Delicious winemaker dinner at Acquerello Restaurant last night. The winemaker brought wines that the chef wanted to pair with her food. It was all =really= delish.

Before we went, his nibs said, Piemonte wines. I think we've been to the village this wine is supposed to come from. He named it. I checked. I rummaged through old digital photos we'd taken on a trip in September 2002. And, yes, we had indeed walked through the village of Serralunga d'Alba.

 
We'd poked through the square and climbed up into the castle that dominates the surrounds.

We'd walked through Gaja vineyards in the morning and watched them harvesting, before we walked up to the village

 
but I'm pretty sure we hadn't walked through Ettore Germano, which is a ways from the village and on the other side of the village from Gaja.

Tasty wines last night. He had a sparkling to start and a gem of an un-oaked Chardonnay before he dove into Barolos and such.

Plus Sergio Germano was a very charming man with loads to talk about truffles and wine and winemaking. Entertaining evening all around. We need to visit Acquerello more often than we do. Suzette Gresham-Tognetti makes such amazing food.

Labels: food, restaurants, San Francisco, travel, wine

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:19 PM|| |

Last Saturday was the last but one dinner for the Dissident Chef. He's putting his pirate ship into drydock so he can focus on the new restaurant that's a-building at Pier 5.

The Theme was truffles ... the fungi not the chocolate. Saturday night's menu was the long-form (we got home waaay after midnight) while Sunday's (the final final final dinner for at least a year) was a shortened version to allow folks to get to work on Monday.

Eight courses, followed by three desserts. Every course, including the desserts, had truffles either in or on or over.

(White truffle ice cream .... mmmmmm)

Photos (and menu) from Saturday's Truffle-palooza

SubCulture Dining Finally Waves Goodbye

Labels: food, restaurants, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:19 PM|| |

The wind is kicking in from the south. White caps on the Bay. Planes landing from the north at SFO.

Rain soon! (x'd fingers)

 

Update: Rain was fast and furious for a bit, but now the wind and the rain are barely there. x'd fingers for more wet.

Labels: San Francisco, SanFranciscoBay, SFOBayBridge, weather

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:25 AM|| |

 
We've been having amazing weather, but, please, may it rain, really rain, soon?

Labels: California, photographs, San Francisco, SanFranciscoBay, sunrise, weather

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:11 PM|| |

 
 

Labels: photographs, San Francisco, SFOBayBridge, Yerba Buena Island

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:05 PM|| |

Took some photos from the deck of one of the Eureka Valley Victorians while we were on the house tour Sunday. Biggify by clicking on the photo.



 

Labels: photographs, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:30 PM|| |

 
Added: [desciption] TCHO as the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
(I also PhotoShop'd the picture to enhance the edges. So sue me.) Check the links below.

Deluge this afternoon. Havoc reigned.

Labels: photographs, San Francisco, SFOBayBridge, weather

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:01 PM|| |

Public transit to Eureka Valley for the annual (always a different neighborhood) San Francisco Victorian Home tour.

Then walked up and over to Noe Valley and hung out (in bookstores and a bar, 'natch) until Contigo (1320 Castro Street -- between 24th St & Jersey St) opened for dinner.

Dee-lish dinner.

Walked down to Church and took the J to the Montgomery Station and popped above ground to take the 30 to Washington Square Park. Walked home.

I'll write about all in more detail ... later.

Labels: life, restaurants, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:11 PM|| |

Last night we headed over to the Galleria at SF Design Center for Wine & Spirits' Top 100 Wines event. We bought the plebe tickets and had a discount on those, so the evening was the cost of a nice dinner. Walked down the hill and caught the 10-Townsend at Levi's Plaza. A while and a ways later, we arrived just as the plebe doors opened at 6:30P.

Fine time. In addition to the wineries that made the list (of which we had far fewer than 100 tastes and red-wine-only at that), the interspersed foodie tables included wares from Flour & Water, Il Cane Rosso, Hog Island Oysters, Heaven's Dog, Gitane, Cliff House, and more.

The event was shutting down at 8:30P, and with a last hurrah we handed our Riedel wine glasses to the gent at the exit and left to catch the bus home. The 10-Townsend stops running at 8P or so, but we could catch the 19-Polk at 15th and Rhode Island and take it up to Union and Polk where we'd catch the 45 down to Washington Square Park.

We thought.

We walked around the corner and down a block to the bus stop. NextBus signage said the next bus was due in 20 minutes or so. We could wait. The weather's been relatively warm with the Japanese storm and it wasn't raining. Thanks be.

The signage counted down (with some hiccups) to four minutes more to wait and then, suddenly, flipped to saying the next bus was due in 15 minutes. Wah?

