Category: Life in San Francisco

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World Autism Awareness Day in San Francisco

Today I’m having yet another guest blogger and that is my wife Mama Fog who runs her own blog about what she has learned about autism to help her better understand how to deal with the system when it comes to our daughter. You can read more on her site Out of the Fog.

Tomorrow is World Autism Awareness Day.  It seems like a perfect time to list some of the local resources available for families with autism.

Autistic Like, Graham’s Story, the movie will be airing on some PBS stations.

Support for Families of Children with Disabilities hosts workshops, support groups and trainings.  They offer parent mentors, a library and many online resources.  I think their IEP workshop is a must for any parent of a student with an IEP.

List of autism friendly local activities and attractions.  Includes times and dates for the AMC sensory friendly movies and times at bounce houses around the area.

Our daughter is too young for these activities, but I have heard good things about them.

SF Park and Rec Adaptive and Inclusive Programs

KEEN – Kids Enjoy Exercise Now

Special Olympics of Northern California

Janet Pomeroy Center

Parents of children under 3 with a child with autism will be eligible for some help from Early Intervention.   Contact the Golden Gate Regional Center.

Like most city school districts, SFUSD is confusing at best: San Francisco Unified School District’s Special Education

Last year an audit was done on SFUSD’s special education programs and services.  The report was not favorable.

SFUSD is attempting to remedy this.  They are allowing special ed inclusion students to apply at any SF school.   It remains to be seen how this will be supported: San Francisco Unified School District Community Advisory Committee for Special Education

Community Alliance for Special Education offers free and low cost legal counseling and advocacy for families with special needs.

The blog SF K files documents the journey of several parents going through the gauntlet that is the admissions process here in our lovely city.  I’m pleased that they are featuring parents of children in special education.

Here’s a great post about the special education enrollment process.

Redwood City knows how to start and maintain a special ed PTA.  SF should have this too!

Other local bloggers and sites:

Senior Dad

Laura Shumaker

Squidalicious

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Playgrounds R Us

Since it’s spring break and our daughter is too young to be running around half naked with drunken frat boys we have to find something to entertain her with. Now that we’re having real weather again in San Francisco we’ve been visiting some of the local playgrounds and have found a few surprises.

This week we went to a playground we haven’t been to in over a year. It’s the Junipero Serra Playground that a block away from the Stonestown Galleria. The nice part about this playground is you can’t see it from any major street. This means that it’s hardly ever crowded. At best there was maybe 12 people at the spot. If you’re a parent of an autistic child this place is a real god send because there’s not a ton of kids running around screaming with joy that can overwhelm your child.

The nice thing about playground today is that they aren’t like the ghetto, industrial playgrounds of my youth. Back in my day [christ I can’t believe I used that phrase] playgrounds were steel, concrete and sharp tanbark. They all looked like something built in cold war Russia. Now they are nice and soft with no sharp pointy things to poke your kids eyes out.

The playgrounds we have today are nice, generally peaceful spots where your kid can run around and well, be a kid. They have much more inviting structures with very little chance for injury and the parents don’t have to keep an eye on their kids as much because if a kid falls you don’t have to worry about a broken tooth or arm because they’re filled with soft puffy foam.

Now this could be construed as a bit of molly coddling for kids and a few people could make allusions to the real world isn’t soft and cuddly, but I don’t think we need to make our kids suffer the harsh realities of the world at a young age. They need a place that they can exercise their minds by making stuff up as they go along. I found myself watching my daughter on the structure in the picture above walking around like it could have been a pirate ship running and jumping and climbing in ways that I wished I could of as a kid.

Then there are people who think the opposite. They aren’t the young kids using their imagination they’re the bored teenage few that don’t have home computers with World of Warcraft to waste their time after school, but can find a way to get their hands on a few cans of spray paint and try to ruin it for the others.

Here was a pretty close to pristine playground except for the sand that always overflows the sand box and a couple of kids had to try and ruin it by leaving their names which no one can read because they lacked proper penmanship and they know that the city lacks the funds to clean up their damage after they’ve finished.

