Category: Life in San Francisco

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8′ Apple or Pumpkin Pies Now On Sale!

I suppose it’s the casualness of writing today that caused this, but in today’s world where people can’t remember when to use its or it’s is one thing, but advertising an 8 foot pie for $5.99 is going a little too far.

I feel I’ve been ranting a little too much lately so I’ll try and keep this in rant lite mode. I actually thought this was kind of funny and was wondering if  I should demand an 8 foot pie for $5.99, but then I realized, I don’t really like pie enough to eat a whole 8′ of one. Hopefully I’ll get to be at the Lucky’s store when someone demands 8′ of pie for $5.99.[mappress mapid=”23″]

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The Outside Lands

Friday was an interesting day for me as I got together with a couple of friends for lunch in the Inner Sunset district. This is a great place to eat because of the area I refer to as “the Cross”. It runs from roughly 8th avenue to 10th avenue and from Judah to Lincoln Way. Every other shop is a restaurant pretty much and you’ve got a choice of foods from around the world.

As we were sitting and gorging ourselves at Crepevine we started talking about how San Francisco used to be before people decided it might nice to live here. Well, the picture here is of 7th and Lawton streets before the construction boom that finally killed off the last inland sand dunes somewhere around the 90’s [it’s now a soccer field behind St. Ignatius High School]. I remember the sand as a kid, it was everywhere. If you dug down less than a foot in the grass planted around my elementary school you hit sand. I think the street cleaners used to be there more for cleaning the sand off the streets than for picking up garbage.

When my parents bought our house in 1954 their backyard was a long strip of sand enclosed in low cost fencing [much the same as many of the pot farm houses still retain]. My dad used to tell me how he’d take my mom’s dog to rear fence and drop him over on the dunes and let him run. Don’t worry, it was a low fence. These were what was known as the “Outside Lands.” Because of Twin Peaks it didn’t used to be very easy to get here so people would have to drive from downtown out through the Mission and circle around until the street car tunnel was put in and roads were able to built to bring people over.

It probably had something to do with 1894 Midwinter Exposition that gave us Golden Gate Park as well. First thing built in the Sunset District was the Shannon Bar, the oldest remaining bar in San Francisco. If you travel out by the beach you might find some remains of Carville where people bought old streetcars and cable cars and turned them into housing kind of like what some people are doing with the steel shipping crates today. Steve “Woody” LaBounty of the Western Neighborhoods Project has written an excellent book on this time and I remember seeing him at a removal of an old earthquake shack from someone’s back yard several years ago. Oh, and what was in that backyard…sand. We still have it. If you travel along Taraval or Judah streets closer to the ocean you’ll see it filling in cracks along the streetcar tracks still, just not as much as it used to.

Our cool, foggy beaches are what says Sunset District to me along with the Indian summers that bring us out of our houses more to do nothing except be outside. Oh, and then there’s the sand.

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Superheroes of the Sunset!

There is a family of superheros lurking in the Sunset district and they are my family. I discovered our superhuman powers today on a trip to IKEA. Normally we don’t have much of a problem with IKEA, but the following story will introduce you to our superhuman ways which hopefully only occur outside of San Francisco. Allow me to introduce you.

I am Gravitron! A man of seemingly normal size, yet he has an internal mass of that close to Jupiter. As we were walking around IKEA I noticed people were bumping into me so I stopped walking due to irritation and the need to punch something preferable human that wouldn’t land me in a jail cell. Straight ahead, family of four, walking a straight line and yet as they got closer and closer their straight line trajectory started to veer off, pulled by the gravitation forces Gravitron exudes. I even cleared my throat to make this a near impact event yet Fi! Tis not! They walked right into me. I attracted in excess of 10 tractor beam like collisions with double that in near misses.

Now it is time to meet my wife, The Invisible Woman. She has the power to walk next to you and as you are talking to her when you turn your head your sentence ends with, “where the hell is she?!” She is obviously immune to the pull of Gravitron, but that is to be expected after being married for 14 years. She at least is lucky enough to not be sucking IKEA patrons in to herself like Gravitron, but this also makes Gravitron have to conduct all business transactions because she gets ignored by their dreaded nemesis, Check out Boy who can’t see her until Gravitron throws off the IKEA customers stuck to him at Check out Boy to get his attention.

Ahh, and then there is the sweetest of the family, their daughter, White Dwarf. She who is small in stature, yet at 3.5 years old is like pushing Jabba the Hut in a wheelchair. Luckily she has not folded in on herself to become Black Hole, which, let’s face it would be a creepy superhero name. She is not fat, barely reaching 40lbs, but she has the innate ability to make herself heavier in her vehicle of transport called, “The Stroller” by pushing her feet against the wheel that you will break a sweat within 20 ft of pushing her. Lucky for us, her kryptonite is french fries which weakens her strength.

So now I know why families get a little stressed by group outings. Always remember in the words of Gravitron while shopping in stores, “Walk! Don’t Block!”

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Politics! Politics! Politics!

Note to readers: Having discovered that my name server had changed a little to late when I moved things over to the new server I suddenly lost a few posts and pictures which threw me off for a bit. Now I will hopefully regain my stride and get back to more regular posts.

The only thing that got more people’s attention than the Giant’s winning the world series was the election and pretty much as I figured California mooned the rest of the country.

Jerry’s back as President Governor followed by the rest of the Democrats just showing that we’re more a blue state than we were yesterday. Queen Meg will now have to be questioned on her business acumen after investing over $100 million dollars in a campaign that failed. Think of what she could have done with that money if she hadn’t run and started the Whitman Foundation to help needy kids or homeless people or some other ennobling cause. She’d be seen as a hero, but now she’ll go down as a business woman who spent the most money in a campaign that failed.

