Sunday, November 16, 2025
Part 1 of this Trip Diary is here and Part 2 is here. There’ll be one more of these after this one.
Brinke and I so enjoyed our breakfast at Americana on Saturday that we went back there again to be joined by a wonderful friend of mine. A few of my closer buddies will know who I’m talking about but some years ago, I was involved for a happy time with a very special lady. The in-person part of that involvement only ended when she had to move to Northern California to care for her aging mother. Thereafter, we remained in touch and saw each other whenever possible, though it was rarely possible.
One of the reasons I regretted when the annual WonderCon moved in 2011 from San Francisco to Anaheim is that when it was in S.F., I could see this person during it. But we remained friends via telephone, e-mails, text messages and the occasional in-person visit — her down here, me up there, both of us to Las Vegas or Santa Barbara. She is now a nurse working insane but happy hours up there and on Sunday morn, she finished a brutally long work shift and stopped off on her way home to breakfast with Brinke and myself. When I said in the previous chapter that a conversation with Jean Schulz was my favorite part of the trip, I only meant the Peanuts-related part of it.
We had a lovely reunion, she and Brinke got along great but she finally had to head home to follow her marathon work session with a marathon sleep. Brinke and I then took a very expensive Lyft ride (53.2 miles) from Santa Rosa to a hotel in San Francisco. We checked in, then hurried over to the Cartoon Art Museum where I was immediately put to work signing the rest of those pages for the deluxe edition of our Peanuts book along with Patrick McDonnell and Chip Kidd. If you buy one and my signature looks a bit weary, it was probably signed Sunday at the Cartoon Art Museum.
The museum was opened in 1984 and moved to its present location in 2017. That put it near Fisherman’s Wharf and San Francisco Bay, not far from Aquatic Park, the Maritime Museum, Ghirardelli Square and the spot on Hyde Street where the cable cars turn around and go back the way they came. Thus, it’s in a perfect place for a visit when you do the touristy thing in that city. Its insides (8,000 square feet of space) are always crammed with great comic strip and comic book art, books about that kind of thing and an ambitious program of guest speakers and book-signers. The staff there, including Executive Director Summerlea Kashar and Curator Andrew Farago do a great job.
We had another panel discussion there with, above — me (well-lit in the center), Hilary Price, Patrick McDonnell, Chip Kidd and Charlie Kochman. Hilary is, of course, the creator of the clever/lovely comic strip, Rhymes With Orange and she had great stories of the inspiration and encouragement she received from Charles Schulz. She also contributed a great piece to the book about Peppermint Patty and her friend Marcie. The five of us answered questions from moderator Andrew Farago and from another sold-out audience. Then, of course, we signed books for the folks who’d bought ’em or brought ’em.
I said in some interview before the book was released that I expected to hear lots of people tell me the story of how they fell in love with the strip. I was right. Many, many of those who came to get me to write my name in their copy of the book told me what Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and the rest of the cast meant to their lives. One even told me how he grew up wanting to play the piano like Schroeder. I asked him if he did and he gave me a great answer I wish I could go back and put in the book. He said, “I always thought Schroeder played a toy piano so it sounded like a grand piano. Well, I can now play a grand piano so it sounds like a toy piano!”
I signed and signed and signed. Counting the 540 pages I had to sign for the upcoming special edition, I most have written my name 750-800 times this past weekend. At times, I found myself envying people like Jim Lee and Don Ho or one-namers like Adele, Cher and Bono.
When it was all over, ten of us hiked over to a restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf and I gather nine of us enjoyed our meals. Alas, one of my food allergies kicked in, I think because, as I once learned the hard way in Baltimore, when you tell a seafood chef that you want “No Old Bay Seasoning,” they assume you can’t be serious; that that’s your way of asking for a slightly lighter dose of Old Bay Seasoning than usual.
It made me somewhat ill so we left a bit early. Lovely Brinke and lovely Charlie Kochman helped me into an Uber that got us back to our hotel. An hour or so later, I felt like me again.
Upon arriving home in L.A., I called the restaurant and got someone who basically told me that (a) they use Old Bay Seasoning in the batter of their fish ‘n’ chips and (b) if I really didn’t want any Old Bay Seasoning in my meal, I should have specified it in a clearer manner than saying, “No Old Bay Seasoning.” So in the future, I intend to say, “Tell the chef that if I find any trace of Old Bay Seasoning on my plate, I’m going to fucking kill him!” Perhaps that will give him a clue.
Actually, there was little chance of me ever returning to this restaurant anyway. Like every eatery near the water in San Francisco, they advertised clam chowder that had been voted — probably by the owners — as the best anywhere. I thought theirs wouldn’t even be the best in a place that also served the canned Campbell’s version. That’s the one where you don’t complain if you find a fly in your soup but you do register surprise if you come across anything resembling any part of a clam.
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