Green Tortoise San Francisco Hostel Blog

With 2011 looming around the corner I am at a loss to help all my happy tortoise friends what to do.  Personally new years eve is a time to get together with some friends, get insanely drunk and pass out on couches and strewn about the floor.  I have never been to a "real" NYE party and this city has a bunch of them.  So if you like to go out and get your drink on with a bunch of strangers I think I should be kind enough to refer you to sf.funcheap.com as they have a great list of parties cheap and free around the bay area.

Also for some alternative ideas in the bay area there is this fun little list of events:  http://calendar.insidebayarea.com/oakland-ca/events/alternative+events+in+san+francisco .  And no matter where you are, you can catch fireworks over the bay, YAY!

 So I hope this will help all you great travelers, and remember that we love you here at the tortoise and hope your new year will be a fantastic and exciting new adventure.

***UPDATE*** If you go to http://sf.funcheap.com/city-guide/sf-sketchfest-cheap/  than you can get half priced tickets to a bunch of the shows!

Hey kids!  Its your friendly neighborhood hostel worker here to tell you about the comedy scene here in San Francisco.  What comedy scene you ask? Well once upon a time San Francisco was the place to be for "alternative comedy" whatever that means.  Greats like Patton Oswalt and Robin Williams have spent a good chunk of their career here in SF and to our credit we still have some pretty great clubs still operating in the city, most of which are right in our neighborhood.  Cobb's Comedy Club (cobbscomedyclub.com) and the Punchline (punchlinecomedyclub.com) are the two more traditional clubs but we also have the smaller more personal, Purple Onion (caffemacaroni.com/purple.shtml) not a block away from our front door.

And for the last 10 years we have opened our figurative city gates to the SF Sketchfest.  A comedy extravaganza that lasts over 2 weeks.  Half the venues are in our neighborhood and the other half are super easy to get to from the Tortoise. 

A few highlights of the festival are Mike Birbiglia's one man show "My Girlfriends Boyfriend" that is making its making its stop here before it heads out to New York for its Off-Broadway run.  A ton of podcasts are going live shows like Jimmy Pardo's "Never not Funny", Chris Hardwick's "Nerdist", and Mark Maron's "WTF".  A couple big names on the show include Neil Patrick Harris, Bob Odenkirk, and David Byrne.

 For ticket and venue information go to sfsketchfest.com

For anyone in the city who enjoys staring at the night sky (i know i do), there is going to be a full lunar eclipse on the night of Monday, December 20th on into the morning of the 21st!

The eclipse begins at about 9:30PM and ends at 3:05AM, with the full and most exciting portion between about 11:40PM -1:00AM. It should be a good one, since the moon will be nearly full!

Its also special, since this year it happens to be landing on the winter solstice! Should be some good parties for that...

The best place to view will probably be Ocean Beach by Golden Gate Park. There are bonfire pits over there to help keep you warm! 

Bundle up and enjoy. Now all we can do is hope the weather's clear...