New York is a city where you don’t live in your home – you sleep there. You live at work, restaurants, bars, clubs, museums, parks and pretty much go into hibernation when the weather hits rock bottom. San Francisco, on the other hand is a going out and staying in city. We have as many dinner (code name for ‘drinks’) parties as we do in bars & restaurants. So we jazz it up and bit and SF, bless it, is the queen of theme dinners.
I’ve been to pie parties, my left foot parties (can only wear a shoe, and not on the right foot), meat parties, veggie parties, bad t-shirt parties, dress like your grandmother parties, whiskey parties, 80’s make-up parties and my best: wig parties. Actually I wasn’t feeling well at the pre-dinner party so was the only one wearing my wig knowing I’d not last the main party. I felt a bit daft: I wigged, I ate, I left, I cramped up, I took Aspirin, I slept.
Keeping with the best of our non-summer Summer theme where the weather just isn’t really taking off but we all know that in 2 months, we’ll have yet another Indian warm blast that will knock the socks off the rest of the country currently going through a heatwave. BTW, have you noticed SF is never above 70f in the past few days radar? We’re so achingly cool….we’re cooler than cool, literally.
Which brings me to my point! I’ve created a bunch of theme dinner parties for you to enjoy. I’m actually creating them as I’m writing because that’s the best way to do it – they don’t call me Heddi Spontaneous Cundle for nothing. They actually don’t call me that at all. But I’ve utilized some of the quirkiest of San Francisco’s stores so you can still support local businesses, even if you’re having a couch evening:
1. Be a Bit of a Superhero Party: No need to dress 100%, just maybe Wonder Woman wrist wraps or Batman cape. Costumes on Haight ROCK!
2. Meat You For Dinner: Fatted Calf is amazing, especially the Fennel Sausage
3. Make A Fortune Party: My favorite place EVER is the fortune cookie store on Ross Aly*
4. Upper Crust Snob Party: Half the guests bring a dessert crust and the other half bring a non-bake filling. Then mix and match. All else, Mission Pie is Plan B
5. The Beer Necessities Party: Get to SF Brew Craft, make your own beer and either love it (drink it) or hate it (gargle with it like Listerine)!
So don’t just think that having a dinner party is something you on a whim – plan it and use the local SF resources. Hey – you could even have a Phantom Pregnancy Party: buy a Cabbage Patch Kid on Ebay and off you go.
* I actually bought 500 for my dad’s 70th birthday party (personalized), schlepped them to SFO, over the pond to London, on another flight to Manchester, 1 hour in the car to Leeds to my parents home. Mum (sorry, can’t write mom, I'm too British) & dad had a huge party, 1am everyone leaves and I realize I’d not taken the fortune cookies out my suitcase. They traveled 5000 miles for absolutely no apparent reason! Mortified.com
