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A perfect day at Park Chalet
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It seemed like a perfect day on Ocean Beach after drinking a bunch of
beer at Park Chalet.
Big Vic doesn’t want to watch playoff basketball anymore. It’s making him sick. He throws an empty bottle of Jack Daniels at the television. He’s pissed at Kobe for letting the Rockets smoke the Lakers. He needs some fresh air so we drive down the hill toward the Pacific.
It’s warm and sunny and clear and there are lots of people milling around the Ocean Beach promenade; it can get pretty rough down here with all the opposites gathering in one place, the Sunset Boys and Daly City and Mission Street, but red-faced cops on horseback always seem to keep everybody in check.
I can smell the salt air and sweat. I can hear seals barking. As well as the dog-bark of a Harley on La Playa. I can hear funky Jamaican music. We follow the sound to the Park Chalet, which is nestled in the shady, tree-lined back-end of Golden Gate Park.
There are two stools open at the bar. I order a sampler ($8 for short glasses of six different types of ale). My favorite is the Riptide Red (toasty and bitter) and Big Vic especially likes the California Kind (nice malt finish). But they’re all good, the Chalet makes a decent beer.
The band we’d heard is called Kapakahi; sort of a reggae, ska, hip-hop fusion. A bunch of folks are sprawled on the lawn enjoying the weather and the drinks in plastic cups and food items from the Recovery Brunch Buffet (Sundays from 10am until 3pm) and of course the mellow tunes.
Big Vic starts rapping with a couple local girls; he’s got game. The girls are eating fried onion strings ($4.95) and downing Bloody Mary’s ($8.50). One of them asks Big Vic about his tattoo. I excuse myself to the bathroom and consider stealing the red carpet with the establishment’s logo but there is no way to do it without getting caught and that’s the last thing I need. In the lobby, a German tourist with a video camera is inexplicably shooting footage of the glass-encased model of the park.
So they’re Mercy girls, Big Vic says.
The girls laugh.
Mercy is one of the few remaining single-gender high schools in San Francisco and its graduates have earned a reputation for being a bit promiscuous; all those years of pent-up frustration, I guess.
I order another round. The sun is in my face so I pull my Giants cap low. The band is taking a break and we are getting loud and the bartender is getting nervous. He gives me a look. We say goodbye to the naughty Catholic girls and cross the Great Highway on foot. Irish Pat is sitting on the sea wall. We shoot the breeze with him for a while, talk about the recent championship prize fight, until he nods off.
The Farallon Islands are twenty miles out. I jump over the graffiti-scrawled concrete wall and walk down to where the waves are breaking on the sand. Little white pipers scatter as I approach them. All the beer is kicking in and it is feeling like a perfect day now. Then Big Vic calls my name and I look up and have to shield my eyes with my hands in order to find him, back-dropped by the eerie silhouette of the Dutch Wind Mill. It will be just a few moments before the alcohol will allow me to see things more clearly.
Park Chalet Garden Restaurant, 1000 Great Hwy, San Francisco, (415) 386-8439
