Category: Life in San Francisco

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My Thoughts On The Central Subway

Central SubwayWhen i was first announced the SFMTA was going to build an offshoot of the Muni Metro that would run from near AT&T Park to outer Fisherman’s Wharf. This sounded like a great idea because you could get off at the Van Ness and Northpoint and have a short walk to Pier 39, the Wharf, a little further down to the Cannery do a little shopping, maybe drop by Ghiradelli Square next door and have a sundae then head back home. Then they said because of costs they would have to stop it at Chinatown.

Of course Chinatown. If you drop it into google most of the responses you get will be in Chinese newspapers, blogs, etc. Rose Pak is usually mentioned as well. This leaves out North Beach and the Wharf. Two high money making areas for tourists. Most tourists to Chinatown don’t spend much time since they done speak Chinese. At least at North Beach and the Wharf they speak English and a few other languages which means more money they can take out of your pocket.

Now they have been talking about the extension into North Beach. This was before the Mayoral election where most of the people running for Mayor were against a Central Subway that stopped in Chinatown. It really would have only benefitted the Chinese in San Francisco and very few others. You might get a short walk to the strip clubs on Broadway, but now they’ve found a way to move it into North Beach to support the Italian community that once lived there [a few still do, but it’s mostly hipsters now.

I would still like to see the full run of the Central Subway all the way down to Van Ness & Northpoint because it would help people who live out there commute downtown as well as a greater influx of money to the city. I’ll take the stop at North Beach for now and then maybe they can extend it all the way down to the Wharf just like they did with the T. I find the Metro to be very quick and I can get downtown in about 15 minutes, so why not speed things up to get people down to the wharf? As it is right now, from where I live to get to the wharf I need to take two buses and a short ride on the Metro. That usually takes me over an hour to get there. We rarely drive as parking is steep and hard to find. If we could hop on a Metro and get there in about an half hour instead of the over an hour it takes now I’d be all for it. We should be serving the entire city, not a small part of the city.

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Snow? In San Francisco

A few people have been talking about this, but unfortunately they weren’t old enough to experience it first hand [you darn kids!]. In 1976 something weird happened in San Francisco…it snowed. Now I spent plenty of time outside San Francisco on vacations and even had a chance as a five year old to drive up to Hamm’s Station in the Sierra’s from my Aunt’s house in Jackson to experience snow and tobogganing. Unfortunately my much larger football playing cousin fell off the back leaving light old me to shoot up over the end of the snow and head face first for a trailer hitch with my parents just standing there screaming and doing nothing to stop the toboggan. For some reason a little voice in my head told me to lie down and I slid under the car and was stopped by a gas pump.

That was the last time I was allowed on a toboggan, but it wasn’t the last time I dealt with snow. So on sometime around February 5, 1976 I heard my Grandmother yelling from downstairs for me and I jumped up and ran downstairs at 3am thinking what do you want and why are you screaming at me at 3am in the morning and then she opened the back door. SNOW, in San Francisco. There must have been close to a foot at the time because it was the middle of the night. Our dog ran down and ran outside and got to the bottom of the stairs and decided to come back in the house. He had never seen snow so this was something he didn’t understand. I started making snowballs and throwing them all over the place of course because that’s what you do with snow.

In the morning there was still snow and I got bundled up for junior high school and walked down and as I turned the corner was hit by a snowball. OK, it’s on now. I knew how to be a machine gun with snowballs and several of the kids started to run away while a few joined my team. One of my friends Martin who was on the other team who happened to make a rather large snowball and as I saw it coming at me I ducked and heard a rather large crack behind me. Apparently it was so big because it was a snowball made around a heap of frozen dog poop. Throwing frozen dog poop is kind of like throwing a rock at someone because the person who got hit took it right in the nose and ended up with a broken nose. That was probably the most not fun part of the snow storm.

The roads were icy in places and it was the first time a lot of the city kids had not only seen snow, but seen cars swinging back and forth on the ice. Note I had hike a few miles to the Sulphur Works in December at Lassen Volcanic Park with a friend of mine Mark Ghiorso wearing snowshoes so there was a bit of mountain man in me. Slipping on the ice you just expected if you didn’t have crampons attached to your shoes which we didn’t. I understood the snow while most of the other kids didn’t.

