Eric Kauschen – Page 12 – Baghdad By The Bay

June 17, 2013December 18, 2021

Great Highway Fixed

I’m happy to say that the road work on Great Highway from Lincoln Blvd. to Geary Blvd. is fixed. Wife and I took a drive over there this morning after the San Francisco marathon and I have to say that the road is smooth as glass now.

Well smooth as glass with sand all over it at least. That was the first thing I noticed since now that the road is black once again after being a dull gray for so many years you really notice the amount of sand that blows across it. Click on the photo to enlarge it to see for yourself. There really isn’t a fix for this except more wind to blow to sand away. I ended up having to take another trip over there this evening and found that the wind that picks up in the afternoon had done it’s job and the sand was off to the side. I suppose for now I’ll just think of the sand as a natural asphalt polisher to help keep our roads out there nice and shiny.

I’d also like to take a moment to note that I had written several times to then Mayor Gavin Newsom about repaving the street down there that it might encourage some food truck businesses and cause an over all re-awakening of the area. Well, since it’s only the street that’s been done and none of the parking areas there’s still that problem looming, but hopefully that will be added in in the near future. If you look at some old pictures of Playland when it was there I think that might have been the last time the road had a full repayment. The whole area could be nice if they could find a way to keep up the area, but they would have to start with the sand first.

At least for now you can drive your car in the area once again without having to take it in for a re-alignment afterwards.

June 14, 2013December 18, 2021

How To Tell If You’re A San Franciscan

This topic has been bothering me for awhile when I see people who are bloggers and journalists and sometimes both talking about being from San Francisco. Most of these people are in their 30’s or 40’s and have moved here maybe in the 90’s. They never seemed to be San Franciscans to me and the reason why finally came to me today.

It’s not that you have to be old to call yourself a San Franciscan. My daughter is only six and she’s a San Franciscan. She was born at Children’s Hospital like me and my mother. Then it hit me. You pretty much have to have gone through puberty in San Francisco to qualify as a San Franciscan. What’s so special about puberty? Well I’ll leave the jokes out along with the gray haired old ladies that were hip and with it who taught sex ed and scarred us for life. It’s more than that.

Going through puberty in San Francisco means that you went to elementary school and high school here. Even today if you are currently going through that it will change you and leave a mark on you that everyone will notice. It does in part have to do with what part of the city you’ve grown up in provided that you aren’t moving every couple of years. You should stay in the same place for at least 10 years. I’ve figured 10 years is a good length of time because by then you’ve spent enough time in one place where you can qualitatively say things like, remember when we… or gee this place had gone to crap. People who are always moving around in the city have never spent enough time to see the place change. I on the other hand have been in the same neighborhood for so long I’ve seen it change and change again a number of times. Why I remember when I could go by my neighbor’s house to get lumpia and not have to drive to Daly City. Oh, there I go. I remember when the only people without kids in the Sunset district were elderly drunks. Ah, that’s a good one I had almost forgotten.

There are a few people this doesn’t really apply to, but they still can call themselves San Franciscans. Willie Brown started here by going to San Francisco State in 1951 before serving as Mayor and Tony Bennett was a New Yorker who got his claim to fame by writing I left my heart in San Francisco which sort of gives him status. [Note to Willie and Tony: Can I get an interview?] I suppose people like this would come under the category of leaving your mark on San Francisco in a big way. I’m sure though that there are others who left their mark in a big way that some might dispute, but I think you get my idea.

If you’re wishing that you could have the old San Francisco back and you’re talking about the 90’s you aren’t a real San Franciscan unless you’re 20.

— Eric I remember when a successful start up mean you could drive to the store. Kauschen

June 12, 2013December 18, 2021

WWDC Nerd Fest

Well Apple is in town this week for the World Wide Developer Conference and along with that comes the requisite keynote address. I’ve watched it a couple of times before writing this to let it sink in.

