San Francisco and what to do in it

berkeley, university ave and shattuck.

straight off the downtown berkeley bart.

modlang (www.modlang.com) - for latest uk imports. lot's of garage and psych stuff. very pop-oriented.

the comic store next to modlang rocks. i can't remember the name.

crepes a go-go... my favorite crepe place in the bay. i like it because it's not as frou frou as all those dumbass gourmet places. the (dark) chocolate, banana, coconut crepe is just perfect in semi-sweetness, texture, and fillingness.

there's a lot more in this area foodwise, etc. great china. sushiboat (or sushico). thai e sun.

if you head north on shattuck you find the gourmet ghetto where nouveau cuisine came from. the cheese board is the shit there for breads and cheeses. there's a deli next to a pegasus books that also rocks. barney's burgers is good. cha'am on shattuck is really really good thai.

berkeley... telegraph and durant

a 10 minute stroll up from downtown berkeley BART...

amoeba - the berkeley location doesn't have as good a used selection but the new stuff is just as together and it's a block down from rasputin's, which is another large store that isn't amoeba haight, but still decent. rasputins has a BUTTLOAD of seven inches. that's right. a buttload. both of these stores are also in the telegraph area of berkeley which has both moe's and cody's books, and more ... plus lot's of great food.

cafe intermezzo has awesome pbhb sandwiches...peanut butter honey and banana on big, thick wheat bread. the salads there are easily two meals and really good.

blue nile... great egyptian food.

top dog on durant is a favorite for hot dogs and stuff.

king pin donut on durant will make you fat with glee. the buttermilk donuts are pretty awesome. it's also on the end of the asian hallway... where you can pretty much get fast food asian of many different varieties. some better than others... but generally edible.

this area's also pretty well hooked up with vintage clothing stores and stuff and lot's of street vendors with all the dirty hippie hook ups you could possibly want.

Rockridge at college ave... off Rockridge Bart station.

great food... zacharay's deep dish chicago pizza is the shit.

pearl of siam is decent thai.

cactus taqueria is one of my favorite burrito joints... it's right off the bart there. it's probably not authentic enough... but it's all natural and way good.

barney's is there if you want burgers and shakes and curly fries that rock.

there's a dreyers ice cream store here. yum!

also on this stop is pendragon books... a small place that's pretty well packed... and another book store that's south on college on the right that i can't remember the name. both are very tasteful and have a great collection of the latest bits.

saturn records kicks ass. it's a small crowded place. there's a small section of spockmorgue weirdo stuff you can't find most places. it's also one of the best place in the bay area to find collector's vinyl. if you wanna tempt yourself with $30 trips to rarity heaven, saturn will probably do you right. i also like it cause they've got very condensed sections of certain types of music. pan through their punk section and you'll find the best of the best. you won't find the latest or the rare name... but there's a quality you usually don't find at most stores in the area.

i could describe a few other hoods... but but but...
m.

Also, I always eat at a Barney's whenever I'm in the Bay Area. The curly-fries are great for hangovers!

the one great thing about the area is the quantity of different types of restaurants. brazilian pizza? tibetan? afghan? and more... it's all there.

Sushi A'float Restaurant is the one i was trying to remember... they send you your sushi on a little boat....

another thing... with BART, it's easy to stay in berkeley... hit some breakfast ... goof around... get some lunch... then get on bart and go into san fran goof around and then BART back to where you're staying and vice versa... you can really mix and match the locales if you want that way.
m.

i'm not sure if you're going to be in the east bay during the weekend, but you have to go to Berkely on Sunday morning. across the street from the Ashby BART station (where they have a killer flea market with a real drum circle, not that hippy shit you find in Golden Gate park, and you can buy some crazy swords) is a Thai Temple. every Sunday until about 1.30 or 2, they have Thai brunch. it's the best thing in the entire world. everything is super duper cheap, and the servings are huge. 4$ gets you a heaping serving of your favorite Thai food. The mangos and sticky rice are to die for!!!

le cheval (french vietnamese) - downtown oakland (10th/clay)
-one of my favorite restaurants in the bay area and suprisingly affordable
lotus thai (on piedmont ave. near rockridge and college)
-service/decor used to be better, but the food is still good.

there is a really good comic store on piedmont too but there is an even better one on divisadero between page and oak in SF called comix experience, it's got all the small run indie and fantagraphics-like stuff. they have a complete set of meatcake!

