Author: Eric Kauschen

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Sunset Summer Morning

©2010 Eric Kauschen

This morning was one of those mornings that was like no other. My alarm goes off at 6:50am and I wake up feeling warm. I get up to open the window and realize that it’s already open. Grab the iPhone and check the temperature and it’s 70° at 6:50am in the Sunset District.

I knew it was going to be a good day so I had to run down to the beach because on a nice day like this there’s nothing better than the beach in the morning. I know for people in places like Texas, Florida or Hawaii 70° in the morning is nothing for them, but here since we don’t get weather like this most of the year, we love it all the more.

How can I best describe the beach in the morning on a warm day? Quiet. The sun is at your back and not glaring in your face, everyone slows down a bit and even the waves aren’t crashing as hard as they do on one of our foggy mornings. I was watching Anthony Bourdain yesterday in Miami and he was walking around Key West and I remember how cool the water looked with all the greenery growing as close to the water as it could get and that image popped into my mind. It may not be exactly the same, but for that short period of time, watching the early morning surfers, I was in a tropical paradise.

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Durian Gelato…Interesting

Today I did something I never thought I’d do. I asked to sample Durian Gelato. The Durian is a fruit from the Phillipines that is of mythic proportions. An ex-girlfriend’s Grandmother used to tell me that it was, “The fruit that tastes like heaven, but smells like hell.” Lola, you had that one down cold. The only problem is when I put this tiny morsel of gelato into my mouth I was struck by a flavor that wouldn’t go away.

First there was a sulfurous bite followed by a somewhat grassy, well rotten grassy flavor, but never once was there anything sweet in the taste. I had the chance to try this at the local Marco Polo gelato shop on Taraval street. Don’t hold the Durian gelato against them though. They have a lot of the standard flavors you’d find in a gelato shop like rum raisin, pistachio, arcobaleno, double chocolate, but they also have mixed in Asian flavors such as sesame, taro (that’s ube in the Phillipines), green tea and of course the Durian.

This is a fruit that Andrew Zimmern who hosts Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel can’t even get himself to try. He says it’s because he, “just can’t get past that funky, gross smell.” I figured gelato might water down the strength of the flavor, but if it did, I can see why Andrew would never eat the fruit. This is the same person who I have watched eat bugs, rotten egg omelets, but there is one fruit he just can’t eat. That tells me a lot of how bad the smell is if he can’t even eat it.

So what do you all think? Durian, yay or nay?

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Yogtography

Yesterday I got together with my friend Clint to shoot some photos of him for his website. Clint has become a Yoga teacher and is now working with Paresh Martial Arts at the corner of 6th and Irving adding Yoga to their curriculum.

Clint is a very easy-going guy who offers very affordable yoga classes. You can get 3 classes for $20 and there’s never a hard sell. One of his specialties is the Sunday Chill Down that’s a great way to end your weekend fully relaxed and ready to get started for the week ahead.

When you meet Clint he’s sort of surrounded with an aura of peace. He’s the type of guy that you can’t imagine ever getting angry and he always has a smile on his face. Check him out and tell him you heard about him from Baghdad by the Bay SF.

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Shopping on Irving Street

Irving street is a funny mix of stores. There’s a produce place just about every other storefront and then there some electronic/kids clothes/candy/XXX Vcd places. Yes, I did say XXX VCD’s and they were right next to the kid stuff, but at least they had cardboard in front of them and I didn’t get smacked by my wife when I pulled a piece of  cardboard up to reveal the perfect asian boobies behind the cardboard.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’d like to talk about my two favorite places to go on Irving street that concern food. The first is the 22nd Avenue Market. It’s been there for years and is mostly a produce market, but it also sells canned and bottled food in the back that you won’t find in your average grocery store. A lot of it comes from the Mediteranean. Greece, Turkey, that kind of thing with some Russian stuff thrown in. What I especially like is big aisle of nut sacks they sell. Yes, you heard me right. There nothing like a huge Irving street nut sack and they have all kinds of nut sacks to choose from. They have colored nut sacks, white nut sacks, raw nut sacks, even roasted salty nut sacks.

The list is mind boggling, but their also very inexpensive. I’ve recently found a new snack food I love called cacahuates or “Japanese Peanuts”. These are salty peanuts covered in a slightly sweet hard coating. You can think of them as Mexican M&M’s without chocolate. I have a huge bag of them now and they’ll probably last me at least a week. I was tempted to purchase some Turkish Delights, but I couldn’t find a price on the box so I figured I’d hold off for now.

