⭐ Our Favorite Places 6/1/25

Hi Everyone!

I’m thrilled I’ve been able to do so much recently, but what’s even more thrilling is knowing that at the end of the week, I am going to be able to relive it as I write and catalogue my week. In some ways, I get to experience the week twice!

I know that there are tools out there for archiving our lives that are widely available (ie, Snapchat memories), but there are certain moments in life where I am amazed that I can look back on a certain day or event. One such moment occurred for me this week. 

So with that said, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…

My time wasn’t up in Canton, GA, just yet. I still had one more day, and we were planning to do one of the most quintessential Canton things: going to the local thrift store.

There are one or two stores in Canton that are pretty infamous in the thrifting community, and I guess Rylee’s family finally started liking me enough to invite me to tag along. 

As we were driving to the store, they were explaining the discounts that you could get: occasionally, you would get 50% off coupons, but you could only use them on the next Monday and the following Monday after that. Otherwise, if you spend $25 at the store during the week, you can get a 25% discount coupon to use, but only for the next upcoming Sunday. I swear it was the most convoluted system I have ever heard of, and felt like I would need a Ph.D. to truly understand it.

We arrived about at it opening, and within 15 minutes it was overwhelming crowded. All the carts got taken, so multiple people came up to me to ask for my cart after I was done with it. I did manage to get a couple pairs of clothing. 

I also managed to take a couple of photos of my favorite shirts I found (I did not

On the drive back, I was shocked to hear Rylee’s mom say that was a light day. If that’s the case I don’ think I would want to be there on a crazy day. I have a new found respect for Canton thrifters.

We stopped for a quick lunch at La Cantina on Main where I had Asado de Boda, a stew of pork shoulder and a mole-like sauce, that is also traditionally served  at a wedding. Someone probably got married that day, so cheers to them. 

It’s always interesting to see restaurants and stores have the vertical garden with their logo on it that was so obviously put there for the purposes of being an Instagram wall. I feel like while sure you have the logo, the space lacks the sense of place that it is trying to create. Now, I did take a photo in front of it so maybe I am part of the problem, but I’d like to think that mine is ironic. I’m not like the other VSCO girls. 

Anyway, after lunch, we packed up and drove to the airport. If you’re wondering, we did weather through a couple of delays (including a full stoppage of the Dallas Airport due to a Flash Flood Warning), but thankfully, no overnight stays this week. 

It was a busy week house hunting (more on that in a little bit), so Rylee and I collectively decided that we needed a date night for ourselves. Now that a move is approaching, we have realized that we are going to be farther away from some of our favorite places we found while living here. While that also means that we are going to be closer to some places that will eventually become our favorites, there is a sadness of knowing it’s going to be more of a hassle to get to some spots. 

One of these places, is Otherwise Brewing, a fully gluten-free brewery located in SF’s North Beach. The mission of the place is beer for everyone, and it’s really cool to see all the ecstatic customers that can finally get a good gluten-free beer.

When we arrived, we agreed that it only made sense to get two flights of beer to be able to try every beer available. My personal favorites were an Italian-style Pilsner and a strawberry and prickly pear fruited ale.

There has been a place that has been on my list for the entire two years that I have lived in the Bay Area. It’s called Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, and it’s got several awards for best pizza in the US. We got a Sicilian-style pizza, which is similar to Detroit style, but its dough is focaccia bread. Fun fact: its original name is “sfincione” and translates to thick sponge. That definitely sounds less appetizing, but I promise it was wonderful.

To round it out for dessert, I got an ice cream sandwich with Spumoni ice cream.

Keeping in the same vein of going to our favorite places, we went to one of our favorite local wine shops called Oakland Yard because they were hosting a summer kickoff artisan market with a couple of pop up kitchens, stores, and live music on Saturday. It was nice to walk around with a glass of wine and just vibe. I also hopped next door for Tacos Oscar, which served an incredible Ham and Cheese breakfast burrito.

Last week, when we went to the Oakland Ballers game, we couldn’t park in the parking lot, so the team gave us complimentary tickets to this past Saturday’s game. Tonight’s theme was a tribute to West Oakland and brought local heroes like Bill Patterson (who was instrumental in building the first Raiders field in Oakland) to celebrate. 

That day, the Jumbotron was facing technical difficulties, with at one point saying that the opposing team had 91 points. It was a blowout, but at least it wasn’t that bad.

It has been a super stressful week, but we finally found our new apartment! We toured a place on Tuesday that we fell in love with, so we spent the rest of the week crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s for a June 1st start. There were several times that it felt like it would fall through and we would have to go back to searching, but it finally all came together in Sunday. We got our keys and moved in our first couple of boxes. Then, it’s become a tradition to pop a bottle of bubbly and sit down to take in our new place.

The night before I was looking at my Instagram story for our move and I saw the last two pics of me moving some boxes and us celebrating with a glass of wine, and I just thought about how cool it was to have these memories archived for me to look back on for the rest of my life. It also makes me realize how far both Rylee and I have come from those moments almost two years ago. 

It just so happened that our move-in day coincided with Walnut Creek’s Art and Wine Festival. We walked down to Civic Park to look at the works of local artists (and maybe have another glass of wine to celebrate this special occasion). It feels poetic that our start day aligned with this festival. Already manifesting good vibes.

I find this video fascinating because A) I love seeing how each State portrays itself, and B) I love seeing how a Canadian reacts to these tourism ads. The California ad is pretty sick.