Not a single product was released. That means that there wasn’t a throng of Apple fans rushing to update their software right after the Apple love fest in an attempt to bring down the internet for the rest of the world. On the upside I think this keynote was Apple’s answer to everyone saying that Apple just isn’t as cool without Steve Jobs. Sure they had to pull out several people to cover for the missing omnipotent Steve, but I think they did a pretty good job. Here’s my breakdown of the speakers:

Tim Cook: He’s been seen as a bit milquetoast-like. He doesn’t offer the wow factor Jobs did, but he was always the voice of reason to come back to. I noticed a bit lispy precision in his voice making him sound a bit like a gay account as he was rattling off the numbers to us of how popular Apple has been in the past year.

Craig Federighi: This was the wow factor guy. He played the audience of balding 20 year old nerds quite well in such a way that he also made those who were watching that weren’t of the nerdish variety go weird. You know the type. Those people who think plugging in an appliance makes them technologically advanced. Craig played to the hecklers who tried to interrupt him without breaking a sweat and even through in a bit of self deprecation which always goes over well in my book.

Phil Schiller: He’s Phil. He’s always there and he’s got a sort of low brow, I’m not going to throw numbers at you, but big words that sound cool. Can’t innovate my ass was his best line of the show. Phil is the type of guy that you place a shot of 50 year old single malt scotch in front of and start to explain all the care and forethought that went into making it and when you turn your eyes back to him from the glass he’s downed it and ordered another couple of shots while pulling out his corporate card to pay for it. Phil to me represents the end user that just wants the box he sunk his money down on to do the job.

Eddy Cue: METALLICA! I was waiting for him to scream that out during his presentation of iRadio, but he went a little more subtle and chose Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin with a couple of required head bangs during the start of the song. Eddy Cue is like comedian Jim Breuer in that he took the stage looking like he had just finished off a few too many beers and can’t pronounce the big words Phil was throwing out. Oddly enough he did a pretty good job explaining iRadio. I’m going to use it when it’s available. Something tells me he has Nickelback on his playlist though.

All in all it was a pretty well thought out presentation. So much so that it wasn’t until afterwards that all the people who use Apple at home finally realized, They didn’t release a single product today!!!! The various people talking about how great Apple is was interspersed with shots of the audience to include Al Gore, Woz and Jony Ive just to add to the cool factor of the day.

From what they showed of iOS7 looks like it was created by someone who watches far too much 80’s Japanese Anime, but after all the talk about flat, simple icons I could finally understand why when Craig started tilting an iPhone running iOS7 — the wallpaper looks like it sits about 6″ below the icons. I’m sure there’s someone at Apple who gets paid a lot of money who said the line during a meeting that 6” is enough for anyone. That was probably Jony Ive who used to be Jonathan Ive, but I guess that was a bit stuffy sounding for Apple. Then there was Darth Vader’s trash can™ or the new Mac Pro. It had a very slick look to it and it’s sleek black is something I welcome back. I’ve missed Apple’s black laptops because black will always be the new black. Black has always been cool and will always remain cool. Kind of like why we call the Yakuza the Japanese mafia and not the mafia the Italian Yakuza, because it was the first to come up with a cooler name for organized crime.

Looking cool seemed to be the focus of this keynote. Gone is the skeuomorphic design, replaced by flat icons that every designer has now redesigned in 15 minutes. Sure the new OSX Mavericks does some cool things, but it’s doing things it should have been doing a few years ago. Speed and functionality took a back seat in the presentation to showing off how tilting the screen lets you see more of the wallpaper or that animated thunderbolts accompany your weather prediction. It’s kind of like a new coat of paint on a old car with a few tricks thrown in. Yes Apple can still innovate, but at the same time they’re adding on features that other apps have been doing for awhile, so while they innovate they are also coming up to speed. San Francisco will be changed this week and hopefully the city can suck every last penny out of all the techies who’ve come to San Francisco and not live off the outside sponsored hipster buffets™ that no doubt will be going on all over the place.

June 10, 2013December 18, 2021

Amazon? For Groceries?

Apparently Amazon didn’t get the memo and is planning to start grocery delivery in San Francisco this fall. With one exception every company that’s tried to do this before has failed. Something tells me that for San Francisco Amazon will fail like the others, but at least it has a another side of it’s business to fall back on.

