The Griffin’s Favorite Duo goes to San Francisco

By: Hannah Wiley, Managing Editor and Kaitlin O’Meara, Copy Editor

The Griffin’s Favorite Duo decided to take a break from being food and theater critics to jet set across the country for the staff’s annual trip to the Associated Collegiate Press (ACP) College Spring Media Conference. 

I (Hannah) would first like to take a moment to apologize to anyone who may have fallen for my Instagram caption. I can confirm I am still both jobless and planless come May 16, 2026 (unfortunately). 

Day zero (A.KA. our travel day), we got off the plane and, after listening to “California Gurls” by Katy Perry, almost immediately (two hours later) found ourselves at the Golden Gate Bridge. We spent a while looking around and taking pictures because many of us had never been here or seen it for ourselves. After spending around 30 minutes at the outlook, we ventured towards the visitor center to check out the “trinkets,” as Peter Neville would say, and then went to dinner. 

If you’re a loyal TikTok or Instagram follower of @thecanisiusgriffin, you probably saw our In-N-Out vlog, and this was our day zero dinner. Most of us had never been before, so we decided that it was a must-visit this trip. While here, we met a group of students from Central Michigan University who were also here for the conference. We then left for the candy shop next door before heading back to the hotel via cable car. Well, mostly on the cable car, as it ended up breaking down about halfway into our trip. Though we waited for it for a while, we eventually decided to take a bus back, but after realizing that it wasn’t showing up, we decided to walk the mile back to the hotel. 

Day one started off at Kaitlin’s most requested activity, Philz’s Coffee. We all liked it so much that we went every morning for the rest of the trip. Thursday was also the day of our favorite breakout session, called “Have some fun, damn it.” We were in line to buy the conference sweatshirts, and ended up meeting the girl who was running the session because she was manning the table. We struck up a conversation because she was wearing a “professional yapper” sweatshirt on, and if you know The Griffin staff, you know that is definitely a way to describe us. She is the self-proclaimed “director of fun” for her newspaper staff and we think that should be a permanent position added to our staff. 

The first day of the conference is always the keynote speaker (this year, a panel on covering protests) and the welcome dinner, which we obviously attended like the dedicated student journalists we are. Dinner was subpar, and also, we have a bone to pick with the hotel for not providing us with a sweet treat. What kind of establishment doesn’t provide a sweet treat after dinner?! Alas, we ventured out to get our own sweet treats and somehow three of our staff members ended up on the news. If you were watching NBC Bay Area around approximately 11 p.m. PST, you might have seen our Editor-in-Chief Mikayla Boyd. The Griffin’s Favorite Duo sends our apologies to Colin and Kaitlyn Belile (KB) who got cut out from the segment. 

Day two was the day we had all been waiting for: Alcatraz day. We began the day with, you guessed it, Philz and the conference. I (Kaitlin) went to a session led by students from California State University Long Beach on how to go about covering immigrant stories in ways that don’t focus on ICE and the current political climate any more than necessary. I had gone to their session last year that talked about their process of transforming their magazine from a fully Spanish publication to a bilingual one, and I found that both were very interesting. Hannah went with a few other members of The Griffin staff to a session on how your first job is not your dream job, and that’s okay. 

After conferencing, we went on an adventure to Target and Trader Joe’s, the former because KB was in desperate need of a sweater and the latter because we were curious. We found a little alley with cute restaurants to sit and people watch while we waited for KB and Mikayla to be done shopping. When they rejoined us, we found a restaurant for lunch and spent some time eating and chatting about the rest of our day. And then, Alcatraz. For more on our experience at Alcatraz, read Assistant Sports Editor Peter Neville’s article on our time there. 

When we returned from our visit to Alcatraz – luckily they let us all off the island – we ventured on to Pier 39 to visit one of The Griffin’s favorite restaurants: Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. For anyone who heard about our experience last year in Long Beach, you know that attending Bubba Gump (what we lovingly named “gumping”) was a crucial part of our time. For a group of people at a seafood restaurant, we ordered a shockingly low amount of seafood, with only two members of our group actually getting the surf part of surf and turf. From there, we visited Ghirardelli Square for ice cream to end our night.

Day three was our most action-packed and chaotic day. We didn’t realize until touching down in San Fran that they have the biggest Lunar New Year parade outside of Asia that just so happened to be taking place while we were in town. We also happened to be staying in Chinatown and on the street the parade would be going down. Earlier in the day we went back to Pier 39 to see the sea lions in the daylight (it was nap time when we were there) and then we also decided to return to Ghirardelli Square, you guessed it, to see it in the daylight. We ended up having lunch here and Sophie dropped one of her best roasts of the trip (shout-out to Sophie and her one-liners). 

After lunch we met up with Dr. Snyder and stood outside of the “Full House” house for a whole 60 seconds (it was anticlimactic) and then walked around the Haight Ashbury neighborhood. When we finished exploring, we tried to head back to the hotel before dinner, but were caught by the parade and ended up heading to dinner early. Dinner was delicious – we went to a restaurant in Chinatown and shared a lot of different things – and then we went to an ice cream sandwich place, finishing out the trip with one final sweet treat.

As always, this trip is a great opportunity to spend time with fellow members of staff (including many other members of various Griffin’s favorite duos) and explore a new city. 

Until next time, xoxo GFD!

Via Kaitlyn Belile