One time at a party in SoMa, I was chatting up a couple girls who were waiting in an inordinately long bathroom line. Since I didn’t have to pee and they did, this pretty much amounted to as much exposition on water flow I could think of—about how I like to take pictures of waterfalls, the time I got stuck in Big Basin in the dead of winter just after a rainstorm and had to crawl down the mountain on my hands and knees while holding a cell phone just above the creek water, and other things that would make their peeing experience, when it did come, that much more satisfying.

“Oh, I should ask Andrei if he’s wants to share a cab with me to after the party. Where is he?” Andrei lives in the building across the street and North Beach is the other end of the city.

“He’s right behind you,” one of them points.

I yell over my shoulder, “Hey, so are you coming home with me?”

At that moment, a guy passed between me and Andrei. He looked like he was new to the city.

Needless to say, the look of horror on his face as he thought I was hitting on him was priceless.

I love this city.