The signage counted down (again) (again with some hiccups) until it said, "ARRIVING."

We watched a different bus heading south on an adjacent parallel street and our next bus info changed its mind. Our next bus was now due in twenty-two minutes.

Is NextBus based on GPS in the buses? Or is it all just wet-finger guessology?

One of the other people waiting for the phantom bus called to see where the 19-Polk might be and when we could expect it. Oh, the answer came back after he'd been put on hold, there was a shooting and that's why your bus is delayed.

(So tell me again why it said, "ARRIVING," if it had had no intention of arriving and was, in fact, twenty-some minutes away?)

(Still can't find any news reports of such a thing online this AM. Had we misunderstood? Would a fire at Union Square interrupt a bus route on Polk, because that's the only trouble that happened last night that seems to have been deemed newsworthy.)

It's now quarter to ten rather than quarter to nine, when we first arrived at the bus stop. No bus. No one knows if the latest ETA is even accurate. When will the next 19 arrive? None of us trust the system at this point. Pretty crummy for bus service that is supposed to arrive every twenty minutes at that time of the day.

The crowd waiting for the 19 at 15th and Rhode Island started to disperse. Each of us headed off to the location we thought would most likely result in a bus ride before midnight.

We opted to walk from 15th & Rhode Island to 4th and Townsend (a little less than a mile) to catch the 30 back to Washington Square Park, which still would leave us about half a mile up hill (and down) home. (Most of the other nearby bus stops we knew about were either no-longer-running 10s or the mysteriously-missing 19.)

Finally reached home around quarter to eleven. Far later than we'd intended.

What if we hadn't been in shape or willing to walk over to catch the 30? Would the 19 ever have arrived?

What responsibility does SFMTA have to their customers waiting after dark (or during the day for that matter) to get them from where they are to where they are wanting to go according to the published schedules?

Inquiring minds.

Labels: food, life, San Francisco, SFMTA/Muni

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:56 AM|| |

 

Labels: Blue Angels, photographs, San Francisco, Telegraph Hill

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:32 PM|| |

The PhotoShop wizard who was visiting from Up North last weekend gave me a quick walk through some features I didn't know how to use. Crystal Ball sez: I see a deep time sink in your future.

BEFORE:
 

AFTER (with an artsy finish):
 

[Update: A more contrasty & saturated version per Don's suggestion]
 

Labels: photographs, San Francisco, Telegraph Hill

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:48 AM|| |

For some reason, our jet jockeys have decided to come RIGHT OVER the deck.

 

LOUD!

Labels: photographs, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:53 PM|| |

We partied on the 52d floor of 555 California for the Fourth with maybe a hundred other people, from pre-toddlers to creaky oldsters. Pre-fireworks entertainment included watching everyone else, making faces at the adorable seven-month-old (maybe) girl at the next table, a buffet that included hotdogs and hamburgers, and a hosted bar.

The event opened at 7:30P so we were a bit perplexed when we walked in a few minutes later to see all the occupied tables and chairs. We found an empty table next to the windows facing Pier 39 so we could at least see the eastern portion of the dual-barge, synchronized show. As it got closer to showtime, people began genteely squabbling over whether tables could be "held" for expected guests.



I took pictures of the view as the sun faded and the colors greyed. We watched "our" barge being pushed up from the south and over to Pier 39. The hills behind Tiburon and further north looked like a Chinese watercolor as they faded, faded, faded in the distance. (I tried to capture that view. The photo also captures the reflections of the party in the window as the lights came on and the twilight darkened.)



Note the hunkering layer of clouds just waiting to drop down and obscure the evening's entertainment.

Reflections on the window overlaying the views led to talk of Plato's Cave. We watched the fog creep in, hoping it wouldn't get so low the fireworks would (again) be fogged out. Dinner ships and private boats maneuvered into place. The Coast Guard churned back and forth keeping people out of the critical area, and then Hooray! The fog held high and right on time (9:30P) the show began.

I was using my digital camera, holding it steady on the railing between us and the window, which would have worked if there hadn't been some young adults who kept moving under the railing to get close to the window to use their digital cameras AND BUMPING THE RAILING WHENEVER THEY DID!

Ahem.

So the pics here are of views of Telegraph Hill and the Bay/Alcatraz/Angel Island as the light fades and Coit's lights come on. Followed by some of the better fireworks shots. (But oh ... my, the City's civic 4th fireworks just don't compare to KFOG Kaboom!)



We stayed for a while after the civic fireworks were over, enjoying the amateur fireworks that were exploding to the west. I've included a couple shots off the west side of the building showing the Civic Center and downtown and the vista out to the ocean (Note how "straight" streets on a grid look all curvy as they go up and over hills...)

