Weekend Notes
My sister and I just spent a girls' weekend in San Francisco. Although part of the reason we planned the mini-getaway was to check out the new Barneys, it actually was not one of the highlights of our time in the city.
But this was: We were in a Union Square shoe store when my sister, who insists she has extra-wide feet, starts measuring her feet with one of those metal contraptions (which I have not stepped foot in/on since I was in grade school). She asks some guy walking by — who was coming out of a back room — if he knew how to use the measuring tool. He did, so he graciously helped her. But then it turned out he wasn't a sales associate, but a real live shoe designer! Fast forward an hour or so and he's showing us his fall and spring collection online. He offers to drive down to his warehouse in the Peninsula and gather up all of the shoes he has in our sizes and bring them back that evening. He tells us his story and about his factory in Italy. And the best part: He said he could specially make shoes for me in my size.
Hello.
Oh, back to Barneys. The verdict: A bit of a disappointment, especially if you've shopped at the NYC store. I did, however, really like the mosaic tiling in the SF store's entry:
And at Cielo on Fillmore Street, I love the paper-chain curtains:
(Pssst ... I'll be blogging in more detail about both at AT:SF later this week.)