Tag Archives: travel

Mar 27 2013
11 Comments
Food, Outer Sunset, Posts about Breakfast, San Francisco, San Francisco bakeries

A True Story of Pastry Paralysis

beachside cafe pastry display san francisco

Photo courtesy of yelp.com

On a Saturday in mid-March, I walked 2.6 miles and 42 blocks down Irving Street to Beachside Cafe, and I was hungry.

My hunger grew the longer I walked, and along with it, hungry indecision. In my mind, I could see a pastry, the perfect, tender, sweet, and comforting pastry that would solve my craving, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. Was it a cookie, a scone, a cinnamon bun or twist? It was impossible to tell.

There was almost no line as I walked into Beachside, and a full display of pastries glowed in the light of hunger and baked good glory. This was the first level of disaster. When faced with a display of pastries in which everything looked good, my mind froze up solid. I was left staring open-mouthed at the pastry display like the first Adam trying to name a billion different orange-colored things. I began to ask the server a series of questions, becoming more dissatisfied with every answer.

“What is your favorite?” “I really like banana nut muffin and the peanut butter cookie.” (boo)

“What’s your most popular pastry?” “The chocolate chip cookie.”(duh)

“What your second most popular pastry?” “Blueberry muffin?” (boring)

“Is the blueberry scone good?” “Yes.” (obvs)

“What’s that thing” “Scallion-bacon scone.” (weird)

“And that?” “Cinnamon apple muffin.” (reminds me too much of oatmeal)

These were the questions of a woman who clearly had no idea how to satisfy her need for a pastry or even what that particular need was. The crux of the issue is that I knew there was a right answer – there was a pastry on the shelf that would satisfy my deepest desires and yearnings, but I didn’t know how to find it, and I was terrified of missing the chance to sample the perfect pastry.

At last I chose the peanut butter cookie, and it was tasty – probably one of the better PB cookies I’ve had, but it didn’t hit the spot, the spot that cannot be named. It’s not the chocolate, pie, or berry spot. It is the pastry spot, and it is left un-hit, a hole in my soul that still seeks to be satisfied.

The quest continues. Who will win? The spot, or the human?

If you liked this, you might also like Experimentation in Pastries at Craftsmen and Wolves, Purchasing and Eating a Sandwich, and Deconstructed Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.

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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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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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Nov 09 2012
16 Comments
Humorous, San Francisco, Travelling

Crucial Information for the Midwesterner’s First Time in San Francisco

First of all, I would like to congratulate you on making it out to this heathen city. I’m sure you’ll enjoy your time and have some interesting stories to avoid telling your parents when you get back.

As you may have noticed already, San Francisco is not like the place you are from. Not only is it anywhere from 8-20x more expensive, but there is a very palpable cultural difference that reflects itself in everything from who people cheer for on Election Night to the kinds of music you won’t find on the radio station to the way people conceive the vast expanse in the middle of the United States.

Let’s begin with a few tidbits of information that will help make your time here as pleasant as possible.

1. Geography: Many San Franciscans have forgotten about the Midwest entirely, and are only reminded of it every four years when they watch most of it turn an accusing color of red and they boo. This is not a positive connotation. The red, for them, will stand for anger, ignorance, and obesity, three words that start with vowels. Some may even express fear at visiting the place you call home, as if the moment they stepped there, they would be accosted and forced to listen to country music  and believe in Jesus. Do not tell them that this is true. Avoid getting defensive, and merely laugh along with their bigotry. Then, make a note and send it back to your prayer circle to get something moving on the cosmic justice front.

2. Coffee: Be very careful of where you purchase your brown brew. Learn to identify the words “hand-crafted” or “hand-made” with “expensive” and “slow” and sometimes “too strong.” Be prepared to pay up to $4 for a brewed coffee that would have cost $1 at McDonald’s. If you’re not a true aficionado, it won’t be worth the money or the wait. Don’t feel bad about it. Just embrace who you really are and look up the nearest fast food restaurant on your smartphone. Do not ask a stranger.

3. Naked Flesh: Many/Most San Franciscans are horrifyingly more sex-positive than the average Midwesterner and lack a natural and healthy body shame. To make the matter more interesting, public nudity is lawful in some areas of the city (maybe all of it). It is possible, depending on your luck and the weather, that you will see nude flesh of varying quality as you mind your own business in the city, especially in an area known as the Castro. If this happens, don’t stare, don’t gawk, and don’t take pictures, weirdo. Just walk on by. If you’re with someone else who doesn’t see the nude flesh, do them a favor and don’t tell them about it. Let them live in peaceful oblivion and innocence.

4. Dogs:  San Franciscans love their animals. In many cases, the animals are their children and they are treated as such. You will see an astounding array of fresh pet food stores, dogs wearing various clothing items and political buttons, and  people taking their dogs out to eat with them at restaurants that encourage this sort of behavior. You can use this to your advantage by making it a conversation starter, “Do you have a pet? How much money do you spend on it, per year? Is that more than the money you give to charity?” And so on.

I hope this was a good introduction to the subject of Midwesterner travel in San Francisco. The topic may or may not be continued. It’s not really any of your business.

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