somewhat miraculously sailed through and arrived a full twenty minutes early.

So I parked my car on a side street near some restaurants and apartments and….shhhhhh…tried to ‘borrow’ a loose wifi signal to hook in to the net. Alas, nothing. So I wandered into a super market just as a tall, well-dressed African American male (model type) was completing his purchase. I thought his shoes might crawl off his feet, the alligator skin looked that fresh.

I asked the gruff looking Pakistani cashier if there was a nearby café with wifi –in my best Pashtun. Ok, in truth, maybe I just imagined I was speaking Pashtun. The attractive customer (ok, yes I admit he was handsome) chimed in to suggest a café a few blocks down. I thanked him and hit the road.

I found the café, went in, ordered an iced tea, fired up my connection and hunkered down to get some work done. I had just gotten comfy when out of the corner of my eye I spotted, Mr. GQ walking in. He ordered his half-calf/half-decaf skinny mochachino and then sashayed over to make sure I was “OK” and began to chat me up.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t gay since he was so damn hospitable. And truth be known, I was trying to get up the nerve to ask where he got his shoes.

So after some polite conversation, I begged out to go to my event which was just across the street at a nautical-themed home décor wharf. A place where you normally buy scented biodegradable soaps, Alpaca handtowels, kayaks and I’m pretty sure, whale blubber. The VC, who has an office one wharf over had rented it for the evening.

You see these days the Web 2.0 conference was lighting up the San Francisco conference center. Eight thousand people applied and a lucky 1000 were actually invited. This was one of those fabled “after parties” for all the technogliterati. I figure Norad must have picked it up on their radar due to the concentration of high power electronic devices.

I got a florescent blue nautically- themed drink with rum in it (the drink was a manly skipper’s drink since it came sans umbrella) and started to mingle. There were hundreds of professor types triangulating on moneyed Mr. Howell VC types. I met the guy who writes a top 50 blog (worldwide and yes it’s techy), a hulking 6′7″ guy who used to write for Forbes and now drives mini’s cause they’re easy to park in SF (I know I had a hard time imagining it myself), and a famous VC in a wolf’s costume. Or again maybe that was my imagination getting the best of me.

Just then two booth babes, kind of hot Ginger types distinguished by their stunning looks and vacuous demeanor, sauntered up and diverted his attention away from moi.

Anyway, I digress. Sorry, it’s the rum. I swear. Gin might make you sin but rum makes you dum.

Eventually I struck up a conversation with the event organizer. She had a quaint Mary-Ann quality about her until I asked her if I might not be able to get some whale blubber to go. She screamed, “You’re such a Gilligan!” and chased me out.

And I spent the next two hours in a traffic jam driving home.