ÉCLAIRS! AND WARM AS TOAST TOO!

This Sunday I shall reward myself. I shall lie in bed feasting on a nice strong cup of coffee and a luscious éclair. Because this Sunday marks the 25th San Francisco Aids Walk.
Sign-in is at nine in the morning.
Which is approximately when I shall be getting out of bed, briefly, to fix myself that cup of nice strong coffee.
Obviously, I do NOT intend to be there.

Instead, I've paid a bunch of other people to be there for me.

Five of them, in fact.

So while they stumble around in the fog and mist of a summer morning out in Golden Gate Park, I shall be warmly ensconced in my bed, poofy comforter over my lower half, a thick coffee table book of New-Yorker cartoons spread open on my thighs, with a hot caffeinated beverage of my choice and a nice CREAMY CUSTARDY ÉCLAIR!
I am going to be sooooooo comfortable!

But I'll think about them now and then.
In between munching, sips, and giggles.


AH, BLISS!

The biggest question in my self-indulgent mind, for at least the next thirty hours, is "where am I going to find the éclair?"

In prior years, if I had wanted an éclair on Aids Walk Sunday, that would not have been a problem. Just pop over the hill along Bush Street the previous day. Unfortunately Pâtisserie De Langhe at 1890 Fillmore Street no longer exists. A very great pity, as their éclairs were purely scrumptious.
So were their Napoleons, Swedish Princess Cakes......

De Langhe was a national treasure.
I do not know where to get my good-morning pastries now.
It is a very great loss.
I am BEREFT, as I'm sure you understand.

I've NEVER gotten up early on Aids Walk Sunday. It always seemed so much more convenient to sponsor someone else to hike through the park at that hour. To that end, not only would I pay my roommate to do the heavy walking, I even tried to get others to contribute, including my coworkers at the Indian restaurant. The first year I tried, I got seven dollars out of them. That's a TOTAL of seven dollars, out of five different sub-continentals.
The next year, four dollars and fifty cents.
As one of them explained to me, "Indians don't get AIDS, only gay Americans get it - we don't DO such things".

Apparently, they do.

Pointing out to them that the human immunodeficiency virus did not discriminate, even if they themselves did, did not cut any mustard.
Nearly twenty skinflinty people worked at the restaurant.
First year: seven dollars. Second year: less than five.
One of them asked me how much I was contributing, then pretty darn-near called me a fool and a patsy once he found out how much it was.

I'm afraid he was overlooking the logical benefit of the exercise.
Contributing generously to a good cause gives you the right, the pleasant duty even, of staying nice and toasty warm on a cold San Francisco summer morning. Other people have to get up at the crack of dawn, when it is still dark and moist, and gird their loins for the task ahead. But not you. You have expended funds NOT to have to do that.
Again: Coffee. Éclair (or maybe a Napoleon). Comforter. Big book. Mmmm, comfy! And warm!

I think I shall luxuriously stretch at some point. Ooof!

Then smoke a pipe.
No, not in the nude!
In my warm fluffy bathrobe.
Perhaps with a throw-rug, too.


Still, this year is not like all previous years.
I need recommendations for an éclair place.
De Langhe was the best, but it is no more.
The battle is not yet won.


Suggestions welcome. There's an éclair in it for you.



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