Author: Eric Kauschen

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Owning a Home in San Francisco

There’s been lots of articles in the paper recently about owning a home being a bad thing. I was always scratching my head about this until I realized I’m one of the few people left that was born and raised in San Francisco and is STILL HERE. Most of the people you’ll find in San Francisco are lucky to have lived here for twenty years at most, so it’s time I gave you a little history lesson about San Francisco real estate.

Now for most people here they don’t remember the time when a house was affordable because they aren’t, well, old like me. I was born in 1962 and my parents had bought their four bedroom house in the Sunset in 1954 for a whopping $18,300. Yes, you saw that right, there isn’t a couple of extra zeros on that number. The builders, McKewan Construction were asking $23,500 and my parents underbid the asking price and got it. The early 50’s was a buyer’s market.

My parents never thought of selling the house and moving on. It was a home to them and you didn’t sell it every couple of years to turn a profit only to move into a bigger home that you’d again turn and sell at a profit a few years later again.

My Grandmother was always the business savvy one in the family and she consulted her lawyer who worked out a deal that because I was living in the house when I turned 18 that I could have my name added on the the title as an owner so that when everyone was gone there would be no inheritance. Smart move and if you have kids you should think about doing this. There’s nothing illegal about it and it gives your kids a pretty priceless place to live in California what with Prop 13 and all that.

Now housing prices rose a bit over the years, but it wasn’t until around the late 80’s that the prices started to soar. In the 70’s you could get the same house for around $50,000. That’s pretty much close to the cost of a Lexus today with add ons and closing costs. Somewhere around the mid 80’s the prices started to skyrocket. When my wife and I got married you could get a two bedroom for around $215,000 out in the Sunset. I know, we were looking into the idea at the time. Our first landlord got a two bedroom house with a 1 bedroom cottage house in 1994 for $205,000. It wasn’t a fixer upper either.

Prices kept going up and right before the dot bomb of 2000 my Mom’s best friend who was in real estate told us we could easily get $1.5 million for this house. Great, we were millionaire, but still trying to struggle to pay the bills. I remember having to write the check for my Mom for the property tax that year and it was $650. We were paying twice that for our two bedroom house we were renting at the time.

My friends from High School, the few that stayed around and ended up in a similar situation to myself are all doing pretty good. I’m happy for them. We had parents that thought ahead. Others can’t fathom this and the fact that the people writing for the Chronicle and Examiner never take this into account shows that they aren’t either. Probably because they weren’t born and raised here. There are lots of people who want to do away with Prop 13 so that the state can get more money from home owners, but I’m not going to stand with that group. I plan on dying in this home, probably not literally, but I want to pass this house on to our daughter when we go.

I used to hate the crotchety old guys who would sit out in front of their houses in a lounge chair watering their lawns talking about why, I remember back when we… fill in the snide comment of your choice. I want to be that guy when I’m in my 70’s. I guess it’s all because I’m a Sunset redneck at heart and I want to be around to remind people about that.

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Leland Yee Called Me A Racist…Publically!

Oh no he dit’nt! Yes he did. Well at least someone on Leland Yee’s staff or Leland trying to look like someone else posted the following to me on Twitter today: @baghdadbythebay he’s against it. Or haven’t you been reading his statements? #racism

I assume it wasn’t Leland Yee posting directly because if he does he’s just become one of those people we all hate who talk about themselves in the third person. I am assuming someone will be getting their walking papers soon. Make sure you click on the picture and read how this all started.

I don’t quite understand how making a statement that a surprising number of Chinese American voters backed the ban on shark finning makes me a racist? Perhaps the fact that Senator Yee backed the ban on foie gras makes him a racist for destroying French Culture? I think the method of foie gras production is just as barbaric as shark finning so do I hate French people as well as Chinese people? No, I think not. We even have Yao Ming speaking out against shark finning in the US and in CHINA, yet I haven’t heard Senator Yee calling him a racist.