And then we wandered home and watched some fireworks that were still going off. We had a good time. (I enjoyed my first hot dog in MONTHS!)

All-in-all, I took over 170 photos, of which I've kept ninety-five. (That collection may still be weeded.) My bloggy photo gallery here contains only twenty-two.

Labels: life, photographs, San Francisco, SanFranciscoBay

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:53 PM|| |

Fishers give up on plan for Presidio art museum

... so I wrote another letter to the editor at the Chronicle (previous letter was 09/2007):

The Presidio was never the right place for the Fishers' Contemporary Art Museum for reasons both practical and historical, reasons soundly argued by neighbors, historians, park enthusiasts, and environmentalists.

There are wonderful alternatives to the Presidio site in our city. Consider for a moment the effect of having the Contemporary Art Museum located near Pier 70/Potrero Point, an area poised for redevelopment! Donald Fisher could do immense good by building his museum there, at the edge of the Bay. Plenty of public transit. Space for parking without cutting down a single tree! Near the ballpark and the new UCSF Medical Center development at Mission Bay. Near all the new condos south of Market. Within shouting distance of Bernal Heights and Potrero Hill. A short transit ride from the southern neighborhoods.

The Contemporary Art Museum could knit the city together, bringing folks from the northern neighborhoods and the western neighborhoods over to our "other" shore.

Look what the ballpark and UCSF@Mission Bay have done for the surrounding areas!. The Fishers have the opportunity to do wonders for the central waterfront and the city if they build their museum there. Say you will, Mr. Fisher!

Update: Letter in today's Chron.

Labels: art, museums, news, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:07 PM|| |

23 Jul 2008
Sitting on a dock of the bay.

 

Labels: economy, photographs, San Francisco, SanFranciscoBay, Treasure Island

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:23 PM|| |

And so with nary a care, Leah Garchik spills the beans about Gavin's new digs, with enough information (price, street) that any stalker worth his/her salt could track down the address in (oh ... say ...) about ten seconds.

I dunno. If I were someone who attracts stalkers like Gavin does, I'd be a bit annoyed at Ms Leah leaking the info just because she could.

Maybe it's just me.

(And, yes, even though I'm not a stalker, the challenge of the day -- after finishing the ***Sudoku and both crosswords -- was to track down Gavin's new address. And it didn't take that long. ...)

Labels: politics, real estate, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:35 PM|| |

Joseph Schmidt, a local purveyor of fine chocolates, now a subsidiary of Hershey's, will close as of June 30. Their chocolates are now on sale (3489 16th St.) as they skid toward the end of the month, although you wouldn't be able to tell from their Web site.

 
Old friends brought a "spring" box collection as a hostess gift when they came for dinner a few weeks back. The box is beautiful. The chocolates ymmm.

Adieu, JS. Another San Francisco tradition signs off.

Labels: food, photographs, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:29 PM|| |

[prior screeds]

Had a heads-up from Friends of Joe DiMaggio Playground mid-May:

Dear Friends of Joe D:

The next step toward civic improvement in North Beach is to say:

"Yes, I support the Library Commission and the Recreation and Park
Commission in unanimously approving the North Beach Library / Joe
DiMaggio Playground Master Plan, including the relocation of the North
Beach Library to 701 Lombard Street, including the closure and
greening of Mason Street. Completing this project will provide a
much needed new library, greater green space, and improved parkland
that is more accessible to all North Beach residents!"

Please show your support for the new library and future playground
improvements by writing to:

Bill Wycko, Environmental Review
Officer, San Francisco Planning Department
1650 Mission Street, Suite 400,
San Francisco, CA 94103

[...]

With clicks and links to this and that. ...

So, I wrote a letter. Sent it off a bit after noon today with a copy to David Chiu (President, Board of Supervisors, and also our very own District 3 Supervisor) and Luis Herrera (City Librarian).

I'd talked with David Chiu at the SPUR Urban Center opening event yesterday afternoon and told him to expect a copy of what I was sending to the City.


Mr. Wycko,

A note from Friends of Joe DiMaggio Playground (FJDiMP) asked me to send you a note beginning, "Yes, I support the Library Commission and the Recreation and Park Commission in unanimously approving the North Beach Library / Joe DiMaggio Playground Master Plan, including the relocation of the North Beach Library to 701 Lombard Street, including the closure and greening of Mason Street."

Although I am a member of the Friends group, I support neither the placement of the new library at 701 Lombard nor the closure of the segment of Mason Street that's being asked for to facilitate the 701 Lombard location.

