Month: November 2010

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8′ Apple or Pumpkin Pies Now On Sale!

I suppose it’s the casualness of writing today that caused this, but in today’s world where people can’t remember when to use its or it’s is one thing, but advertising an 8 foot pie for $5.99 is going a little too far.

I feel I’ve been ranting a little too much lately so I’ll try and keep this in rant lite mode. I actually thought this was kind of funny and was wondering if  I should demand an 8 foot pie for $5.99, but then I realized, I don’t really like pie enough to eat a whole 8′ of one. Hopefully I’ll get to be at the Lucky’s store when someone demands 8′ of pie for $5.99.[mappress mapid=”23″]

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The Outside Lands

Friday was an interesting day for me as I got together with a couple of friends for lunch in the Inner Sunset district. This is a great place to eat because of the area I refer to as “the Cross”. It runs from roughly 8th avenue to 10th avenue and from Judah to Lincoln Way. Every other shop is a restaurant pretty much and you’ve got a choice of foods from around the world.

As we were sitting and gorging ourselves at Crepevine we started talking about how San Francisco used to be before people decided it might nice to live here. Well, the picture here is of 7th and Lawton streets before the construction boom that finally killed off the last inland sand dunes somewhere around the 90’s [it’s now a soccer field behind St. Ignatius High School]. I remember the sand as a kid, it was everywhere. If you dug down less than a foot in the grass planted around my elementary school you hit sand. I think the street cleaners used to be there more for cleaning the sand off the streets than for picking up garbage.

When my parents bought our house in 1954 their backyard was a long strip of sand enclosed in low cost fencing [much the same as many of the pot farm houses still retain]. My dad used to tell me how he’d take my mom’s dog to rear fence and drop him over on the dunes and let him run. Don’t worry, it was a low fence. These were what was known as the “Outside Lands.” Because of Twin Peaks it didn’t used to be very easy to get here so people would have to drive from downtown out through the Mission and circle around until the street car tunnel was put in and roads were able to built to bring people over.

It probably had something to do with 1894 Midwinter Exposition that gave us Golden Gate Park as well. First thing built in the Sunset District was the Shannon Bar, the oldest remaining bar in San Francisco. If you travel out by the beach you might find some remains of Carville where people bought old streetcars and cable cars and turned them into housing kind of like what some people are doing with the steel shipping crates today. Steve “Woody” LaBounty of the Western Neighborhoods Project has written an excellent book on this time and I remember seeing him at a removal of an old earthquake shack from someone’s back yard several years ago. Oh, and what was in that backyard…sand. We still have it. If you travel along Taraval or Judah streets closer to the ocean you’ll see it filling in cracks along the streetcar tracks still, just not as much as it used to.

Our cool, foggy beaches are what says Sunset District to me along with the Indian summers that bring us out of our houses more to do nothing except be outside. Oh, and then there’s the sand.

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Superheroes of the Sunset!

There is a family of superheros lurking in the Sunset district and they are my family. I discovered our superhuman powers today on a trip to IKEA. Normally we don’t have much of a problem with IKEA, but the following story will introduce you to our superhuman ways which hopefully only occur outside of San Francisco. Allow me to introduce you.

I am Gravitron! A man of seemingly normal size, yet he has an internal mass of that close to Jupiter. As we were walking around IKEA I noticed people were bumping into me so I stopped walking due to irritation and the need to punch something preferable human that wouldn’t land me in a jail cell. Straight ahead, family of four, walking a straight line and yet as they got closer and closer their straight line trajectory started to veer off, pulled by the gravitation forces Gravitron exudes. I even cleared my throat to make this a near impact event yet Fi! Tis not! They walked right into me. I attracted in excess of 10 tractor beam like collisions with double that in near misses.

Now it is time to meet my wife, The Invisible Woman. She has the power to walk next to you and as you are talking to her when you turn your head your sentence ends with, “where the hell is she?!” She is obviously immune to the pull of Gravitron, but that is to be expected after being married for 14 years. She at least is lucky enough to not be sucking IKEA patrons in to herself like Gravitron, but this also makes Gravitron have to conduct all business transactions because she gets ignored by their dreaded nemesis, Check out Boy who can’t see her until Gravitron throws off the IKEA customers stuck to him at Check out Boy to get his attention.

Ahh, and then there is the sweetest of the family, their daughter, White Dwarf. She who is small in stature, yet at 3.5 years old is like pushing Jabba the Hut in a wheelchair. Luckily she has not folded in on herself to become Black Hole, which, let’s face it would be a creepy superhero name. She is not fat, barely reaching 40lbs, but she has the innate ability to make herself heavier in her vehicle of transport called, “The Stroller” by pushing her feet against the wheel that you will break a sweat within 20 ft of pushing her. Lucky for us, her kryptonite is french fries which weakens her strength.

So now I know why families get a little stressed by group outings. Always remember in the words of Gravitron while shopping in stores, “Walk! Don’t Block!”

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Politics! Politics! Politics!

Note to readers: Having discovered that my name server had changed a little to late when I moved things over to the new server I suddenly lost a few posts and pictures which threw me off for a bit. Now I will hopefully regain my stride and get back to more regular posts.

The only thing that got more people’s attention than the Giant’s winning the world series was the election and pretty much as I figured California mooned the rest of the country.

Jerry’s back as President Governor followed by the rest of the Democrats just showing that we’re more a blue state than we were yesterday. Queen Meg will now have to be questioned on her business acumen after investing over $100 million dollars in a campaign that failed. Think of what she could have done with that money if she hadn’t run and started the Whitman Foundation to help needy kids or homeless people or some other ennobling cause. She’d be seen as a hero, but now she’ll go down as a business woman who spent the most money in a campaign that failed.

Oh yeah, pot is still illegal.

The coastal areas were all in favor of it and the inland empire was against it.  What surprised me the most was that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin showed support for prop 19 yet Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, Kamala Haris, Barbara Boxer and the California Cannabis Association were against it. Wait, Governor Moonbeam didn’t want pot legalized? What’s he been smoking? It turns out on the against prop 19 list where a large number of pot producers who would, so they thought, lose money if it was legalized because it would drive the price down. Any quick trip online to look at prices for medical marijuana show that that’s not true.

Personally, I think it’s a shame that it didn’t pass. It would have increased the revenue that we already get from medical marijuana sales (which is currently north of $100 million) and it would have given California another reason to be a “go-to” spot. Estimates put the potential gains for the state at north of $4 billion per year.  Think of what that money would have done for our schools, our roads. It’s even possible that we could have eliminated state income tax if it passed. Nevada fortifies itself from gambling revenues so its residents don’t have to pay state income tax. Think about it. Even though our own Governator was against prop 19 he decriminalized have up to an ounce as a $100 fine.

I think the best that can be said about this was said by Richard Lee of Oaksterdam University, “Over the course of the last year, it has become clear that the legalization of marijuana is no longer a question of if, but a question of when.” I guess we just need the state to need the money more and have less people who don’t want to put their political careers on the line to support it.