Leland Yee has spoke up that he believes it should be ok if you use the whole shark. That wouldn’t be a problem with me either except that people don’t eat shark anymore because of the high mercury content. Yee stated that Costco even sells shark meat so there would be plenty of fins to go around.

The problem is once again, Yee was wrong. Costco hasn’t sold shark meat in over ten years. If you drop Leland Yee into google you’ll find a large number of articles pop up linking him with the shark fin soup debate or pretty much him against everyone else.

Now let’s look at the little #racism hash tag. Take a look at the picture on the right. That’s me the nazi racist standing with a few of my friends at a small high school reunion. See a common thread in the picture? Riiiight, there’s a whole lot of Asian going on in that pic. I went to George Washington High School that was over 60% Chinese at the time. If you didn’t like Asians, that wasn’t a good place to be.

I live in the Sunset District, in a part of which I’ve had Chinese neighbors for the last 15 years and is a predominantly Asian neighborhood. If you don’t like Asians this is not a place to live, but I’m still here.

What this is about is a barbaric act to harvest the fins of sharks then throw them back into the water to drown a painful slow death. Pelagic sharks must always swim. They have a constant need for water to pass over their gills so that they get oxygen. When they have no fins they suffocate while they are bleeding to death.

This isn’t like a lizard that regrows it’s tail when it loses it and this isn’t about racism. Keep that in mind Mr. Yee before you end up putting your foot in your mouth again.

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Muni Noise

I was on the Muni metro the other day and happened to run out of things to do with my iPhone while traveling to my destination. I happened to remember that I had a decibel meter on my iPhone and decided to run it because the street car seemed a bit loud. I was pretty surprised at what it told me.  It peaked at 105db and averaged between 90-95db. What does this all mean? Read on and find out.

A normal conversation takes place at about 70db. A loud rock concert can be at 110-120db. Anything over 85db is bad for your hearing in long bursts. Once you pass 85db you’ll start to develop hearing damage after 30 minutes. Pass 100db and in five minutes you’ll start to develop damage.

I luckily have a set of earplugs that reduce the noise by 60db and they’re reusable. I used to be the guy at rock concerts that was uncool because I wore earplugs. When I was managing the band Warfare D.C. we used to sell earplugs so that the people coming to the show and the musicians in the bands didn’t have to go deaf when performing.

I remember getting jeered at in the beginning, but some of the people didn’t like leaving the clubs with their ears ringing and started to purchase the earplugs. They were a foam type that you could throw away afterwards and selling them gave us a bit of an edge because it was one of the few ways to make extra money by selling everyone a disposable item for under a buck.

I never thought that the street cars would be so loud and now I might set up shop outside West Portal station or perhaps down at Embarcadero or Montgomery stations selling the ear plugs. Our transit system shouldn’t be so noisy, but it is. While I had thought about noise at concerts I never thought about noise in every day life and it’s pretty astounding.

If you go to work everyday on the streetcars like most people do, you’re exposing yourself to noise pollution of a high magnitude. When I was in a band and rehearsing we used to get the local police knocking on the door telling us that we were emitting greater than 75db from my house where we rehearsed and had to stop. I never thought about that, but essentially they were saying we were having a loud conversation that other people could hear. We weren’t necessarily endangering people’s ears outside the house, but the law is the law. I’m sure we were putting out more than 75db from the house, but the law is also sometimes leaning toward the neighbors of a nice quiet neighborhood. I suppose that’s why most rehearsal studios tend to be in industrial not residential areas.

I’m hoping that some of the San Francisco Supervisors and Mayor Ed Lee will read this and think about it. We don’t want a large majority of San Franciscans saying, what was that you said when they hit their 40’s. I’ve been so good with my protecting my ears from a young age that I can’t have my cell phone more than halfway up when I have the ringtone turned on because it seems too loud. My wife is taking a shower right behind me with a wall separating us and it seems loud to me yet only registers at about 55db. I hear the humming of the fans and electronic equipment like our refrigerator that most people never hear. When we get hit with the occasional black out everyone I know says it sounds weird and that’s because they can’t hear the 60hz hum of the power lines like I can.