This playground has a really nice rec center, but I’ve never seen anyone inside it or any listing of events here. Around the corner is a set of picnic tables under a well constructed pergola that would be a perfect staging point for a small party. Aside from the graffiti the only thing wrong with this playground was that one of the drinking fountains was backed up. I found a few small sticks that I tried to loosen up the drain with, but it didn’t work. I did notice a guy from park and rec walked around taking pictures and making a few phone calls so hopefully this will be changed in the near future.

Perhaps some of the vandalism is due to the high cost of other attractions around San Francisco that can turn kids minds around. While most of the big attractions in San Francisco have a “Po’ people’s day” where they are open to the masses for free, that also makes them crowded and gives our kids less chance to see and learn from them. Luckily not all playgrounds have been hit with graffiti and vandalism. Today we will stop by another spot that will not have the graffiti and our daughter will have another chance to entertain herself.

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Sometimes you gotta leave the city…

And you’ll get a few surprises when you do. My wife and I were trying to figure out what to do last Friday because our daughter was off from school for a furlough day and needed something to get some of the energy out of her.After jokingly saying let’s go to San Jose because I hate when she asks, “What do you want to do” and no matter what I offer she always comes up with something different.

So I waited and she comes in and says what about San Mateo? San Mateo? Why San Mateo? Well it turns out that there’s a huge toy store there called Talbots Toyland that she’s heard a lot about. I figured it’s close enough and I haven’t been outside the city [which means farther south than Serramonte] in quite awhile.

Now I know I’m supposed to be writing about all things San Francisco, but when we got there I saw something I didn’t see in San Francisco, well there were a few things:

  1. It’s clean, almost Singapore-like clean.
  2. No homeless people.
  3. No one has an accent. This is something people who hate the Marina say it’s because they’re “too white” but they aren’t “too white” there were asians, latinos and african americans, just no accents or ebonics.
  4. You can understand people who ask to take your order in a restaurant. See above
  5. Parking Downtown: It’s there and it’s 50¢ per hour!

As we were walking around the downtown area we noticed that there was a Draeger’s market across the street so we decided to take a peek. Not really a cheap grocery store, but the quality of the food was good and they actually had products I had never heard of, like Yunnan Palace Bamboo Rice which is green. They even had an escalator going up to the second floor where they had home and kitchen wares.

As for Talbots Toyland, they had everything. They had a room just for model train people and slot car enthusiasts. I didn’t even know they still made slot cars. They had another room of just dolls and another just for biking supplies. They had a stuffed giraffe toy that was easily 15 ft tall and we were wondering what kind of house you would have to have to have that. Obviously a big one.

There are some downsides though. If you like to drink more than beer and wine you’ll have a problem. There were only two bars we saw downtown [mind you this wasn’t an exhaustive check out, only a couple of hours] and Draeger’s only carries wine and beer. Your selection of foods are a little thin downtown in that there’s four pizza places in one block, Two taquerias in the next and a couple of Chinese and Japanese restaurants in the third. Their traffic signs also could use a bit of work, when we were leaving there was a sign that pointed to us to get over to the left for San Francisco which when we did missed the on ramp to San Francisco because that was on the right. We then proceeded to make a U-turn and what looked like pretty much the only street you COULD make a U-turn on and as we’re driving back the on ramp that pointed to 101 South turned out to be the onramp for 101 North. We still made it home in under 30 minutes.

It was a nice place to visit, but I like the fact that San Francisco keeps you on your toes. Which is probably part of the reason people on the Peninsula don’t like San Francisco. As we were walking down the streets we could have been in Burlingame or Millbrae, everything looked the same. No big chain stores though. I’m sure there’s a few there, there has to be and I didn’t see a single SamTrans bus, but did get shaken as the Cal-Train passed by.

All in all, I think I like San Francisco better, but it’s nice to get away once in awhile.

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El Burrito Express: A San Francisco Secret

Thirty years ago when they opened, El Burrito Express was a god send to me. I was a broke college kid with a girlfriend who had a daughter and EBX was half a block away from her house. We would walk down and get a bean and cheese burrito for $3.65 and it would feed the three of us. And oh what a burrito it was. I’ve had burrito’s all over the city and yes, I will sound a bit sacralegious to folks out in El Mission, but I have never had a better burrito than here.

