Towse: views from the hill

I always wonder at folks who fall for scams.

Well, yes, there are some scams and spams that are really clever, like the new ones that claim to be letters from the FDIC asking the recipient to click a link for more information or the one I just tossed from Citibank (even though I don’t have a Citibank account) titled Citibank Fraud Verification Process, but the Nigerian scam? Why do I still get so many Nigerian scam e-mails? Nobody could still be falling for that one, could they?

Seems so. Yesterday I read this sad bit in News of the Weird. Seems a seventy-three-year-old guy lost $300K to the Nigerian scam and even after losing all that money, he still blamed his losses on the “corrupt governments” that were plaguing his Nigerian friends, never suspecting that he’d been scammed by his so-called “friends.”

Got a nice note from Troy Litten inviting me to his book launch par-tay for WANDERLUST (Chronicle Books), and wish we could be there, but his nibs is — as we speak — having some outpatient surgery and although I’ll be picking him up in a couple hours, he doesn’t think he’ll be feeling like nobhobbing and noshing tonight.

Oh, well.

We do plan to get over to Den, where the party is being held tonight, sometime in the next month. The nice folks there are putting on a gallery exhibit of Litten’s photographs, which I’ve only ever seen via his Web site.

Litten’s photographs are very cool and interesting, sometimes a bit odd and quirky. He has, f’rex, a collection of signs from around the world — traffic signs featuring people. You know the type: “children at play,” “crosswalk,” “construction workers ahead.” The photos of signs are gridded together, each with a brief “where the photo was taken” tag: Istanbul, London, Ohio.

Litten also shares photographs of an array of fire hydrants and, not to be missed, Troyland’s collection of vintage airline bags (including Varig, believe it or not!). I know passions, I’ve written about passions, but this is the first instance I’ve found of this particular passion.

Check out the Troyland Cultural Awareness Programs, including “Traveling China with a blank book and a glue-stick” and “Death at Christmas,” a collection of photos of the traditional post-holiday street corner magic that makes our city by the Bay what it is. Great stuff.

Maybe he should start shooting photos of mattress and box springs abandoned in odd locations, — more local magic, as this photograph from www.whileseated.org a San Francisco-based photolog and blog attests.

Maybe if the US government had not banned photographs of flag-draped coffins back in 1991, there wouldn’t be all the furor there is today over Tami Silicio’s photograph of flag-draped coffins, published in the Seattle Times (and now elsewhere), and the collection of flag-draped coffin photos gathered through the Freedom of Information Act efforts of www.thememoryhole.org.

We get the Merc delivered every day to Dale and Fri-Sun the Chronicle is delivered as well. I often read the papers side-by-side and compare the news coverage.

Today both papers ran Silicio’s photograph on Page One, both with a bit of the photo above the fold. The Chronicle coverage was strikingly similar to the Merc’s.

(Feh. The Merc is now requesting a free registration to read its articles online. I’m OK with that but I know many people aren’t.)

Quirky, I know, but I always check to see how the two newspapers edit articles obtained from other sources. Today both papers ran non-identical edits of a Bill Carter article from the NYTimes. The NYT itself wasn’t running the photograph, though: “The Chronicle purchased rights to publish the photograph on today’s front page from ZUMA Press, a photo agency, which is handling distribution. In addition, rights to it have been purchased by a weekly news magazine, according to ZUMA. Until it appears in that magazine, the deal specifically prohibits it from appearing in the Washington Post, USA Today or the New York Times. Proceeds from the sale of the photo will go to a charity selected by Silicio, according to ZUMA.”

Or, as the Mercury puts it, “Zuma Press, a photo agency, is handling distribution of the photo. Rights to publish it have been purchased by a weekly news magazine, according to Zuma. Until it appears in that magazine, the deal specifically prohibits it from appearing in the Washington Post, USA Today or the New York Times. Proceeds from the sale of the photo will go to a charity selected by Silicio, according to Zuma.”