Few people remember back in the 90’s when there was a company called PeaPod that operated in San Francisco delivering groceries. They actually were buying their groceries from Andronico’s which meant you were getting top shelf fresh produce and meats, but it was a bit higher. Granted if you wanted top quality food delivered to your house it would cost you a bit more, but overall it really was maybe around $5 on a $100 order of groceries. Wife and I used to use them a lot because my family stopped going grocery shopping and just told us to pick it up for them when we went shopping.

This caused a few problems as we would now have to lug around two shopping carts and confuse the checkers as to why we would be paying for two carts separately which for some reason seemed strange to them. PeaPod changed this since we could order my family’s food online and have it delivered to them all paid in full. This worked out fine until one of the deliveries refused to bring the delivery up the stairs so my Mother assumed that they would never do this again which led us to have to go back to shopping for them.

It wasn’t too bad since PeaPod decided to close up shop around the same time, but a new company called Webvan had started up just a little before. Webvan wasn’t as good as PeaPod. I don’t know where they were getting their groceries from, but the couple of times we used them they would substitute something we ordered that they didn’t have with something that wasn’t even close to the same. Like you order six apples, but they’re out so they send over a watermelon. I’m not sure who did the thinking on the substitutions there, but they also didn’t last long.

Safeway is the only store that delivers groceries for a flat fee, but at this point it’s just as easy to go to the store for them since both of us aren’t working 40 hour weeks anymore. There’s no word yet on where Amazon is getting their supplies of groceries from or where they’re planning on stockpiling them, but the idea of bring back a Web 1.0 concept that didn’t work figuring you’re so big that you won’t have a problem is, well, a problem. I have a love for some of the old Web 1.0 companies. I used to use Kozmo all the time to rent DVD’s and then started added other stuff like ice cream and snacks in with the DVD. I especially loved that all I had to do was walk down to the corner from my house to return the DVD. That’s kind of like what Amazon is planning on doing, but with groceries as the main item and then you can supposedly add in some of their other products as well. Keep in mind that Amazon invested over $60 million dollars that it lost in Kozmo.

Good luck to you Amazon. No wait, not good luck to you. Amazon makes it’s employees wear ankle monitors like prisoners released to house arrest so that they can track them and data mine their workers to make them more efficient and fire them if they aren’t. That is not the kind of thinking that San Francisco has ever liked unless your home was Alcatraz.

June 7, 2013December 18, 2021

The Cable Car Museum

San Francisco is known for it’s museums, but some of them don’t get noticed. San Francisco’s Cable Car Museum is one of these, even for people who were born and raised here.

If you’re from San Francisco you probably don’t ride the Cable Cars very often and just sort of take them for granted, but they have a history that is truly San Franciscan and the Cable Car Museum is the best place to learn about this. Andrew Smith Hallidae conceived of a cable driven transport system in 1869 and brought it to life in 1873 starting on Clay Street. The hills of San Francisco were just too much for the horses to pull the cars loaded with people so he came up with a way around it that has become one of the main symbols of San Francisco ever since.

The Museum itself was built in 1974 and is operated by the Friends of the Cable Car Museum as a nonprofit educational facility.

Located in the historic Washington/Mason cable car barn and powerhouse, the museum deck overlooks the huge engines and winding wheels that pull the cables. Downstairs is a viewing area of the large sheaves and cable line entering the building through the channel under the street.

On display are various mechanical devices such as grips, track, cable, brake mechanisms, tools, detailed models, and a large collection of historic photographs. You’ll even get a close up look at how the cables work.

The museum houses three antique cable cars from the 1870s. The Sutter Street Railway No. 46 grip car & No. 54 trailer and the only surviving car from the first cable car company, the Clay Street Hill Railroad No. 8 grip car. The museum store offers a variety of cable car memorabilia, books, clothing, cards and even genuine cable car bells! Hours for the museum are 10 am – 6 pm, April 1 thru September 30. 10 am – 5 pm, October 1 thru March 31. Open every day except New Year’s Day, Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Admission is Free. Phone: 415-474-1887

June 6, 2013December 18, 2021

Annabelle Candy Company

Here’s one of those, WOW! I didn’t know that! things that happens to me every once in awhile. Some friends were talking about candy we all ate as kids and one name that came up was the Big Hunk. It turns out that was made by the Annabelle Candy Company that started in San Francisco in 1950 and moved to Haward, CA in 1964.