I have become what people in the recording industry refer to as a GEB [golden eared bastard] because I can hear things other people can’t. It’s a bit of a blessing and curse at the same time, but I highly suggest if you work downtown or have to take public transportation on a regular basis that you try wearing earplugs for a month and see if you don’t start to hear better. Better yet, if you have a smart phone download a decibel meter app. I got mine for 99¢ test it everywhere. Trust me you’ll be surprised.

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Sea Lions Back at the S.F. Zoo

I have to give thanks to two of my friends Beth Wise and Lincoln Shaw who work at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. I follow their posts to facebook about the work they do and when I heard about a sea lion they called Silent Knight I was happy. Not so much for the sea lion as it had been shot in the face with a shotgun and was now blind, but I was happy that they got to care for him and bring him back around.

Sea lions tend to not be bothered by people so they tend to act rather friendly towards us. Then some idiot has to pull out a shot gun and shoot at them to get them to move away from them. While that sounds like a good idea in some parts of San Francisco, it’s not a good idea when it comes to marine mammals.

I’ve had a love of seals, sea lions and all other marine mammals from a young age. I remember taking a class at the now defunct Junior Academy at the California Academy of Sciences and we had a field trip down to Año Nuevo Beach where the elephant seals come to breed. I remember jumping over a log with the rest of the people in the class only to turn around after and realize it wasn’t a log, but an elephant seal. These are pretty impressive and intelligent creatures and many of them moved from Seal Rock out near me to Pier 39 now where they put on a show for the onlookers and manage to stink up the place a bit due to their diet of oily fish which makes their poop smell a bit on the unbearable side.

Sea lions have always been the Marx Brothers of the pinniped world used in movies because of their humorous antics that mimicked human behavior if people had finds instead of hands and feet. They can adapt to living in these confined conditions, but they aren’t their happiest when they have to. This is part of the reason I’m glad that Silent Knight has been moved to the San Francisco Zoo. While he’s recovered from the shotgun blast, he’s still blind and can’t be released into the wild like the Marine Mammal Center normally does. The San Francisco Zoo stepped in and offered to care for him so he can live out his years with support and care from people who know how to take care of animals.

The Marine Mammal Center volunteers have a job that isn’t the best and they don’t get paid. Imagine going to work and having to blend up lots of oily smelly fish that you then have to more or less force feed to a sick not very willing animal. You probably don’t come home smelling very good and on top of it there’s no pay, no benefits other than knowing in your heart that you’ve helped an injured animal.

So cheers to Beth and Lincoln and all the other hard working people at the MMC. Maybe I need to get all the other members of my old band together and take up a collection to donation to one of their residents named Black Wolf [my band was named Black Wülf, note the umlat and U to make it look even more metal.]

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Wild Weekends & Disasters

OK, so here’s the deal. I’ve decided that Monday’s through Friday’s I will post articles about San Francisco. On the weekends if I get some time I’ll post bonus material that can be about anything in particular, stream of consciousness rants, whatever. I’ll call these wild weekend articles. That being said today I want to talk about…

Disasters. We hear about them all the time. Earthquakes in Japan, tornados in the midwest, hurricanes in the south and east. What I find funny is that people who live in the areas where it seems like they have to buy a new house every year have all said to me, California’s nice, but I could never live there because of the earthquakes.

I’ve lived in San Francisco my entire life and the only time there was a disaster that set us back was in 1989 when the 6.9 earthquake set us back a day. We lost power for about four hours and our phone lines were screwed up for about four days and that was it. Our house survived quite well as it was bolted to the foundation and the only thing in our house that got damaged was a ceramic goblet that I bought at the renaissance faire that fell off a shelf.

Yes, you don’t know when they are coming and when they do they’re usually very loud and scary, but they’re over shortly and life goes back to normal. I think the scene from L.A. Story where Steve Martin is sitting at a cafe with a group of people when an earthquake hits and they are all going about their business because it’s no big deal. It really isn’t that big a deal unless you might happen to live in a liquifaction area such as the Marina which really had only the area North of Chestnut street affected.

