civicmon

greatest baseball team? I'm sure some of my friends that bleed the black and orange would turn your body into those colors for that comment

Could always get a box out on the horrible Mt. Davis... after he ruined that really nice view the A's had for that hideous monstrosity.

mstraveler

Count me in also. Not sure exactly which parts, but definitely want to be some part of this!

Wireless

ok, thems fight'in words! The sucky Giants will be out of town, losing I'm sure, so we have to defer to the future Silicon Valley Athletics of Fremont.

While I love the A's, I stopped short of suggesting we drag people over to Oakland. I mean, it's bad enough some folks might actually have to use OAK to get here, let alone go back again to see a ballgame...

Of course, if it works out, I certainly wouldn't mind a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark. I'll take a look.

lucky9876coins

Less than twelve hours of sign-up and we have 30 people between the confirmed and definite maybe list! Keep it up! ^

cepheid

I'll skip the baseball, thanks. Yes, it's heresy, but I just don't really follow sports and find baseball especially boring. (Even the couple of times I've been to catered suites, I basically just spent the entire time eating and talking with everyone else. And yes, I know that's the point of baseball. )

BTW, for planning dinner, might I suggest Indian this time around? There are dozens of great Indian restaurants to choose from all over the Bay Area (especially in Berkeley). But if that won't sit too well with people, we can always go to the world-famous Stinking Rose and eat more garlic than we thought possible... it's pricey but oh-so-tasty.

And heck, I could always just throw a BBQ at my place. Of course, parking is a pain, but it could be arranged if people carpool...

lucky9876coins

Speaking of restaurants: a major concern of ours is the restaurant for dinner on Saturday night, which should be our "main event." We really need suggestions for a place that we could essentially "rent out" for the night. Obviously looking for a decent place, preferrably not ridiculously expensive, but the important part is that they can make room for a VERY big party (don't want to guess numbers yet, but bigger than any of the other dinners we have had in SF). It would be ideal if they would shut down so we have the place to ourselves. If anyone has any ideas, please post them here or PM myself, Wireless, or xj47. Thanks!

cepheid

Has anyone invited sf4dfish and kevino? They were at the Dim Sum DO and might be interested. PTravel has defected to SoCal but might be persuaded to come up... I also think KathyWdrf, BayAreaPilot, and berkeleyguy3 live locally, in case someone wants to page them for this thread.

cepheid

Well, if people are up for Indian, I can check with one of my local faves around here. They know me by name and might be willing to shut the place down for us. However, it is in the Rockridge area of Oakland, i.e. people would need to BART or drive over here. (But it's a nice neighborhood! )

I also know a couple of great Thai and Chinese places in Albany (next town north of Berkeley), but again that would require cars (or BART+car).

If we intend only to stick to places in The City, I guess I don't know of any good places besides the Stinking Rose (yummmm) and Calzone's (across the street), and a place or two by Fisherman's Wharf that are more than big enough to handle us (without shutting down).

lucky9876coins

I have already "paged" most of those people. Will PM the two that I have not yet PM'ed and let them know. I encourage everyone to get the word out, be it via PM or changing your signature.

cepheid

So Ben, how exactly can you take a week or more off of school to do this plus New Zealand? Or are you telecommuting to school that week?

lucky9876coins

Just to be clear, our first SF Dinner had around 60 people, and that wasn't even with an associated Do. My **hope** is that this will be substantially bigger, as in at least three digits. We have almost another four months, and we already have 30 people in the first 12 hours, so I would expect that number to get a lot higher.

cepheid

Well, restaurants around Fisherman's Wharf are pretty darn big, they're built for the tourist crowd. But I'll keep that in mind.

Too bad we don't have any 300-seater lobster shacks like in Maine or NH... now THOSE can fit a crowd. (Of course, they also use only disposable utensils/dinnerware.)

A word of caution, getting too big a crowd will severely limit our dining options... in the end, we might just want to rent a hotel ballroom and bring in catering!

lucky9876coins

Believe it or not, the time commonly known as mid May through late August is known as summer, so not missing much!

cepheid

Yessss.... but the time known as mid-September, for when this DO is being scheduled, is commonly known as fall semester. Plus, isn't your AKL trip also right around then?

EDIT: Whoops, I misunderstood about NZ... that trip is next week, not September. D'oh!

But this DO still falls during your semester, so the question stands.

(And yes, this thread is my ticket to Evangelist status! )

lucky9876coins

My NZ trip starts this Saturday, actually. Lucky will be semi-FTless for over two weeks!