I had to laugh when they said a few years ago that due to the rising cost of supplies they would have to raise their price. The same burrito thirty years later is now $3.95. I can’t knock them for that. What changes they’ve undergone in that time period. Most places will usually trim down their menu to only what is essential. EBX, they’ve expanded it to the point they don’t have room to put up anymore signs and have to use paper attached to the front of their case to advertise their new El Gigante burrito in honor of  the Giants winning the World Series [note, the picture was from last night and they’ve re-arranged things and have done away with the paper signs]. Apparently they’ve also learned a lot about our new technologies and finally have their own website set up, will deliver, they are present on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. That’s pretty impressive for a little burrito shop in the Sunset. I’ve found that calling in my orders works best here as they always seem to be crowded.

Enough about technology. Let’s talk about their food! As you can tell burritos are their main focus, but they have tacos, enchiladas, tamales, tortas as well. They’ve just added something called asada fries that’s kind of like their nachos except using french fries instead of their hand made tortilla chips. That’s more California than the place in the mission that makes a “California Burrito” I’ve spoken about before that’s a burrito with fries added into the mix. I’m going to start with the burritos because they are the best deal you’ll get. You’ve got a choice between the Regular and Bronco to start. The difference is that the regular has guacamole as an extra and the bronco has no rice and sliced avocado [my choice]. If you want a bigger version you ask for the Super burrito or Super Bronco. If you want even bigger than that you have to move up to the Expresso Burrito. This is one HUGE burrito. Two tortillas filled with cheese, beans, rice, meat rolled up and then covered in guacamole, their “special sauce”, more salsa and more cheese. This is the wet style [burrito mojado] and they seem to sell a lot of them.

Now I have at times been a big eater, but lately not so much so I’ve found I can cut one in half and get two days out of it. There was a time that I believe I was able to eat an entire burrito by myself, but I’m not sure. I’ve had their nachos, enchiladas, tostadas & tamales and they’re all good, but it’s the burrito’s that really shine. A personal tip if you’re someone that’s low on cash and needs a quick snack you can get their corn quesadilla’s for 90¢. They also have homemade aqua fresca’s and they also seem to be moving towards a more healthy way of serving their food with in store tips like, “hold the sour creme and add a whole wheat tortilla.” I like the fact that they are being socially responsible and not filling their customers up with tons of lard. They also have advertisements they’ve put on their Burrito TV youtube site that shows they have an interest in giving back to their community and taking care of it as well. See the video below. Note they also have a card you can get where you buy nine burrito’s and the tenth is free.

All in all, there’s little bad I can say against this place. Actually, there’s nothing bad I can say about this place except the front door that is a little hard to open, but that’s nothing. If you want a good burrito, go to the Sunset district. 🙂

 

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Mommie Dearest

A year ago today marks the day my wife and I found my Mother dead watching TV in our house. That is still a hard day to think about because I don’t really like death. I don’t think anyone does, but I was a 5 year old that was afraid of dying. I suppose that’s when I first understood what it really meant. But I didn’t come here to write a downer piece for today. So let me tell you a little bit about my Mom.

She was born on May 28th, of 1929. That’s seems like a long time ago and you’re right, it was. She was the first of our family born in San Francisco. My family leaning toward the Italian side lived in the Marina when they moved here. Back then my mother told me she as a kid could remember there were still people having ice delivered to their houses for their ice boxes. Being a little girl starting her not too long before the great depression life probably sucked a bit for her, but my family being the type they were stuck together to get through it.

Once she entered her teens she joined the Girl Scouts and was very active with the environment before it was a popular thing to do. She was quite into camping and hiking and seeing as times were simpler then and she didn’t have access to all the new toys like we do she had dolls and a dollhouse that were made by my Grandfather supplemented with a few store bought dolls. In the summers at girl scout camp she would have fun tossing “cow chips”. When you think about it and she never said it, but it would have been a good line, “Why in my day we didn’t have World of Warcraft. When we wanted to have fun we threw dried up cow shit!”

We had family who lived up in Jackson, California which from the pictures back then it was pretty much a farm, so my Mom was a city girl who was raised on a farm part time. Because Jackson had a large population of Native Americans who were the original owners of the land she became interested in their culture and left us with a huge collection of “indian baskets” most of these were from the California tribes, but she did have a few items from the Navajo and Hopi’s, most notable are the collection of Hopi Kachina dolls we have hanging on our walls. What she never told me and we didn’t find this out until we started going through her stuff is that she also had a keen interest in the local Ohlone tribe’s language and it looked like she was either writing a book or just collecting research.

