This may be a cautious Christmas for the consumer, but it is tradition that every year two friends and I take a day off to celebrate Christmas in the city, which means heading down the freeway on a midweek morning for the Larkspur ferry to skim across the bay and deliver us to San Francisco for a day of eating, drinking and shopping.

We’ve been doing it pretty faithfully for more than 20 years. First there were three, then four, then five of us. Now we’re back to three stalwarts honoring the ritual and we’re not going to let a recession get in the way. It costs nothing to be with friends, and every woman knows you can shop without spending.

It costs nothing to be with friends, and every woman knows you can shop without spending.

We go to the city to join the festive swarm. You don’t get that shopping from a catalogue or ordering online or going to a mall. Like it says in the song, you need city sidewalks, dressed in holiday style, lit up and loud. You want street musicians, glossy red shopping bags and fantasy windows. You want to be part of the bustling crowd.

This year there was an apparent lack of bustle. Two weeks before Christmas the streets were tame. Lines were short. The cable car guys were so glad to see riders they invited us inside where it was warm and there were seats aplenty.

The crowds were thin but the spirit was there. A young violinist played on the corner, her instrument case filled with dollar bills and a bouquet of white tulips.

We had no problem making merry. Our ritual includes starting off with a Ramos Fizz, a cocktail that one in our group long ago christened Stepmother’s Milk during a challenging period when four of us had acquired young stepchildren and found that leaving town and drinking in the morning is an ideal way to commiserate. The stepkids worked out but we’ve continued with the fizz.

Eating and drinking our way through the city provides time to sit and talk which is really why we do this. Shopping has always been secondary. During a whole day together, with no real agenda, we catch up on dogs and partners and kids, current health status and favorite book and movie recommendations. We’ve known each other since our hair was naturally brown and blonde. We make each other laugh.

We have our route, our designated stops at hotel bathrooms and favorite stores. We look. We touch. We try on shoes. I lusted for a $1200 red leather swivel chair. Our total take was one Christmas ornament, one fancy ginger grater from the kitchen store and three pair of sensible but cool-looking shoes.

Another part of the ritual is the late afternoon martini. We like to search out bars that feel like old San Francisco with lots of wood and preferably a sunset view. It’s not that we drink a lot but, you know, shoppers get thirsty. This year we found a bar on the 36th floor of a Union Square hotel where we watched the sky go from misty pink to indigo. We toasted to missing friends, to our new president, to rain coming to California and a magician to fix the economy.

Leaving San Francisco from the deck of the ferry the city looked as dazzling as always, reassuringly resilient and vital, the Embarcadero buildings outlined by white lights in their new low energy bulbs. We stood under a lopsided moon, huddled together against the cold and then ducked inside.

Listen to the Eat, Drink, Scale Back radio segment on KRCB’S Another Voice.

Tags: christmas_shopping, Juicy_Tomatoes, recession, Susan_Swartz

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 11:34 am and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.