Tag Archives: san francisco

Feb 11 2013
5 Comments
Humorous, San Francisco

What I’ve learned from speed-walking to work in San Francisco

Speed walkingSome people drive to work. Others bike or hop on the train, bus, light-rail, or ferry. Still others run, walk, scoot, or rollerblade. There are, perhaps, a few that cartwheel, skip, grapevine, ride a hovercraft, tesselate, or apparate.

But it is a small minority indeed that speed-walks to work. In fact, from what I can see, I’m the only SWLKR, making me the Bay Area’s foremost speed-walking commuter.

Speed-walking is like walking, except faster and dorkier. I like to keep my arms up and moving at a brisk pace to avoid finger swell, one of the foremost dangers of long periods of speed-walking.

As the Bay Area’s expert SWLKR, you probably have a lot of questions for me, and these I am happy to answer if you leave them in the comments below.

For now, I give you 10 tidbits, just a sample of the mind-juice I’ve squeezed from my walking grapes.

1. No one else speed-walks to work.

2. Speed-walking past someone is, by far, the most awkward way to pass someone. Especially if there’s a stoplight coming up. And they’re your co-worker. And you stand behind them because you don’t want them to see you in your tennies and backsweat. And then you walk at a normal pace so you don’t have to talk to them, but end up taking the elevator with them anyways.

3. Speed-walking up a hill makes one look just as foolish and out of shape as running on a flat stretch of land.

4. Speed-walkers get more love from the general public than other kinds of commuters. To date, I’ve gotten two thumbs up, countless smiles, and one (friendly) comment.

5. If you’re speed-walking, it’s a shorter step to running across the street to avoid waiting for a red light than if you’re just walking.

6. Wearing tennies, athletic capri pants, and a backpack in downtown San Francisco at 7:45 am in the morning is a great way to avoid fitting in with the corporate culture or getting respect from people who dole it out based on appearance.

7. Sweat still happens, but like most liquids, it dries.

8. People are often frightened by speed-walkers, the bizarre combination of quick but not-too quick movement that makes them think someone’s trying to sneak up on them but no it’s just me, your friendly office employee heading downtown to do some thought work.

9. There are three major hills I have to overcome as I head into town from the Richmond, but they don’t always pay off in beautiful views. Rather, the views come when you least expect them, like when I saw the Golden Gate bridge randomly yesterday and a rainbow today.

10. Beauty is everywhere. I saw a bird fly from a blossoming tree branch as two flowers fell to the ground and thought it was incredible. Then I realized what a romantic sap I was and that I probably shouldn’t share that moment with anyone.

11. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll see something new everyday. And I think that’s the most important lesson of all.

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Jan 17 2013
7 Comments
Guides to San Francisco, San Francisco, Travelling

The Official Snotting Black Guide to Loving San Francisco

san francisco twin peaks san francisco state university USF1. Love at first sight isn’t real. That’s true with humans, parakeets, human-parakeet relations, and cities. You think you know a city but then it starts raining and housing is hard to find and strangers talk to you while you’re in line for the bus. Give yourself space to find the reasons you love the city for yourself. Or go back home to Oklahoma.

2. The city will be just like you thought it would: hilly, tree-ridden, and expensive. Rejoice in the fact you knew what you were doing when you came here. Make sure your confidence level is as high as possible.

3. The city will be nothing like you thought it would be: you had no idea what you were getting into, people take themselves too seriously or not seriously enough, and it turns out that dreams don’t come true automatically with geographical relocation. Beginning with a surfeit of confidence, however, was the best way to beat your bird-brained assumptions out of you.

4. You can make it work. Believe this despite the fact that no one will blame you if you fail or decide to move away or change course. Maybe that’s what you should do anyways–you shouldn’t rule it out at least. It’s hard out here, but people make it work every day. You can too.

5. Attitude changes everything. Either you’re stuck in a job you don’t like or you’re getting the skills you need to move on to something better. Either you’re stuck with a cat at home or you’re learning how to love felines in order to relate to your cat-loving boyfriend. There’s always a lining to the cloud, but you choose what it’s made out of.

6. Everything your parents and your pre-calc teacher told you was right. You need skills. You need to be able to offer something valuable to someone. You need an income and somewhere to live after your friends get tired of you squatting in or around their apartments.

7. Everything your parents and your pre-calc teacher told you was wrong. I’m still trying to figure this one out, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.

