Category: Life in San Francisco

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Who Was Charles Fey?

Since I’ve been using the wayback machine I’ll turn it on again and look at a man who was born in 1862 in Bavaria. A man 100 years my senior, one of 15 children who left Bavaria to seek his fortunes in the US starting in New Jersey and eventually ending up in San Francisco.

He liked to work with mechanical things and because of this he eventually wound up working at the California Electric Works where he met his friend Theodore Holtz whom after awhile decided to leave CEW and start their own company. The Fey Company specialized in telephone, telegraph and electrical equipment until in 1895 Charles Fey created a device he called the Liberty Bell, a boxy contraption that you would insert a nickel into and pull an arm on the side of the machine to cause three wheels to spin and depending on what three images came up you could win up to five dollars [if you got three liberty bells].

Charles Fey was the inventor of the first slot machine and it happened here in San Francisco. In 1980 E. Clampus Vitus placed a plaque commemorating the invention of the slot machine at the location of the original Fey Company at 406 Market Street.

The original Liberty Bell machine can now be found at the Liberty Bell Saloon and Restaurant in Reno, NV owned by the grandchildren of Charles Fey. It is made of cast iron and weighs in at over 100 pounds and believe it or not, it still works.

So here is a salute to Charles Fey the man who invented a way to take money from the willing without even having to be there. He was better than any disposed Nigerian Prince I’ve never met.

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Why when I was your age…

Yes, I do believe the years are beginning to catch up with me so I decided to take a look back today on what it was like growing up in San Francisco back in the 60’s so let’s all jump in the wayback machine and take a look back at the good ole days. This won’t be the most politically correct article I’ve written, but back in my youth the phrase politically correct didn’t exist.

First. When I was a kid we still had rotary phones and we didn’t have to dial a 1 before calling long distance because hardly anyone ever made a call out of the US. It was rare that you made a call outside the state let alone the country.

NASA’s computer system had less power than your smartphone of today yet they were able to send a man to the moon. Today we throw birds at pigs with our computing power.

We knew who our neighbors were. When my Mom died and the local firefighters came to our house it turned out that one of them was a friend from way back when and he took my mind off things by us pointing at the houses up and down the block and naming who used to live in all the houses. Because of this we always had someone to turn to in time of need. If there was a problem in your house you could always turn to your neighbors to help you out.

Sand, it was everywhere. When my parents bought the house in 1954 their backyard was nothing but sand. My Dad used to toss their dog over the back fence and let it run around in the sand dunes behind our back fence. The only reason we have a garden today was because my Dad used to cart in bags of dirt during trips outside the city and dug out the sand and through it over the back fence and replaced it with dirt. He and our next door neighbor got together and even terraced both our back yards into four levels with each area having a different purpose. The only sand that remained was in a bricked in sandbox that was made for me until they realized that the local cats that were allowed outside were using it as their own luxury catbox.

Because of the sand if you lived below Sunset boulevard and didn’t put your car in the garage every night that and the salt air would turn your car into a rust bucket in under five years. Most of the cars down by great highway were rusted out hulks that you probably wouldn’t even believe could be driven, but they were.

If you came from anywhere South of California you were Mexican. We didn’t bother thinking about the other countries even though most of my Mexican friends weren’t from Mexico, but usually Central America. Also back then Latino’s were classified as White, Spanish surname. We didn’t use the term Caucasian which I think started in the 70’s. We did have much more ethnic diversity back then as there were kids I went to school with that were first generation from Ireland, Germany, France, England, India, Japan, China, Italy, Sweden, etc. Sure a lot of them fell under the White category, but there were still many cultural differences.

To quote Herb Caen, Remember when spaghetti was ethnic food? Yes, Italian food wasn’t mainstream and neither was Japanese or Chinese food. I remember when my family was a bit down on their luck we would eat pesto regularly because it was cheap to make and all the other kids would hear of this green sauce you’d put on spaghetti [which was pretty much what any kind of pasta was called] and would they would say, ewww, gross. Now some fast food restaurants use pesto like it was ketchup. Most of the Japanese or Chinese food you would buy back then wasn’t really from the country, but adapted by immigrants from American ingredients. Oh, and back when I was a kid, Japanese restaurants were owned and run by Japanese people. I ordered some food from a Japanese restaurant locally and said arigato when I got my food and the waitress said, huh? You’d never hear that if you said gracias at a burrito joint.