Any bets that that photo will be on the cover of the next issue of Time Magazine? OK. Maybe Newsweek. Probably not People.

Would there be all this hoorah if photos had been published off and on, numbing the juiciness of this story?

www.thememoryhole.org seems to be overwhelmed with action this morning. I get an “operation timed out” when I try to pull up the site. Ah, the bane and heaven of getting great publicity.

California SB 1520 : Senate Bill This bill is idiocy. New York has pending legislation along similar lines. Customs rules were recently changed to disallow fresh, frozen and canned meat from France. Where’s a girl to get her seared foie gras if these bills pass? Who the heck does Senator Burton think he is?

I just love HowStrange.com

BLOGGER – Knowledge Base – How To Get A Book Deal With Your Blog — an entertaining review of folks who have actually snagged a book deal with a blog. You can do it too! Meet Julie Powell, who decided to spend a year cooking up Julia Child’s recipes … and blog about it. Her book from Little, Brown will be out in 2005.

Chocolate and Zucchini is a French foodie blog brought to us by 24-year-old Clotilde Dusoulier of Montmartre. The blog is entertaining in and of itself, but it also has a swarm of links to other foodie blogs, an index to the recipes she shares, archives sorted by subject as well as date, a bloxicon (in case you don’t know what an amuse-bouche is and want to), book recommendations, &c.

Turns out there was an article on foodie blogs in Gourmet’s April 2004 issue. Behind on my reading I be.

El Raigon — Argentine asado

510 Union St, San Francisco

I mentioned that we’d gone to El Raigón, a new Argentine restaurant on Union, a week ago. I’ve made copies of their menu to drop off with friends who might be interested. Hope this restaurant has much success. Unfortunately, one set of friends who would be very interested in a restaurant close to Coit Tower are low-fat vegetarians. El Raigón is not for them.

We’d noticed last Tuesday that El Raigón was open as we walked down to Iluna Basque. We’d walked a half-block farther past and decided to turn back and eat there instead. The door was locked! There were people inside eating! We realized that the staff was probably having an open house/dress rehearsal for friends. We stopped off again on our way home from Iluna Basque when we noticed the door open and a woman standing in the doorway.

“When are you opening?” we asked.

“Tomorrow,” she answered. “Here, take a menu.”

We thanked her and trundled home, already making plans to eat there the next night, even though eating dinner out three times in four days is far from our norm.

El Raigón — Argentine asado

510 Union St. [between Grant and Stockton, North Beach]

San Francisco, CA 94133

415-291-0927

The restaurant design is simple– exposed wood beams, concrete floor. You can’t miss the “art” on the walls — framed cow hides. The frames are about 3′x3′ and the cow hides are stretched over the frames. Spot lighting picks up the swirls and variations in the hides. The hides were all of a piece: reddish brown with white patterning, almost a Rorschach. Don’t know what cattle breed. Maybe Guernsey? An array of bolos hung against the wall at the far end of the room. Some framed photographs of Argentinians hung on the wall as you came in.

The woman we’d talked to the night before appears to be one of the partners. She was running the front room and recognized us. There were a good dozen people having dinner. A group of five and another couple of couples came in while we ate. Seemed a good turnout for a first night for a restaurant that doesn’t have a flashy exterior. Word of mouth from friends of the restaurant, Telegraph Hill neighbors and noticing the place while you were walking by are the only ways the first-night diners could’ve known the restaurant was open.

We started dinner by nibbling on bread dipped in chimichurri sauce as we decided what to eat. The bread came in a metal bucket, continuing the cattleman motif. Excellent chimichurri sauce.

Both of us had mollejas (grilled sweetbreads) for appetizer. My first experience of sweetbreads was when his nibs wooed me with home-cooked sweetbreads in a sour cream, shallots and port sauce. My first experience. Since then, sweetbreads have always been a favorite. Recently I’ve been lamenting the fact you can’t find sweetbreads in the meat cases at the grocery stores these days and very few restaurants have sweetbreads on their menus. The prime reason we first stopped at Isa was because Luke’s menu featured both sweetbreads and seared foie gras.