8. Be prepared to talk to people either about their dogs or about food. It’s the surest way to the San Francisco resident’s heart. Be sure to call it “Frisco.” Locals love that, almost as much as they love instant coffee. (The last two sentences were jokes.)

9. Learn the secrets of the city, the way things look at night or from the tops of hills, the vistas you earn through inner thigh sweat, the places that everyone says are good but actually aren’t (I’m looking at you Bi-rite ice cream). In this way, you can make the city your own.

10. Don’t be afraid to be who you are, even if that means using a flip phone and eating McDonald’s soft serve ice cream occasionally. Singularity (both kinds) is what San Francisco’s supposed to be about, I think, so don’t go changing to try to please it.

11. Remember it’s all going to burn anyways.

What are your secrets to loving your city?

If you liked this blog post, you might also like: I’m not a local, but then again who is and Finally, a Bachelorette Party that Celebrates Pain, Confusion, and Fear and The Oatmeal that Changed My Life

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Jan 15 2013
16 Comments
Humorous, San Francisco, San Francisco weather

San Francisco: the 9th Circle of Hell

san_francisco_cold_winterDante sets out on quite the spectacular journey in The Divine Comedy. His buddy Virgil leads him through the onion-like trappings of the universe beginning with hell and ending in Paradise. He meets a whole pack of interesting characters on the way, and even talks to a girl!

Dante learns a great many things about the metaphysical world, but this blog post is mostly concerned with the temperature of the 9th circle of hell. For those who haven’t read it, this circle is not a fire pit with little devils poking bare-bummed sinners with pitch forks. It’s frozen solid, and at the very epicenter, Satan is frozen mid-waist, eternally munching on Brutus, Cassius, and Judas in his three mouths. It’s pretty gruesome but not unlike what’s going on in San Francisco this winter.

It’s freezing here. I’m talking walk-in freezer temperatures, the kind of environment conducive to housing animal carcasses and supermodels. At night, I wear all my clothes to bed and still wake up shivering. I go to restaurants and find them cold. I go to church and find it worse. At work, I huddle under a shawl like a widow and pray for the winter to end. My productivity suffers. How can I type if I can’t feel my fingers? How can I be a thought leader if my brain synapses are firing at the pace of cooled weed molasses (is that a thing)?

Some of you may be scoffing. Yes, the temperature is a seemingly mild 44 degrees, but San Francisco’s disgusting secret is that it never gets warm. Buildings are made out of Popsicle sticks and pipe-dreams, devoid of any kind of insulation that would make them inhabitable in temperatures below 60. Heaters were installed mostly for stylistic purposes, if at all, and it seems the average business owner doesn’t believe in turning them on for any reason whatsoever.

The chill sinks into the bones and stays there, making its home where once useful body cells now lie shivering against the walls in despair. In this rendition of hell, Satan is the Zynga dog eternally chewing on 3 members of the Big Four.

Dear Lord when will this end? How many techie geeks do we need to sacrifice? How many hippies? We have too many of both! What quantity of kombucha will save us from the never-ending ice? Just say the word and I’ll see if TaskRabbit can get it for You. Please oh please oh please.

Save us.

If you liked this blog post, you might also like: Notes I Took While Watching Your Date, Hi Everyone! I Changed My Profile Picture, or Watching Dogs Crap and Other Joys of Living in the City.

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Jan 14 2013
6 Comments
Food, San Francisco, San Francisco bakeries, The Mission

Experimentation in Pastries at Craftsman & Wolves

craftsman and wolves the rebel within

the rebel within

Craftsman & Wolves is a new-ish bakery on Valencia St. It is not a carpentry supply store or a bizarre dance studio/cult. It’s one of those bakeries where it’s easy to be overcome with blind fear, the same fear a child experiences when they begin screaming after discovering they’re holding a stranger’s hand.

At first, everything looks delicious and I’m feeling confident.  I’m like, “Bakery….I know bakery. Bakery has cookie, has cake, has bread.” But then bakery turns out to have things called “the rebel within,” and “pain au cochon,” and a scone with “mango, ginger, coconut, and kaffir lime.” And when the woman helping boyfriend and me decide points to something and explains, “this is a financier,” I know that this is not the bakery of my homespun, capitalist youth (Panera).