Our playground back then were filled with sharp redwood tanbark chunks and had a few hard metal play structures. Nothing soft and bouncy like you have today and we didn’t have to wear helmets when we rode our bikes. I still have scars to show from my playground and bike riding days to prove it.

Change will always happen. I’m not saying it was better back then, but we didn’t think as much as we do today. Maybe it’s because our parents were all drunks because back then you had cocktails before dinner, an after dinner drink or three and of course there was the night cap before you went to bed. In order to be labeled an alcoholic you had to drink a whole lot. I have to say though that back then at least Harvey Milk wasn’t as gay as the movie Twilight.

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The Streets Of San Francisco

I didn’t used to have to drive much when I was unemployed, but now that I have a job and have to hop in my car every day I’ve realized something that I haven’t in quite a while. The Streets of San Francisco pretty much suck. The street outside my house hasn’t been redone in over 30 years. While I am seeing streets being repaved all over the city for some reason my street seems to be at the bottom of the list.

My wife and I were watching a TV show a couple of months ago about technology and how there’s a machine that can drive down a street and grind up the old asphalt and mix it in with a little bit of new asphalt and lay down the new street very quickly. I’ve seen these machines at work in the city and they can redo a block in a day or two. I’m sure they’re a bit costly, but compared to a group of 10-15 guys working for two weeks to do the same thing they probably pay off much quicker.

Every rainy season we have in SF we start to see cracks in the street that get bigger and turn into potholes. The only places I’ve ever been where the streets are marginally worse is New York City. Driving in your car gets thrown around just like my drive into work everyday. I need to have my wheels realigned on my car at least once if not twice a year because of all the potholes and uneven surfaces. This reminded me of my first trip back East to visit my wife before we were married. They have to deal with snow and the salt they put on the roads so that’s a lot more hard on the roads than what we have out here and they have to replace the roads more often. Driving back East in Massachusetts and Connecticut was like driving on glass. The roads were so smooth and the car just hugged the road like were driving on a LeMan’s race track. It was beautiful.

I know San Francisco has a lot of other things to deal with than the roads and they are replacing the roads quite a bit lately. They just seem to not be using those new machines that make the change come about faster as much as they could. It has been worse I’ll give you that. I remember a drive downtown where there was a large pothole that I didn’t see until it was too late to avoid and when I hit it the pothole actually shifted my car from drive into neutral. That’s not right. Most of the work is down is patchwork and I remember when I was first learning to drive how there was a strip jutting out from the parking space in front of my house that if I could back up just enough to hit the little hump I knew my car was in the right space. I’ve got a driveway now to park in and I shouldn’t have to think about the street humps [not speed humps as they call them now] to know how to park. Yes, as I said earlier there are a lot of other things that need help in the city, but if you have to drive in the city your car gets more wear and tear than it needs to.

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Stonestown Farmer’s Market

I grew up with my family going to farmer’s markets on the weekend. Back then though there was only one in San Francisco out on Alemany Avenue that still is there today. Back then things were a little different from what I remember. There was pretty much only fruits and vegetables and they weren’t organic, but they were good quality. My Mom used to buy pickling cucumbers when they were in season by the crate and make Kosher dills and bread and butter pickles [those are the sliced pickles of today]. She’d also get various wax peppers and pickle them too and there was always the fresh fruit for making pies and cobbler. My Mom could cook to say the least.

Now, the farmer’s markets are focused on organic and artisanal products. Stonestown Farmer’s Market is pretty similar to other farmer’s markets around the city that you’ll see. Most of the vegetables and fruits are trucked up for the day from down South and while the fruits tend to be pretty good I can get a crate of strawberries on one of the corners from a hispanic kid selling them before the police chase them away for less. Not that I’ve had a need to purchase a crate of strawberries anytime in my life, but if I did I know where to get the cheap. Generally the fruits and vegetables are a little bit cheaper than in stores, but the vegetables tend to be lacking in quality. Our trip yesterday yielded us not too much other than some baked goods which specializes in pretzel based breads. The time before that our purchase of vegetables ended up having to be thrown out as after we got rid of the outer bits of leaves the inside tended to be molding and rotting. The potatoes we purchased were pre-bagged and were rotting when we opened them up.

