Mar 14 2013
14 Comments
Humorous, San Francisco

Dear Mom, Please Send Long Underwear

IcicleDear Mom,

It’s hard to find non gluten-free cookies here in San Francisco. My co-workers are weird. My college friends won’t let me eat their leftovers. My boyfriend’s in New York. I’m lonely and cold. Please send long underwear.

My house doesn’t have heat and it feel like the winter will never end. It’s hard to get up in the morning because the world feels like ice and my nose and heart are cold, and we already ate the good snacks at work and the next Costco shipment isn’t for weeks. I don’t want to buy a space heater because I’m afraid it’ll blow out the fuses in my room. Please send long underwear. Also, if you have a vacuum cleaner you don’t really want, you could send that along too.

A co-worker mentioned to me that San Franciscans seem to be more friendly, less judgmental, and happier than the people of New York City. I’m not sure if that means anything to you, considering neither of  us are from New York or have spent significant amounts of time there, but I thought that if maybe you’re talking to one of your friends who wants to know what San Francisco is like and has spent a lot of time in New York, that might be something you could say to them. You could also tell them that it’s really cold here.

My two thin jackets aren’t enough to keep the mild cold from sinking into my body and making a fool out of this girl that went to school in Boston. My friends make fun of me and I feel silly complaining about the chilliness.  I wrote a blog post about this already, but I’m not sure you knew how much this affects my life.

If this goes on for much longer, I’m going to go on a long underwear buying spree that’s certain to end poorly. I’m looking forward to seeing you in April, and to receiving long underwear from you.

Love always,

Emily

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Mar 12 2013
9 Comments
Food, Posts about Breakfast, San Francisco

Your Life Coach Recommends Biscuits from the Pork Store Cafe

The Pork Store Cafe on Haight

The Pork Store Cafe on Haight

On Friday March 8th, the last day of the work week and the first day of what was then the rest of my life, I went to breakfast at the Pork Store Cafe.

My alarm that morning woke me in a spiteful way, right in the middle of a sleep cycle. For a moment, I debated whether or not it was worth it and that maybe I should just get a morning breakfast on Saturday. But my strength rallied and I finally got up. The instant my tennies hit the pavement I knew I’d made the right decision. Even better, I felt the breakfast hunger.

I arrived to the Pork Store Cafe at approximately 7:03 am, and about 15 minutes later, some of the most tempting breakfast food was steaming in front of me like a freaking holiday feast. I ordered the two eggs in a tasty nest, which consisted of two eggs over easy gently laid across the most deletable mixture of hashbrowns, peppers, onions, cheddar cheese, and a wild amount of bacon. You’re probably already salivating and I haven’t even gotten to the best part.

When I first walked in the door, I overheard a conversation between the waitress and a certain gentleman who was interested in purchasing biscuits but was being told that they would be another 15 minutes before they came out of the oven. Let me repeat that for those of you who are slow to understand the most important part of stories. He was waiting for a PAN OF PIPING HOT, FLUFFY AS HELL, FRESH OUT OF THE OVEN, HEAVEN BISCUITS.

Of course I had to have them. Lucky for me, a side of these biscuits was included with my meal. They came out slightly after I got the tasty nest due to the fact they were still being incubated by their oven mother, but I didn’t care about their tardiness. When I saw them, I became a believer in love at first sight.

I gently pulled them open in order to prepare them with butter and nearly fainted when I saw the amount of steam that Pork Store Cafe Biscuitscame off of them. The pats of butter melted with love and grace, and I took my first bite. It was one of those experiences when all I wanted at that moment was to be wrapped up in that biscuit for eternity, to have it surround me forever in an eternal embrace of fluffy goodness. I began to wax poetic about them in my mind, “A biscuit as textured and embracing as the hills of San Francisco, a biscuit as tender as a good mother’s love, a biscuit as fluffy as a middle school crush.”

I left that morning inspired, and vowed to never, ever skip Friday breakfasts again. And the biscuits. Sweet Mary mother of God, the biscuits. With the taste of those dear lambs, I believe I fleshed out a little more of my life’s purpose. I suggest you do the same.

