Day 1 - Welcome to San Francisco...

Day 1 of Project Recharge began with the chevra leaving via the various flights and one by one meeting up at SFO, where we were greeted by “the Principles” (Rav Josh (Buns) & Rav Dan). Once everyone, except for Michael Kirschenbaum, was accounted for we headed to Golden Gate Park to eat lunch. Along the way Keith and Rafi decided to jump out of “the Van” in the middle of the highway and scare Reb Dan who was driving alone in the car in front of us.

When we eventually arrived at the park we found a nice place to eat lunch, Brooklyn Bagels that were from San Francisco, in the botanical gardens.

After which we headed on an expedition through the park stopping off to play a little football, with Sir Dani Kaye catching the winning touchdown.

Following this we continued our journey through the park Haight Street where we many people wanted to sell us “trees”. Our hike to Haight Street was interrupted briefly by the PopChipsmobile, upon which greeting us a woman, and in the wise words of Milgraum, “has the best job ever, driving around and giving out free food,” handed us all free samples. When we finally arrived at Haight Street, we decided it would be best if we split up. Some went to go see where the Grateful Dead had once dwelled, while some walked around taking in the culture of the area. While walking around we were greeted in hebrew on multiple occasions by a fellow brother or sister. A few guys had a very interesting encounter while talking to a brother who grew up in Eretz Yisrael, a woman, Hadasah, who at that moment happened to be kneeling and petting the man’s dog over heard us and said she was a yid too.

After spending some time in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Fransisco we headed back through the park where we encountered a fellow by the name of Richard, who claimed he was the King of England. He explained to us how to play football and even showed us a demonstration on his PSP, which he pulled out of nowhere, leaving us all to wonder where he charges it.

Once we returned to “the Van” we headed off to Oakland to attend the A’s vs. Yankees game. We tailgated and davened mincha in the parking lot and eventually made our way into the game around the 7^th inning, where we instantly became celebrities in our section with our unique chants. The chants ranges from Texeria is amazing*, Geiger, Grey shirt, That guy, Mazel Tov Buns! (while smashing our hands with our fists**) and Davis. Eventually we were kicked out of the stadium, which was our intended plan to begin with. We were cool with that and headed off to the parking lot to go and daven Mariv, where our drunk neighbors started yelling inappropriate things at each other.

Once Mariv was completed we decided to make our way over to the house, which was over 2 hours away***. Overall the day was packed with excitement, leaving us all exhausted. I’m off to sleep, till next time holy chevra...

* - From here on in “Texeria” is synonymous with “amazing“ as per Milgraum.

** - We’re are still unsure how this practice started, but all our hands are sore.

*** - A brief description of the house will be written in my next post.