The Neighborhood Diaries | Hayes Valley

First off I apologize for it being such a long time since I wrote my last Neighborhood Diaries post. I definitely planned on making this a more consistent feature on my blog, but with some serious time constraints the past couple months, these posts have gotten put on the back burner. I'm going to try to get one of these posts out at least once per quarter so that they can be as thoughtfully put together and researched as possible. I wanted to kick things back off with a post all about Hayes Valley, a neighborhood which has seen an incredible amount of change in the last ten years or so. When I was growing up, Hayes Valley wasn't a place where I spent a lot of time, and that's mainly because there wasn't a whole lot in terms of shops, restaurants, and open spaces. However, all of that has changed so much, and the whole corridor of Hayes Street is bustling with new shops and restaurants opening constantly. 

Eat

One of my favorite Hayes Valley restaurants is A Mano. It's a relatively new restaurant, having only opened about a year ago, but wow does it pack a punch. The drinks are amazing, and I foresee myself frequenting their bar many a time this summer for a good ol' aperol spritz. The food is incredible and also won't completely break the bank. They have a daily special and a standard menu that is homemade pasta-centric (so basically I want to eat here every day). My advise would be to go on the earlier side because the place gets packed. They also have a ton of outdoor seating, so if you do end up having an earlier dinner you can at the very least enjoy a nice sunny relaxing dinner outside. 

There's nothing I love more than a good cozy café, and 20th Century Café absolutely fits the bill. As the name would suggest the theme of the café is very much in the style of a 1930's home. All of the utensils and dishes are antique and mismatched, which just adds to the character of the space. A lot of the food and baked goods are inspired by Eastern European cuisine. They also do a much more extensive brunch service on the weekends, which is definitely worth going to. And if you have any extra room after breakfast, definitely get a slice of their honey cake!

I don't think I could write a post about Hayes Valley and not include Absinthe. Even though Absinthe, definitely errs on the more formal, pricier side for restaurants in Hayes Valley, it is absolutely worth the price if you want to splash out on a fancier dinner. The food is definitely that of a typical French brasserie, and while it isn't the most experimental restaurant you'll find, the food is always consistently incredible. The bar alone is definitely worth a visit (especially if you've never actually tried absinthe) and they have a bar menu, which is a bit cheaper than the usual dinner menu. 

Shop

There are a lot of amazing shops in Hayes Valley, in fact it's kind of become the hub for a lot of millennial brands to set up brick and mortar shops (such as Warby Parker, Away, and Outdoor Voices), but there are also a lot of local boutiques that have a more curated and unique selection of products, one of which is Seldom Seen. This boutique is definitely more focused around high-end clothing, but they carry a lot of lesser-known designers in a very edited atmosphere. I can't afford most of the clothes in there, but it's always a nice shop to have a look around , and the space is beautiful!

As someone who has been getting more and more into incorporating plants into their home, Plants and Friends has been a welcome addition to the neighborhood. The store is so small but somehow they manage to fit a ton of plants in. When I first saw this store after it opened, I passed it off as a hipster, most likely overpriced plant store, but after my first trip in I was pleasantly surprised. The staff is so helpful if you're new to or bad at caring for plants. The plants and ceramics they have also are also very reasonably priced. 

Wander

The main open space in Hayes Valley, Patricia's Green, is smack-dab in the middle of the Hayes Street corridor on the Octavia cross street. Besides the mini park itself, the space is also home to a drive-in style movie screen (where the neighborhood puts on movie nights in the park), and an array of food vendors from Ritual Coffee to Smitten Ice Cream, which are housed in formerly used shipping containers. The whole space just feels very quintessentially San Francisco. 

One of the things I love most about Hayes Valley is that despite how new most of the businesses are, there is something old and provincial feeing about the neighborhood. Nowhere is this more apparent than the tiny, alley-like Linden Street. One of the reasons why Hayes Valley feels so quaint is because of the old Victorian architecture, something that is also very much associated with the city of San Francisco. Linden street definitely encapsulates a lot of the character that I love so much about Hayes Valley with it's low profile Victorians and brick structures. Even though there aren't any shops or restaurants along Linden street (from Octavia to Laguna), it makes for one of the most peaceful walks in an otherwise bustling neighborhood. 

My Month in Film | May 2018

This month's film post marks exactly one year since I started documenting every month on 35mm film. I'm really happy that this is something I've stuck with and I don't foresee myself stopping anytime soon. It's been nice to keep a consistent photo diary of what I've been up to every month, and I'm sure I'll be looking back on these images for years to come. Enough gushing, May was quite an up and down month. I didn't end up getting my camera out as much as I had hoped mainly because I was super busy and haven't been doing much besides working and having nights in. Although, with summer on the very near horizon, it's been so nice to have some sunshine back in my life and to spend more time outdoors. 