bay tours: forget the fisherman's wharf, go downtown to the ferry building (where market ends downtown) on a clear day and take the tiburon/angel island ferry. pack a lunch and hike on angel island, a 740 acre island in the middle of the bay. $8 including park admission and is a nice way to spend a half day when the weather's nice away from the city. the views from the ferry of downtown SF, north SF, alcatraz, golden gate bridge are really worth it for the perspective from the water.

fisherman's wharf: crap, crap and more crap. tourist traps, revisionist/false history (ghiradelli chocolate is something of a manufactured myth), but there is an In N Out hamburger on jefferson (btw leavenworth and jones) if you're hungry from hiking up telegraph hill to coit tower. uh... trying to think of more to write about...

golden gate park: i recommend the japanese tea garden, it's a nice little walking park in the middle of the park. if you want to walk from the haight to inner sunset or inner richmond, this is a good destination on the way. strawberry hill is kind of fun to hike up, you get some nice views up there.

museums:
the asian art and deyoung museums are located in golden gate park but the deyoung is closed for renovation.
SFMOMA is pretty nice, they have a decent chagall retrospective through the summer.
next door, is the yerba buena center for the arts [keep checking back]

The only good thing about Fisherman's Wharf is that the Musee Mecanique moved there temporarily while they rebuild the Cliff House. Haven't been to the new home but this collection is my favorite thing to show out of towners; absolutely amazingly huge collection of coin-operated diaoramas from the early 20th century.

Sutro Baths is my favorite place in the entire world.

Beauty Bar: bring some coke and make a hundred new friends. Yuck.

there was one really good club here but it moved to the sublounge (dogpatch - 3rd/20th).

Make OUt Room is the best bar in the Mission but go to get fucked up, not for excellently mixed drinks (ditto Latin American Club up the street).

they occasionally have good live music here (i saw the m0unt@in g0@ts here 3-4 years ago? jonathan richman played a 4 hour set here as well).

The only good thing about Fisherman's Wharf is that the Musee Mecanique moved there temporarily while they rebuild the Cliff House. Haven't been to the new home but this collection is my favorite thing to show out of towners; absolutely amazingly huge collection of coin-operated diaoramas from the early 20th century.

YES! excellent recomendation, i forgot that it moved... what ever happend to the camera obscura?

oh yes the best ice cream in the world is now located in berkeley: mondo gelato on shattuck right by bart.

ciao bella is my favorite, they have a shop at 3rd/harrison and a new cafe in the new ferry building.

okay, i'll try to think of more when i get back on sunday.

(That said, there are more and more places that "feature" Mitchell's ice cream nowadays, so maybe just keep an eye peeled for it since there's little else to do near San Jose @ 29th!)

Also, I stand by my recommendations. The critiques upthread are TYPICAL Bay Area snob bullshit.

SF/East Bay has a large amount of charismatic, conveniently located "ok" food joints, with the occasional fucking excellent place, in a sparse mire of shitty places.

LA has a slightly smaller amount of not-as-conveniently located restaurants, but they are all "fucking excellent", though surrounded by a lot of shitty restaurants.

Your right, you don't, so keep your insulting nonsense judgments about me to yourself.

The places I mentioned are good fun, and I doubt most people visiting them would have your same elitist reaction ("HORRIBLE hill-dwelling BMW-driving loudmouths", "Clientele are hysterical young people trying to be posh", "Beauty Bar: bring some coke and make a hundred new friends. Yuck"). Your smug, sickening and judgmental attitude reminds me why I left. Yuck, indeed.

so yeah, these aren't necessarily my picks for best of SF but good advice caters to those who are asking for it.

i'm sure someone much smugger than i am (impossible!) will chime in about how great the french laundry is even though they haven't been there in 3 years or something but that's really not going to help clarke and stolenbus (charlieva?) on their adventure.

Gygax spelled out in more detail the reasons why I made the points I did. I really do think that both ceasar and foreign cinema are overpriced; well, foreign cinema is criminally overpriced and I think the food there is not as good as the concept of the restaurant (which is a good idea). Ceasar isn't so much overpriced (although the drinks there are expensive, but they are, from what I understand, well mixed {note: I don't drink anymore}), but it is terribly loud in there and you're more apt to hear the conversation at the next table than the person across from you. Sorry!

The Beauty Bar is a coke den, or was the last time I went. It was fun when it opened but then they started charging a cover at the door. It seemed to be a place for the wanna-be-NYC-hipster electroclash detritus to wash up. It might be fun to visit once though but not if you've been to the New York branch already.

vegetarian:
there are some famous/pricy veg/vegan restaurants (most notably millenium and greens), but here are some other more reasonable ones:
golden ear (o'farrell btw. jones/leavenworth)
herbivore - a small chain: divisadero/fell & valencia/21
legume - 24th/noe

another suprise to look out for:
the tamale lady, a woman (just turned 50 last week) who travels from bar to bar in the mission (sometimes lower haight) has a rolling cart full of fresh tamales (and hot sauce) which is always a treat.