El Raigón’s sweetbreads were delicious, simply prepared, grilled and served with a lemon wedge. Also good dipped in chimichurri. Excellent.

We continued on with beef for the main course. The restaurant is proud of its grass-fed Montana beef and plans to be able to serve Argentinian beef some day. I had Bife de Chorizo (similar to NY strip) and his nibs had Ojo de Bife (rib eye). My mental translation of “Ojo de Bife” is cow eyeball, which is why I didn’t order it. Of course, Bife de Chorizo sounds like beef sausage …

Both pieces of beef were ordered medium-rare and both arrived perfectly done. yay! I opted for a side of Espinaca Saltada (sauteed spinach) and his nibs had Calabaza Pisada (mashed squash). Both good. The spinach was sauteed with garlic. Both vegetables were prepared with no extraneous fuss.

Also on the menu are shortribs, lamb loin, grilled chicken, and halibut. For the vegetarians, main dishes include fettucini with marinara sauce and steamed vegetables. The restaurant also serves salads, other sides, empanadas, blood sausage, Argentine sausage, prawns, &c. Plenty of choices, just not very much choice if you’re vegetarian. If you’re on the Atkins diet, however, this place is for you.

I saved half of my beef to leave room for dessert. My Panqueques con Dulce de Leche (crepe-like pancakes rolled around rich, golden brown dulce de leche) were yummy. Exceedingly rich. His nibs had Flan Casero, which was an excellent excellent yummy flan.

What with wine and coffee, dinner was in the $$$ range even before tip. The pieces of beef were $24 and $28. The sweetbreads were $9 each. Sides were $3 each. Desserts were $7 each. Yummy stuff, though, and just a few blocks from home. El Raigón is definitely a place to return to when we are entertaining beef-eating friends or just hankering after a simple slab of beef.

The day has turned blue and sunny both here and there.

My little bird family was squeaking and squawking when I took a break to fix lunch and move some more boxes.

“Mom, I want a worm!”

“Waaaah! She got a bigger piece than I did!”

And all the while the mother bird saying, “Hush. Can’t you see that giant human down there checking out all the squawking you’re making? Hush, missy! Hush! Or that mean ol’ human is going to fry you up for lunch!”

For the second year in a row, a small Oregon junco has made its nest in the window sill of the small window at the top of the kitchen wall, just above the stove. The window (a clerestory window) opens in on chains, and there’s a three-inch deep space between the window and the screen outside. I seldom open the window even on the hottest days. Last year, the bird pecked and ripped a hole in the screen and built a nest in the protected space, out of sight of any of her common predators. Her family duties were so successful she’s back again. This year she doesn’t have to rip the screen because we didn’t mend it after her caretaking duties were done last year.

You can’t see the bird-lets too well, because of the angle of sight to the window, but you can always tell when mom arrives with something to eat. Peep. Squawk. Waaaah! PeepPeepPeep.

Was up for a Board meeting of the Broadway Towers HOA last night. KS has finally sold the last of the condos left from the condo conversion which began in the 80′s: 1981? 1986? Something like that, but I’m not interested in searching through old paperwork to find the date. I suppose I could ask KS: she’d know right off the top of her head. Part of the conversion deal was that the developers had to allow a life-lease to tenants over a certain age who didn’t want to buy their unit.

KS’d attended practically every Board meeting since she took over from her father back when. Last night was to be the last Board meeting she’d attend (x’d fingers that escrow closes smoothly). So I made some chocolate chip-macadamia nut brownies to celebrate the end of what seemed to be a never-ending connection to the building, with all the ups and downs. We bought our place from the eeeeeeevil condo developers in summer 1991, never thinking they’d still own units in 2004. (They probably never expected it either.)

Back in Dale today and the skies are a semi-sunny gray. Checked out the cam and luckily it’s just as gray in the city or I’d be even more gloomy about the columns that pend and the chores that nag.