That being said, there are some interesting things you can try and purchase at the farmer’s markets. Baked goods, cheeses, olive oil pretty much anything packaged will be good quality, but beware of the term artisanal in front of it. We had some cheese samples that were very good, but when you have it called artisanal cheese expect to pay a higher price. We tried an aged cheese that was washed in beer, but that meant nothing to be as I didn’t get any taste of beer from it. Another was brine washed called salty dog and while there was a hint of salt, it was a longer aged cheese which could have contributed more than the brine wash.

There are also several jewelry, clothing and art retailers there that while nice wasn’t enough of an attraction. There were several food vendors that were tempting me, except we were going out to lunch so I didn’t want to spend money twice and not be able to eat all of the food I purchased. Stonestown’s Farmer’s Market also had weekly bands that aren’t blasting loud, but entertaining and seem to be enjoyed by the children when they aren’t enjoying the bouncy house at the far end. It’s every Sunday until 1pm and I definitely think you should check it out, but keep in mind that not all fruits and vegetables are in season year round.

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BUSTED!

Yesterday I was taking a leisurely drive through Golden Gate Park when I noticed a motorcycle behind me with the driver wearing a white helmet. The motorcycle didn’t look like a normal street bike, but more of an off road type. The driver kept accelerating aggressively coming up on my tail repeatedly so I sped up to give him some room. All of the sudden I noticed the red and blue lights flashing and I pulled over. It was a stealthy park cop.

I trust my gut when things like this happen and I was sure I going to fast. When ever I get pulled over for speeding and it’s very rare it’s usually because I didn’t see the cop behind me or I did and they getting all up on my tail which forces me to accelerate. I should probably slow down and let them run into me which I could then sue the police department for soft body damage, but I’m not like that.

The cop walked up and didn’t ask me if I knew what I did wrong. He told me he clocked me at 45 mph and the speed limit was 25 mph. He was probably right, I do tend to be a bit of a speed demon on city streets, freeways, not so much. I’ve noticed when cops tell you what you did wrong they usually let you go. I’ve got a clean driving record which he might have checked and in the end he let me go without a ticket.

Now I bring this up because I’d like you all to try driving at 25 mph on city streets and if you’re near a school in San Francisco you have to drop to 15 mph. I was driving past Lincoln High School a couple of days ago and dropped to 15 mph. It was a weekend so no kids were around, but within 30 seconds I had cars honking at me or zooming around me. I watched as a jogger ran past me. I’m all for pedestrian safety, but when a jogger runs past your car that usually means you’re going to slow. Cruise control doesn’t kick in unless you’re going 30 mph so I can’t even use that to help me out.

While driving around yesterday I started comparing my speed to other vehicles. The L-Taraval I clocked at 40 mph and people claim how slow Muni is. Think of what they’d start to say if they actually drove the speed limit.  The 48 Quintara maintains the speed limit going uphill, but hit 45 mph going downhill. I’m not sure what to make of any of this other than if you’re driving through Golden Gate Park watch out for the cops on off road bikes. They’re making a statement at the moment and you don’t want to be the one pulled over.

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Home is where the equity is…

I was a boomerang kid before the term came out. I didn’t move out of my parents house until I was 28 because I didn’t see a reason to. Neither did my mother who cried for two days even though I only moved 15 minutes away. I lived on my own visiting twice a week for twelve years and then after my wife and I got evicted from our house we were renting and seeing that we couldn’t find anything acceptable within our price range and the fact that my mother was in her 70’s with health problems we moved back in with her.

My heart sank because I heard the stories of the loser 40 year old living in his mom’s basement. Which is exactly what we did. We were living in the downstairs rooms, but because my Mom occupied so much of the four bedroom house I had to turn the garage into my work place, so I was in effect, living in my Mom’s basement at 40. People don’t always run the numbers as they say, but if you have a minimum wage job you don’t have enough money to afford a one bedroom apartment in the city which requires $21k-25k/year in San Francisco. Minimum wage doesn’t cover that let alone food and utilities. If you’re unemployed and getting the highest pay out you can afford a one bedroom and have $200 extra for food and utilities, still not enough.