IMPORTANT REMINDER:
don't think because you're going to california in the middle of august that you will be greeted with blue skies and a warm sunrays washing over you. san francisco is notoriously gray and foggy and cold and windy in the summer months. (i spent the fourth about 100 miles inland and it was in the 90s. when i drove back into SF it was 57 mid-day). bring layers. the east bay (berkeley/oakland) is about 10-20 degrees warmer on average. even the east side of SF can be 10 degrees warmer than the west side. again: BRING LAYERS.

As for Cesar, the drinks are expensive, but the food is not especially and it's not always loud in there - maybe on Friday or Saturday nights, but I've had very quiet conversations there and the bartender/owner is very nice. As for Foreign Cinema, I actually haven't eaten there in years, but I had a great steak there once and the novelty of it has not worn off for me.

When I'm staying in SF for a weekend I mostly eat at El Farolito, Puerto Allegre, Atlas, Ti Couz and sometimes Ramblas or Andalu. These are all fine and fun places although I'm sure somebody will condemn who eats there and the "detritus" that hangs around there trying to be cool, when clearly the coolest person is the one criticizing everyone and everything because they aren't "real" San Franciscans, etc vomit.

Atlas Cafe is excellent, that place does so much business on the strength of how good the food is (sandwiches, nothing fancy), amazing since it's really out of the way (not a very foot-travelled street). Ti Couz is a great standby and the crepes are at least as good as you'll find in France. Actually the Mission is filled with great restaurants.

Stolenbus, even though there may sound like a lot to do in Berkeley, I think that most of it can be done easily in one day. It's a tiny town and everything is close to everything else.

Show up at Zeitgeist around 8:00 on any given night, and she will come to your table, feed you an excellent meal for next to nothing, dispense free advice, hug you and call you honey. Best substitute mom EVAH.

don't forget Merritt's in oakland for good homestyle cooking... chicken and waffles is THE SHIT!
m.

Hahaha! That's my (current, until September) hood, Jason. Frankly, that drum circle, or any drum circle I have thus far seen in my brief time in Berkeley, grate like stainless steel on gorgonzola. That said, there are some great swords, and some decent looking used stereo equipment, too (note to future self). The thai temple is key, though I'm not sure why they still serve tofu in the non-veggie section. Make the right choices, and the food is definitely worth it.

Also - the aforementioned comic shop by Mod Lang (British Indie Music? At Extortionate Prices? You should have seen the look on my face) is called Comic Relief.

I also discovered that you can buy a ticket at the UA theatre on Shattuck and just jump from screen to screen all day. That is, if you think The Hulk, Terminator 3, and Charlie's Angels:Full Throttle are even collectively worth $6. Much better, the Pacific Film Archive has an Aki Kaurismaki season at the moment-worth a look if Clarke or Stolenbus are into that kind of thing.

Anthony/Kyle - check your mail (in about ten minutes).

i have no idea if you guys like america's favorite pasttime:

I wish I could say something original about Pac Bell Park, but I'm afraid I'm going to say what everybody else says: It's great. There aren't many beautiful ballparks in the major leagues, but I think Pac Bell just might qualify, especially when the Giants, in their classic cream-colored uniforms, are arrayed about the greensward.

My favorite place in the majors is a good seat at Fenway Park, but now I think my second-favorite place in baseball might be standing on the walkway beyond the right-field wall at Pac Bell, wondering if Barry Bonds is going to hit one over my head and into the water. It's something that every fan should experience at least once ... and the nice thing is, the cheapest ticket can get you there.
-- Rob Neyer

KEXP SF is live on your terrestrial receiver @92.7FM

thats so fuckin awesome

Thanks! Tuned in today

Whoo boy we're going to be drowning in fliers and mailouts by Election Day

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/04/san-francisco-mayor-race-aaron-peskin-00150538

On a wholly separate note -- lukas and I are both seeing Steve Roach at Grace Cathedral on Saturday and I've got a couple of guest list spots open. If anyone wants in, let me know!

https://gracecathedral.org/calendar-events/reflections-steve-roach-structures-from-silence/

(To the ilxor who asked -- you need to get me your own email in your message, I don't know it otherwise!)