My concerns:

1) re closing Mason
-------------------
I have suggested in the past, and continue to suggest: (from e-mail to SFPL Commission, dated 28 Aug 2008) "The City should temporarily close the [Mason] street segment for [at least] a month and see what =really= happens to the traffic patterns. Such closure would ease the minds of the neighbors, if the traffic patterns flow as the models suggest, but could put the kibosh on the idea of closing Mason if the traffic patterns change as neighbors anticipate.

"While the K-rails blocking Mason are up, label them:

Temporary closure of Mason.
Permanent closure is proposed as part of
plans to build the new North Beach Library
on the Triangle.

"In addition to the temporary closure and signage, story poles need to be erected on the Triangle, showing the outline of the new library so that neighbors can see the impact of putting the library there."

There is considerable controversy over what effect closing Mason would have. A temporary closure would help address those issues.

2) re placing the North Beach Library on the Triangle
-------------------
Luis Herrera (in an e-mail 03-Sep-2008) stated, the Triangle location, "meets our service program requirements, including additional book and materials capacity of up to 15%."

"up to 15%" in collection expansion? The North Beach library collection has been undersized for decades. "up to 15%" expansion is far less than the community needs or expects from a new library.

Currently the NBE circulation stats show ~ 6.4 turns per collection item per year. (Circ: 250K Collection: 39K items) That figure is 26% higher than the branch library =average= for SFPL, which shows 5.08 turns/item/year. (Branch circ: 6116K Branch collection: 1203K)

Currently the NBE circulation stats show 9.26 checkouts/capita/yr. (Circ: 250K Popn served: 27K) The City's average for all branches is 7.42/capita/yr. (Circ: 6116K Popn served: 824K) The State's average for public libraries is 5.78/capita/yr.

The North Beach library and its collection are heavily used. A potential incremental 10-15% collection growth over the life of the building is not enough from the get-go.

My major issue with the Triangle location is that if we ever need/want to expand the library, there will be NOWHERE to expand. Any further expansion beyond what is already planned (onto Mason, assuming Mason can be closed in part to make way for the new library) will be impossible without rerouting all utilities that currently run underneath that segment of Mason. Hardscape and landscape are suitable on top of a closed Mason, but structures cannot cover the utilities because of access issues.

While you are considering the impacts of closing Mason, could you also investigate the costs (financial and environmental) of re-routing the utilities under Mason when the library needs to expand onto that area in the future? Is re-routing even possible?

3) re alternatives to the Triangle and closing Mason. Environmental impacts?
-------------------
I asked Luis Herrera in an e-mail dated 03-Sep-2008: "Was any thought given to blocking Greenwich at Columbus for added space for expansion? Blocking Greenwich would raise far less outcry than blocking Mason as there is an island in the middle of Columbus at that point preventing Greenwich-west drivers from turning left onto Columbus or proceeding through onto the western end of Greenwich, and vice versa.

"The last garage access off Greenwich between Powell and Columbus is at ~735 Greenwich, which leaves a major chunk of that roadway with no current requirement for vehicle traffic access. Are there issues with what lies under Greenwich similar to the issues with Mason?"

Luis Herrera replied, "The closure of Greenwich at Columbus was not discussed as that location would also provide for the proposed size to the programmatic needs."

As part of the environmental impacts investigation, the City should investigate the environmental impact of closing Greenwich as an alternative to closing Mason. The new library could be placed where the tot lot currently is and expand onto Greenwich as far as any underground utility issues allow. This would address some of the issues that some FJDiMP members have regarding loss of a tennis court and location of the tot lot. The tot lot would be relocated elsewhere, perhaps to where the library currently is, adjacent to the bocce courts.

Which road closure (Greenwich or Mason) has less impact?

Thank you for your time.

Labels: libraries, North Beach, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:14 PM|| |

[Blogger wasn't FTPing nicely this afternoon so this post was delayed. ...]

Carl Nolte writes, Flu outbreak diverts Mexico's cruises to S.F.

The Mariner of the Seas (>1K' long -- displaces 137,276 tons) berthed early this morning at Pier 35.

<PALIN> We can see it from our bedroom window! </PALIN>

(yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that was SNL and not Palin.)

Just now, [well, sometime after lunch] the Carnival Splendor (952') came into Pier 29 and I took a mess of photographs. Together the two ships have ~ 6800 passengers aboard.

I feel kind of :-((( for the passengers because the weather was grey and drippy today. Rainy a bit and then not a bit and then rainy again. MUCH chillier than the folks on the cruise (who had signed up for Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco, &c.) were dressed for. We thought, boy, those folks down by the wharf are probably upping the prices on their fleece jackets and umbrellas.