Yes, I did get hit with a few falling bricks and some flying glass shards from a broken window when the quake hit in 1989, but  because we get quakes often enough we know what to do and we’re prepared. So why is it then that other parts of the country that get hit by large hurricanes and tornados every year get warnings and aren’t prepared? Looks like a cat 5 is coming, ah nothing to worry about we’ll get by. Seriously? I know a lot of friends in hurricane country who do get out in time and hope their home is still there when they get back and in a lot of cases it is there, but they still get affected in some way much worse that us people who live in earthquake country. Like having to throw out their refrigerators because of the toxic mess that’s accumulated in the week or so they’ve been gone and the fridge has been off.

Well what about the Northridge quake? Yep, that one was pretty bad when it happened over 30 years ago. We don’t get blizzard conditions in the winter or heat waves in the summer. We’re lucky to see the temperature go past 100° for more than a couple of days [except for perhaps in Needles, CA]. There are parts of California that do fall prey to flooding, but they’re on the coast and if you want to avoid flooding, don’t live on the coast. I recently looked at the weather departments predicitions of a tsunami hitting San Francisco and as long as you live above 46th avenue in the Sunset above La Playa in the Richmond you’ll be fine. That’s only two blocks that would be affected.

There was a recent study done on the San Andreas fault that showed that it would never be capable of delivering a quake much above a 7.6 at this point in time. So earthquakes aren’t really something you need to be too afraid of here in California. They’re just a little surprise wake up call to make sure you’re prepared.

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Happy Birthday Wavy Gravy! Don’t Take the Brown Acid!

Wavy Gravy is an icon of San Francisco in the 60’s yet he came from New York and lives in People’s Republic of Berkeley. On the 15th of May he will turn 75 years old. For most people today they probably equate hippies with being old, but for those of us reaching middle age we still scratch our heads at the thought of old hippies. Maybe not so much as we used to.

Born Hugh Romney [hmmm…any relation to Mitt?] he received the name Wavy Gravy from of all people B. B. King in 1969 when B. B. just before taking the stage at the Texas International Pop Festival saw Hugh sitting backstage and asked him, “Are you Wavy Gravy?” to which Hugh replied, “Yes” and B. B. responded with, “It’s OK, I can work around you” and preceded to go onstage and play. Not sure who was drinking the Kool Aid that day, but methinks B. B. might have had a glass or two

I guess that was a bit of a day of revelation because Hugh decided from that day to use the name Wavy Gravy as his legal name. He had also chose to portray himself as a clown because as a demonstrator for peace he thought that it would be difficult for the Police to have it in their hearts to arrest a clown. We’re not talking the drunken, swearing after hours staggering around in misery type of clown that TV likes to portray and make people like my wife afraid of clowns, but the happy childlike things are better type of clown.

Wavy Gravy as a clown has brought about change in the world one smile at a time. He started the Hog Farm collective commune in Los Angeles in 1966 which wasn’t the free love, let’s run naked and do nothing else type of commune but a group of people who lived and worked on the hog farm of Claude Doty and turned it into a showbiz enterprise staging concerts in the Los Angeles area before the group relocated to Black Oak Ranch in Northern California in the 90’s.

Wavy also started Camp Winnarainbow which was originally started as a day care for Sufi children so that their parents could meditate and pray and wouldn’t be penalized from that because they had kids. Wavy took the kids and made them have fun by running it like a circus and teaching the kids performing arts. It’s still thriving today though looking a bit less hippie.

He even managed to influence Ben & Jerry to create a Wavy Gravy ice cream. I have to say I haven’t tried it just because it sounds like there’s gravy in the ice cream which seems wrong to me, but there is no gravy in Wavy Gravy ice cream. I suppose that came from the time he spent with the Merry Pranksters in the 60’s. What he might be best known for, at least to me was as head of security at Woodstock [the original one] he walked up to the mic one day and gave everyone the warning, “Don’t take the brown acid.” That moment was immortalized in the movie Woodstock and showed that he wanted everyone to have fun, just have fun safely.

