Holiday parties combine pretty much everything that San Franciscans love: parties. It’s not that they don’t get to party year round, but the stretch between Thanksgiving and New Years is like the third night of a girl’s weekend in Vegas: it’s what separates the ladies from the babies.
Sometimes (if you’re very popular or have a lot of jobs) a San Franciscan will end up going to multiple holiday parties in one night, and they practically have this down to a freaking science, “Okay, so here’s the game plan. 17 minutes at Jen’s wreath decorating cupcake blowout. Two hours for my company dinner at Gary Danko (!), and then I’m just going to pop into my dog-walker’s thing for a second. Seriously, that’ll just take a minute. No, I’m not gonna bring the dog. You think I should?”
After they’ve rounded out an evening of mandatory parties, some people might just call it a night and head home, but those people live in Mountain View. In San Francisco, holiday parties are like foreplay: it’s what you do before you pass out. And in the past three weeks, pretty much every San Franciscan, or at least everyone who is a friend of a San Franciscan, has gotten a 1 a.m., typo riddled text saying, “holidaypartys [sic] compleat [sic] lets go nut (autocorrect is not doing anyone any favors here)!!”
There’s something about the combination of free booze, glitter, and a roomful of people they know only vaguely that practically forces San Franciscans to chase their 17 dixie cups of merlot with a brandy.
Of course, one of the reasons none of these people look familiar is not only because they’re a lot paler than when you last saw them in July, but because most of them you’ve actually never seen before.
Party crashers are of course one of the best (worst?) things about the holiday party season in San Francisco. During much of the year self-respecting San Franciscans will not just walk into a stranger’s apartment and start eating their canap