Seems we'll have more of the same (cruise ships, that is) for a while now. ...

I imagine Butterfly restaurant down at Pier 33 is not the place to go for lunch. Not that we had any plans to do so. We have [had] a Cinco party down at Mercedes - Hair of the Dog Cantina starting at 6p.

[The Cinco was terrific. We walked down (con paraguas), stopping off at the bank to drop off a rent check. Got to the cantina a bit early. No prob. Met some new folks, old friends. Mariachis out front. Folks who weren't invited to the par-tay were sitting on the benches in the alley enjoying. Music (after the mariachis were done) by Carlos Godinez and his sidemen. We were seated RIGHT THERE. (Literally. We chatted across to them between songs.) Godinez played some Jobim, which made me happy.(Jobim? Cinco music? No, not really, but made me happy.) The spread was terrif. (Munchies followed by buffet. All you can drink vino blanco o rojo, margaritas o Dos Equis o whatever you wish.) I heartily endorse Mercedes - Hair of the Dog Cantina. Owner/staff were swell. We had a good time.]

(and then hoofed it home -- sin paraguas ... ~2mi total RT)


 

 

 
We got home to find the cruise ship nestled, all snug in its berth ...

The Mariner of the Seas leaves in a half hour or so, but I think the Carnival ship won't leave until morning. ...

 

Labels: pier29, San Francisco, SanFranciscoBay, ships

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:38 PM|| |

Sara Zarr blogged (in her blog, The Stories of a Girl) about a number of things yesterday. I was captured by her comment,

Earth Day. I don’t know how I feel about it, as a day, which mostly feels like yet another opportunity for capitalism to taint what should be common sense.

I remember the first Earth Day. 1970. A few months before Sara Zarr was born. Spring semester of my freshman year. We buried a new car (a Ford Maverick?) in the Quad at San Jose State during the Earth Day Survival Fair. Oh, we were root-toot-tooting greenies even back then.

Looking back, though, the green we are today wouldn't even have been dreamed of back then. Sara went through some of the things she's now doing ("a few of the major though easy things") that help celebrate Earth Day year-round. Here's my list of ten greenie things that are part and parcel of my life these days.

1) WATER Like Sara we don't do bottled water -- not at home, not in restaurants. (Well, if someone else is paying for the con-gas/frizzante at an event, I will certainly imbibe. My no-frizzante-at-restaurants is because I'm way frugal too ... Why pay a restaurant for a marked-up bottle of water? Why buy water at the store? I appreciate restaurants that fizz their own water instead of bringing on the French or Italian bottled stuff.

Our local HetchHetchy water is fine water indeed. I understand that some other folks may not have tap water that tastes good. (I've been in Midland, TX. Reverse osmosis water is the ONLY way to go in that town.) But if you don't live in Midland or some place with equally bad water, have you even considered tap (or as an office mate used to say, "sink") water?

Sara doesn't live in San Francisco these days, but where she is her tap water's fine too. Are you missing out on drinking from the tap because it's "sink water"?

We have a couple bottles of chilled water in the frig for (f'rex) when we're going out for a walk on a hot day (to avoid getting so terribly thirsty that we break down and buy a bottle at the wharf). We refill our bottles. Again and again and ...

We have a case of bottled water under the bed as part of our earthquake supplies.

That's it.

2) BAGS: PLASTIC & OTHERWISE We reuse paper bags and packaging materials. And those peanuts &c. that show up in mailorder stuff that we can't use? We give those to a friend who is slowly decluttering his house by selling stuff on eBay. We stuff clean plastic (which isn't recyclable with the city recycle program in this town) into a large plastic bag and when the bag's full, take it down to Safeway, which does, still, recycle plastic. We save the larger grocery-sized plastic bags to line the wastebasket in the kitchen.

We have cloth bags (and, for Trader Joe's, paper bags) for shopping. Most of the cloth bags are from conferences: Bouchercon, AAAS, LCC. We have HUGE STURDY IKEA BAGS that we bought for $0.59-$0.99 each (they dropped the price and we bought two more) which we use to haul stuff in from the car down the stairs and up to the front door when we take the car to Costco or Trader Joe's and buy in bulk. We also use them to haul stuff UP! so we have a couple bags on either end. We have had these bags now for years and they carry a ton of stuff without wearing out or ripping at the seams.

2a) I wrap presents in Sunday comics. Did you know that you can cut long strips of comics (or any wrapping paper, really) and curl the strips with a knife/scissors edge to make ribbony attachments that MATCH!! the wrapping paper? I wrap packages for mailing in paper bags, deconstructed at the seams and turned inside out.