This was a whole new world to a lot of us, but we actually have had snow since then. I lived for a short time in Midland Terrace and in the mornings would see a few trucks coming down off the top of the mountain and they’d have some snow in the back of their trucks. In 1986 I worked on the third floor of the Pacific Bell Building and we started to see snow fall and all ran downstairs to see the snow which had melted by the ground floor and just turned into rain.

We do have every few years  of weather where it’s cold enough for your car windshield to ice over which I would always go and get a bucket of hot water and pour over the windshield. The first couple of times my wife would yell at me because you apparently don’t do that back east because it either freezes over or cracks your windshield. Well, on the west coast it doesn’t stay cold enough for that to happen and the ice just melted away.

Snow can be fun, but after hearing what living through a winter back east is like, I’ve decided I’ll just take the cold rain here. You don’t need an old beater car to drive in the snow so you don’t ruin your good car. You don’t need chains and the stores don’t run out of food and your power doesn’t go out for a couple of weeks at a time. Thank you San Francisco.

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Tommy’s Joynt

Of all the places in San Francisco, as I was driving back from downtown I saw Tommy’s Joynt and when I got home I couldn’t believe in my six plus years of writing this blog I had never written about the home of the meat lover’s Tommy’s Joynt. If you’re even the least bit hungry this is the place to go. It’s got the old San Francisco feel and your plate will be filled and I dare you to finish it all.

I took a few friends from out of town [about 30 actually] once because it was across the street from the hotel they were staying at. A few got confused by the soup nazi attitude, because you have to know what you want when the guy asks you what you want or else you’re in for it. I’ve tried lots of things there [brisket is always great], but I keep coming back to the Buffalo stew because where else are you going to find Buffalo stew for $10.95. I’ve also gotten the $8.95 Buffalo stew sandwich which is for when I just need a little snack [which if you’ve eaten there you know is a joke]. You order your food, grab your silverware yourself and then find a table amongst the three floors going back up the hill.

As you walk up the first set of stairs you’ll see a tub of pickles that says, Help yourself to pickles, but please take only as many as you can eat. All that food and free pickles? You get to see a host of crusty old native San Franciscans there and the occasional person who falls off their bar stool. Incidentally they stock over 100 draft beers in stock and supposedly have a full bar, but for some reason I suspect that if you asked for a cosmopolitan you’d get a knife thrown at you or just thrown out of the place. This is probably part of the reason I’ve never seen cops eat here as they’d end up having to work instead of eat.

If you like turkey and order it as a platter you get the equivalent of a Thanksgiving day meal. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing. If you ask for a side of green beans you’ll usually get a WHAT?! from the carver and you repeat it and he yells side of green beans. This is not a place for vegetable lovers. Probably one of the reasons Metallica loved to hang at Tommy’s Joynt. Just a little side note, Metallica has a rider on their contract that bacon must be available at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now that is a bunch of meat lovers.

Tommy’s Joynt offers sandwiches, platters, stews and of course their special of the day. Someone like Gordon Ramsey would probably say they had too many items on the menu after which he’s get gob smacked by one of the owners. They do offer salads, but only one is a mixed vegetable. The rest or stuff like potato salad, macaroni salad, coleslaw and then some other vegetable mixes I never thought of. They also offer desserts such as apple pie, carrot, cheese and chocolate cake so even with the desserts they’re staying very old school. I always like to go as far back as I can when I visit just because it’s quieter and you have less chance of someone falling off a barstool and hitting you.

Tommy’s Joynt is a place where you will eat like a king on a pauper’s budget and I hope that it never goes away because it’s a part of San Francisco that defines the way San Francisco really is, not some half caf soy frappucino place that’s opening up on every corner or some luxury cupcake shop where you pay $5 for a cupcake that, well tastes like a cupcake you would make at home. Tommy’s Joynt has that old San Francisco soul to it and we need to keep these places around..

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Winter In San Francisco

It looks like winter has finally arrived in San Francisco. Winter here is different that in other parts of the country. We don’t get snow [well maybe every 30 years we get an inch], we don’t get ice, we don’t get below zero temperatures, but for some reason you are freezing when it’s 60° outside. It’s a different kind of cold. It’s a very wet cold that soak through to the bone and there are a few things you have to keep in mind.