This post is part of my general obsession with breakfast, breakfast foods, and the holistic experience that encompasses breakfast. If you want to munch on more of this topic, see I am the Breakfast Whisperer, Oh My God It’s Breakfast in Istanbul, and The Oatmeal that Changed My Life.

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Mar 05 2013
50 Comments
San Francisco, Writing

Where the Muni Buses Sleep at Night

Muni busses at nightMuni buses are the red blood cells of San Francisco, which makes the people the oxygen. The Mission is probably the city’s belly, and Oakland is its liver.

To most people, the buses are ordinary vehicles of public transit, purely utilitarian pieces of equipment with no other purpose besides shifting around the city’s biomass.

But I like to believe the Muni buses have a life of their own, that they think their own thoughts and maybe have crushes on the other bus lines (the 38L is pretty cute), that they have worries and fears and hopes and dreams and that maybe when they grow up, they want to be something like astronauts or ballerinas or social workers and preschool teachers.

They spend all day giving up their bodies to the abuse of a city with many hills, wierdos, fruits, and lots and lots of kale. They ferry the humans and their pets around daily, with some also taking on responsibility for the nighttime people, an entirely different breed. They worry about doing their duties properly, about the weird guy in back bothering their patrons, about their Muni operator who seems to be having a bad day. Just like everyone else, they want to get to where they’re going and want to know that they’ll be safe on the way home at night.

The Muni bus is a social creature, and depends on interaction with others of its kind for personal fulfillment. They greet each other in the streets as they pass, tell each other jokes through the electrical wires and share stories about the crazy and wonderful things that happened to them during the day and at night. They race each other and comment on the quality and personality of other buses’ patrons and on whether or not anyone said thank-you to the operator.

And at night, they all go to the same parking lot, except for the ones out taking care of the night walkers, and they cuddle up together. For a while, as everyone’s arriving there’s plenty of chatter and asking about what the other ate during the day and what did you do and how is your back pain or your friend doing. But then everyone settles into their rows, and the chatter gets quieter, and it’s about deeper concerns and worries. “I just don’t know what to do.” “You can tell me anything.” “I don’t know how to tell her I don’t love her anymore.” “I want to believe there’s something out there but I’m not sure.” “You know we’ll be together always.” “I don’t know…I just don’t know.”

As these words float into the night, the buses drift off to sleep, surrounded by everyone they know, resting for the challenges of the day to come. Under the stars they huddle with the sounds of shifting machinery and deep sighs of loneliness or contentment. They wake early the next morning, ready to do it all over again, wondering if they’ll ever know the answers to their questions.

If you liked this post, you might like Me and God Kicking it at Six Flags and God in the Kitchen, Making Casserole. 

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Feb 27 2013
25 Comments
Food, Posts about Breakfast, San Francisco

I am the Breakfast Whisperer

Breakfast at mozSometimes I’m a marketing associate working an office job, printing out personal things at work because the paper quality is higher and vaguely feeling like I’d rather be outside building something with bricks.

Other times I’m a friend, mooching off my companions at restaurants, sampling their food, and arriving late with extra people in tow.

Once in a while I’m a lover, wooing my beau with orange-accented tennis shoes and a no-frills attitude towards personal dressing and home furnishings.

But sometimes, when the weather is right, and the sun is shining just so and the city is not quite awake, before 9:30 am on weekends and as early as 6:00 am during the week, I am the breakfast whisperer.

I love breakfast. Just to prove, I’ve blogged about it here, and here, and probably somewhere else too.

Like many passions, I can’t really explain why I love breakfasting. I only know that I do, and that I have a very specific idea about what constitutes the ideal breakfast experience. Allow me to describe:

The ideal breakfast is a solitary event and takes place as early as possible, anywhere from 5-7 am, depending on when the restaurant opens. The restaurant should not be busy, thus ensuring best possible service. If available, a window booth with a little bit of sunlight falling on the table should be had. A book should be there, or a newspaper, and this shall be read while drinking a cup of (preferably weak) coffee, a cup that shall be magically refilled without asking.