3) RECYCLE We recycle newspaper, magazines, cardboard, flattened boxes, clean paper items, bottles and cans, plastic bottles, &c. We stash the recycle stuffs in boxes and on the day before the twice-a-week pickup, we transfer them to paper grocery bags and carry them up to the nearest street and leave them in a recycle bin there for pickup. We empty the bags that hold bottles/cans into the bin and bring the bags back for re-use. The bags holding magazines/newspapers, we leave in the bin.

4) GREENCYCLE San Francisco has a wonderful compost program -- green bins or, as we call it, Greencycle. What can you put in the green bin for composting? All food scraps, food-soiled paper, garden clippings and cuttings, pizza boxes, paper milk cartons, tea bags, coffee filters, banana peels, food-soiled paper napkins, wooden crates, tree trimmings, sawdust. Oh, the list goes on. Fish bones, lobster and crab shells, oyster shells, bones, wine corks.

The only things that shouldn't go in the green cart are (1) things that are already recycled in the blue bin: newspaper, clean paper items, bottles and cans, empty spray cans, aluminum foil, plastic bottles, tubs and lids, &c. and (2) things that belong in the real garbage:

* Styrofoam
* plastic bags
* diapers
* kitty litter or animal feces
* rocks, stones, or dirt
* &c.

How hard is this? Well, for us, we have to make more effort than someone living in a SFH with curbside pickup. Where we are, the City will not pick up recycle or compost. A bunch of greeny neighbors FINALLY arranged for the City to pick up recycle if we carry it up to the nearest street and tuck it down on the first landing. (The neighbors on either side of the steps complained if we put the recycle bin on the sidewalk next to their buildings.) Greencycle, though, is out of the question at that spot.

Our Greencycle effort goes thusly. We have a large glass casserole dish on the counter that gets the stuff that would go into the green bin, if we only had a green bin. When the dish gets full (or at the end of the day), we transfer the contents to a large, lidded, metal menudo pot (lined with a compostable bag), which sits over in the corner of the kitchen.

When that bag gets full (or in four days, whichever is sooner, because the compostable bag begins to compost at that point), we put the bag into a larger plastic bag and take it out and drop it sans plastic bag in a green bin that we know of that's on our way out-of-town or over to Costco or somewhere else that we'd be heading anyway. I suppose we could find a neighbor with a green bin (Hey! I may know just the one!) who lives within a quarter mile who would let us drop the Greencycle in her bin.

Greencycle is so very cool. I wish everyone used it.

As the article linked above says,

San Francisco's garbage and recycling companies are leading the way in producing a high-quality, boutique compost tailored for Bay Area growers, experts say. In one year, 105,000 tons of food scraps and yard trimmings - 404 tons each weekday - get turned into 20,000 tons of compost for 10,000 acres.

Greencycle recycles 105,000 TONS of food scraps and yard trimmings a year! How cool is that?

5) PACKAGING AND PLASTIC WRAP We don't buy many things that are in non-recyclable packaging. We still eat meat, so there are usually styrofoam trays (why?) to dispose of and the plastic wrap around them. Vegetables go into plastic bags before purchase, but if you rinse them out and dry them, the plastic bags recycle. Cheese is wrapped in plastic. Bulk rice comes in tough plastic bags. But we don't buy a lot of bagged, canned and bottled stuff, and what we do is usually in recyclable containers or something that can be Greencycle'd.

5a) When we heat things in the microwave, we tend to either use dishes with glass lids or put the food on a plate and cover the food with an inverted glass casserole dish from the cupboard. (We have several sizes.) The steam stays in. There's no plastic wrap to deal with. You can see through the glass dish to see how things are progressing. Wash the casserole dish afterwards. Reuse.

5b) All in all we probably have half a grocery bag of "garbage" a week. If that. (And the "garbage" bag is a plastic grocery bag from Chinatown now that the majors aren't allowed to give out plastic bags in our fair ville.)

6) WALK & PUBLIC TRANSIT We don't drive much. His nibs drives to work in the south bay once a week. Unfortunately, even though his company is now near a train station, the logistics are impossible for him to take the train to work unless he got out of here soon after 5A to catch the bus that would take him to the train station. Car it is. We also take the car when we're going to Costco or if we're planning to pick up A LOT of wine, &c. at Trader Joe's. Other than that we walk or take public transit. The nearest Trader Joe's is a mile each way. Coming back up hill with a bag or two of groceries each is doable. (We bring our own bags, 'natch.) We walk to dinner or down to the library or out. We do our veggie shopping in Chinatown and pickup our sweetbreads at Little City and walk (uphill) home. If we're going out to dinner somewhere too far to walk, we take public transit. We've taken one cab ride since we started living here and that was shared with fellow diners after a Subculture Dining experience that ended too late. The J-Church had stopped running. Really.