If you have a fireplace check to see if you can close the flu. I have to do that today because even though we have our fireplace blocked off with our daughter’s toys I was still gettiing hit by 50-60 mph wind gusts blowing down the chimney and around the boxy toys blocking the fireplace. Make sure the windows are closed because cold air will blow in and if have your heater on it’s just sucking the heat out the window. If you have gas heating, use it. It’s cheap compared to electric space heaters and will keep your PG&E costs down. It will also warm the whole house and not just a room. Don’t use your fireplace, especially if you’ve closed the flue as it will heat only the one room and might flow over a bit to a closer room. Things like this will make your home life more comfortable. It’s also more eco-friendly not to use your fireplace.

When you have to leave your house, always bring a small umbrella. It might be clear when you leave, but an hour into it you’ll be hit by a downpour. You’ll also have to make sure you wear layers just the rest of the year, but it’ll be time to pull out the sweaters and other long sleeve shirts. Think of how the people dress on the TV shows in New York. You’ll want that. You might sweat a bit on your way in, but trust me, you’ll be warm.

If you’re one of the lucky few that gets to drive into work you’ve got another thing to deal with and that is the manhole covers on hills. I haven’t been out today, but I’m sure with the rain that’s been coming down that we have a few manhole covers being lifted up by too much water and flooding the streets as it rolls down the hill. You won’t need to sandbag your house if you live in an area like this unless it’s a heavy downpour and you live in the downward corner houses. The streets are also not very even so you’ll get puddle build up especially near corner drains that get blocked with pine needles and leaves being blown off the trees. I would suggest you keep to the middle lanes when driving. I remember a horrible experience I had when driving in San Rafael one winter where I was driving and underpass and saw a line of water all the way across and thought to myself…PUDDLE JUMPING TIME! Turns out as I speed up the water was over three feet deep and spewed everywhere soaking my engine and stalling out my car. Luckily I had time to get off to the side, but this was before cell phones so I just put on my blinkers and luckily a tow truck came by and took my AAA card and helped me out.

Another thing you’ll need to think about is power outages. Even in San Francisco where it gets wet and windy, but not as bad as the North Bay we get power outages. If it happens after you go to bed then your alarm doesn’t go off and you’re late for work. You’ll get up and have no power to cook yourself breakfast unless you’ve got a gas stove [we don’t]. It helps to have one of those butane burners on hand if the powers out for awhile. Don’t open your refrigerator or freezer very often to make sure you keep things cold. The frozen stuff will stay frozen for a day or so, but your refrigerator might get warm because it’s used more often within 12 hours. It’s also nice to have an old style oil burning lamp. I have my grandmothers for when we’re sitting in a room together, but we also have several rechargeable very bright lights that will last for 12 hours we can carry around with us. It’s kind of interesting showering and shaving in the dark with nothing but a bright LED light to brighten the room. We also have a gas grill outside that we can cook on if it’s not a downpour. If it is we should think about getting an awning to cover it.

If you need to kill time hopefully your iPhone/iPad/Tablet/SmartPhone has 3G or 4G that can pick up a connection. I learned how to turn my iPhone into an alarm clock with out it buzzing with every email or tweet I get. Just be careful that you don’t overuse your time or you’ll have to pay big time. I always kind of liked the quite during a power outage. It just makes me feel like I’m not being attacked by electrical energy from all the devices in the house. The power outages only last about four hours, usually less unless it’s an earthquake then it could be 12 hours without power. I have some friends who own a Victorian they restored to its original form so if they get a power outage they light the gas ceiling lamps and are fine. Most of their appliances are gas powered which saves them money and keeps them going during a blackout. Just a little something to think about.

Yes, winter is the magical time of Christmas, but there’s nothing magical about living in a freezing house or working in a freezing office. I do like coming home from work and opening the door and feeling heat hit my face. To me that’s the magical part of winter for me.