If you’re from around San Francisco you may remember the super sweet peanut-y Big Hunk. It turns out the secret ingredient that gave it its taste was honey which is funny because while I loved Big Hunk bars, I hate honey in most forms. The company was founded by Russian immigrant Sam Altshuler in 1950 and was named after his daughter Annabelle. The Annabelle Candy Company also has the distinction of being the only independently owned candy company able to work on a large scale. If that’s not impressive enough they have even gone solar, expecting to save over $125,000/year or over $6.5 million over the next 25 years just on the energy savings.

Big Hunk is not their only candy though, they also make Rocky Road, Abba-Zabba, Look and Uno candy bars [note: Microwaving a Big Hunk for 3-5 seconds or freezing a Uno bar is like receiving communion from the devil. You’ve got to try it]. They aren’t that hard to find in and around San Francisco as they are still made today, but if you’re having trouble finding them or you moved away you can order them online and have them shipped. Oh did I forget to mention that they regularly run contests on their facebook site giving away their candy?

If you want to see how a small candy company makes their bars that turn a big profit watch the video below.

June 4, 2013December 18, 2021

If I Were The Supervisor of District 4

I apparently found out today quite by accident that Supervisor Katy Tang is up for re-election for Supervisor of District 4 just after she was appointed to the position. Those who wish to run against her have until June 11th to come up with the $500 to enter the race.

There is one person who entered to run against her, but he’s 64 and has only been here for three years. That kind of thing doesn’t work out for the Sunset District. If you’re going to run to be Supervisor of this district you’ve got to have been born and raised here. This got me thinking because several of the locals out here have asked me over the years, why don’t YOU run for Supervisor.

I thought about that today and it actually isn’t that bad an idea since I was born and raised in the Sunset District 50 years ago and except for a short six year stint living in the Mission District [pre-Hipster] I’ve been in the Sunset District the whole time. I’m a home owner. I frequent many of the local businesses and I know the area from 19th Avenue down to the beach probably better than anyone else who has lived here. I don’t really have the $500 to spare at the moment either, but unlike Matt Gonzalez, I’ve got a suit [three to be exact.]

I have been here long enough to see the changes in the area which have been for good and bad. When my parents purchased the house in 1954 from the McKuen Contractors this was a part of the Parkside District. Pretty much anything in the 94116 area code was the Parkside with Ortega being the Northern Boundary. While the boundries have changed and the Inner Sunset is now lumped in with the Parkside for areas under the charge of Norman Yee, what the City now calls the Sunset has been my home for more years that most people.

It would be tough for me because there is a very strong Asian population and I don’t really speak enough Mandarin or Cantonese without getting my face slapped so I may not go over so well with them. I do realize though that the Sunset has been getting a large influx of Russian and Irish immigrants that are finding their own niches to hang out at. Actually I remember when the Sunset District had a mostly Irish population in the first wave during the 50’s and 60’s. I went to school with most of their kids because my family having strong Italian roots [don’t let the Germanic last name fool you] moved from the Marina along with other Italians from North Beach to San Francisco’s suburbs or the Sunset District.

I’ve seen lots of changes over the years with the outer lands near the beach starting to pick up and creating the new Westside Hipsters™ as I coined the term which are techie based people who like hanging out at cafes and coffee shops without the hipster attitude. I like that. The Sunset District needs to be brought into the 21st century like the rest of the city not just in small places here and there, but more like what the Inner Sunset has developed into over the years while maintaining households instead of apartments.