People shouldn’t be surprised that kids in their 30’s are moving back in with their parents. My old roommate moved in to his Mom’s house after she died because it was his, free and property tax compared to rent was way less. My Mom died over a year ago and if we had to rent this house we would have to plunk down close to $50k/year. People like to blame Prop 13, but when it comes to rent Prop 13 has nothing to do with it. It has to to do with the fact that San Francisco has water on three sides and no room to expand. There’s also the fact that there’s the San Francisco mystique that helps keep prices up. You simply are not going to find a place in San Francisco to rent for under $1500/month and if you do it’s called tenement housing.

Our parents were the smart ones. They worked hard during a good time and were able to buy a house that they hopefully passed on to their kids which hopefully they didn’t have too many of. I was lucky being a single kid. I didn’t have to sell the house to invest in my own. My name was already on the lease so we were golden. People talk about not wanting all the hassles that come with home ownership, but if you run the numbers the hassles [meaning costs] are less than renting. Say you have to replace your roof every year [which you don’t] that’s still less than rent for the year. Want granite counter tops? That’s less than two months rent. If you start to look at how much per year you have to pay in rent here you’ll begin to understand how people making $75k/year are barely getting by. I suspect that home ownership in San Francisco will become more reasonable when home prices start to drop into the $500k range. Then the monthly mortgage costs will begin to equal rental costs. Oh how I wish I had run the numbers back when my roommate and I had the chance to buy the full five we were living in for $209k. Ah, the early 90’s, the good ole days.

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Embrace The Fog

I’ve decided that after living in San Francisco for a little over 49 years that I’ve chosen to select, Embrace The Fog as my new catch phrase. I’ll start signing emails with it partly because no one signs sincerely any more because that sounds insincere or best which always makes me thing best what? or the usual, regards…regarding what? Your best insincerity? But anyway, let’s get back to the fog.

San Francisco while not being the foggiest place on earth is certainly the best known [Labrador is the foggiest]. The fog is caused by warm moist air hitting colder drier air. When the temperature outside gets close to the temperature needed to get water to condense out of the air as a liquid [dewpoint] you get fog.

San Francisco is odd in that it gets three types of fog and I’ll go into explaining the three types without hopefully putting any of you to sleep the three types are radiation, advection and tule fog. Here we go:

