The newspaper has officially given me an event to cover. Apparently, there is group of hipsters who have decided to start their own winery. Unlike most wine makers, instead of going out to some field somewhere in Napa Valley or Sonoma, these upstart rabble-rousers are doing it in their garage. That’s right, they’re like the micro brewers of the wine business. I’m sure Mondovi and the other big bottle wineries are shaking in their boots at the thought of people turning out their own bottles of wine as much as Coors and Budweiser are afraid of people in trailer parks, going on hiatus from making meth and making beer even worst than theirs. I managed to drag Lucy away from the computer for a while because as it turns out, these Winos (their title, not mine) had set up shop not that far from her boyfriends apartment in the Lower Height. Long distance relationships are hard, (said the woman who has never been in one) so it’s amazing that Lucy and Gordon have been able to pull it off. Actually, truth be known, Silicon Valley and San Francisco are physically not that far apart, but when you factor in that traffic, that shit takes forever to get to. Gordon works for another tech company but he was lucky enough to land one at a company that set up shop in the Mission district, kicked all of the families out of the neighborhood and then parachuted a bunch of lofts right on top of the buildings which have been there, even before the Latinos kicked out the Irish. They spend so much of their time going back and forth, I can’t figure out why one of them doesn’t give up their job and just move in together. It’s been discussed but it’s like they’re playing a game of macho-job chicken to see who flenches first. I try to stay out of it, but if I have my say, the one that makes the most money is the winner. That’s how it worked in my family. My mom was the one with the fancy international Ph.D. thing and my Dad, was a starving writer, living from book deal to book deal until he finally landed the white whale publisher. Until this day, I have no idea what my mom really did for a living. I think it was related to language studies. But if that were true, it would explain how we got to travel to places like Africa and the Pacific islands but not that long stint in Italy, France and Switzerland. I mean, seriously, what did she have to learn from French, Italian and combo that they speak in Switzerland, that a million people haven’t already said. But, I digress (I’ve always wanted to use that in a sentence). I miss my mom. It’s been 10 years but it still creeps in and squeezes my heart.
Any-who, We get to the winery (I use that word loosely) and it’s exactly what you would expect. A tiny San Francisco garage, completely filled with wine barrels, a big steed drum thing and other mad scientist shit. The upstart wine makers are Tom and Von. Apparently they use to date each other but remained friends. They both used to work at some wineries in Napa Vally but quit their jobs to follow the American Dream of unemployment. They gave us some tastings of their first crush as they called it which I guess is like the preview of what’s to come. I’ve never been an expert on wine in the least. To me it all taste like vinegar. I guess I’m one of those chicks that like the sweet stuff you see rapper bitches drinking. It was as expected like vinegar to me, but Lucy is more of a wine snob and she said it was good on the some level as a French Pinot. I knew she would come in handy on this assignment. To further bribe me to write something nice about them, they gave us each a free bottle. They had yet to print labels so they wrote three ‘X’s on the label which made us look like hobos carrying these things back to the bus stop. I got home, wrote up my story about them and submitted it to the paper. By the time I finished dinner, I got a response from Kai my editor telling me it was a nice pice and they will use it but he wants me to dig deeper next time and how I should have found out more about what is it like to be two gay wine makers that used to be lovers now forced together to make their dream come true—blah, blah, blah. I mean seriously, do I have to dig all in their holes just for a story?
When I finished dinner, I hear Margaret playing her stereo really loud. The strange thing about her, (besides everything) is that she likes to listen to classical music really loud and at odd hours. I guess it could be worst. When she’s blasting the violin solo shit, It’s usually something I can fall asleep to, so I don’t bang on the walls for her to stop. I think I’m afraid that if I bang on the wall, she’s gonna come back playing some heavy metal death punk group called Ear Bleed or something. The particular song she was playing was weird because it would stop and start all over again. I was like, is she doing a remix or something? It was then I figured it out. Someone is playing an actual violin in her apartment. But who? I know it couldn’t be her because she looks nothing like a violinist or anyone that would do anything with their hands that didn’t involve a hand job or holding a cocktail. After the music stopped, I listened wit my ear to the door to hear someone leaving. It never happened. I figured the violinist must be spending the night. Is it the guy that stormed out the other night, come back for makeup sex? Whatever, I have to stop spying on her. She seems like the type that loves attention, I wonder what the whole tit incident was about? I choose to ignore her and her life and went to bed to figure out how to get more money for rent.
