Supervisor Chris Daly has made a new year’s resolution to include the word f*ck in every meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Such a noble venture for the most hated of all the Supervisors. He is antinomian to core. His job is just to anger people in this city by saying no to everything we say yes to and say yes to everything we say no to.
Chris serves the government less and himself more. Therefore it is at this time that announce, nay, I proclaim that I should replace Chris Daly as Supervisor of District 6! I have lived my life in San Francisco. In the Sunset District, The Mission District and Midtown Terrace. Chris Daly lives, just like Ed Jew, outside of San Francisco. He is the governing Supervisor over the Tenderloin and Treasure Island. My college thesis was on the construction of Treasure Island and I have visited it many times, probably more times than Chris f*cking Daly.
Being one of the few who was born and raised in San Francisco, I know San Francisco and you Chris Daly, are not San Francisco. I will serve this city as Supervisor as a true citizen of San Francisco, by helping to clean up the Tenderloin and create a new green community on Treasure Island by implementing the best plans that have been suggested as well as building concrete walls around the perimeter to keep the rising water from flooding our Treasured Island build in 1939 for the epic San Francisco world’s fair celebrating our city and the construction of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge.
I call upon our esteemed Mayor Newsom to hear my call and replace Chris f*cking Daly for a dereliction of duties as a Supervisor of San Francisco and for his misrepresenting our fine city to the world. He has no right to besmirch our image as the great city that we are with his foul mouthed antics and disregard for performing his job as a supervisor of this great city. I shall offer to meet Chris f*cking Daly in public debate and will offer my services to the community he presides over as well as offering to replace him for under 6 figures a year since no one in the district he presides over makes that much a year. I will also attend every Board of Supervisors meeting unlike most of the board and I will walk the streets of my district proudly meeting with those who live there other than during re-election time.
If this does not happen I will do as Emperor Norton once did and proclaim myself the royal sovereign of the Tenderloin and Treasure Island and make myself the Commander-in-Chief of the area to protect it from the pompous ways of its public enemy #1 Chris f*cking Daly!
This isn’t a story about San Francisco per se, but it is about a friend of mine who lives in San Francisco. I won’t share his name to protect his anonymity, but he’s flown off to join the crew of the Sea Shephed Conservation Society to serve a noble cause–the end of whaling. When was the last time you woke up and thought, hmmmm I want some whale today? Probably never. Part of that fact is that there has been a moratorium in place on commercial whaling for many years. The Japanese have made an end run though and saying their doing it for scientific research. What exactly is so scientific about killing and cutting up whales then putting them in cold storage?
My friend on board is an average guy yet remarkable. He is risking his life as well as his career and the possibility of facing jail time for what he believes in. Yes, you could say he’s a “Berkeley hippie type”, but he’s not. He’s the type of guy who’s trying to protect our environment and the animals that live in it. He was on a boat in the Antarctic Ocean watching as a Japanese whaling boat turned and rammed a much smaller trimaran boat injuring several of the people on board who had to dive into arctic waters to save themselves. By international maritime law, this falls under piracy, by the laws of Australia and New Zealand it is considered an act of war. The Japanese on this ship aren’t just researchers as why would researchers need Swat armor and flash bang grenades or LRAD systems that our soldiers use? If you visit Animal Planet’s website you’ll see this for yourself.
Australia and New Zealand have condemmed the actions of the Japanese, but are also afraid of the possible loss of $52 Billion Australian dollars they get from the Japanese. From my understanding of this, while the Aussie might loose a bit of money, it will be for a short period of time. The coal and beef going the Japanese will not stop once they start getting cold and hungry.
I’ll be the first to admit, I like my meat, but I have to send out a word of thanks to a friend of mine who’s doing a good job in a place where it’s way to cold for me to go under conditions I don’t think I could tolerate. This is what San Francisco is all about, not smug yuppies that came from somewhere else who sit around drinking latte’s and swearing during our Board of Supervisor’s meetings, oh wait, that’s our local government.
People are talking about the loss of a big tourist attraction from San Francisco, the Pier 39 sea lions which called Pier 39 home since 1989. Everyone is writing stories about why they left, but they don’t know why. Allow me to edify you as to why the sea lions left Pier 39. They used to live on the obviously named at the time, “Seal Rock” out by the old Sutro Baths ruins. Then because they ate up most of the herring out there they left to find more and find a nice feeding ground with lovely places to rest at Pier 39.
This year, there was a large influx of sea lions in the late fall which caused the amount of plentiful herring found near Pier 39 to disappear. When the food goes, so go the sea lions. They basically ate the place dry and needed to move on to find more food. Find the herring and you’ll find the sea lions.
It’s a bit sad that they’re gone from Pier 39, but there’s lots of other stuff there to attract people. Maybe they’ll move back to Seal Rock so that people will have another place to visit in the city, and while you’re out there You should visit the Seal Rock Inn for breakfast or lunch. Great food at great prices and their Greek food is to die for, not to mention their rooms if you’re looking for a place to stay are awesome. There I got a foodie reference in.
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago at 5:18 pm. Add a comment
Being the Italian kind of guy I am we have an annual Christmas Eve traditions of having ravioli’s for dinner. I think this might have started just to make life easier so we could focus on the big meal the next day.
Our tradition begins usually a week or two in advance where you actually have to call in your order for ravioli’s at Lucca’s Delicatessen. If you don’t call it in there won’t be any when you get there. Now Lucca’s is probably one of the only shops left on Chestnut Street aside from the Horseshoe Bar that were still there when I was a kid.
I used to remember my dad getting off work and he bring me to the Horseshoe where they’d hide me in the corner with my Shirley Temple while he knocked back a few. But I digress.
