San Francisco, Part II: Where'd you get those hydraulics from?

Okay, there is a second side to San Francisco we saw... and it's not just San Francisco, and it's not just California but it's the United States in general.

I must say, I do love the U.S. for some things, many and most of which I've seen on this trip. I love it for Hollywood, it's cheap pizza, it's love of television, it's knowledge of sports (every passerby at a ballpark has been able to have an intelligent conversation about the Blue Jays and their retarded manager J.P. Ricciardi), it's 40 different kinds of potato chips, and it's big cities.

But upon exiting the Giants' game, we clearly saw that negative, uneducated side of this country. We were essentially booed out of AT&T Park by "South Central Los Angeles", even though we had cheered for the Giants all game (I mean, I had money on them... sorry, Mom) and they won.

We've had the dumb cheers at every stadium by people saying, "Blue Jays suck." Yea, that's a good one, how long did it take you to think of that?

But being told, "Get the f*** out of San Francisco!" and being threatened by hoodlums is a little too much. And I'm not even angry about it, I find it quite funny.

However, when three guys who are so cool they cant even grow hair on their head and they have chains that cost more than their mortgage say, "F*** blue!" and flash red t-shirts, let's just take a second and pause...

I know what that means - you think you're a gang and so you don't like people who know how to brush their teeth.

But blue?

That's a colour. I mean, Tupac and Biggie - I got that. I've seen Boyz N Tha Hood - I got that. Hell, I even get the main conflict in The Emperor's New Groove.

But blue?

Go and get your GED and then come talk to me. Maybe read a book, or even a page of a book (and a magazine doesn't count). Until you understand that blue is a colour and that it wasn't invented by a guy wearing an oversized New Era hat on the East Side of North America.

Are you just feeling insecure that your city's biggest celebrity right now is Harvey Milk?

Maybe. But until you get over whatever you're sitting on, please let the 95% of San Francisco that are amazing people take care of things and stop ruining your city's and country's reputation for everybody else.

I'm out.

DAY 10, 11, 12: Bologna, a woman's love, a good cellphone...

SAN FRANCISCO

Goodbye Boston. It was a little sad to say goodbye to the hometown of two of my favourite sports writers, Mike Shalin and Bill Simmons, who duke it out for top dog in a city that definitely knows it's baseball and also likes to steal the Vancouver Canucks talent out from under us (First Neely and now Lucic? Do you want Hodgson and Schneider, too?)

It appears as if there are two faces to every city. I mean, if you were to judge San Francisco on the way from the airport to any hotel worth staying at, you would probably call it "the land of the homeless."

But it is San Francisco, and it's a great city. Pier 39 feels like a theme park, and we even had a hat draw to see which loser had to do the bungee jump trampoline with all the kids.

Alex Graham, way to handle it like a champ.

A few of us went over the Golden Gate Bridge, a few of us saw Lombard St. We all drank and played football for a while in a dog park, and I will say that there is nothing quite as exhilarating as getting yelled at by a woman walking her dog.

We made our first Hooters visit of the trip, and there will be plenty more to come.

The Giants game was also insane (in a good way, not in a Howard Hughes way) until the end, which I will detail later. All-in-all, Giants defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks even though closer Brian Wilson deteriorated faster than the "actual" Brian Wilson and almost cost them the game.

We were here for three days, but I must say there was nothing as good as getting that feeling upon the arrival at the airport that first morning and being able to say, "I'm in California."