So what would I do if I was elected Supervisor of District 4? Here’s what I’d do:

Work on the roads. Yes, there has been work on the roads, but it really is more of a small scale of look what we’re doing. It doesn’t affect the entire Sunset District only small parts. The street that I live on had a section in front of my house torn up to work on a sewer pipe over 30 years years ago. You can still see scar on the street today because it hasn’t been repaved in that long. While the Sunset District doesn’t get real seasons other than foggy and not-foggy our roads still need work. We don’t have lots of traffic compared to other parts of the city and because we’re built in an easy to navigate rectangular way it’s easy to drive around the block if a street is being worked on. With the new machines that basically eat the old road in the front and lay down the new road in the back having your street worked on should be able to be held to a minimum.
Crack down on double parking. In the commercial areas of the Sunset we do have a parking problem sometimes which leads people to double park and leave their cars so that if you are parked you have to sit there honking your horn to get the owner to come out and move [which usually doesn’t happen because there are several cars double parked and then never know who their honking at.] If you double park and leave your car, automatic ticket. If you are in your car with the engine off, automatic ticket. If you’ve got the car running you’ll be moved along to circle the block until the person you’re waiting for is ready to get back in the car like we used to.
Stop Muni Switchbacks. While I haven’t needed to take Muni lately I have to say that every time I have, I have not been able to get to where I’m going. Even when it’s the middle of the day during the week they have switchbacks and even though we’re one of the most populace districts in the city the L-Taraval, N-Judah and 29-Sunset should complete their routes.
Ditch the 66-Quintara. This bus line used to have a purpose, but it doesn’t really anymore. There are plenty of ways to get downtown faster now and the 66 hasn’t gone that far in years. It runs from 30th and Vicente to 8th and Judah and that only really services people who want to shop in the Inner Sunset who could use the 71-Noriega and N-Judah to get there directly or the L-Taraval, 48-Quintara and 29-Sunset with a single transfer. If you’re attending UCSF you probably live close by. I would have the 48-Quintara switched to full time instead of only rush hour to serve a neglected part of the Sunset District.
A guaranteed physical and electronic presence. Because I live and do business in the Sunset District you’ll see me around here frequently outside of Supervisor related roles. I will also have a very nice electronic presence to keep everyone in the Sunset District updated as to what is going on here and what I am doing in the Sunset District. I have a large network of people I interact with out here and access to all the tools necessary to building a great community. I can easily guarantee my website will look more attractive than the supervisor pages on sfgov.org.
Acknowledge that more than 50% of the voting population isn’t Asian. Everyone seems to focus on the fact that nearly 50% of the voting population of the Sunset District is Asian, but they don’t realize that means that more than 50% of the population isn’t Asian as well. I honestly don’t like focusing on people in this way because it makes them out to be a singular entity like the Borg on Star Trek or like the 800 pound gorilla in the room metaphor. When I was growing up in the Sunset and attending Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary, Lawton Elementary and A.P. Giannini Junior High School [that shows you how long I’ve been here] there was more ethnic diversity then than now [note of full disclosure: While I have spent the majority of my life in the Sunset District, I did attend George Washington High School in the Richmond District through an out of district permit because they offered Marine Biology and Japanese that were not offered locally at Abraham Lincoln]. Sure there was a much larger population under the category White back then, but it also included people of Hispanic, Middle-Eastern and East Indian descent which have now been separated out. We also had lots more European immigrants back then who were not as Americanized as they are today so when you opened a can of Spaghetti-O’s you were having ethnic food. I am all in favor of bringing your cultural heritage to the table, but I think we all have to remember that we are American and San Franciscan first.
Keep my word and think about what I do. This has been a problem for a long time in the Sunset District. Fiona Ma who was once the Supervisor of District 4 rallied everyone around the idea that she was going to get rid of the overhead power lines in the Sunset. My street was supposed to have them removed by 2010. They’re still here along with almost everywhere else in the Sunset. Carmen Chu replanted part of the median on Sunset Boulevard with grass…golf course putting green grass that has been ignored now and is dying or beginning to look like thick weeds. In the Sunset District why not rip that up and plant a more drought tolerant row of succulents that hardly ever need watering or upkeep? It would save thousands of dollars. Ed Jew, well I don’t think I need to say more there. I want to research or have someone under me research properly anything I want to have done for the Sunset District so that I don’t promise something and am not able to come through or come through badly. I am not a glad handler who likes to show off and go back and sit at my desk. I have to shop and walk around the Sunset District every day. I don’t want to have to face someone that I’ve failed on a promise to.

