Happy Hour With the Finance Crowd
Laina suggested we all meet up for happy hour before heading to the Warriors Game on Friday. She works in finance downtown, so she suggested Sens in Embarcadero 4, near the BART station.
They were sitting in the back, on the covered patio, and I made my way through the sprawling restaurant, weaving in between too-skinny girls in heels and heavy makeup. The back patio had a DJ and the pretty people were all sipping cocktails and hitting on each other. I joined Laina and her friends for a beer for leaving for the BART station.
On the way out, we walked through the restaurant, with its stone arches, decorative wood-fired oven adorned with decorative loaves of bread. A lot of well-dressed people were picking at seared ahi tune skewers or bowls of hummus. I waited at the front door with Gordon while Laina said goodbye to her work friends.
I looked around at the modern lounge furniture, the image-conscious crowd, the decorative and utterly inauthentic Greek flourishes to this supposed Greek restaurant, the ornate wood doors with the gawdy pewter handles.
"This place feels like San Francisco for people who would prefer LA," I said to Gordon, shouting over the DJ.
He looked around, seeing it all for the first time. "Yeah... you're right. The stones archways, the DJ... it feels like we're in an upscale strip mall."
Just then we noticed the host, a young guy in a starched red shirt and two earings, staring at us.
"Uh... that's okay..." Gordon said quickly, to cover our asses, "we like strip malls!"