We currently have two cars (with -- ouch! -- the leased parking fees they incur). Eventually, when the older younger guy gets his license, he's due to get the 2000 Honda and we'll be down to the 2005 Mini Cooper. After his nibs stops working in the south bay altogether, we'll probably go carshare. My Mini Cooper consistently gets about 33 MPG. When we drove down to my cousin's memorial service and back, it got 36MPG, iirc.

We don't belong to a gym. The walking and the stairs and the carrying of groceries is pretty good exercise.

6) ELECTRONICS AND PAINT San Francisco has great hazardous waste dropoff/recycling. San Francisco residents can drop off household hazardous waste at the Tunnel Avenue transfer facility. Hazardous wastes accepted include batteries (large and small), paint, chemicals, motor oil, used oil filters, fluorescent bulbs, antifreeze, &c. Norcal tries to reuse as much of the "hazardous waste" as possible. Collected latex paint, for example, is available free to anyone who stops by (sometimes remixed, sometimes as donated) in large buckets. Customers can drop off up to 30 electronic items per month for free if they are delivered separate from any other garbage. You don't need to wait for the special "hazardous waste" days and hours. If all you are dropping off is electronic items, you can bypass the line of people waiting to use the public dump facility.

If you have BIG ITEMS that need pickup, you make arrangements with NorCal and they'll pick them up. When we got rid of the BULKY air conditioner that had been here when we bought the place (which was really pretty useless and took up space), we called NorCal and they sent someone out to pick it up. We paid extra to have him carry it down from our top floor, down our stairs and up the path/stairs to the street. We're no fools. The extra charge was well worth it.

7) WATER CONSUMPTION We watch water use. Short showers. Large loads of laundry. Handwash/air-dry dishes because we really don't use enough to fill/run the dishwasher even every other day and if you don't run it that often the kitchen stinks, we've found. We hardly ever drop things at the drycleaner. When we do, we've collected a batch over a while and take it all in at one time, saving the hassle of dropoff and pickup.

8) ENERGY We have photovoltaic cells on the roof with battery backup. Our meter runs backwards. The solar covers about half our use, which leaves us with a minimal power bill. No A/C. Turn off the lights. No TV. We use sweaters and sweatshirts on colder days rather than cranking up the (gas) heat. We're using compact fluorescent light bulbs, even though there are still questions how (years down the road) CFLs will be disposed of.

9) MAGAZINE RECYCLE AND ALTERNATIVES We just joined the Mechanics Institute Library downtown. I plan to give up most of our magazine subscriptions and save money and save the paper that then needs to be recycled by reading most of my magazines, and ones I don't currently subscribe to, there. Yes, I know. Magazines are having tough times. My subscriptions weren't enough to sustain them anyway.

10) THRIFT STORES, GOODWILL, FLEA MARKETS, BARTER I love thrift stores. Buy a dress or shirt or whatever that someone else bought first and you're saving all the associated construction/manufacturing costs that went into the original product. The current issue of San Francisco Magazine interviews Cris Zander of Cris, consignment boutique at 2056 Polk St., which has been in business for decades. (Full disclosure: I've never been there, although I might take a peek in to see if the prices are way over my wallet.)

The writer asked Cris about her ladies-who-lunch clientele who use her boutique to sell the clothes they don't plan to wear anymore and (perhaps) pick up alternatives. She quoted one of her clients who wondered why people worried about buying "used" clothes: "All of the clothes in my closet are used," the client said.

Exactly, I thought. But then I always got plenty of hand-me-downs from my three-years-older sister while I was growing up.

                                                ***

I look at the list I just made and think, yeah, fine, but you can do better than that. If we were vegetarian, we'd avoid all the expenses associated with raising meat. We could be more conscientious with buying locally. We still have two cars, fer pete's sake, but that will change. We have plants that are purely ornamental. Bottles and cans don't recycle easily as people would like to think. There's a glut on newsprint and cardboard because the cheap trinket folks are making fewer cheap trinkets in this downturn and don't need as much packaging. And what really happens to the plastic bags we take to Safeway?

And, as always when I buy something (or even pick it up free), do I really need that? Do I need that book? Do I need that stuff I picked up at Bonham's/Butterfield yesterday? Can I cut back?

Sure.

Labels: culture, environmentalism, life, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:11 AM|| |

 
6:15A 13 Apr 2009

Labels: photographs, San Francisco, SanFranciscoBay

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:40 PM|| |

 

Labels: photographs, San Francisco, SanFranciscoBay, SFOBayBridge

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:43 PM|| |

Bronstein at Large : Newspaper disaster? It's all my fault. I'm the one.

