Potrero Hill is a quiet old warehouse district with a beautiful view of the SF skyline. It is kind of a modest neighborhood, but is slowly becoming one of the last old hippie neighborhoods to suffer the yuppie gentrification. My stepdad describes it as a neighborhood that used to be a little secret; one of the last places with affordable housing.

I got there early, and stopped at a little coffeehouse up the hill that boasted high ceilings and white walls. It looked vaguely like a small apartment that had had its walls knocked down and an industrial-sized sink installed in the back. I sat down with my chamomile tea just as the one of the workers popped the 22-minute version of ‘Inna-Gadda-Davita’ into the stereo. I sipped quietly at the front window, keeping my eye on the clock. I was actually really nervous and excited and anxious, about both the concert and going to a strange venue for the first time.

I didn’t finish my tea, but left a good tip and headed down the hill. The Bottom of the Hill looks, from the outside, like someone’s house. It’s baby-blue and shaped sort of like a townhouse, in between a vacant lot and a small apartment building. Across the street was a row of warehouses.

The doors were supposed to open at 8:30, but weren’t open yet when I got there at 9. There were a few people hanging out, including two gen-x yuppies who tried to make menial conversation. The one guy was kind of cute, like an olive-skinned Stone Gossard, but he quickly turned me off with his mouth. He was making snide comments about one guy’s jalopy car, and then made another snide comment when J and Luisa came out of the club after soundcheck; something about J having ‘the requisite 24-year-old model girlfriend’. Never mind the fact that, earlier, he’d asked me “Has Dinosaur Jr put out any albums lately?â€