San Francisco: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the Mother of All Hangovers

As most of you know, restraint is not exactly my middle name. So, when I heard that a group calling itself The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence was holding its thirtieth anniversary party in San Francisco over the Easter weekend, there was little doubt where I would be spending my time.

Every indulgent sister needs an indulgent sister. So, when I put my plan to San Francisco aficionado B, she said she’d be only too delighted to spend 24 hours exploring the ramifications of excess at some of her favourite city haunts. So, off we set, with B at the wheel and The Best of Girls Aloud blasting the state’s dreadful drivers off the freeway. Any administration allowing teenagers to own a car deserves the very worst of what pop mogul Louis Walsh has to offer, in my view.

Hotel California

We had snagged a two-bed room at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel for just $109. The Mark sits at 1 Nob Hill, on the corner of California Street, on the site of a mansion generously built by Mark Hopkins, one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad, for his wife, Mary. The mansion survived the 1906 earthquake, but not the fire in the days that followed. The hotel was built some years later, opening in 1926, and is a great big hunk of Old San Francisco architecture.

B put the pedal to the metal and somehow got us up what felt like a 90-degree gradient to our digs. We saved the price of three cocktails, sisters, by doing it for ourselves and driving the car into the car park, rather than handing it over to one of the many valets only too eager to pass up the chance of driving a Maserati in favour of our four-door saloon. We then took the lift up to the reception desk, where we were given a complimentary upgrade, presumably because we were, at this point, sober.

Delighted, we took a brief gander around the bling-bling lobby and the little hotel museum, then headed for the ninth floor, where we found ourselves in an ‘upgraded’ room suspiciously like the one I had booked on the hotel website, only in miniature. It had a view of a car park and the back of some very big buildings. If you opened the window even an inch, the wind blasted through like a flatulent tuba. If this was an upgrade, I dread to think what the non-upgrade looked like. There wasn’t room to swing the scrawniest of kittens, but the beds were comfy.

Ready, steady, indulge!

Our descent into decadence started at the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, an oak-panelled wine shop and bar in the Ferry Building, where we had intended to do a little wine tasting, but ended up taking what I would term a long-haul wine flight, eating a local cheese the size of Luxembourg and nibbling on pickled mushrooms and wine-cured salami. The gooey, camembert-style Mount Tam round from Marin County, just across the bay, was hoisted in by crane from the jaw-droppingly well-stocked Cowgirl Creamery cheese-lover’s paradise just yards from the bar.

Indeed, the cheese was so big that the four 2oz glasses of wine in the tasting flight didn’t come close to being enough to wash it down, while the last glass – a Côtes de Luberon – just didn’t cha-cha with the cheddar, as it were. And though we drank it anyway, so as not to hurt the feelings of the helpful and friendly barmaid, we had to order a carafe of Verdicchio to finish it off. Then another glass, because we’d forgotten about the salami. And, oops, those glorious mushrooms.

We were tempted to have another glass to finish off the half cracker left on the plate, but figured this would probably be excessive. The barmaid said we didn’t look at all inappropriately hammered for 5pm on a Sunday afternoon, noting that we weren’t nearly as bad as a woman she’d served the previous week, who broke two glasses, fell off her stool and lost her purse in her own handbag. Reassured, we paid up and left anyway, thinking we’d better quit while we were ahead.

Sister act

We then hoisted ourselves onto the F train and travelled up to Castro, to the corner of Noe and Market, where the tail end (in so many ways) of the carnival of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence had gathered as the sun set on their Easter festivities. Alas, we had somehow missed the Hunky Jesus competition in Dolores Park, a highlight of the Sisters’ frolics to fundraise for their charitable works. But the booze was flowing on the oh-so-inaptly named Beaver Street, so all was well.

The Sisters are primarily, but not exclusively, gay men who “vow to promulgate universal joy, expiate stigmatic guilt and serve the community”, according to their website, www.thesisters.org, mainly by encouraging people to party until they keel over and make a donation. Founded in 1979 by three friends who, out of boredom, donned traditional nuns’ habits somehow procured from a convent in Iowa, the multi-faith Sisters came to prominence in 1980 during the Three Mile Island protest for their “Rosary in Time of Nuclear Peril, including the ever popular pompon routine.”

The full-blown (ahem) members of the now-global movement parade, party and minister wearing white-painted faces, a wimple (more an ear brassiere) and veil, as well as a habit, which can be, well, anything at all, really, as long as it’s mighty spectacular. As usual, I was decidedly underdressed amid fluffy flamenco dresses and 10-inch platform heels, calf-length pink tutus and see-through negligees that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. I was definitely out-Sistered and out-partied.

B was looking quite a bit more glamorous, but we retired to the sidelines in any case to partake in a bit more wine and a bit of Sister-spotting. I can share with you that Board Chairnun is currently Sister Barbi Mitzvah, while Sister Anni Coque l’Doo serves as treasurer. My personal style icons are Sister Dana Van Iquity, Sister Bella de Ball and Sister Meira-Meira Ondawall. Oh, yes. Amen.

A dash of Absinthe ...

B and I were sufficiently merry at this point to contemplate attending the sing-along showing of Mama Mia in the famous Castro Theatre, but, thankfully, not sufficiently drunk to actually do it. So we jumped (fell) into a cab in search of dinner and cocktails at Absinthe, a hip and laid-back bar-bistro on the corner of Hays and Gough. And yes, the bar serves an array of absinthe. No, I didn’t have any.

Though my dancing days are few and far between, I started off with a Ginger Rogers, reluctantly passing on the cracking wine list (even I have a wine quota, believe it or not) for a cocktail consisting of gin, ginger ale, mint and something else. It was very good. B asked if the barman could make a Harrington, a concoction of vodka, cointreau and green chartreuse. He said he could. She said he didn’t. But she drank it anyway.

... and a little soakage

We decided to share some of the intriguing offerings on the menu, all of which came out perfectly halved in advance, probably because the chirpy Balkan waiter intuitively noticed that we weren’t in a particularly good state to deal with cutlery. The spicy fried chickpeas were a revelation, akin to the world’s smallest falafel and positively addictive. The green garlic flatbread with ricotta and fava leaves was to die for. The asparagus was crunchy and well dressed (though the long thin plate was a challenge), while our half-burgers with aioli and gruyere drew groans of delight.

B sluiced this down with a very good martinez (allegedly the precursor to the modern martini – she only drinks cocktails that have surnames), while I opted for the mujer verde, which had gin and chartreuse in it, and I’m not sure what else. At this point, it probably didn’t matter much. We should have left it there, but we didn’t. B chose a dessert cocktail called Tempted Eve, which was so good that I finished it for her, and I picked a Cafe Paradaiso, which wasn’t as good. Though, to be polite, I drank it anyway, with B putting in an Oscar-winning performance in a supporting role.

The morning after

The next thing we recall, really, is waking up the next morning and trying to decide whether our legs would hold us long enough to trek out for breakfast, or whether we should just limp to the lift and dine where we may or may not have ended up drinking martinis from the 100 Martini Menu the night before – at the Top of the Mark on the nineteenth floor. Clutching Alka Seltzer, Aspirin and gallons of water, we opted for the latter.

The breakfast buffet was nothing special, but the 360-degree views more than made up for it. The coffee, though, and there’s no getting away from this, was bloody awful. So we checked out, collected the car (during which B tried to trap the valet’s arm in the boot, but just missed, darnit) and headed to The Haight district for a serious caffeine hit and some shoe shopping that would have done the Sisters proud.

If you want a cure for the mother of all hangovers, turquoise heels are the only way to go.

© Poilin Breathnach 2009