After learning the news that we’d have a week off from school before online school began, my friend Joann Zhang and I immediately made plans to hang out. In order to have a night we could remember that was fun and worthy of social media posts, we set out to have an aesthetic VSCO night.
(For the older demographic who might be reading this story, VSCO is a photo editing app that allows people to share their pictures.)
Our plan was simple: Go for a 20-minute run along the railroad tracks until we made it to DeAnza Boulevard, where we could get some food to eat on the railroad tracks and take pretty pictures.
We set out at 5 p.m. to make it in time for sunset pictures. The first part of our plan went smoothly as we ran to DeAnza, although I was dying from being so out of shape.
After sweating from the run, I was worried our pictures wouldn’t come out as well as we’d expected, but we still had high hopes.
Once finishing our run, we went to H-Mart to stock up on snacks for the break. We then got F’Real milkshakes at a gas station and made our way to a pizza shop.
But we immediately noticed a weird vibe when entering the restaurant. The customers were all old white males, and the place gave off a very conservative vibe, which is something you wouldn’t expect to find at Saratoga.
We began to look at the menu before we were kicked out for having food from outside the restaurant. Not wanting to throw away our cheap but delicious milkshakes, I stayed outside as my friend ordered our pizza to go.
After 30 minutes of waiting for our food outside in the freezing cold while people came and went with the food they received before us, we went in to check on our cheese pizza.
Two minutes after asking if our pizza was ready, we were given a dirty pizza box and shoved out the door.
It was already 7 p.m. and sunset was scheduled to be at 7:15, so we ran with our groceries and pizza to the railroad just in time for pictures.
Things had already gone off plan before, but now our whole agenda was ruined when the sun decided not to look pretty for our pictures. There was no sunset; the sky was dark and gloomy, and it was freezing as we walked along the tracks.
Of course we were sad we didn’t have the perfect VSCO night, but we knew food could fix our mood.
We opened the pizza box only to realize they had given us the completely wrong order: pepperoni when we specifically asked for cheese.
Our aesthetic VSCO night had been officially ruined. We walked back home shivering in our running clothes and in the dark. After all of our effort, there were no pictures taken to post on Instagram or to edit on VSCO as commemoration of an interesting night.
Now that I’m abiding by the rules of the shelter-in-place, I can no longer have an aesthetic night, but it was a fun experience that marked the beginning of our break. So if anyone is planning to not follow social distancing, don’t expect an amazing VSCO night, it might be best to stay in during quarantine.