I actually got to meet Wavy a few years ago at a place you wouldn’t expect to see a hippie at. My wife and I were celebrating our wedding anniversary and decided to go to Harris Steakhouse in the city. We liked to have early dinners when we went out to avoid having to scream at each other over our expensive meal. We were the first ones in the restaurant. My wife ordered the Prime Rib and I had the Bison steak [rare!] as we were waiting for our meals to arrive in walks Wavy and his wife Jahanara and they are seated next to us. My jaw kind of dropped because I was raised that hippies were supposed to love the earth and not want to harm animals so they were always vegetarian. Well my parents were wrong teaching me that. I got up and walked over to him and extended my hand and introduced myself. He responded sort of like a celebrity who was just trying to have dinner and not be disturbed and I picked up on that and left at the handshake because I was supposed to be there to celebrate my anniversary after all.

As we got up to leave after dessert and started walking towards the door he extended his cane to block our path for a moment and wished us both a happy anniversary and happy life together. I had never received a hippie’s blessing before, but that day just seemed brighter because of it.

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Live Poultry Banned in San Francisco

Not a big shocker here, but the United Nations Plaza farmer’s market has finally banned the sale of something that has already been against the law to sell in San Francisco—live chickens. What I find odd is that the city has let this go one for some time without having a problem with blatant out in the open violators of the law collecting money.

The chickens being sold are said to be spent hens and roosters that serve no further purpose to the poultry farm they came from and are sold stuffed into a sealed paper or plastic bag and given to the buyer to take home and kill as they please. This is kind of a rock or a hard place argument because there are lots of people against factory farming. I’ll have to say though if I was going to be a domestically raised chicken who had to die to feed other people I’d rather I be killed by trained professional with machines meant to do that than someone trying to wring my neck or slit my throat with a knife that probably isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

You also have a sanitation issue. San Francisco while not the densest of cities still has a lot of people coming and going and bird feces aren’t something you want introduced into large populations. That’s part of the reason most farms are outside of towns so that you can have a town in the first place.

I’ve talked about Jackson, CA before and I’ll bring it up again because I was a city boy who spent his summers in a country town. It was easy to get to the farms outside of town. It was mostly for produce because the factory meat farms where bringing the meat in cheaper. If we wanted the odd treat every once in awhile Joe Valvo down the street from my Aunt might come by with some goose eggs from the flock of Canadian Geese that occupied his front yard. Joe mostly raised them for their eggs and only ended their lives when they were started to have difficulties and then he’d have goose meat for a few weeks. The problem was that his front yard looked like crap—literally. It also smelled pretty bad on a hot day and when Joe would hose out the front you could see it all running down the street. Now this was from only eight geese that he had. When you compare this having over 1000 factory farmed chickens twice a week in a space that probably the entire population of Jackson travels through in a day and you start to have health problems.

Some people have taken the stance that these are better to eat because fresher is better. These birds are probably worse off than the chicken you buy at the store because as I said earlier, they are spent hens and roosters, not healthy birds. They can’t reproduce or lay eggs so their food supply is cut back so that the more productive birds get what they need to make more money. These are starving and undernourished animals that are probably barely up to the legal standards for McNuggets.

People need to understand that livestock butchering put into the hands of people is not a good thing. Buying live doesn’t mean it’s better quality, in most cases it’s a worse quality bird than the Foster Farms you buy at the store. These birds don’t go through any inspections or testing before being passed on to the public. Luckily there’s only the Raymond Young Poultry company that’s doing this and now he has been relegated to Richmond, CA to sell at their Farmer’s Market twice a month. Below is a piece of footage from the Civic Center Farmer’s Market that shows the pre-bagged chickens being tossed to people. Don’t watch it if you have a weak stomach.