Lucca’s is an outstanding delicatessen. The kind of place that you’re just happy standing out in front and smelling the air that wafts out of the place. Quite a lot of their meats and cheeses are imported directly from Italy and they receive shipments of fresh real mozzarella every week. Their prosciutto de parma is a meat that is absolutely to die for. But today we were here for the big meaty raviolis. They are the true traditional raviolis and they make them fresh daily there. If you don’t know what goes into true raviolis you might not want to eat them. I think they’re a way to get kids to eat animal parts they wouldn’t normally eat, but I still love them to this day. The trick is to call in your order and pay by phone then you won’t have to stand in line for so long. You just show up and give the girl in the front by the door your name and she’ll run back and give you your order. I get a kind of smug feeling when I get to do this because it’s like walking into the post office with an already labeled priority mail box at Christmas and getting to walk past the huddled and tired masses and just drop it on the front table and walk out.
Lucca’s is a gem that I hope never goes away like so much else on Chestnut Street. I’m really looking forward to dinner tonight.
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 2:10 pm. Add a comment
I never brought this up before, but I’ve done my time giving lectures. I guess it started when I was asked to give an oral report in school. I liked doing that very much and as a kid I was a sponge soaking up information left and right. I’m glad I’ve kept that up because I find myself learning more now than I did in school which in and of itself could be a lecture. I have a very good knowledge of San Francisco History as well as aquarium keeping and audio recording. If you have a group that would be interested in having me as a guest lecturer email me and we can make arrangements. I’m pretty inexpensive as well. I might even do it for a free dinner.
Here are a few of the lectures I’ve given in the past.
San Francisco’s Sunset District: The Outside Lands.
Why Americans never call themselves Americans.
Why Caucasian is a meaningless term.
Getting your blog noticed.
How to turn your computer into a professional recording studio.
Setting up a planted aquarium.
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 12:58 pm. Add a comment
Ok I’ll step back from food for a minute and talk about the technological wonders of the Bay Area. We are probably one of the most tech-savvy areas in the world. Maybe we don’t have scream powered cars like they do in Japan, but just about everyone I know has a website or is a blogger etc, etc, etc…
Well a few years ago when I was paying well over $200 a year to host my first commercial website on about 60mbs of space it seemed a bit expensive. I think it cost $50 a year to register a domain name back then as well. Well prices have dropped. I wanted to let you all know of a super deal that you can get through our sponsors hostrail.com. This company will give you 30Gbs of space on your own virtual private server for $7.99/month. If you want even more bang for your buck if you buy in use the promo code LGN09 and you’ll get an additional 30% off for the life of the account. That brings the price down to less than $5/month.
A VPS gives you overall control of the server and you could even sell off space to your friends and make some extra money. The Bay Area is home to techie entrepreneurs so why not give it a shot. They have 24/7 onsite access and I’ve never seen one of my sites go down. My last provider was charging me $45 a year for 200mb of space so just do the math for a few seconds and there’s a lot of potential there. With this you also get full access to cpanel [which will give you the ability to auto install several add ons like wordpress that I'm using] and whm control of each site and overall VPS control. Many of the providers are doing this sort of thing so why not jump in and do it yourself. Say you offer 1Gb of space for $50/year that would be an extra $1500/year you’d be getting then you could move up to even bigger servers and make more money.
All you have to do is monitor you email and the rest of the work is done for you. They also have an affiliate program so you can use that to make even more money. So take my advice and check them out.
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 7:04 pm. Add a comment
OK, I’m getting a bit foodie again, but this place came to mind tonight after watching an episode of Chef Daniel Boloud’s After Hours. In the show he brought a chef he would be cooking with that night some of his own name brand caviar. Now for me growing up, fish eggs were something you used as bait when fishing, mainly salmon roe. Then one day a woman walked in to the printer I was working for who needed some folding done of some cards they were sending out. She was from the Tsar Nicoulai Caviar company that was next door. We did the job and when it was finished and I delivered it within an hour she was so happy she gave me some black truffled infused osetra caviar and smoked sturgeon. It was about a 2oz jar which for caviar is pretty sizeable and I had learned that this company which has farms up by Russian River uses sustainable farming techniques. This is due to a ban on importation of Caspian and Black Sea caviar due to the fact that the sturgeon are on the endangered species list from being over farmed.
Fish eggs? hmmmm. I wasn’t sure what to think about eating fish eggs, but I had just received something people who usually make about 3 times what I was making usually get to eat. So i figured I’d do it up right and bought a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and went home and put it in the freezer. Aside from smoked salmon, I don’t tend to like smoked fish so I gave the smoked sturgeon to my mother who said it was really good. By now the vodka was properly chilled and we broke out the blinis and creme fraice. He both looked at each other with a “you go first” kind of look. We both threw them back and began to taste them. Suddenly, I understood the “nutty, briney earthiness of this caviar. The earthiness was most like from the black truffle infusion which usually means it tastes like dirt, but still it was pretty good. I was really surprised I would actually enjoy this, but it was really good.
Apparently, it’s so good that there are top named restaurants around the US who are purchasing their caviar from them. Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter and Rick Moonen to name a few. What they’re doing they’re apparently doing right and getting lots of acclaim for it. They have a café at the Ferry Building where you can have tastings paired with sparkling wines that will run you from $42-$102. Not cheap, but it’s definitely worth a try. They also have a wide range of sandwiches and salads that incorporate their caviar and smoked fish as well. I have to tell you that their smoked salmon is incredible and they don’t focus just on sturgeon caviar, but have other less expensive versions from paddlefish and whitefish that have a great taste as well. If you have the time and little extra money and want to feel a bit like James Bond, check these guys out.
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Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 8:59 am. Add a comment