When World War II hit she would spend her days after school at St. Bridgette’s helping out the military by either scanning the skies off the coast for incoming aircraft from the other side to helping out with mapping in the staging areas at the presidio. I suppose they didn’t have child labor laws back then like we do today.

As she grew older she ended up attending SFSU and graduating with a teaching degree and got a job at Francis Scott Key out here in the Sunset working for the city’s then Childcare program. It was nothing like it is today, but it was more like pre-school and a little bit later for kids that couldn’t afford a private school.

Then one fateful Christmas day as my family was gathered into the car to go to someone in our families house for dinner they stopped on a gas station on Lombard street and my Mom saw a gas station attendant that she felt sorry for because he had to work on Christmas. It turns out that a few years later this man would one day become my Dad. For the life of my I can’t remember their wedding anniversary, but then again, I wasn’t there but sometime after that day came me. My Mom had had lots of trouble and after nine miscarriages they finally decided to adopt and that’s where I came into the picture. Adopting was a kind of hush hush thing back then and my parents arranged for a private adoption that only close friends and family knew of. I never would have known myself had I not been snooping around and found the paperwork when I was around ten. Even back then I was a devious kid.

Once I came along she became a stay at home Mom and never worked again. After I got older though she started focusing on her cooking and that is what she will always be most remembered for. If she taught me anything, my Mom taught me to enjoy what you eat and that you can make it from scratch easier than you can buy it from the store [well back then at least]. My Mom would always over cook for most of her life. She and my Grandmother would make vats of minestrone soup or bolognese sauce which was known in my family as Italian gravy. When they were available she would get pickling cucumbers and make pickles. Everyone my Dad worked with and all our neighbors got some along with the gravy and soup which we always had frozen in our big basement freezer.

Mom’s dessert’s were to die for. She could take a package of cake mix and make a few changes and you’d think it came from an uppity bakery that would have charged you ten times what it cost to produce. She made creme puffs and eclairs and cookies that it’s no wonder all the kids liked coming over to my house to play because they always got good food and plenty of it.

I think things started to go downhill for her when my Dad and Grandmother died back in 1999. They died a month apart and my mother had just undergone her fifth hip replacement surgery and the world crashed around her. Her favorite dog Shelly died a couple of months after our daughter was born and if we didn’t have our daughter she probably would have followed the dog in weeks. She at least got to be a Grandmother for a few years and she loved that more than anything else.

The saddest thing to me though is that all I have left of my Mom now are memories that can fit on one piece of paper. Guys, talk to your parents, because one day they won’t be around anymore. Yeah, they can be real assholes at times, but you might learn something from them.

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San Francisco Vs. The Tsunami

You’ll all have to thank my wife for this post. She had done a bit of research on how bad SF would fare if hit with a tsunami and I have to say that my off the cuff, unscientific assessment was off. I had it worse that it really would be.

She steered me toward the County Tsunami Inundation Maps website that shows just how bad we would be hit and I was kind of surprised. It’s the first time I am glad I’m on the front line of defense because the wave would hit us then make a left and head into the bay. Pretty much if you live in the Sunset or Richmond above 47th avenue you’ll be safe. The site’s a little hard to understand at first because it gives you a far away map and you have to click on it to download a large PDF image. I should have figured that since it was run by the government it wasn’t going to be easy. Maybe Apple should be hired as a consultant to make it more user friendly.

From what I can tell from the maps the worst places to be the Marina, the Wharfs, China Basin and Islais Creek. Oh let’s not leave out Treasure Island which would be underwater. I guess my earlier jokes about the tsunami evacuation signs being at the beach wasn’t that far off. Essentially they’re tell you to move a block away and you’ll be fine. I’ve also noticed that Oakland, Alameda and Emeryville will have a few problems as well even though they’re farther inland. Even those places won’t be hit by more than a few blocks.

It appears that as long as you are about a half mile in from the water you will be fine and have nothing to worry about. So everyone, stop being paranoid and get back to enjoying life. SF 1 – Tsunami 0.