Thank you and I will now take your questions…

June 3, 2013December 18, 2021

You Don’t Know The Sunset…

I haven’t been getting out as much as I’d like lately, but that will be changing soon. Because I haven’t been getting out that much I’ve been pretty much restricted to the Sunset District where I live. It’s one of the largest districts in San Francisco that also includes the Parkside, but no one really knows or cares where the barriers are. It’s easy figuring out where the Sunset stops and Richmond starts because you’ve got this big divider called Golden Gate Park in between. Something I’ve notice recently in reading about how other people describe the Sunset district is that they don’t really know anything about it. I’m here to change that.

Apparently people who like to tell other people what the Sunset district is like tend not to be from the Sunset district or have usually only lived here for around 6 months [usually November to May]. Because of this they don’t get a good understanding of this part of San Francisco and it’s a shame because more people would love it if it wasn’t just a place they drove through on a hot day to go to the beach.

It’s always foggy here. Well, we do have fog. Hell I’m almost certain that the twitter account @KarlTheFog was started here. The Sunset district has been known for it’s fog for years. The thing is that we have lots of fog compared to downtown, the Mission, Potrero Hill. It’s kind of like a friend who was here from San Diego on a foggy night and said, oh crap it’s raining. No, that’s called fog. That’s the way fog is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be thick and wet. People who say it’s foggy when they have to look up and see clouds in the sky don’t know what fog is. It’s also not like that all year round. Usually it starts in the mornings when you leave the house to go to work. Once you’ve gotten on the bus and are on your way up past 25th avenue then @KarlTheFog decides to take a nap and it clears up.
We actually have some sunny days out here as well. Actually we have a lot more since that whole global warming/climate change happened. June-August is when you run into the most fog, but it’s usually more overcast than fog. Wife and I took our daughter out to the zoo this morning and it was actually pretty sunny. I actually had to wear a hat and sunglasses. Summertime for the Sunset district and the rest of the city starts in late August where you’ve got sun almost every day and believe it or not it’s warm which leads me to…
It’s always cold in the Sunset district. Not true. November to February is the worst and we might get a couple of mornings where the temperature is in the 30’s, but it’s usually in the upper 40’s during that time. Now that we’re into June and it’s warming up our lows are in the 50’s and we’ve been getting quite a few days where the highs are in the 70’s. Later on in the year during our summer you’ll definitely get weather in the 80’s & 90’s and if you’re invited over to someone’s house here who has a deck in back you’ll find in the afternoon that the concrete backing radiates the heat onto the deck and you’ll be experiencing quite a few days with heat that breaks 100°. The nice part is because we get the fog [real fog] people enjoy the sun more. Like I mentioned earlier on hot days people come out to the beach. Why would they come out to the beach if the weather is always in the 50’s like they say?
We’re boring and uncool. This usually comes from people who aren’t from here. The them boring is a lack of a thriving night life or as I like to call it, gunfire and crime. San Francisco isn’t a place you go to and expect to live it up 24/7. As many people say we roll up the streets at 10pm, but that’s also because we tend to be more morning types out here because once the early morning fog burns off when we get it it’s actually a very nice place to walk around. We’re uncool because we don’t have hipsters. That’s fine with me if what you’re referring to are Mission St. Hipsters, but we’ve got lots of people in retro clothes sitting behind laptops at just about any coffee shop you walk by. One of the distinctive things people use to describe hipsters is the sort of retro shabby chic look which if you really want to find you need to come to the Sunset district. We’ve got places to shop here that have been here since WWII.
There’s no cool places to eat. What? Do you mean eat or sit around and sip overpriced coffee and nosh on overpriced tidbits? We’ve got better burrito and taco shops than the Mission, better pizza than, well SF isn’t really known for pizza, but you’ll find a couple of the best places out here if you know where to look and the prices are less than most other parts of town. As you get out towards the beach on Judah, Noriega, Sloat and parts of Taraval you’ll find a thriving food scene that’s building up speed. We have all the fancy coffee you can drink in several places and you haven’t lived to be a real San Franciscan until you’ve done a proper pub crawl of dive bars out here that are hipper than the hipster dive bars [personal pick is the Riptide and Blackthorn]. If that’s not edgy enough for you how about a mobile BBQ joint that operates on a bicycle that you tweet for your food?

