A Picnic and Some Tunes in Marin
| Move your body |
| Yoga For the Cynics |
| Martial Arts on Polk Street |
| Market Street Gym |
| Windsurfing at Crissy Field |
| Local Swimming Pools |
| Sweetwater
153 Throckmorton Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 Tel: 415-388-7769 www.sweetwatersaloon.com Live
music AND an excuse to leave the city for the evening, what could
be better? Sweetwater in downtown Mill Valley has had some of the
best live music acts in the Bay Area over the last 30 years. The
bar is small, dark and cosy, and the walls are covered with years
of musicians having come to play at the venue. Bonnie Raitt, Bela
Fleck, Elvis Costello, they've all made stops. The clientele is
a mixture of crunchy fleece-wearing Marinites, and more Patagonia-bound
folks. Click here
for a list of what's coming up. |
It's a sunny evening? Oh yeah! Here's my recipe for the close-to-perfect evening: a picnic up on Mount Tam followed by a drink down at Sweetwater in Mill Valley.
So far, in the last few months, I've taken Rachel, Kezia and Marco on this little excursion. Each time, I suspect they thought I was just a bit bonkers. Just a little. Off kilter. But no one's complained.
Now that it's staying lighter out longer in the evenings, it's a good idea to wait until after 6pm to head over the Golden Gate Bridge. At least. Oddly enough, for all these long hours that everyone is supposedly working, traffic to Marin eases up just around about 6pm.
For the picnic, I like to make a stop over at Whole Foods on Miller Avenue in Mill Valley. Whole Foods in Mill Valley is just like Whole Foods in San Francisco except the parking spaces are big enough to fit Range Rovers and the clientele are all glowingly healthy looking. Be sure to buy a bottle of red wine because once the sun goes down, it gets chilly up on Tam. Very chilly. In fact, if you keep a sleeping bag and a blanket or two in your car, you'll be chuffed with yourselves later.
So
as not to make a production of the entire experience, I usually just park
my car in the lot across from the Mountain
Home Inn on Panoramic Highway. It's near to MV and the views are exquisite.
But it's not a real trek from the city. It's a perfect last minute excursion.
You get a straight shot out towards the ocean, lovely at sunset facing
west. And a straight up shot at the stars once it gets dark.
Sated and cold, go back down to Mill Valley proper and stop by Sweetwater for a drink. Sweetwater is home to a great live music scene. Even on evenings when I don't do the whole picnic thing, I'll run over to Mill Valley by myself after hours on the computer for some good tunes. Such folks as John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt, Harry Connick, Jr., and Elivis Costello have shown up here. Nice. The bar is lit with my very favorite dim, orange lighting scheme. And it's filled choc-o-bloc with chairs and tables. Thoroughly unpretentious, I've often swung by the joint all sweaty, manky and muddy after an evening on the trails. You're in fleece wearing country in Mill Valley, where all zippers and pockets have a purpose.
Reproduction of material from posthoc is prohibited without written permission.
Copyright 2002, Posthoc, Inc.