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Stow Lake

How I managed to leave out the largest manmade lake in Golden Gate Park is beyond me, so it gets it’s own spot today. Stow lake offers many things to people who visit the park. Joggers can be seen looping around it in the morning. You’ll find a few elderly people walking around with their grandchildren feeding scraps of bread to the ducks and turtles or you might find people renting boats to paddle around the lake watching urban hikers make the trip up to the top of the centerpiece Strawberry Hill.

Stow lake has come under fire recently because the Stow Lake Corp, a family run business that has owned the boathouse for over 60 years may be ousted from its roost by a company run by Alex Tourk a former aide to our old friend Gavin Newsom. Now I have to say it’s been awhile since I bothered eating any of the standard fare offered by the boathouse, but I do admit I have fond memories as a kid of eating that possibly carcinogenic pink popcorn and drink a half flat coke that they served up while walking around the lake. I’m going to have to stradle the fence on this one because while the boathouse and boat rentals need a major make over, I’m not sure that what would replace it while looking better would better serve the public. I’m not sure I want to see a pricey yuppified expensive cafe going in there, but things can’t always stay the same.

Around back from the boat rentals and boathouse is where you can rent bikes to cruise around the park which does an especially good business on Sundays when that part of the park is closed to car traffic. These are your regular bikes, but recombinant tricycles and four wheeled surrey type bikes that you can fill up with the whole family. While being the main focus of Stow Lake if you walk ar0und you’ll find there is more to be had at this stop.

As a kid I remember hearing stories about piranhas living in Stow Lake. This was one of those urban myths that actually had a bit of truth to it. There was a time period when I was a kid that every kid had a fish tank. As the family got tired of changing water and taking care of the fish you had two choices, flush the fish down the toilet or be more humane and release your tropical water based fish into the cold Stow Lake. I guess no one ever thought of bringing them back to the fish store and just giving them back to the owners of the store, but that was the early 70’s.

Now one of the interesting things about tropical fish is that they don’t all need 80° water to survive. Some can actually acclimate to colder water and one of these fish is a vegetarian version of the piranha called the pacu. I have seen pacu in the lake in the past and you can’t miss them because they’re about four times the size of a piranha and can be found snapping up bits of bread that people would throw to feed the ducks. I remember throwing fishing nets into the water and seeing what kind of fish you would find there. After sticklebacks and minnows we did find quite a few aquarium fish that had been dumped there, mostly goldfish. The pacu was always the goal to catch, but I never caught one.

As you’re walking around the lake you can hike up the top of Strawberry Hill passing over Huntington Falls. It’s a pretty easy hike and the pay off at the topic isn’t exactly the most spectacular. You get to see the remains of a house who’s owner I can’t find anymore, but the rocks have been made into a circle that has been used for campfires and it sits next to a pond that serves as an emergency water supply to fire hydrants around the city. I’m not sure if they’ve tested this any time recently, but I’m not going to hold my breath if it needs to be used in the future. The best part about being up high here is the views of the city. It really is one of those wow moments when you feel like you’re kind of out in the wild and then when you get to the top you see that you’re surrounded by the city.

As you travel back down don’t forget to stop by the Chinese Pavillion. It looks great from a distance, but after construction they didn’t take into account the water spray from the falls would collect on the clay based soil and now drain so it is a bit mucky when you walk up to it.

If you travel off to the side of the boathouse you’ll find several large picnic spots complete with grills. These are rather nice if you want to have a party and don’t want your friends destroying your house. The especially nice part about this picnic spot is that you’re walking distance from the boathouse and the nicely refinished bathrooms. Public restrooms I have no problem with them being changed and updated every few years. I think we can all agree on that!

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A funny thing happened on the way to the park

I had meant this to be my Monday post, but because I was a bit shocked about Darla’s closing I decided to hold off a day. After finishing my part two of Golden Gate Park I saw a tweet about the following “job opening” on craigslist. Click on the photo to read it in its entirety.