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Low Sodium Diet and What I Now Can’t Eat

Well, I’ve been put on a low sodium diet of 2000mg/day. That’s not too bad since the average person should have 2300mg/day, but I started looking at the amount of sodium in foods and discovered that I’ll have to be crossing Chinese food off my list and by that I mean American Chinese food. I’ve never been to China, but from what I’ve read they’re more into the spices than dumping tons of soy sauce on the food.

I was amazed and horrified when I found this website. I love Chinese food and grew up on it at least once a week usually having the left overs if there were any for lunch the next day. My wife and I love General Tso’s Chicken and we found a place that said it had the best in the city so we went and had an odd experience after eating it and going home. Little did we know that we have consumed 11g of saturated fat, but 3200mg of sodium. We don’t normally eat that much fat or salt and we were taking turns running in and out of the single bathroom we had in the house.

Now this is restaurant food, If you want to get worse take a trip down to Costco where everyone there has to buy a case of Top Ramen or Cup of Noodles. Those have over 1000mg per serving and aren’t as large as General Tso’s Chicken. I worked for a printer that had mostly Asian employees and most of them have at least one of the aformentioned for lunch every day. I would see my boss lady eat two cup of noodles daily and if I did that it would put me over my limit leaving me with water to drink the rest of the day.

I also have a bit of high blood pressure that was getting worse years ago and my doctor told me to get a small wrist cuff that I could check my BP on an hourly basis. A could of the guys I worked with were Asian and they wanted to try it out like everyone else. Their BP came in at 160/120. I told them they need to see a doctor, but they kept saying they felt fine. Both had strokes within three months.

Now I can’t just knock Chinese Food because there are tons of fast food and other restaurant dishes that are awful. It just turns out that Chinese food comes out on top. You can check here to see some of the horrors you’ve probably eaten. Italian and Mexican food may not have as much sodium, but it’s got lots more saturated fat which isn’t good for you either. I will once in awhile have a slice of cheese pizza, but I’m holding off on burritos for now [my other beloved food].

Just watch what you eat because you don’t want to wind up in a hospital eating hospital food.

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Thanksgiving The Way It Was

Well, I’m going to have to burst your bubble today and tell you that the turkey, stuffing, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, green beans with the dried fried onions and pumpkin pie weren’t a part of the first Thanksgiving. Sure we had turkeys, but it was held near a coastal region so there was most likely more seafood and shellfish and deer. Since the English didn’t really have the tools to cook most of the food was cooked the way the Native Americans cooked. There was probably some form of gruel or porridge because the Indians knew things like how to cook acorns without poisoning themselves from the high amounts of tannic acids in them.

What we know as Thanksgiving actually came about during the Victorian Era in the United States. They were the ones who started serving turkey with all the fixings much like we have today, except the Victorians didn’t have pumpkin lattes. For some reason, a person of some amount of influence cooked a turkey and their guests like the idea and it started to spread.

People approach holidays in many different ways, some hate getting together with the family, others love it and then there are the rebels that are somewhere in between. Thanksgiving was a holiday that I realized something was wrong very early on. My Dad was a WWII vet and he had lots of PTSD before they put those letters together. Every holiday he spent was nothing like you’d see on TV or hear on the radio [in my father’s case], so he’d sit off in the bedroom watching TV and drink heavily [we all had someone like that right?]. He’d come out for dinner all melancholy and depressed. At some point during the meal he’d pick someone to start a fight with, usually me. I remember one time I asked my Mom to pass the stuffing and my Dad’s response was, Did you tell me to shut up?! You never tell me to shut up! I’m in charge here and what I say goes!!

Oh dear. Looking back I was never scared because I was in my 20’s former fencing team so I could duck any punches he’d throw. I was into bodybuilding and could bench press 300 lbs and did 75 lb curls. If he took a swing at me and I swung back they’d have to pick him up off the ground.

But enough of my screwed up family an their holiday experiences. I really wanted to talk about the rebels. For me it was Christmas where we’d have ham on Christmas Eve and Turkey Christmas day. I finally switched it over to making prime rib that would feed us for four days and make our neighbors dog my best friend when I’d give him the bone.