  1. Radiation fog:  is formed by the cooling of land after sunset by thermal radiation in calm conditions with clear sky. The cool ground produces condensation in the nearby air by heat conduction. In perfect calm the fog layer can be less than a meter deep but turbulence can promote a thicker layer. Radiation fogs occur at night, and usually do not last long after sunrise. Radiation fog is common in autumn and early winter. This is what we see at night and in the morning that usually burns off. Tule fog is included in this, but it’s a little different.
  2. Advection fog: occurs when moist air passes over a cool surface by advection (wind) and is cooled. It is common as a warm front passes over an area with significant snowpack. It is most common at sea when tropical air encounters cooler waters, including areas of cold water upwelling, such as along the California coast. The advection of fog along the California coastline is propelled onto land by one of several processes. A cold front can push the marine layer coastward, an occurrence most typical in the spring or late fall. During the summer months, a low pressure trough produced by intense heating inland creates a strong pressure gradient, drawing in the dense marine layer. Also during the summer, strong high pressure aloft over the desert southwest, usually in connection with the summer monsoon, produces a south to southeasterly flow which can drive the offshore marine layer up the coastline; a phenomenon known as a “southerly surge”, typically following a coastal heat spell. However, if the monsoonal flow is sufficiently turbulent, it might instead break up the marine layer and any fog it may contain. Moderate turbulence will typically transform a fog bank, lifting it and breaking it up into shallow convective clouds called stratocumulus. This is the daytime fog that we get from time to time. It’s also when higher up the overcast cloud layer that we see so often in the Sunset and Richmond districts.
  3. Tule fog: is a radiation fog, which condenses when there is a high relative humidity [typically after a heavy rain], calm winds, and rapid cooling during the night. The nights are longer in the winter months, which creates rapid ground cooling, and thereby a pronounced temperature inversion at a low altitude. This is the nasty fog that it’s so thick you can sometimes not see your hand in front of your face. It’s the most dangerous type of fog to drive in as it can even obstruct car headlines and don’t even think that turn on your high beams will help as it only shines the light back into your face.
Now after reading this many of you will say, why embrace the fog then? Well, here’s the truth. Fog is actually good for you, or so many have said in the past. It was actually used as a selling point for homes in the Sunset District. It’s wet and not salty so it offers moisture to your skin. It’s also said to help people with respiratory problems. If you go to a place that’s hot and humid like say Hawaii, the heat makes you sweat and the high humidity keeps the water salty water on your skin which most people don’t like too much so they cool off with a beer which makes them sweat more causing them to actually feel worse.
Hot dry air is a different story. I made a trip many years ago to my cousin’s place in Arizona. Oddly enough I had never experienced near zero humidity weather before. To beat the heat we hit the pool and when I got out suddenly the nice wet water was sucked off my body into the dry air and I was freezing cold in 112° weather. It turns out when water evaporates quickly it sucks body heat away with it which explains how someone could be freezing in 112° weather. We’re talking like the feeling of waking up in a bathtub full of ice. It’s hard to breath as your body adjusts and people usually use some for of the phrase kill me after exiting a pool in a place like this.
We don’t have to deal with that in San Francisco. We have blankets of fog in many places unless you live in the SOMA, Bayview or Mission then you might see overcast more than fog. The term blanket of fog is actually a very good thing. Blankets keep you warm and the thick fog does hold the heat in a bit. This is why in a place like Las Vegas at night where the sand doesn’t absorb much heat the temperatures can drop pretty quickly. There’s nothing like a February morning in Las Vegas to make you scratch your head.
While we do have a couple of bad months in December and January and sometimes February where it gets wet and cold that’s not cold like people back East have to deal with. We don’t have snow [except for 1976]. We do get hail and mostly rain, but we rarely get temps that drop into the 30’s here. This is why I like the fog. It pretty much mediates any temperature extremes.
For a guy of 49 I have hardly any wrinkles starting to develop on my face and I breath pretty good. I’m beginning to believe the fog is therapeutic if for no other reason than on those few cloudless days when the West facing back of my house gets the direct attack from the sun. It is blinding and we have to close up the curtains and open up the windows because the back of our house was covered with concrete with slate shingles which love to soak up the heat and radiate it back into the house. Our heater is almost never used anymore because if we open blinds during the day our house can be 80°’s upstairs well into the evening.
Besides, if you’re a real San Franciscan the idea of falling asleep and hearing the fog horns off in the distance remind you that you’re home. So come on, join with me and embrace the fog. @KarlTheFog, this article goes out to you.

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Blockboard: Know Your Neighborhood

An old friend of mine who I haven’t seen in probably close to 30 years, Ian Kallen contacted me a few months ago about an iPhone app he was working on called Blockboard. It’s a type of social networking app, but more micro-social networking that helps bring together people in your neighborhood. At the time they were focusing on the Mission District because that’s where they were started, but now they’ve expanded to cover all of San Francisco and are moving on to cover other cities.

What’s nice about the app is that it’s just more than a Howdy neighbor and then you get back to browsing the web or playing some game by Zynga. People in your neighborhood can actually post about things going on that could be anything from police reports, suspected illegal activities or local street fairs and meet up parties. I can honestly say that in all my time with twitter and Facebook I’ve hooked up with some old friends and we’ve talked about the old times, etc, but I’ve only met face to face with about maybe 20 of the close to 1000 people I’ve amassed between the two.

I’m going to start checking daily with blockboard now after I received an email from my twitter friend [who I’ve yet to meet] Bre Lambert of ScoutMob. She wrote to me to remind me that Blockboard is running a contest where five neighborhoods can win $5000 by getting 500 members to sign up. That money will go to fixing up things in the area, making improvements, etc. So now I’m making my pitch to get you to join up in the Sunset. Well, since I cover all of San Francisco you all should download the app and join up actually, but I’m always a little partial to the Sunset seeing as I live here.

Checking in this morning I also found there were coupon offers for local businesses in the area that you could take advantage of through blockboard. The app also appears to aggregate relevant blog postings and articles from the web about the neighborhoods of San Francisco. I was kind of surprised that many of my articles actually had links there that I didn’t have to share with them. I wouldn’t be surprised if this article shows up there.

As I said before, I’m going to be paying more attention to this app as it looks like it has real promise for the districts of San Francisco and I hope you check it out because with your help you’ll help bring about some change within the city better than a bunch of people clogging up the Financial District chanting.