This column is from last month, but I hadn't noticed it until I saw Bronstein link to it from today's piece.

He has some interesting ideas, including this one:

In the meantime, we should look at the problem in simpler terms:

I get two newspapers delivered at home: The Chronicle and the New York Times. The Times hits the step somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m. The Chronicle gets there before 6. Both papers are in existential trouble despite good work and 300 years of accumulated history between them.

So even in the face of the threats to our survival, there are still at least two different people and two entirely different delivery systems in place to get two newspapers to the same address in the same couple of hours. Really? In what rational world does that make sense? Why is that a good idea for businesses on the brink?

He goes on to talk about sharing resources beyond the delivery staff and the printing presses. Pooled news?

We already have pooled news. Take a look at the Chronicle some time and check out how much of the news is fed in from AP or the NYT. (How often do I read an article and think, I read that a day or two ago. Yup, another article from NYT.) We also have the end-of-the-week roundup column telling us what was in the Economist and the half page that covers what the top stories were in a handful of top international papers. We have blocks of print nipped from people commenting on sfgate.com. We have the columnists, writers and editorial and ... but for how much longer? (No more Morford except on sfgate.com, alas.)

Who knows what's to come. The dominant paradigm is failing. We are watching it failing, and blaming the failure on Craig Newmark or Google is not saving the bacon. What needs to change? What will change? What will take the place of the bagged up newspaper delivered to the doorstep?

Bronstein makes mention of both San Francisco Appeal and The Public Press, recently added online news sources for those who don't insist that they get ink smudges on their fingers.

Is that what the future will be? Smaller, more focused local papers? Online "papers"? Behemoth news providers feeding news to newspapers that don't have much staff anymore?

Maybe some brill soul will work out a nice arrangement with Google, which will monetize their news aggregator up the wazoo and then employ their brilliant data mining to figure out how to share the ad $$ equitably with the papers that people are clicking through to.

Will the papers then put their staff on a revised salary plan and "share" their clickthrough income with the staffers who write the articles that people want to read? If I click through to Carl Nolte or Mark Morford (both of whom I enjoy) but not Willie Brown, will Carl and Mark get bigger slices of the pie?

                                    *

But enough of that, here are my dull and unimaginative suggestions to the Chronicle for generating revenue.

(1) Take the crossword answers and the Sudoku answers out of the same-day newspaper. If someone wants hints and clues and answers THAT DAY, they can log on and pay ($1 -- the cost of a Lotto ticket -- would be a good price point) for the info.

(2) Sudoku? Monetize that. Someone inks in that day's Sudoku, ships their answers to the Chronicle with a ($1 again) fee. All the fees go into a pot. One person's name is drawn. If that person's answers are all correctomundo, that person gets 25% of the pot. There'll be a bit of expense over at the Chronicle for handling the entries, but how much could that be? The rest would be found money. Note: you'll have to buy (or otherwise arrange to read) a physical paper to find out how to contact the paper to send in that day's entry.

(3) Be more upfront about what ads cost. Make the information more available. Anniversary, Birthday, Graduation coming up? Maybe the Chronicle could put messages on Page One or above the fold for the Sports section or next to the comics for a suitable price.

(4) Someone had suggested a poet's corner where someone's poetry would be published, for a price. (And then the year's worth of poet's corners could be gathered into a book and offered for sale to those interested.) Why not?

(5) Have a photographer's corner too.

Oh, and while I have you on the horn, could you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE move Paul Madonna's work out of The Pink? Paul Madonna needs to be on a white background, and last Sunday? The print job was so uneven, I couldn't even read the print that accompanied his work. Don't let that happen again.

Update: An edited (to meet the 200 wd cutoff) version of my suggestion list was published in the Chronicle's LtoE column on April 16. (See 4th letter in. ...)

Labels: advertising, financeconomics, news, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:05 PM|| |

Unlike London, whose Tate Museum owns Louise Bourgeois' Maman (given as a gift by the artist and an anonymous benefactor), San Francisco only had Louise Bourgeois' Crouching Spider on temporary loan (for eight months initially and then for another ten).

Crouching Spider was purchased by a private buyer for $6mil and will be moved to Houston by the end of the month.

Visit soon! Pier 14. Can't miss it!
(Click for larger image)

Labels: public-art, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:18 PM|| |

 

Labels: flowers, photographs, San Francisco, Telegraph Hill

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:49 PM|| |

 

Labels: photographs, San Francisco, SanFranciscoBay, ships

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:46 PM|| |