network – Baghdad By The Bay

I don’t buy stocks and now I have an even better reason not to. Facebook managed to have one of the worst and most embarrassing IPO’s in history. I do follow stocks, mostly of tech companies I like and noticed that the day Facebook opened and its stock took a dump so did everyone else’s. Apple faired the best, but it still has sunk.

Social media has lost the game now. It’ll still be around, but it will be a smaller group. I’m hearing about all these new social media apps where you can share pictures, video, your location so stalkers can find you. There’s a new one everyday. There’s even a Social Media app for people who don’t like to use social media, it’s called Google+.

I doubt Facebook will go away anytime soon, but it’s certainly going to be hurt by the damage it’s caused to all the tech companies. Most of which are in the Bay Area. Now those companies that are privately held will have a much harder time getting investors and especially if they’re a social media start up. Mark Zuckerberg has figuratively screwed the pooch with this IPO. Sure he made money from it and he already had money, but I’m sure his investors will be poking him very shortly to answer for this debacle. Many investors have also invested in other tech companies and they’re probably all sweating like a man on his way to the gas chamber.

The value of Facebook stock has dropped 25% in the first week and people are thinking it’s going to keep going in that direction. It doesn’t do much besides let you find people you haven’t seen in years to become friends again, yet meet up with face to face. It’s going to be interesting to see where this turns in the near future. People already didn’t like Facebook for the changes it made and how it made things you wanted to keep private to only your close friends public to the world. If you haven’t done so already it would be a good idea for you to check what your page looks like to the public by going to the Activity Log and choosing View as…

You might be surprised at what you see. I’ll still stay on Facebook until the new whiz bang site comes along, but it will be interesting to see how long that is.

I read an article today that has been on my mind for a long time. Every since the Food Network came to the Bay Area we have yet to see one of the star chef’s open up a restaurant here. Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Anthony Bourdain [who dislikes San Francisco because of Alice Waters in Berkeley] Mario Batali and the several others don’t want to even bother opening a restaurant here because the competition is too stiff.

Now we do have Wolfgang Puck who opened up Postrio and Roy’s Hawaii Cuisine, but not a single Food Network star has bother with San Francisco. Well I suppose I could include Martin Yan, but he’s no longer a part of the network. I haven’t seen Tyler Florence much lately, but he’s busy with his restaurant here at the moment. Now to me, if you’re going to talk like you’re a world renowned chef you should at least be able to thrown down in Baghdad by the Bay and pull it off. We’ve got some really hefty chefs here already like Michael Mina and Jeremiah Tower who have changed the restaurant industry, but for some reason we scare off the big guns of the media. Had I the money I would travel to one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants with a small camera crew and pull his throw down move with him to get him to come to SF and try his hand in the restaurant business here.

San Francisco, while being seven by seven miles has the largest number of restaurants than any other city in the United States. I was walking around the Embarcadero yesterday and found that there were more places to eat than I remembered. One block alone had six restaurants on one side of the street and these were Subways or McDonalds, but real white linen, sit down restaurants [I’ll still count the Tadich Grill since it’s so good, but no white linen table clothes.]

I like the Food Network and consider myself a bit of a foodie, but not a food blogger. I’ve got more to write about than Mom’s great recipes or the great dishes you can get around town. I watch it at least a couple of nights a week and do have a fondness for Guy Fieri’s Diner’s Drive-in’s and Dives, probably because he’s not afraid of San Francisco. I would love to see some of those Iron Chefs give it a shot in San Francisco, but apparently we scare them off. Could they even handle going up against one of our great food trucks at Off the Grid on a Friday night at Fort Mason? I don’t think so. Could they stand up against the falafel at Sunrise Deli or a shawarma at Yumma’s? I don’t think so.

Bobby Flay, I challenge you and your East Coast Food Network crew to a throw down to open restaurants in San Francisco and see how you fare in our Kitchen Stadium.

[ad#AdBrite]

Tag: network

Throw Down with the Food Network!