I have to admit it’s a pretty funny job listing, but what’s a little bit shocking is that some one is so pissed off about Park and Rec [now Recreation and Parks that they call it now] that they were willing to pay $75 to list this job of an job listing. My close personal friend Craig Newmark [who once banned me from his list] must be laughing all the way to the bank on this one.

I do have to admit that our parks are suffering a bit. When we were kids [and I’m sure my other close personal friend Steve will chime in on this] the parks were well grassy more than weedy. I have another close personal friend Nikolai [who deserves special notice because I’ve used that term and have actually met up with him in the past ten years] worked for the park system as a gardener.

Nikolai used to make sure that the grass was grass and the weeds were gone, that the grass got watered and didn’t turn the many colors it does other than green. We used to have a very nice show piece with the park where the only thing you had to worry about when you were being a rough kid with your friends was hitting the odd piece of crab grass that I remember as hurting like hell.

The drinking fountains used to work until some of the bigger kids would stuff gravel in them so that you’d get squirted with a high pressure blast of water which is what we all took our science classes to learn how to do. God knows where the water came from for those faucets, but I’m sure they’d be on a toxic waste list today.

The park used to be much nicer than it is today. The only way to get even close to the experience is to go out to the west end of the park around the chain of lakes at 45th Avenue [Sunset side] or 43rd Avenue [Richmond side]. That’s about as close as you’re going to find to the old GGP I knew as a kid. The playgrounds out around there have sand that the feral cats aren’t using as a litter box for some reason and it’s just a nice clean and green area. The Arboretum and Japanese Tea Garden used to be free and the DeYoung and Academy of Sciences didn’t cost you an arm and a leg. It was really a place to be proud of if you were from San Francisco. The Polo Fields used to have grass before it died off to the point that weeds don’t even want to grow there.

I’m hoping our interim Mayor Ed Lee reads this or at least someone forwarded him the craigslist job listing. Maybe he could do something to change the park for the better.

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Darla’s Burgers Is Gone

Friday was sad for me. I was watching a TV show and my phone buzzed at me. Not unusual with all the crap I’ve got installed on my phone. Then I looked down. One of my friends on Twitter just sent the message NOOOOO! Darla’s is out of business.

WHAT! Darla’s while not being an old San Francisco tradition kind of a place has been around long enough to have developed a loyal following. I think she opened up 9 1/2 years ago and my wife and I used to go there a lot back in the day. The burger’s and fries where always juicy and the service was quick. Darla herself could usually be found being the waitress and it was always kind of funny to me watch this Asian woman speaking Spanish to her cooks.

I have a fond memory of one day after eating a burger that she would always make for me [a bacon cheese burger with sliced avocado] I walked up to her and politely whispered into her ear, That was the best motherf*cking burger I’ve ever had. To which she turned around and said, Why thank you! in a rather sugary sweet tone.

Darla Kubala was a smart cookie. She even had an iPhone app called Diner Dash that was based upon her. If you got to see her work you’d see how the game idea came about. She would take all the orders, deliver the food and be the bus boy all the while checking on the customer’s needs. Somedays she had her off days, but the majority of the time she was always on it. The thing that you always remembered was how she ended your meal. You got your check with a brownie for every one at your table. I liked that because after a lunch or dinner there you really didn’t have enough room for desert, but the little brownie was intense and did the job.

Darla was also good with faces. It had been over a year since we had gone in there and she came over to our table and the first words out of her mouth were, you cut your hair?!?!? Then she sat down and talked with my wife about whether or not she like me with short hair or not. She even thanked me once for always bringing my friends in. She had a lot more than just burgers and I tried a few other things she offered, but I always came back to the burgers. Those were her signature along with the fries topped with season-all. When she let that one slip to me I can’t eat fries without them anymore. Now I’m sad that I don’t have Darla’s Burgers to take my friends to for the best motherf*cking burger anymore. I tried to give them a call today to make sure and yep, the number is disconnected. I suppose it was the economy that put her out, but she always seemed to have customers in there. Hopefully she’ll resurface again. I miss her already.

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