I love San Francisco.. Fuck everyone who lives here.

Even though I really don't like people, I want to treat them well.

I've been a regular customer at Hana Zen in San Francisco. My wife and I have been going there for as long as we can remember. I guess that when I say "as long as we can remember" you probably think about going to the Olive Garden down the street while you are living your pathetic lives. What I really mean is that we were junkies and Hana Zen was our crack. We went there 3 times in ONE FUCKING night. First for an after-spending-money-on-stupid-shit-downtown pre-dinner trip.. then actually having dinner there once we met up with friends.. and then for the oh-shit-we-are-drunk-and-next-door-so-lets-stop-by-anyway sake/sushi session. So while you were tipping 10 dollars on your extra order of whatever fucked up pasta dish your local Italian restaurant decided to invent, we were financing the operations of our favorite restaurant with 30% tips on awesome food, service, etc..

I like to be comfortable everywhere I go. Especially restaurants. When I am outside having a cigarette, I will divert all street traffic where I want it to go. When I walk into the restroom of a place I respect, I fix their fucking toilets (ooooh so many times I regret doing that). So it would make sense that..

.. we always make sure that we aren't the last customers left. To a fault. I would always look around the room and if there was any sign of closing (i.e. chairs being stacked, you know what I mean), we're going to run out of there. There were many times when we would finish up our evenings early because we saw that the restaurant was closing and we didn't want to inconvenience anyone.

Sooo...

One night, we showed up at 1045pm or so when we thought the restaurant was closing at 1am. We ordered food, had a great time, and saw lots of customers there the entire time. We did all the usual checks.. there are people eating... there are people moving around... this place is totally active. We are surrounded by people so we kept ordering more drinks, food, and all the things we would normally do.

Around 1am, I went to the restroom and realized that the restaurant closed that night at 11pm.

We were ordering food, drinking, and having a great time all night.. while the restaurant was closed. All the "customers" we were surrounded by were the staff in plain clothes making sure we thought the restaurant was still open. They knew what dishes we would order... so those ingredients weren't put away.. drinks were easy.. but...

Imagine standing up to take a piss and seeing random empty plates at random tables surrounded by all the dishwashers, chefs, hosts, waitresses, cleaning crew, managers...

... and realizing that every person you ever dealt with there staying around HOURS after they were supposed to leave going way way WAY out of whatever to make you feel good. You can throw piles of money around and feel good about yourself. Or you can actually experience what it feels like to get props for... I dunno.. [not being a jackass? treating people well? showing some respect? being human?]

To this day, that was the most awesome thing I have seen.