I could go on and on, but let me just say that if I was stuck here for six months I would be able to live comfortably without having to drive more than five minutes to find what I’m looking for. Oh yeah you can drive out here and even park. If more startups knew about how nice it was to be out here I’d only have to walk five minutes to work or could bike to work without having to worry about being run over by drivers.

May 22, 2013December 18, 2021

Ed Lee Nails The Niners

Mayor Ed Lee got his way with the niners. He has nailed down the Bay Area for Superbowl L [that’s 50 for those of you who don’t speak Roman or 2016 if you don’t keep up with the Superbowl]. The only problem is that the 49ers won’t be playing the game in San Francisco. Not entirely a bad thing when you think about it.

The 49ers are moving to Santa Clara which means that the police department there will be inundated with overtime, double shifts and trashed vehicles, both public and private whether the 49ers win or lose. After they recover from their hangovers they’ll get a chance to spend all their hard earned money by taking a drive up to San Francisco. While we’ll need more cops on duty it won’t be as many as Santa Clara will need and it won’t be much more than what you see for your regular Bay To Breakers race.

In my opinion this is a good thing. The people visiting the Bay Area won’t have the energy after a drive up here to trash the place because they’ll have used up all that energy down south. Think of all the speeding tickets we’ll be able to issue them all on their drive up here.Think of the parking tickets to feed the cities coffers from the fans forgetting to put a few dollars in the meters. Think of all the seafood and sourdough bread they’ll be eating when they come here. Think of all the other things we’ll all be standing by to help take their money from them.

This could really help San Francisco after the America’s Cup which looks like it will cost the city a mint in the end. We’ll all get to make more money during the day and retire home at night to the quietness of our San Francisco homes a little bit better off for a week or so. It may not be the best time to go sightseeing, but if you live here you can do that anytime.

While I’m sure that there will be lots of people saying how it won’t be the same with the 49ers not playing in San Francisco, I’m sure in the end it will be a little bit similar to those people who used to say that the waterfront won’t look the same without the Embarcadero Freeway. They were right, it looks better. Think of the 49ers moving to Santa Clara as we’re just sending them to grandma’s house to play for the little while. While they’re gone we get to relax and clean up what they’ve done here. Mayor Ed, I think I owe you a beer.

May 21, 2013December 18, 2021

Tosca Cafe Closes

It has finally happened. At 2am Monday morning the doors of the Tosca Cafe closed and the ownership under Jeanette Etheredge came to an end. It is scheduled to re-open with new owners and the only thing that will change we’ve been told is that it will now serve food.

Jeanette Etheredge will always be welcome said new owners April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman, but there is something to be considered. The new owners are from New York and if there’s one thing San Franciscans like to thumb their nose at more than Angelenos it’s New Yorkers. We don’t like the pompousness of the food they present. We aren’t going to pay $200 for a skewer of lamb that was made while the chef was standing on his or her head while singing Verde. Food is not about what goes on in the back room, it’s about taste and the look. We don’t need gold leaf on our hamburgers if we can’t taste it. We love good food and we’re practical about it.

So we have a couple of New Yorkers who sound like they understand this and don’t want to change a San Francisco institution. Good for them. They better keep to it. Minor updates aren’t a bad thing and I honestly believe if they clean the nicotine stains off the walls that would be an improvement even if they added a bit of character, but I fully expect when I go in there to see the bartenders wearing the old school lab coat style jackets and ties. I fully expect the Irish Coffees and Cappucinos to remain unchanged and when they add food they better take into consideration of the last paragraph.

Hipsters and others moving into San Francisco are killing off the history of this city that attracted people to it over the years. This is a bad thing because they’re actually destroying what brought them here in the first place. Tosca is a hold over from a long time ago and its class doesn’t really attract the hip crowd. It attracts a more grittier type of people with a few lines on their face and some history behind them, not the nouveau types who have come here to make a few bucks and leave.

On closing night you could see why Tosca was so popular with some of the more colorful people of San Francisco. Francis Ford Coppola, Will Durst and Carol Doda were some of the names of celebrities who were there. They may not all be A list, but they’re all well known enough that they’re appearance made a statement.