Things I'm Looking Forward To This Summer

As much as I don’t love summer, I’m really looking forward to this upcoming summer! I know that these next few months are going to be hectic and stressful, but there are also a lot of really exciting things happening that I’m very excited to be documenting on the blog. I’m going to write a post more on this later, but I feel as though this summer also marks a big transition point for me. Last summer I graduated college, and have been very open about the fact that the transition from being a student to being a working adult has been more challenging than I ever imagined. While I’m still not fully through the transition, I feel as though I have learned so much about myself and what I want out of life. Having it be a year since graduation feels like a big milestone and I’m excited to throw myself fully into being a working adult more than ever. 

One of the things I’m looking forward to most this summer is moving in with my boyfriend, Brad. I’m incredibly lucky that I’m originally from San Francisco and could have the safety net of moving back in with my parents post-college. However, it has been tough sometimes to feel fully settled moving back into my childhood home. That house will always be my home, but I’m also incredibly excited that Brad and I get to start making a home together in whatever apartment we settle into. We’ve been together for almost two years and I think both of us feel eager to move onto this next chapter in our relationship. On a more superficial level, both Brad and I are really looking forward to putting our apartment together. Neither of us are in a rush to buy everything at once for the apartment, and I think that will make for a really great oportunity to document our interiors process on the blog. 

I think for a lot of people summer is synonymous with festival season. I took a break from Outside Lands last summer, mainly because the lineup wasn’t worth the money, but I’m so looking forward to going back this August! This will be my fourth Outside Lands and I think I’m looking forward to this year’s festival more than any other than I’ve been to in the past. I'm not only incredibly excited about the lineup but most of our friends will be going, which always the experience that much more enjoyable. 

One of the things I loved about summer growing up was that my parents would take advantage of mine and my sister's homework-free schedules and do small little staycation-like weekend trips. With a jam-packed schedule, both in terms of work and moving, my boyfriend and I don't have a lot of time to be jetting off on a long-haul vacation, but we've been trying to brainstorm a few quick trips we can make over the summer to relax and recharge. 

Even though I'm moving out in a couple of months I'm really looking forward to having more family time as well this summer. I'm very close to a lot of my family and it's been hard trying to strike a balance since I've moved back to see them as much as I want between work, seeing friends, and spending time with my boyfriend. Especially since my sister will be leaving for college in the fall, I want to get in as much family time as possible. Hopefully, we'll also get to do some family weekend trips as well. 

I guess this should fall under the category of moving in, but I'm really looking forward to hosting people in our new place and having friends and family over for dinner parties. My parents were always very into dinner parties, and some of those parties are some of the fondest memories I have growing up. It's really exciting to get to play the host and it also makes me feel like a fully-fledged adult. Brad and I have also been getting more and more into cooking and I think it'll be nice to expand our horizons a bit and cook for other people. 

My Favorite Perfumes

I love the idea of fragrance, that a scent can evoke memory and that just a few notes can represent how want to express yourself to the world. In a lot of ways, fragrance has the same ability to be a form of self-expression in the same ways fashion does, albeit in a far more subtle and nuanced way. Even though I’ve always loved the idea of fragrance, I haven’t always worn in on a daily basis. This is for two main reasons, 1. When I was younger, most perfumes being released erred on the side of fruity and floral and girly, scents which I’m genuinely not enticed by or drawn to and 2. Perfume is a lot like jewelry for me, in that I love it, but it’s usually out of sight and out of mind for me when I’m getting ready and I simply forget to wear it. 

I’ve recently been getting more and more into wearing perfume on a daily basis. It's become a very simple and quick act of self-care that lifts my mood for the rest of the day. Sali Hughes once mentioned in one of her videos about perfume that smelling one's perfume throughout the day is cheering and I 100% agree. So in the spirit of becoming more and more of a perfume person I thought I'd share my favorite fragrances of the moment. 

One of my longest standing fragrances in my collection is the much loved Jo Malone Wood Sage & Sea Salt. It's a scent that I can wear no matter my mood or the season. I tend to prefer more masculine scents and this one strikes the perfect balance of being woody and masculine, while still smelling fresh and somewhat feminine. I will say that this fragrance doesn't have super long staying power since it is just a cologne, but since it comes in such a small bottle it's easy to transport for top ups throughout the day. 

