Ride Wit Me by Nelly

We are on a motorized cable car, cruising down Pine St in San Francisco on St.Patrick's Day in 2001.  One of my co-workers had invited me to join her and 30 of her college friends on a cable car pub crawl.  I invited another 10 of my friends and it was the best St. Paddy's Day ever.  The cable cars were stocked full of drinks (Guinness, of course, 7&7s, which I did not drink but I didn't know what the other 7 was, and the very "in" drink of the time, Rock Star & Vodka).  The cable car stopped at 3 different places: a bar in China Basin that I cannot remember the name of for the life of me, the Bubble Lounge, and finally the Velvet Lounge.  The cable car itself was a blast and a half. Dancing, drinking, high-fiving people in their cars as we worked our way through Friday-night, St. Paddy's Day traffic.  I was having the best time, surrounded by friends and strangers, many of which were very cute boys indeed.

The song of the moment was Ride Wit Me by Nelly.  I had heard the song before, but never really liked it.  I obviously needed the right moment and this was it.  We were all in this together, singing loudly and exuberantly: Must be the Money!!  I didn't want the evening to end, but after closing down the Velvet Lounge, it did.  I remember Pam kissing a boy, saying goodbye, as I waited in the cab.  I had lost track of the boy I had been kissing somewhere in the Velvet Lounge.  It was around this point that we discovered Pam's wallet was missing, but this story had a happy ending.  Some kids found it on the Embarcadero (must have fallen out of the cable car during the dancing) and we spent a fun morning shopping in Marin where we met them and the wallet. 

No St. Paddy's Day has compared to that one and I doubt one ever will.  There is simply no corned beef in the world that can compete with cable cars and Nelly.