For Auntie K. 
November 14, 2008
October 21, 2008
October 5, 2008
And feather canyons everywhere*
Tom Perkins is out in Maltese Falcon, cruising around.
That’s a BIG yacht.
* “Both Sides Now” – Joni Mitchell
[Sour Grapes posted a beautiful cloud picture over at his place.]
And ice cream castles in the air*
Lovely clouds. With luck we’ll have more rain. With luck the weather cleared up and stayed sunny in bucolic Kern County, CA, for first-cousin-once-removed Davy’s wedding this afternoon.
[view of the N bay from Pacific Heights]
* “Both Sides Now” – Joni Mitchell
October 4, 2008
Our visitor yesterday
Left this morning.
This is the time of year when the cruise ships move south for the winter, from Alaska routes to Mexican routes. Our ville is a stop off point and has been having heavy cruise ship activity (sometimes three berths in use) for the last month or so.
August 18, 2008
Opening Summer 2008 | press club
Opening Summer 2008 | press club
Waiting. (Waiting. Waiting.) for Press Club to clear up whatever ABC issues they’re having and open … and not just because Sophie will be pouring Mount Eden Vineyards’ wines.
The wineries involved in this new and different wine bar opening (SOON!) on Yerba Buena Lane are Hanna Vineyards, Mount Eden Vineyards, Fritz Winery, Chateau Montelena Winery, Miner Family Vineyards, Pahlmeyer, Saintsbury, Landmark Vineyards.
Should be fun. Support your local winemakers.
August 2, 2008
Garbage (and recycling and more!) redux
The trash police: Gavin Newsom is proposing the nation’s first-ever mandatory recycling and composting law. Be prepared to pay hefty fines if you toss coffee grounds in with the newspapers.
Read the article.
Read the comments.
People can be such whiners. Gestapo! It’s so hard to recycle. &c. and so on.
Yes, proposing outrageous fines if people don’t sort their garbage (and maybe cutting off their garbage service … that’ll teach them!) is nonsense, but the City pays a fortune to truck garbage to the dump over by Altamont and with gas prices rising not only is the dump filling (and where will we put trash then?) but costs are rising too.
Our field trip to the dump — AKA “Norcal Waste System, Inc’s Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center” — last October was enlightening.
Read the trip report with piccies to see why getting people to separate out their recyclable stuff AND ESPECIALLY THEIR GREEN CYCLE is a must if we’re going to control the garbage stream (and the fuel costs and the personnel costs and …)
That said, my comment on the Chron article:
Dear Mayor Newsom.
Come visit. I’ll invite some neighbors over. We’ll explain how difficult it is to recycle at all when you live off the Filbert Steps.
(1) NorCal won’t pick up blue bins here. Paying extra isn’t even an option. We FINALLY got a locked bin — locked so tourists won’t throw trash in — that the immediate neighbors share up at Montgomery and Filbert, but neighbors who live at Filbert and Montgomery bitch and complain about us parking our recycling bin anywhere near their buildings. Add a green bin? As if.
(2) I have a dish on the counter for green-bin scraps. From there, the scraps go to a covered compostable-bag-lined re-purposed menudo pot over by the ‘frig. Every 4 days or so — MAX … any more than that and the bag will disintegrate and maggots and crud grow — we tie up the bag, put it in ANOTHER bag, walk it three-plus blocks to our car and DRIVE to drop it off in a large green bin we have access to.
We try, Mr. Mayor. ’tain’t easy. Make it easier for us.
His nibs said, why didn’t you write about people putting non-greencycle stuff in bins left out for pickup and the greencycle people refusing to pick up the bins? Why didn’t you write about neighbors getting upset about people picking through blue bins for cash-refund recyclables and the bratty neighbors kicking the full bin and contents down the stairs, spreading recyclables down the steps to the next landing? Why didn’t you write about …
I told him that the SFChron allows you 1000char for comments and I was down to my last ten or so. …
July 27, 2008
Neighborhood dinner
And so it came to pass that we had our second annual neighborhood progressive dinner last night.
As usual, I skipped town — after offering my minimal help in designing the flyer and settling on dates (dinner scheduled for a week and a day after we got back) — and left the delivery of invites, acceptance of RSVPs, and scheduling to my charming co-conspirator, co-host and next-door neighbor.
We got back from Africa and I sent a note: Is dinner still on? Did we get enough RSVPs? Indeed it was. Indeed we did.
Some last minute re-shuffling of venues and a dinner we had. First stop, Napier Lane for kickoff and appetizers. Next stop our lane (and the charming next-door neighbors’) for appetizers. Then upstairs next-door for salads. Then here for tapas (goat-cheese-stuffed Anaheim peppers, chicken piccata empanadas, beef and pepita sauce empanadas from me and vegetable frittata from a Napier neighbor). Then back next door and yet another floor up for dessert and coffee.
Neighbors included a couple who is putting their San Francisco life on hold and heading to Malaysia for a few years, a neighbor I’d never met but whose apartment I’d wandered through on one of our open house Sundays a couple months back, a neighbor who has left her job to go back to school for a post-graduate degree, the neighbors who have the colossal re-model just uphill from us, others, and the chocolate guy.
The chocolate guy lives on Napier Filbert but, because his life is still in boxes, decided he couldn’t host and in lieu brought the desserts for the final gathering on the top floor next door. He had chocolate bars
and two types of chocolate gelato (chocolate/cardamom ym!) and I went home the happy owner of a bag of chocolate nibs from his latest tonnage. My assignment: think up new ways of using chocolate nibs.
“add to salads” is already a known use.
I finally put the bag away this morning. I’d been nibbling out of hand during and after breakfast, over reading the Sunday papers. Nibbling out of hand is good enough for me.
Say, Timothy. Why not just sell nibs as a straight-to-the-vein snack for chocolate lovers who don’t want to wade through all the other ingredients needed to make a chocolate bar?
Tcho — the chocolate guy’s chocolate — is that good. Tcho is a San Francisco company, working out of Pier 17.
Buy online! but only if you think milk chocolate is not worth the paper it’s wrapped in and dark chocolate with chocolate content > 70% is the way to go.
July 23, 2008
Festival of Sail kicks off with parade of ships at noon today
We live where we can see the water because his nibs wanted to see boats, boats, boats!
And we do.
The Festival of Sail kicks off at noon today with a parade of ships sailing in through the Golden Gate.
I’ll be downtown for lunch with his nibs and will miss the ship parade, but I’ve been enjoying some of the runup this morning.
Shown:
[1] The fire boats serving San Francisco Fire Department from the Bay spray a welcome for an incoming military ship.
[2] Some masts over by the Ferry Building. And a ferry, and a docked dinner cruise ship. The Delta Queen, the largest of the dinner cruise ships on this side of the Bay, has been docked elsewhere to free up some room for the wooden ships to dock. The ships will open for tours starting tomorrow. We’ve been enjoying views of a two masted ship, docked at Pier 19 since we got back.
[3] Another smaller boat.
May 28, 2008
Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main*
Spotted last evening before sunset.
Note UCBerkeley campanille in the east bay hills behind Treasure Island at about 10 o’clock.
*Geoffrey Marks, 1880.