TL;DR

San Francisco

• Stay
  • The Clancy, 299 2nd St, San Francisco, CA 94105
    • Super modern and comfortable hotel and a great location if you work in the South of Market Area (SOMA). I would definitely stay here again.
• Eat/Drink
  • Aicha Moroccan Cuisine, 1303 Polk St, San Francisco, CA 94109
    • A place I’ve been to several times and consistently enjoy – whether I get a tagine or the chicken bastilla.
  • Radiator Coffee Salon (inside the Clancy Hotel), 299 2nd St, San Francisco, CA 94105
    • The in-house café serves up pastries from Craftsman and Wolves – a famous SF bakery. The pièce de résistance is the “Rebel Within” – a soft-boiled egg baked into a muffin – and it is utterly fantastic.
  • The Enclave (seating area at Parklab Gardens), 1379 4th St, San Francisco, CA 94158
    • Parklab Gardens is a super charming outdoor dining area full of food trucks in the Dogpatch part of SF. While the crab cake sandwich I had was nothing to write home about, the laidback outdoor atmosphere of the area was a joy.
  • Luna Park (now Luna), 694 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110
    • Team dinner and an excellent burger
• See/Do
  • Pinterest HQ, 651 Brannan St., San Francisco, CA 94107
    • You’ll need to know someone to get in here, but it’s a beautiful workspace.

Trip Background

As I mentioned in my last post, April 1, 2022 was my last day working at SAP SuccessFactors. April 19, 2022 was my first day working at Pinterest and I was so excited – not just for the fact that I would get to do diversity and inclusion work (which I had long sought), but because it was also a reunion of sorts. In joining the People team at Pinterest, I would be reconnected with my MBA classmate Kristen Hartley, my college classmate and former Deloitte colleague Lipika Choudhury, and even a high school classmate!

On the backs of a whirlwind wedding (my friend’s – not wine), I got home in time to get my new work laptop, do my laundry, repack my back, and turn around and head off to San Francisco for a few days to both meet my boss, some of my team, and the broader Pinterest people leadership team.

Day 0 (April 18, 2022)

I arrived the night before work activities began and spent the evening meeting up with my old friend Jason for dinner at Aicha Moroccan Cuisine. He and I had spent 7 glorious days traveling through Morocco back in 2014 and it remains to this day one of my favorite trips (which actually pre-dated the launch of this blog!)

I returned to my hotel and had a surreal moment. Here I was on my first work trip in several years, in my hometown, and when I pulled back the curtains on my hotel room window, I saw my old office (the LinkedIn building at 222 2nd Street). It was almost like I’d come full circle, as I left LinkedIn on January 3, 2020 – right before the pandemic locked everything down. It brought a smile to my face to see my old building (which by the way is a stunning workspace) as I drifted off to sleep.

Day 1 (April 19, 2022)

The morning began at the Pinterest office getting to know my colleagues and I spent the entire day in a people team strategy session.

That night, though, we went as a team to Parklab Gardens to browse the food trucks, have some drinks, and get to know one another. We had a reserved seating area at The Enclave and if you and your friends (or your colleagues) want to come here, I highly recommend reserving a seating area here!

I also found a really neat souvenir vendor machine – and as an SF native, I couldn’t NOT buy this pin.

Day 2 (April 20, 2022)

I won’t bore you to death with all my work stuff, but after another super-packed day of meetings, my team and I went to Luna Park (now Luna) for dinner.

Day 3 (April 21, 2022)

When I first got to The Clancy hotel, I kept hearing about this breakfast item they served down in the Radiator Coffee Salon.  The in-house café serves up pastries from Craftsman and Wolves – a famous SF bakery. The pièce de résistance is the “Rebel Within” – a soft-boiled egg baked into a muffin – and it is utterly fantastic.

I will take a moment here to share the Pinterest San Francisco office, as it is spectacular. While the business world now (2023) is pressuring people to return to the office, our company has a very open remote work policy, but if you want to go into an office, we have amazing people and resources around.

Alright, enough fanboying.

After work, I headed over to my family home in North Beach. April 21 is my Dad’s birthday, so the timing of this trip was a perfect reason to surprise my Dad for his special day. I hid out in the living room so he wouldn’t see me and when he came into the kitchen for dinner, I jumped out – and my sister Aimee and I celebrated his big day over takeout.

Sadly I had to be on a redeye that night to get back to Chicago, so after dinner, I took an Uber to San Francisco Airport (where I met my new colleague Charlie in the lounge) and headed home.

Final Thoughts

I am always super thankful when I can combine a work trip with a personal trip – and 2020-2021 really crushed virtually every opportunity for work travel. I got to meet and get to know more colleagues in three days at Pinterest than I had in two years in my previous job.

On top of that, being there to surprise my Dad for his birthday was incredibly gratifying. The pandemic years made it really hard for me to see my family (and vice versa) and this trip really made me feel like the world was returning to normal.