Nevertheless, we persevere, wading through the muck of over-descriptive pastry names and decision-anxiety. We purchased one (1) brewed coffee, one (1) small latte, one (1) chocolate chip cookie, one (1) “rebel within,” and one (1) sesame passion fruit croissant. The total cost: a cool twenty (20) dollars. I wonder what my sister would say, the one that called $1 popcorn at the Wichita botanical garden “a rip-off.”

The place is packed and we’re forced to sit next to strangers. I’m not mad, I’m just telling it how it is.

We dig into the food, delicately placed on square ceramic plates that are clearly not from Ikea. The first surprise is that the rebel of “the rebel within” is a soft-boiled egg. BOOM. SURPRISE. The yoke is gooey and fairly delicious (if you like egg juice), adding to the flakey, hammy, biscuity, exterior. Unfortunately, the dough around the egg is a little raw, disappointing for a place that calls itself “a notion.”

The cookie was tantalizing, salty enough to make sure everyone knows there’s salt in it, and plenty of chocolate even for the women. It wasn’t doughy at all (though it was described as such by a review in 7×7), but I’d definitely stop back in on a day that I deserve a treat and dunk that mother-nucker in some Nescafe instant coffee (BRING ON THE BOOS! I FEED OFF YOUR HATRED!)

The third baked item, the croissant, was a little sad and dry. The flavor was good, but if I’d had a pat of softened butter or some edible lotion I would have moisturized the crap out of it.

Upon leaving Craftsman & Wolves, I knew I would probably return, if only for their carnitas and machengo mac and cheese. It was fairly tasty and certainly interesting. Maybe next time I’ll get something even more inscrutable, like a buckwheat, concord grape, and peanut butter cube cake.  Just try to figure that one out.

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Jan 10 2013
7 Comments
Outer Sunset, San Francisco bluegrass music, San Francisco country music, San Francisco shindigs and events

The Secret of the Outer Sunset: Hillbilly Hootennany West Side Review at the Riptide

honkey_tonk_san_francisco_outer_sunsetIt was Sunday and I hadn’t eaten anything since brunch when my boyfriend picked me up and we headed out. He didn’t know where we were going since this was going to be part of his Christmas present, and I didn’t really know where we were going either.

I only knew the address and that we were heading to The Riptide, “the bay area’s best little honky-tonk by the beach” for their Hillbilly Hootenanny West Side Review. It happens at the beginning of every month.

The Riptide is buried deep in the Outer Sunset, all the way at 46th and Taraval. Many people from farther in the city aren’t even sure the intersection exists, believing deep down that most of the Sunset is a foggy myth created to scare hipsters of their potential oblivion. But seek and ye shall find, and find we did.

We headed further and further until we reached that dark corner, San Francisco’s last resort before it gives into the ocean.

It’s a clear night and the world was silent as we got out of the car, looking ahead at Taraval Street. A couple of restaurants lit up the sidewalks, but it felt empty and forgotten. The lonely Riptide sign, a blue wave, shone on up the street.

Inside the bar it’s warm, both temperature and atmosphere-wise, and packed with regulars and more people wearing western gear than I could yell yee-haw at. The walls are covered in nautical motifs as well as a moose head and some country paraphernalia. Somewhere, I suspect, there’s a mermaid wearing a cowboy hat.  All around us, people are greeting one another and being friendly-like, excited to get the hootenanny going, or maybe just excited to get blammo’d on a Sunday night. I’m not a sociologist.

Finally, a man in a pearl-button shirt and a cowboy hat takes to the microphone, introducing the musicians, including a man that looks like Johnny Bravo’s cousin and a walking, talking, handle-bar-mustaching caricature of a saloon piano player. The music starts.

The definition of a hootenanny is something like “a gathering at which folksingers entertain, often with the audience joining in.” But what that definition neglects to say is that hootenannies are often spiritual affairs and can cause a deep stirring in the soul. The music was wonderful, country and heartbroken and twangy, sung by people who probably have day jobs and look forward to this all week or all month.

After the first couple of sets, guest musicians started to play and then the fun really began. My favorite performers were a pair of no-nonsense, fun-loving, belt-buckle brandishing women who didn’t just sing and play music. They took it to the next level, becoming the music they played and hamming it up shamelessly. We loved them for it.

Then it was time to go, on a Sunday, and we stepped out of the bar onto a street as silent as ever. But now we knew its secret, the secret of the honky-tonk and the fire inside (both literal and figurative).

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