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Chinatown West

This post is meant for people in San Francisco or who used to live in San Francisco because they’re going to understand it better. The Sunset District has blossomed recently with a huge influx of Asians, mostly Chinese. While that’s more disturbing to many of the few old guard left who originally bought their homes when the companies who built them would only sell to Caucasians, I was surprised to see a bit of a split between the Chinese.

Recently while I were searching Yelp the other day to try and find a good Japanese restaurant out of all the Japanese restaurants around us I started to notice something about the businesses around us that people where complaining about. Chinese complaining about Chinese. WTF?

Then I began thinking about it. In particular I’m going to be referring to Noriega Street because that’s where I saw most of the complaints. Noriega is one of those odd streets in the Sunset like Judah, Irving and Taraval that allow a short run of commercial sections and then housing. The majority of the business on Noriega are Asian owned. What I’ve noticed over the years that there are a number of Chinese that are coming in that are new to the U.S. and either don’t know English, know vary little or know it, but feel more comfortable speaking Chinese [Mandarin or Cantonese take your pick] In a short walk from 33rd and Noriega to 30th and Noriega you’ll be lucky to hear a word of English spoken.

This isn’t a bad thing, per se, but you have to understand the area that you’re dealing with if you go shopping there. There is a dim sum place, Mong Kok [see map below] that I’ve learned you have to understand that you’re walking into a place where English is a second language and that while they expect the occasional non-Chinese speaker to come in they don’t know more than a few words and how to count in English. They know me because I’m the white guy who goes in to pick up some of the cheapest dim sum you’ll find. They always smile and say hello, but I don’t go farther than that because I probably know about as much Cantonese as they do English and with my luck they probably speak Mandarin. People have said they are rude, but I don’t think so. I think it’s more that they are there to get their job done and English isn’t really a part of it.

I think what’s happening is that there are Chinese people who have made the complaints on Yelp haven’t had a need to learn Chinese because they were born here and they get frustrated that their own people don’t understand them. These are Chinese people who know about as much to even less Chinese than I do. You have to realize that the business owners are used to the way things work in China and that’s not exactly what people born and raised here regardless of race come to expect here.

If you need to do some shopping and have to do it in the Sunset District you’ll just have to remember that sometimes it’s like you’re taking a trip to China. I’m not afraid of that. Besides, sometimes you’ll discover something you didn’t expect to find.

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KUSF To Return From Exile? It’s Possible

I was a bit surprised when my friend Ian Kallen, one of the founding fathers of Rampage Radio sent me an email yesterday telling me that USF & USC’s lawyers have filed a petition to ban the transfer of the FM license for KUSF. It looks like they’re having a change of heart. There is also a website established to raise money to fight the transfer that you can visit at savekusf.org.

NOTE: I got it wrong from the email I received from Ian. USF and USC’s lawyers are fighting to block  the transfer. KUSF has an internet site using bandwidth from WMFU to broadcast over the internet in the interim. What I’ve heard is that KUSF is raising money so that if they get the reprieve and USF says, you want it, you pay for it they’ll have the cash to do it. Please donate to them.

KUSF has been a known leader in serving the community of San Francisco for many years and has sorely been missed by many residents since KDFC started pumping out it’s classical music over 90.3. I’m not sure why a for profit station such as KDFC is operating on a non-profit frequency, but that isn’t really the point. The point is that KUSF is gone and we want it back. If you can visit the site and donate if you can to help bring back KUSF.

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The Tsunami That Never Was

Oddly enough it was earlier last week I was thinking about writing this long before the earthquake hit Japan. It’s one of those funny, duh kinds of things that just has me scratching my head sometimes. Notice the sign to the left. Good idea to know which direction to go in case of a Tsunami emergency.

I’d like to talk a little bit about tsunamis and San Francisco. We used to get tidal wave alerts fairly often out in the Sunset with warning to expect flooding. You know what we used to do? Drive down to the beach to watch and see if the big wave ever came. Absolute opposite to what a person should do, but we did it anyway. Guess what. No tsunami’s ever came. Even if we did get a big one there’s a few hurdles it would have to cross first.

