Pirate Cat Radio

No that is not a clever title I made up for my new post (although I am quite good at them if I do say so myself), it is actually the name the place my friend Cheryl and I visited in San Francisco. I will explain more later why the name is so befitting of the institution and why us visiting it together is nothing out of the norm.

Cheryl is one of my best friends in the world, and probably the most absurd friend I have as well, which I appreciate because it allows me to be my absurd self around her. To give you an idea of what she is like, I will share this picture with you.

Here she is holding what seems to be a large grasshopper of some sort with a look that says, "Continue wise grasshopper, I hear all you say."

Anyways, Cheryl and I usually do stuff like pulling one another behind a bike on rollerblades or trying to attempt a 3 person shoulder sit or even watching movies in the graveyard. Most things also involve our friend Maddy, who due to distance was not able to make it.

You get the point. So when Cheryl invited me to a place called Pirate Cat Radio , it totally clicked once we arrived.

Pirate Cat Radio is a small coffee shop in San Francisco that doubles as a radio station that used to pirate their radio signal for free (thus the name) until the FCC said, "No more!" So currently they broadcast in some Scandinavian countries and the internet until they can get their own station here which is in process.

However, the coolest thing about Pirate Cat Radio is that they are famous for their Maple Bacon Lattes and even received coverage by Anthony Bourdain on his show No Reservations. So of course, that's what Cheryl and I went to try.

When we got their we immediately became super self-aware because it was soooo awkward.  No one said hi to us, we didn't know who to order from and to make things worse the space was super tiny so

we had no room to discuss what we were going to do!

Finally a very timid woman with a heavy accent asked us what we wanted and without hesitation I said the Maple Bacon Latte please. But get this... They were out of bacon! What a buzzkill!

So we decided on a plain old maple latte and a coconut latte and two vegan (it is SF) donuts. We took our seats and had our drinks in 15 min, after much debating behind the counter of what went in what. We decided to add some "extra special goodness" to our lattes since I have never seen a coffee condiment labeled as such, and who wouldn't want extra special goodness?? Especially when it is rainbow sprinkles!

Before I could add enough in our latte, Cheryl told me to stop acting like Elf and control myself.

So how the heck was it? Well let me tell you! (sassiness implied) I was totally blown away by how good the quality of their espresso was (which turned out to be De La Paz , a small San Francisco based organic coffee company) and how well it coupled with the taste of real maple syrup. It was the best flavored latte I have ever had! Granted I'm not a huge fan of flavored lattes, but the fact that I thought this one was delicious says a lot. I can only imagine what it would taste like with bacon! That is of course until I actually do taste what its like when I'm back up north on another date with Cheryl. Not to mention we have to go back to visit our hippie friend who has her own radio show there, a lot to say about the slums of Canada and talked to us for 20 minutes while we were enjoying our lattes. I told you, that kinda "stuff" just happens when I'm with Cheryl.