This place makes my heart sing. I’m so happy it’s only 2 blocks away. This teeny tiny little Cuban restaurant/bar is always warm, welcoming, and vibrating with visual over-stimuli. Surreal toy sculptures cover every square inch, and I always find something I’ve never seen before while slurping down my sangria.
I feel like a little fish, swimming under a twinkley ceiling of silver streamers and shiny things in this most fantastic bar. I am completely mesmerized by the gaudy décor and it is the best place for me to shake my booty to some Latin 45’s on the dance floor. Wish I were there right now.
One day when I was walking around in the hills behind my house, I happened upon this bizarre street. It was as though someone had taken postmodernism and tried to make it into a block of houses. Each one has its own internally complete theme, involving strange colors and sculptural elements attached to the outside walls (gold eggs, wisps of wrought iron). This led me on subsequent walks to name them: the Corbusier House, the Barn, the Preschool Blocks house, the House of Wicca… and so on.
Located near to the Alamo square's Painted Ladies is this wonderful gothic "stick" Italian villa with a long weirde history. Built by a Candy Baron in 1889, it's housed variously; a Russian Czarist nightclub, Jazz musicians, Satanists, a Manson family member, and one of the first 60's Hippy communes -Calliope. Creepy as hell enshrouded in fog after dark.