  1. There’s either concrete walls or  rock and sand piled up at the beach that reaches close to 30 feet. The waves that devastated Crescent City in 1964 topped 20′. We’d need something a lot bigger than that.
  2. The 8.9 or 9.1 quake that hit Japan has no chance of happening here according to experts because of the way the San Andreas Fault is built, plus our fault line is inland, not 10=15 miles off shore.
  3. If a wave did manage to pass over the rock, sand and concrete it would have to drop about 40′ into a trough like area that runs uphill for about 4 blocks before you’re at the same level as the top of the sand.

So all in all we’re pretty safe. My house is over 100 ft above sea level so I know I’m safe and if there’s ever a chance I’m not then there’s pretty much no where in San Francisco you’d be safe.

Now back to the picture. That picture was taken at the foot of Judah street right across the street from Java Beach cafe. If you turn 180° this is what you see. OCEAN BEACH! Ok, I kind of took a few liberties with the picture, but basically the sign is right across the street from the beach.

Yes, this sign was money well spent for people who ride on a short bus to their meetings at the low IQ club. No where else further up Judah is there another sign except over on Lincoln Blvd where there’s one a block up from the beach. No other street has signs like this so I suppose the city of San Francisco is telling residents that if you live in the northern part of the Sunset District you probably aren’t very smart.

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Good Ole Uncle Al…

Alfred Podesta was my godfather and my mother couldn’t have picked a worse man to help me be brought up right. Uncle Al was a bohemian of sorts who hung out with friends such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benny Bufano, Allen Ginsburg, Tippy Hedren and god knows who else sipping cocktails at Vesuvio’s and probably philosophizing late into the nights before leaving for his apartment on Greenwich street.

He was the founder of Podesta Divers a salvage company that had the job of digging stuff out of the bay. It was amazing some of the things he’d pull up and when he’d come to dinner on Saturday nights he would sometimes share some of the odd stuff he pulled up when he had to retrieve a car and find some other odd bits that had accumulated on the bay floor before it. Uncle Al would always show up at the house in his forest green 1965 mustang that he had until the end. He’d always have a leather jacket and a scarf around his neck and when he’d call prior to coming over he always ask me, “do you still have your earrings?” I’d always answer yes and he’d say, “GOOD!”

He could sometimes be a bit of a gruff old man at times, but that was do to his upbringing in Jackson, California which wasn’t any where near as urban as we have it here. He would milk cows and kill chickens for a dinner, but he had a kinder side to him even though he once threw a chair at my Mother when she was a kid for coming into the kitchen one morning without washing her hands. He liked his scotch and he’s probably the reason why I like my scotch as well. He always enjoyed his life to the fullest and even when his first wife [Pacifist Anarchist Artist Shirley Staschen Triest] left him he ended up marrying a German woman who was younger than his first son. This was a man who had some big cojones for the time.

After his first wife left him he decided to run off and live in Mexico with awhile with his son. Neither of them spoke Spanish, but figured since they could speak Italian they could get by and they did. Rather well. We still have some of the wicker furniture he sent back to my mom from Mexico and oddly enough it still works quite well in that my daughter hasn’t been able to tear it apart.

He taught me a love of the oceans and how even back in the 70’s how we were screwing them up with all the crap we were dumping into them. He never proselytised though it was always a one on one type of conversation and even me as a young kid in my 20’s he treated me as an equal.

One of my funniest memories was a news story my mom showed me that was a picture of Uncle Al in the basement of City Lights. I can’t remember if it was the opening or some party, but there he was with a joint in his hand and my mother remarked, “Gee, I never knew your Uncle Al rolled his own cigarettes.” Riiiiight…I really wanted to pat my mom on the head for that one, but she wasn’t exactly always “in the loop” as to how life worked in San Francisco. It took her awhile to figure out that his roomate on Greenwich street Tony was gay, but always noticed he had such an impeccable fashion sense. I suppose Uncle Al though he was just another bohemian type and never gave it much though.

Uncle Al was one of my all time hero’s and looking back I can tell why. He was a true San Franciscan. Just look at the old picture I have up there and you can see he was a bit of rakish individual who wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and share his hooch. Something tells me he probably knocked back a few shots with Sally Stanford. I don’t know why I thought of him today, but I really miss Uncle Al. Now I just wish we still had that old ancient diver’s helmet we used to have.

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