Who the Hell ever Said Sunday was a Day of Rest?

Oh yeah, God. (By the Way, the picture's got nothing to do with anything contained within. I just wanted to bring in a younger demographic. They like the crack, right?) Anywho, I think I'm gonna start reprinting my weekly column for SFist.com here on Sundays. That way, I can increase my laziness potential and participate more fully in the ancient homo-erotic ritual of watching football with the guys. So here goes: (keep in mind that the SFist has a certain writing requirement that may read a little odd at first. They frown upon first person writing, which is basically all I've got)

Staggering Through Fog, a weekly Bushmill's-soaked confession on bar culture by Andrew Lowder.

Union Square is probably the one place in San Francisco that feels the least like San Francisco. It's as if you dumped the people of Hollywood onto 5th Avenue in Manhattan. And since we're not big fans of shopping for $1000 Louis Vitton bags or nibbling on mediocre, overpriced appetizers in hotel bars full of tourists and salesmen, we tend to avoid the Square as much as humanly possible.

But if we're anything at the SFist, we're masochists. Every now and again you've got to plunge back into an area just to make sure it didn't become interesting while you weren't looking. And so, being very careful and trying to keep an open mind, we paid the $12 parking and plunged right in.

Here's the first problem, everything closes at ten o'clock! Aside from the mildly entertaining but horribly over-crowded Gold Dust, it seemed as though all other bars locked their doors about 5 minutes before our arrival. Even legendary haunts like the Owl Tree called it a night at 11. Finally, after what seemed like 2 hours of pulling on locked doors, we found a place willing to stay up past sunset.

Azul - 1 Tillman Place, just northeast of Union Square. Located at the end of a little alleyway, this spacious, after work meet market tries way too hard. From the twin plasma screens showing Barbarella to the impractical 'mattress outlet' style seating, Azul is a tapas menu away from the annoying yuppie trifecta. Drinks weren't ridiculously overpriced, but seemed a little weak, and the overall 'scene', while certainly not being the most annoying in the city, was still far too stifling to warrant staying for more than two.

So while it's always good to occasionally get out of your 'comfort zone', just remember that doing so will probably result in being uncomfortable.

Liver....Out!