I haven’t figured out what to swap out the turkey for on Thanksgiving, but I would love to try some roast venison if he was cheap and easy to get. The only hunter in my family that hunts deer lives in Montana and that’s a distance for him to ship it. It’s not that I don’t like turkey, but we always end up wasting it as I get tired of picking the meat off the bones and the sight of me doing it just horrifies my wife and she runs out of the room with nausea. I’ve made soups before, but now that I’m on a low salt diet that’s a little difficult since that brine inject most turkeys now. I just haven’t figured out what might me appropriate yet.

At least on Christmas day we’ll go Jewish and get some Chinese take out and watch a good movie.

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Another San Francisco Treat…Red Vines

Well they aren’t really made in San Francisco, but as I was looking over the ingredients in a bag of Red Vines last night I found they were made in Union City, CA which is in the Bay Area. Out here in the West when you say licorice, everyone thinks Red Vines. As a kid like the rest of us we’d go to the corner liquor store and they’d always tub of them on the counter. When we’d go to the movies, we’d always get a box of Red Vines. I never realized we did it because that was our licorice.

The funniest part is that when I looked at the calories on the bag per two twists I can’t believe never got totally obese eating a whole box as a kid. I do remember having the black Big Twists a few times [my grandmother believe only black licorice was real licorice] and occasionally I might find the Grape Vines, but on visiting the Red Vines site I found that they also make Cherry Vines and Strawberry Vines which I think I remember trying once or twice, but they also made Spearmint Twists, Choco Twists [I remember trying those and I’m glad they pulled them].

They were originally made by the American Licorice Company in Chicago [which is now out here in Union City as well] and set up their West Coast division in 1925 and it’s been there ever since using old school ingredients and none of the chemical garbage you find in your candy today. One of the funny things is that Red Vines after opening here in 1925 actually made a pair of licorice shoes for Charlie Chaplin to wear and eat in his movie Gold Rush.

When I first moved out of the house I sort of went back to my childhood. I was shopping at Costco one day and noticed a big tub just like all the little liquor stores used to have on the counter. I had to get it as a house snack. Oddly enough when friends would come over, no matter what age they would see it, laugh at me then dig into it and sometimes had to be pulled away. I always liked the tubs because they stayed fresher that way. If you cut a bag open and didn’t finish it in a week it became the candy equivalent of civil war hard tack. This has always been my favorite non-chocolate candy, so much so that I’m munching on some twists now as we speak.

My wife and I always have a bag around in our snack basket in our living room. I’m thinking next time we’re at Costco we buy a tub. It’ll keep them fresher and keep from me getting whiplash when I have to bite into a dried out one. Now how many of you remember biting off both ends and using it to drink a coke as a kid? I can remember a few restaurants from years ago that used to serve their cokes to kids that way.

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Hostess Goes Down…

Everyone seems to be up in arms that Hostess is shutting down. People are ambushing stores grabbing every last twinkie, ho-ho and ding dong. I say good, because all of the people doing this are over 20 and probably haven’t had one in ages. If you’re under 20 then fine, eat as much as you want, but once you pass 20 all the chemical food product in them will kill you. In case you didn’t know the original twinkie creme was whipped lard and sugar only to be replaced in some cases by hydrogenated oil and sugar [that’s what the vegetable/animal shortening is].

Please people, eat all you want and all you can because when you’re dead there’ll be more job openings in the market. If I want something sweet I’ll bake a cake [usually from scratch] or grab a 70% cacao chocolate bar or if I’m cheap I’ll just grab a plain Hershey’s dark chocolate bar. Not exactly the most healthy, but it’s better than the hostess junk. I’m surprised Michelle Obama hasn’t jumped all over this one. I think the only people who have been regularly eating all the sugary, lard filled Hostess snacks you will normally find at WalMart.

As if twinkies weren’t bad enough there are actual people at county fairs who are deep frying them and serving them up. I have to say a part of me wants to try one, but I’ve already got a bit of hypertension and cholesterol problems so I think I’ll have to stay away from them. This is what everyone is focusing on is the snacks, but there are other things that we will lose with Hostess going out of business.

Dolly Madison, Columbo, Home Pride, Parisian, Toscana and Wonder Bread are all owned by Hostess and three mentioned here are big French bread makers. At least in San Francisco we’ll still have Boudin, La Brea and a few other smaller French bread makers to fill the void. There’s more companies than this, but I just listed the ones that Bay Area people would recognize.