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Pink Popcorn: The San Francisco Treat

Pink popcorn was always something I had taken for granted. You would go to the ballpark and get it. You could go to the zoo and get it. Any event that occurred within the Bay Area you would find Wrights pink popcorn. It was like Coke™, where ever you went it was there. What I didn’t realize in my very San Francisco-centric thinking was that it was a San Francisco creation.

Since finding this information I’ve been trying to track down the history of this confection that is taken for granted. I’ve heard stories that the chemicals used to coat the popcorn causes cancer [just like everything else you eat] to it being first made in the 1800’s in San Francisco. I have even called the company that’s located now on Potrero Avenue in the City as well as emailed them, but have yet to hear from them directly.

From Wrights website they mention that they started in the 40’s and that’s as much of a history as I can get about them. I’m not sure who Mr. or Mrs. Wrights is, but they don’t really want you to know about them. I was able to find a couple of guys who did an interview with NPR who were flavor agents that made the flavorings for many high profile food products which I cannot mention, but they did say that they were the ones who created the pink glaze for the popcorn and it was bubble gum flavored. Somehow bubble gum flavored popcorn doesn’t sound as good as it tasted as a kid. Bubble gum was something you chewed and spit out, not chewed and swallowed as my mother always reminded me when I would chew and swallow a piece of Bazooka Joe [as an adult I used to buy tubs of the stuff along with red vines just to satisfy the kid still in me struggling to get out].

I think it’s about time that our Interim Mayor, Ed Lee recognize Wrights pink popcorn as a official San Francisco Treat. When public officials come  to San Francisco Wrights pink popcorn should be in the baskets he presents to them not organic hot dogs like he’s given in the past. This is a company unlike others that started in San Francisco like the It’s-it and Sees candy that have moved to the peninsula, but a San Francisco company that has actually stayed in San Francisco. Sure we have Twitter, but compared to a company started in the 40’s Twitter is an infant.

While Wrights website could use an update they’re more about the product we all take for granted. While I hadn’t seen it at my last trip to the San Francisco Zoo I understand you can still get it there and I was pleased to hear that the Stow Lake boat house will still be selling it. I think I’ll have to find some and share it with my daughter so she can get a taste of old San Francisco.

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NERT: It could save your life

NERT, or Neighborhood Emergency Response Team is a free service provided by the San Francisco Firefighters to help train the public in how to deal with emergency and disaster related situations. Other cities have Community Emergency Response Team classes, but San Francisco, being a bit different focuses on the type of disasters we are most likely to encounter. I haven’t heard of a hurricane ever hitting San Francisco, but earthquakes are up there at the top of the list and this is a good way to get training on what to do in case you’re hit by one or any of the other problems that could crop up with or without an earthquake such as fires, medical emergencies, etc.

My wife found out about this first and brought it up to me because I always used to test her by yelling GET DOWN NOW! and watch her ask me, why? I’d politely remind her that if she had to question me when I yelled a line like that she might end up dead. I can be a bit smug at times and I know that it wasn’t exactly the right situation to make that most effective. Since I had been a Boy Scout and gone through all of this before I figured it might be fun to have a refresher course since it was free as well. There are six classes you take totaling 20 hours. It’s not really that hard or time consuming and it’s definitely not a boring class. You have to be re-certified every couple of years, but that’s just having to take the last two courses.

Well, it turns out what I learned as a Boy Scout isn’t what you’re supposed to do anymore. We were always taught the first thing you do when someone has a severed limb [how many of us have ever been in that situation?] was to apply a tourniquet. Turns out that’s not the best thing to do since you could end up making the person lose more of the limb by killing off blood flow and you should always apply direct pressure until medical professionals can get there.

Remember standing in a doorway during an earthquake? WRONG! It’s actually best to get up against a way because if the ceiling drops in chances are pretty good that a portion will fall at an angle leaving you with a safe place. I also got to learn things I had never thought of before such as teamwork in a situation when some is trapped under say a fallen telephone pole or a car. This was also the first time someone had lit a controlled fire and handed me an extinguisher and told me to put it out. These are handy tips to know and the best part was at the end we got our yellow hard hats and orange safety vests. Yes, some of you might think at times that those outfits look a little dorky, but if something bad comes down like another ’89 earthquake you’ll be glad to see these people. I could go into more detail, but it’s best to get your information from the NERT website.