After a trip to the 22nd Avenue Market you have to go next door to the Sunrise Deli. This is a great Mediterranean Deli that has THE BEST falafel in the city. You can get a half dozen falafel for $2.99, now that’s a deal. They’ve opened another place downtown, but it’s more expensive because of the neighborhood. This is still the best and most inexpensive place to get mediterranean food I’ve found. Their hummus and baba ganoush  is always fresh and cheaper than you could get it at a big chain grocery store. We feed about 40 people on less than $75 with food from here for my daughter’s first birthday. You can also sit down and enjoy a nice shawarma plate or one of their other fine plates that will run you around $6.95 and you probably won’t finish it. Incidentally, the plates come with these little pink things [That I don’t know what they’re properly called] that are pickled turnips. They taste much better than they sound and are worth a try. I would recommend you back away from the myrrh flavored chewing gum as it’s a rather odd taste that the Western palate probably isn’t quite ready for yet. Now time to run off and eat my falafel and hummus!

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Sometimes San Francisco get’s it right.

Something I always disliked about going to work was having to get the fastpass at the end of every month. I’d usually forget and all the places around me that would have them would be sold out, or the smaller places would have them, but sell them cash only because they didn’t make anything on them.

Now Muni I mean the SFMTA has changed all that. They’ve come out with the clipper card that you can refill at any Metro station or online. No more having to deal with cash only or being sold out. You just tap your card and the nifty little gates open. If you’re transferring to another bus or streetcar you tap it and it will tell you how much time you have left (90 minutes from the time you first got on). The only thing I don’t like is that this means they won’t have to print as many fast passes every month yet raised the price to $60 for muni only or $70 for muni and BART (SF Only).

The clipper card also works on AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit and Caltrain as well as BART and they’re trying to get all the other transit companies hooked in as well. If your employer has a system where your transit fees are taken out pre-tax, they can work with that as well. If you’re visiting San Francisco they have a temporary card that you can get that lasts for 31 days, but I’d suggest anyone who visits get the regular clipper card that’s free until June 2011, then the price is $5 I believe.

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How Things Work.

As of today, I am once again unemployed and I’m going to tell you why. San Francisco had a program that was funded by the federal government that San Francisco called Jobs Now! Here’s how it worked. A company signed up to be a part of the program and if they were approved then they had the ability to hire an unemployed parent who was a member of the program [i.e. me] and they would be reimbursed for the salary.

This plan worked great and employed over 250,000 people, but it ended as of yesterday, September 30th, 2010. President Obama saw that it was working very well and wanted to add an extension of a year onto the plan to keep people working while the economy is trying to recover. The extension passed the house and had to be approved by the senate before it could go into effect. Unfortunately, there are a few more Republicans in the Senate who pushed back to keep it from going through. Why you may ask?

As of today we now have over a quarter of a million people unemployed. This will work to the Republicans advantage as long as we the people don’t think. The Republicans will start using the rise in unemployment as a rally cry in the upcoming elections. “Can’t you see that the Democrats are destroying our great country! Look at how they’ve increased unemployment!”

So stop thinking and vilify the Democrats because they did a bad job when in reality, it was the Republicans who  are responsible for the rise in unemployment by not passing the extension. This my friends is a raw deal. Don’t doubt me that they won’t try and use this to their advantage. I am positive that they will. I just want you all to think and pass this along to your friends so they will think as well.

Yes, while it may not feel like it, the economy is starting to come back slowly, but the Republicans have now made the recovery take a step back by putting over a quarter of million people out of work. Think about that before you go to the polls.

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Warm Town. Summer in the City

YAY! September is summer time for San Francisco, but don’t expect to dress like the guy in the picture, or if you do don’t expect to stay that way for too long. Depending on what type of a year we’ve had summer can start around the last two weeks of August and can continue on to the first two weeks of November, but we’re definitely feeling some nice weather now.

Something you need to know if you’re not from around here is that when you get up in the morning, it’s usually foggy if you’re out in the Sunset or Richmond districts. That doesn’t tell you what the day will be like, because I woke up yesterday and couldn’t see a block away at 8am, but by noon it was sunny and bright. Now if you get up in the morning and it’s sunny in the Sunset or Richmond that means you’re going to have a pretty warm day.

Currently our foggy mornings and sunny afternoons mean we can get up into the 70’s out here. If you want to feel the heat from more than the salsa then you need to go over to the Mission district. I lived there for six years and I think I only owned 2 long sleeved shirts which I only wore to visit my parents out in the Sunset district.

So here’s how you need to dress in the “outside lands”. Layers! When you leave the house in the morning for work you should have a t-shirt, sweatshirt and a jacket. When you get to work downtown or anywhere east of Twin peaks you’ll take the jacket off. By noon the sweatshirt comes off and then around 3-4pm you reverse the procedure and start putting the clothes back on. Now with the advent of global warming it’s not always like that, but you still need something to take off when you hit a warm part of the city. Keep in mind that while downtown is warm it does pick up a lot of wind in the afternoon so you’ll only feel the heat in a windless enclosed courtyard like area.