Don’t believe the hype though that it was caused by the strike. They filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and came back [barely] and have bleeding money every since. So this year they decided to triple the CEO’s salary. I think that’s more reason for them to go bankrupt than a few little strikes.

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Muni…’Nuff Said

I haven’t really had to ride Muni much in over three years. In the past three years most of my jobs have been work from home or drive from home jobs, so aside from the rare occurrence I apparently have been lucky. I used to hop on the 48 Quintara which is the only reliable bus in the city, get off at West Portal and hop on any metro train to go downtown. Sure there were a few grumpy faces, but for the most part all was good.

Well things have changed. Now things are fine until you get off somewhere downtown and getting out of the station is like running the gauntlet. I’ve heard about people being shot in the stations, one guy was stabbed in the head, then there is the crazy women who walks around in a heavy coat talking to no one who is interested in listening to her yell things like, I know why we have an AIDS crisis and nobody else does. It’s because we have people f*cking in the mouth! Nice morning commentary Gretchen Carlson.

If you’re traveling on the cheap to San Francisco you don’t rent a car you take the bus everywhere. When I took a trip to London I didn’t rent a car, I took the metro and it was pleasant. Did you know they have ice cream dispensers in most of the tube stops? When I was in NY, pre clean up, the trains while having a few shifty looking characters on them ignored you if you ignored them. We like to show everyone that we’re at the forefront, so why can’t we with Muni?

If you need to get anywhere fast you take the metro. From the Sunset District if you try and take a bus downtown you will definitely take twice as long as the metro and your entire ride will be accompanied by eau de urine. This is what we don’t want the visiting tourists to see. People not of San Francisco like to call us smug, but how can we be smug when our public transportation sucks so bad?

OK, we’ve got the cable cars and F line. Those are more kitschy tourist attractions than something very many people use to get to work and they run on their own tracks. We have new metro cars, but our buses haven’t changed much over the years. We had a few testing free wifi, but I haven’t seen those in about five years. The metro when it goes underground needs cell and wifi service. San Francisco needs to move forward, not at a standstill or move backwards. We are one of the top tourist cities in the world, but how many people come back more than once that aren’t driving? Also shouldn’t we make it safe for those of use who have to commute to work? Muni needs a major overhaul and it needs it now.

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Greek Yogurt

I’ve been hearing Greek yogurt mentioned all over the place, but no one goes into detail about what’s so popular about it. My wife and I were out shopping yesterday and she said, I’ve got a coupon for some Greek yogurt so I figure I’d try it and see. To most guys yogurt is chick food. I think because of Jaime Lee Curtis and all those Activa ads about how it makes her go to the bathroom easier. I never felt that way and used to eat yogurt a lot so I figured I’d give it a try.

Wow, I was in for a surprise. It’s thick, really thick like sour cream thick. Mine was fruit flavored which I learned later that it’s better to get the plain and add your own stuff to it. It was 100 calories, Og fat and 10g protein. I actually felt kind of full after eating the 6oz cup of the stuff. It had a tang to it, but the consistency of pudding. I’ve been losing weight lately and I need to pack on more protein and this is a good way to do it. You can add maple syrup and nuts to it, coconut, berries whatever if you like it sweet, but for the tanginess you can also use it to replace sour cream or mayonnaise.

It’s a very versatile substance that can adapt itself to sweet or savory dishes and save you some calories and lower your fat intake. Just to get an idea of what you can do with it Chiobani and Fage have recipe pages that give you some ideas to get you started. It also has probiotic cultures in it so if you’ve been taking antibiotics, have gut troubles or are like Jaime Lee Curtis it’ll help you out there too. Apparently Greek yogurt is such a buzz word these days that even Ben and Jerry have made a frozen yogurt using it. Our own Straus Creamery in Petaluma has also gotten on the bandwagon as well [which incidentally if you want to taste what whole milk used to taste like not to far from the farm you should try theirs].

While it seems like the new superfood you have to watch the labeling. There are some companies [neither of the two mentioned above] that are trying to skirt around the definition by putting additives in it. Give it a try, but buy the plain and play around with it. I think you’ll like it.