I don't love all of the Jo Malone perfumes since I find some of them to be a little too floral to my liking but the English Oak & Red Current has definitely become a fast favorite. Because I bought it over the holidays, the scent tends to remind me of Christmas. The main notes are red current (obviously), rose, mandarin, musk, and oak. This is definitely a heavier perfume, but it still has a lightness to it that makes it appropriate for daytime wear. This also smells incredible when mixed with Wood Sage & Sea Salt. 

Glossier You was not a fragrance I immediately loved. I will admit that I bought it out of sheer love for the brand. I'm normally not one to buy perfumes without having smelled them first, however because I trust Glossier and it came at a pretty low price, I was willing to try it blind. I will say that this perfume is incredibly hard to describe. It's definitely on the sweeter side at first, something I'm not usually drawn to, but once it dries down you get the creamier, muskier notes coming through. Glossier You has become one of my everyday perfumes for when I'm feeling like something a little bit more feminine and subtle. 

I don't think I could write a post about perfume without mentioning Le Labo. Now unlike Glossier, there's no way I would ever purchase a Le Labo perfume without a thorough trial run, since the smallest bottles cost a hefty $180 a piece. I'm not even fully ready to commit to one quite yet. However, one of the really great things about Le Labo is they understand that their fragrances are investments and should be treated as such. Because of that they offer discovery sets and a really generous sample program, wherein you can buy a set of deluxe samples of any perfume you want for about $5 per sample. I know on the surface that sounds like a lot for a perfume sample, but because the perfumes are such good quality you need the tiniest spritz to get you through the day. I opted for the classic discovery kit, which includes their most famous and well-loved perfumes. My favorite from the set have been Thé Noir 29 and Bergamont 22, which are two very different perfumes. I like to think of Thé Noir 29 as Santal 33's underrated cousin. It has a lot of the same musky and woodsy notes as Santal, but is not nearly as recognizable as Santal has become (mainly because everyone and their mother wears it now). Bergamont 22 errs more on the fresher side of things, with its citrusy notes, but still manages to have a bit of musk to keep things somewhat masculine. 

The Importance of Female Friendship

The topic of female friendship has gotten a lot of air time in the blogging world. Lily wrote a book about it, Lizzy has talked about it a lot on her blog, and Liv and Charlotte did a podcast episode dedicated to the topic. I think female friendship has always been an extremely important part of my life, but as I've gotten older my relationships with my female friends have changed, and it's mostly been for the better. I've always been the kind of person that has a very small group of girlfriends, but the ones I surround myself with are extremely close. I've also been lucky enough to know some of my closest friends for a very long time, in fact my best friend and I have been friends since we were six months old. Because I've always kept a small group close, I've sometimes had a hard time letting people in. On the flip side, because I am very close to the majority of my girlfriends growing apart can feel devastating. Especially as I get further and further into "adult" life I've had to realize that friendship is not black and white, it's not necessarily either on or off, it ebbs and flows and that's ok. 

During my years in school (i.e. the majority of my life) managing female friendships were incredibly easy, which is mostly due to the fact that most of my friends went to school with me so it didn't require much effort to make plans and see friends. However, after college it became more and more apparent just how hard it is to constantly be seeing friends as much as you want whilst juggling a busy work schedule, family, and a relationship. I'm incredibly lucky that a lot of my friends decided to move back to the Bay Area and I get to see them on a regular basis, but it's so easy to take proximity for granted and not reach out as much as you should. Even if when I don't have time to see a friend in person, I've been trying more and more to either pick up the phone and call someone (what a novel idea) or send them a quick text asking how they're doing. I think one of the things I'm most grateful for about my group of girlfriends is that we all have a baseline understanding that even though we might not be seeing each other all the time once we do get together it will feel like no time has past. There are never any hard feelings if we haven't been hanging out every week, because at the end of the day we all work and we all understand that sometimes we won't have the time to see each other as much as we would in an ideal world. 

In all the madness of figuring out adult life and the transition from college to the "real world" (a term I really hate to use), I feel like I have a renewed appreciation for my friends and I've been so incredibly lucky to meet some incredible girls at work who have fast become some of my closest confidants. Spending time with my girl friends has been crucial in my staying grounded the past year, but especially in the past couple months when my stress levels have been off the charts. I also have a tendency to want to spend a lot of time with my boyfriend, but ever since graduating I’ve tried to make a concerted effort to spend time just with my girlfriends. I’ve never had the issue of neglecting my friends when I’m in a relationship, but especially since my boyfriend and I are moving in together in a couple months time, I’ve wanted to make sure that once we do move in we aren’t already in the habit of spending every waking hour together. If you’ve taken anything out of this long ramble of a blog post it’s that I underestimated how much female friendship plays an integral role in my life, and that coming into adulthood has made me realize how much time and care those relationships deserve.