For me, I’ve always like Sunset district weather. I don’t get depressed by fog, I get depressed by the bright glaring sun in my eyes. I think when I went to Hawaii I was wearing my sunglasses at night it was so bright there. For me a couple of hours of flashy sun is enough for me.

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Save our JOBS NOW!

When people talk about the evils of the stimulus package by President Obama they here about the car company and bank bailouts and start pointing fingers and complaining about how Obama is killing America. What they don’t talk about is the employment stimulus that has given over 250,000 people jobs. These are jobs for unemployed parents [like me] whose wages are reimbursed by the government.

This wasn’t talked up too much and I found out about it quite by accident after reading a fairly well buried story on SF Gate. I got in and started making calls and got lots of interviews. I finally got a job in July from a very persistent employer who wanted me and kept in contact from March until the day I started my job.  The problem is that at the end of this month the program ends and I will be out of work again. The problem is two-fold here. The first is that I took the job and lost my unemployment benefits.  Unemployment is based on your earning of the last 18 months minus the current quarter. Since I’ve only worked in the current quarter I won’t be eligible for unemployment unless they make an exception for me. Second is that the our government is trying to extend it for a year, but while it passed the house, the republicans in congress have been filibustering against it.

Over a quarter of a million people will be unemployed once again because the Republicans hate Obama. The Republicans will be the cause of this unemployment because they believe that a cut in federal spending will help America. Unfortunately what it with do is put most of these people on unemployment which just moves the government spending from one room to another, so I ask you all to forward this piece to all your friends and neighbors and have them sign the online petition you’ll find here to ask the government to extend the program and keep the country from adding over a quarter of a million people to the unemployed list which will lead to an increase of the unemployment statistics, lower economic recovery because a quarter of a million people won’t have the money to spend and we’ll have more children going hungry…all because of a few Republicans, not Obama.

Think about this. A quarter of a million people unemployed, all of whom have families with kids who will have trouble living and making ends meet. I am only one, but it’s helping me provide for my wife and my daughter and we’re able to give back to our community by spending our money to purchase goods and services that in nine days will stop coming in. So we’re not talking about over a quarter of a million people being affected but closer to a million people being affected. Please, help do what is right so we can get America back on it’s feet.

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What the Hell is up with our weather?

One of the things in fall for San Franciscans is figuring out what to wear each day. I woke up and felt kind of warm and looked out the window to see this. This type of weather usually means it’s going to be cold out, but today oddly enough at around 9am when I went outside to pick up the paper it was 67° out.

San Francisco is gifted with Indian summers where we get our warm weather starting around the last two weeks of August and it can run until mid-November. Now all my friends that have lived here for awhile has said we had one of coldest summers in years which I have to agree. So I have to suspect that because of that is why we have warm overcast days during our Indian summer. I’m suspecting if we get our sunny days, they’ll come around October. Maybe it’s because of global warming, but our weather isn’t like it normally is. I might check back around 2pm to let you know what the day turned out to be.

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At The Car Wash!

Getting your car washed is a bit of a chore. I used to love every Saturday morning as I’d get up and wash my car by hand and spend a couple of hours detailing it when I was in my 20’s so I’d have a hot looking car for when I went out on Saturday nights. The problem was it was kind of a waste of my time doing it when I could get it done professionally once a month and they’d do a better job. The place I’ve found that always does the best is out on 17th and South Van Ness. It’s a 76 gas station that does a lot more than pump gas.

After you drop off your car you can walk around and watch them do their magic to your car. They’ve got lots of colorful liquids to spray on your car and then hose off and I’m sure kids would love to watch while it’s all happening. Once you get past the car wash you enter into a room with ever possible thing your car could or could not need.

The best part for me is when the car comes out and it’s attacked by what I call, “The Pirahnas”. You remember those old National Geographic seens where a cow walks into the water and the fish swarm all over it until there’s nothing but bones? Well that’s kind of what happens to your car. About 5-6 dive on your car with towels to dry it off and make it shine. There’s one guy running around putting tire dressing on, a couple more doing the inside and outside windows and dashboard. You can go and grab a hot dog while you wait at the convenience stores where you pay for gas [which you get at 25¢ off per gallon if you get your car washed. All in all I’d have to say this is the best place to get your car washed as they take care of you inside and out. I just have to get used to them yelling “ULTIMA!” when they’ve finished with my Nissan, but I have to say it does look pretty ULTIMA!