Evening out

C and I went to Bambuddha Lounge in SF last night. It describes itself as a "hot spot" which usually means it's too cool for us. It serves fusion Asian cuisine, but it was delicious. And it had an amusing mixture of forced retro and Asian stuff that I think of as SF culture. Outside was a drive-in motel which was still painted in the retro 70's colours, but had fresh paint and electronic doors. Arranged outside were funky sculptures and a bamboo garden with black and bright colours. We didn't sit outside, because it was a bit chilly and we also didn't have dyed hair.

I didn't dye my hair in my youth. I never regretted the decision, because I'd have to bleach my hair to do it and I wouldn't want to abuse my hair that much. BTW the only colour I'd want would be purple. I'm still deciding if I want to dye my hair now that I'm older and it's turning white. It's a nice silver white, so I feel lucky.

There was a live DJ, but no-one was in the DJ area. Some Asians lounged outside wearing Mardi gras beads with cups. A few with purple and red hair. They all looked cool and cold.

We had the fastest service we've had in a while before an opera, so we made in plenty of time before Girl From Algiers started. In many ways, the opera seems similar to the restaurant with a silly fusion of cultures. It's a silly opera, though unlike the restaurant it has an underlying seriousness and patriotism. I thought William Burden as Lindero was particularly touching. I was a little annoyed, because even though we have season tickets, we got the second billing stars for this opera: Isabella and Mustafa. And I found Isabella to be second rate. C found her funny, but I found her voice to have a slight burr in it, which grated on me. Mustafa had great antics, but his voice wasn't as robust as I would expect for the part.

However the set was wonderful with a great 20's storybook Indiana Jones feel with some good playacting to counterbalance the repetition of the silly phrases. Sometimes particularly SF opera goes overboard with the playacting, and you miss the words of the opera, but I think this production had the right balance. They let the singer sing the phrase the first couple of times and then start buffooning.

Actually William Burden transported me. Sometimes I think to myself, going to the opera is such a PITA. It's expensive. It costs a lot of time and money. Sure I get to go out with C, but I could walk with C to a restaurant downtown. But when I listened to William Burden singing about missing his love, I was transported back to a time when I missed my long distance loves. Okay it was better than that since they were never perfect operatic lovers. So we had a wonderful evening. Unfortunately the opera was almost 3 hours long, so I was too tired to drop by my brother's birthday party. But I did think of my brother while I was at the Bambuddha Lounge. Because he would have enjoyed the place.