Oh yeah, pot is still illegal.

The coastal areas were all in favor of it and the inland empire was against it.  What surprised me the most was that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin showed support for prop 19 yet Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, Kamala Haris, Barbara Boxer and the California Cannabis Association were against it. Wait, Governor Moonbeam didn’t want pot legalized? What’s he been smoking? It turns out on the against prop 19 list where a large number of pot producers who would, so they thought, lose money if it was legalized because it would drive the price down. Any quick trip online to look at prices for medical marijuana show that that’s not true.

Personally, I think it’s a shame that it didn’t pass. It would have increased the revenue that we already get from medical marijuana sales (which is currently north of $100 million) and it would have given California another reason to be a “go-to” spot. Estimates put the potential gains for the state at north of $4 billion per year.  Think of what that money would have done for our schools, our roads. It’s even possible that we could have eliminated state income tax if it passed. Nevada fortifies itself from gambling revenues so its residents don’t have to pay state income tax. Think about it. Even though our own Governator was against prop 19 he decriminalized have up to an ounce as a $100 fine.

I think the best that can be said about this was said by Richard Lee of Oaksterdam University, “Over the course of the last year, it has become clear that the legalization of marijuana is no longer a question of if, but a question of when.” I guess we just need the state to need the money more and have less people who don’t want to put their political careers on the line to support it.

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30 Year High School Reunion

©2010 Emily Bradley

Well they’re all expecting me to write this since I was talking about it so here it is. I attended my 30 year high school reunion today. We all look a little bit older, but we all seem to finally have found our places in life. Well, actually this is the first time I think we looked like we’ve aged. 20 year reunion we all still had our High School faces, but now there’s a few lines  and a few pounds added, but we’re still all in good shape I think.

I graduated from George Washington High School in 1980 and while I’ve kept in contact with a few of my friends it wasn’t until facebook made it easier to find them that we came together again. One of the odd things about that time period was that if you were going to Washington for High School you probably went to Presidio Junior High, except that since Presidio was having renovations you ended up being sent to A. P. Gianinni Junior High which is where my connection to a lot of my friend I met today came in.

I wasn’t in the Richmond District, so unlike today I was supposed to go to the high school closest to me and the Junior High as well. Most of us at the somewhat small get together first met at Gianinni Junior High and in a few cases that’s what we remembered the most. I wasn’t too big on school most of the time. I think it was because I spent so much time taking classes at the Academy of Sciences that what they were teaching in High School I had done back when I was twelve, except maybe for English. I spoke English very well so why would I need to bother learning English when I knew it already?

Needless to say, I didn’t get much from High School and managed to graduate with a 1.0 GPA which was fine for 1980. 1981 I wouldn’t have gotten my diploma and it took me until my college graduation with a 3.9 GPA that my parents finally understood that High School and I didn’t mix very well. I still had fun though. It wasn’t always a beer and skittle time in High School, but I still had fun even if it was mostly a beer time with very few skittles.

But going back to the reunion we went through the usual round of questions to catch up:

  1. Are you married?
  2. For how long?
  3. So what are you doing now?
  4. What did you do after high school?

The usual stuff and the answers were kind of interesting. I honestly was a little surprised that everyone remembered me. I wasn’t elected the best at anything in my 1980 year book, but at least those who remembered me remembered as the funny smart guy. I think I’m OK with that.

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Look Look Butt Shop!

Traveling on the San Francisco Metro system can be very interesting some times. You can see the strangest things and even like today, hear the strangest things.

I had to take a trip downtown and since driving downtown is crazy and slow and expensive I decided to drive to West Portal and hop on a metro train. Here’s where the fun began.

As I got on the train I sit down and try and tune out everything around me. There was a Chinese couple sitting across from me and they were speaking Cantonese. I’ll get to how I know it was Cantonese and not Mandarin later. So as I’m tuning everything out I suddenty hear. “LOOK LOOK BUTT SHOP!” OK, something like that you don’t just let slip by you.

My minde started wondering what a place called the Butt Shop would be, or maybe it was called the Look Look Butt Shop, kind of like one of silly Asian companies that put English words together to name their company, but not exactly choosing the best words like, “Happy, Sunny Egg Place”. No I’m serious, I actually saw that one time. Maybe the Look, Look Butt Shop sold fanny flattering attire to women who aren’t getting enough attention? Maybe it was a plastic surgery place that fixed dented derrieres?

OK, I’m thinking a little too much here and as I got off the train I realized what she was saying thanks to my Kung-Fu teacher who made us count in Cantonese [Thanks you Sifu Wong!]. They were numbers. 6, 6, 8, 10. They just happened to sound close enough to English words that my mind created the Look, Look Butt Shop out of those sounds. The closest I can come to what the words actually are is luk, luk, baht tsup.

Of course, while I can get my face slapped in about 12 different languages, my knowledge of Cantonese is pretty limited so maybe they weren’t numbers and they really were talking about the Look Look Butt Shop. I tried putting it into google to see if it came up and it didn’t, but maybe that’s a good name for a company that I can make lots of money off of. It’s certainly better than the Cranberry and Apple juice combo that was called “CRAP” when it was released in Japan.

So now I have to ask, what other foreign words can sound like something odd in English and what English words sound like something odd in other languages? Let me know I’m kind of interested in this.

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Sunset Summer Morning

©2010 Eric Kauschen

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

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

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

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Durian Gelato…Interesting

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

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

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

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

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Sometimes San Francisco get’s it right.

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

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

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

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Warm Town. Summer in the City

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

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

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

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

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