The server could be cheerful or grumpy, but above all, the service should be quiet and respect the holiness of the morning hours. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns should all be had for $10 or less. The hot things should be hot. Tender things should be tender, and crispy things should crunch. Fancier items can be had, but food type, variety, and quality is only part of the breakfast experience.

In other words, I like to get up when it’s still dark outside and go alone to an empty restaurant and read the paper while eating normal foods that may or may not be good.

This might sound strange, but  it is my breakfast vision. However,  this is only one kind of breakfast experience. There’s also the social experience, the brunch experience, the breakfast for dinner experience, the traveling, the continental, the exotic, the homemade, the holiday, the…well you get it. There’s a lot of breakfast possibilities.

The breakfast I described is my ritual, a certain set of customs I perform that somehow make the world seem more reasonable and help me find my place in it. Setting off on a quest to find the best 7 am breakfast experience near downtown San Francisco has been one of the highlights of 2013.

All throughout the week I look forward to my excursions, to discovering yet another outlet for my breakfast passion. I think about breakfasts of weeks past, the crispy hashbrowns, the sourdough pancakes (from Bette’s Oceanview Diner – well worth the price tag), how a particular server was especially gracious, or the perfect bite of pancake, egg, bacon, and hashbrown all together while people-watching on a sunny street, wondering where they’re going in their lives and if they’ve ever had breakfast before.

I eat breakfast, for I am the breakfast whisperer.

If you have any stories about breakfast, feel free to share. Leave them in the comments or email me at richmondapt328@gmail.com. Or share something you’re passionate about. Just share.

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Feb 25 2013
8 Comments
California, Literature

Some Words from John Muir, the Most Annoying Nature Lover in the World

John Muir

John Muir: Scotsman, nature lover, beard-grower

I thought I loved nature until I (partially) read My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir. There’s a reason this guy started one of the foremost nature clubs in the world. He’s wild for nature. So wild, his passion occasionally branches into the ridiculous.

In the book, he’s routinely describing pine cones or a certain tree for an entire page, bursting with exclamations on nature’s beauty, talking in dismissive tones about his shepherd companion, or wishing he could stay awake all night to watch the stars. Don’t take my word for it, though.  Here are some passages that I feel best demonstrate the heart of his book.

All quotes are exact and taken from My First Summer in the Sierra, which John Muir wrote while traveling in the Sierra Mountains one summer in the early 20th century.

His (low and slightly threatening) opinion of other mountain travelers:  

“Somehow most of these travelers seem to care but little for the glorious objects about them, though enough to spend time and money and endure long rides to see the famous valley. And when they are fairly within the mighty walls of the temple and hear the psalms of the falls, they will forget themselves and become devout. Blessed, indeed, should be every pilgrim in these holy mountains.”

On what he’d do in the morning if he always followed his inclinations:

“Cooking is going on, appetites growing keener every day. No lowlander can appreciate the mountain appetite, and the facility with which heavy food called “grub” is disposed of. Eating, walking, resting, seem alike delightful, and one feels inclined to shout lustily on rising in the morning like a crowing cock.”

“Exhilarated with the mountain air, I feel like shouting this morning with excess of wild animal joy.”

On showing proper use of the word, “hark:”

“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality. Yonder rises another white skyland. How sharply the yellow pine spired and the palm-like crowns of the sugar pines are outlined on its smooth white domes. And hark! The grand thunder billows booming, rolling from ridge to ridge, followed by the faithful shower.”

On how to describe the sun’s transitions:

“And the dawns and sunrises and sundowns of these mountain days—the rose light creeping higher among the stars, changing to daffodil yellow, the level beams bursting forth, streaming across the ridges, touching pine after pine, awakening and warming all the mighty host to do gladly their shining day’s work. The great sun-gold noons, the alabaster cloud-mountains, the landscape beaming with consciousness like the face of a god. The sunsets, when the trees stood hushed awaiting their good-night blessings.”

On the night sky:

“Lying beneath the firs, it is glorious to see them dipping their spires in the starry sky, the sky one vast lily meadow in bloom! How can I close my eyes on so precious a night?”

If that doesn’t make you want to crow lustily at some alabaster skyscapes, I don’t know what will. Drugs, probably.

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