New Bar Night: St. Mary's Pub

At first I was all, "Maybe I'll keep this one a secret so it doesn't get overrun" but then I was all "(A)," (yeah I actually said "A" in my head) "that's a douche move and (B) overrun by who? My tens of readers? I think I'll still be able to get a seat."

The usual Intrepid Crew assembled - on time, no fucking way! - last night at the 3300 Club on Mission. I've been there before so it doesn't count. It was the first time for other Intrepid Crewmembers and they were pretty much "whatever" but I like it because I'm almost always the youngest person in there and that's tough at my advanced age. Coupla drinks there and then we moved on to the selected destination.

[SIDE NOTE: Just in case you're wondering (and, wow, if you are, you are way more interested in this than anyone else), the NBN policy is to meet somewhere else familiar and then all hit the New Bar together as a unit, in case the New Bar is dangerous or too lame to be at alone. Check back with me if you want to know the other rules of NBN and I'll send you the brochure and DVD.]

Destination: St. Mary's Pub, 3845 Mission, at College Ave. There's a College Ave. in San Francisco? Who knew!? I guess this is in Bernal Heights, but it feels like a different city. We were like, "Hello, fine bartendress! We come from a strange and distant land called San Francisco! We do not know of your primitive ways! Please serve us a flagon of ale!"

Short version: We liked SMP a lot.

Longer version: Pretty standard no-pretense, no-scene bar. Giants and 49ers stuff on the walls. Internet jukebox. Extremely friendly and cute bartender named Meghan with an "h." Small crowd (like 4-5 people) of what appeared to be regulars. Like, regulars since the 70's. Separate back room with a pool table.

It's hard to say what's so appealing about this place. Certainly Meghan helped (thx for the shots, incidentally, M), but it's more that undefinable "Hmmm, I could hang out here" feeling. I mean, there's nothing really special or extraordinary about this place. It's just a nice, mellow bar. Sometimes you just want a bar and not a Scene. (You know where I'm talking about. It starts with P and ends with "op's".) Like Olu said, it'd be a good place to hang out and watch a Giants game. Three stars. We'll be back.

Worst spam ever

Fuck you. You're not even trying. At least you need to come up with a whole little letter about how I've won the Irish lottery and my email address was selected at random and so on and so forth. With some good ALL-CAPS names and Barrister Whatever garbage.

Since your email is from a Chilean domain (.cl), you may not know this, but they use the Euro in Ireland, not the pound.

Fucking idiots. It's like I've got to do everything for you people.

I really don't have a good title for this post. It's kind of all over the place.

- You know what the best part about the health care thing passing is? NOT HAVING TO TALK ABOUT IT ANY MORE. I am so fucking sick of hearing about it every day. My fave k-razy right wing radio guys are going to have to find some new topics and I couldn't be happier because now we can talk about Returning to the Gold Standard or Invading Belize or whatever kind of loony shit they can think up instead of health care. THANK FUCKING GOD.

- Tiger likes to text. Here's my fave:

Tiger:Sent: 07:12 PM 09/07/2009: No turkey unless it's a club sandwich

Me too! TIGER AND I ARE BROS. I pretty much only like turkey in club sandwiches myself. Now, I can do a turkey and ham - that's kind of a modified club, since the real club involves bacon - but I mostly avoid turkey in other sandwich settings.

You know what happens when you bring him a turkey sandwich?

Tiger:Sent: 5:00 PM 08/29/2009: I really do want to be rough with you. Slap you around

O M G!! That's totally how I get when someone tries to force some turkey bullshit on me!

- Oh, have I got a deal for you: $35 for a one-hour Singing-Bowl Therapy Session:

You'll be placed with a small group of no more than 20 people (average of around 10 to 12) as you all let yourself relax to the tones of tranquility. Singing-Bowl Therapy delivers the unspoiled melodies of seven pure-crystal singing bowls that resonate at various pitches to fill the mind and flow through the body's inner networks. Each bowl is designed to stimulate one of the seven chakras. Beautiful frequencies restore order to the chakras and the result is a deeply focused center and a clearer state of mind.

I hoope the bowls are full of vodka or this customer's chakras are going to be pissed. Are you some kind of idiot who still relies on wine glass choirs? Dude, get with the fucking program:

Wine-glass choirs require constant attention and finger wetting, while a 60-minute singing-bowl session lets a patient rest at ease as the harmonic realm enters his or her consciousness.

Oh, something's entering my consciousness, alright.

And I don't even smoke pot

Something about this cartoon really irritates me:



I won't get into the portrayal of people who buy sweatshop-free clothes and fair trade coffee as smug and superior. On the one hand, good for those people for thinking about where their stuff comes from and caring enough to spend a little more to avoid clothes made by an 8-year-old for a dollar an hour or coffee grown on a plantation and blanketed with pesticide. On the other hand, the people that buy that stuff usually are smug and superior. Still, it's a lame construct because it's so easy. It's shooting coastal elites in a barrel.

So that's annoying. But I really dislike the implication that people who smoke pot are somehow responsible for murderous Mexican drug gangs. For one thing, although Mexico remains a huge producer of marijuana, I bet the liberal coastal elite types portrayed here either pay more for quality hydroponic shit or have a medical marijuana card like everyone else.

And, as I think is pretty clear, it's not marijuana that makes murders; it's the illegality of marijuana. Make it legal and my guess is that marijuana-related drug gang violence drops precipitously. After all, you can probably count on one hand the number of illegal cigarette-related murders every year.

It is no doubt true that if Americans suddenly stopped buying marijuana, some amount of violence in Mexico would be reduced (although I'm not sure how much, because I'm willing to bet that a huge amount of the violence stems from trade in cocaine and methamphetamine, rather than pot). But it's also true that decriminalization would do the same thing.

Kind of a drag for a Friday! Sorry! I'll be funny again next week!

Word of the Day: Quixotic

Let me get this out of the way first: No St. Patrick's Day bullshit here. I'm married to a girl from Ireland. Every day is motherfucking St. Patrick's Day in my house. No, let's talk politics! Oh yay.

Two days ago I was walking home when two guys coming the other way stopped me and jammed a flyer into my hand. It was for a guy running for Nancy Pelosi's seat in the House. I said, "Well, good luck with that," because Nancy Pelosi has about the same chances of losing an election in her district as Castro does in Cuba. They sailed past me. "Yeah, we need to get rid of that witch," one of them called over his shoulder.

When I got home, I looked the guy up. It's this guy, Summer Shields. He looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. Then I remembered where I'd seen him - in front of a big poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache, at Civic Center Plaza one day. That's the way to win votes in San Francisco! Oh wait, here's a picture:



This is what someone who's not electable in San Francisco looks like.

As it turns out, Summer Shields is a follower of Lyndon LaRouche. A taste of what that's all about:

For those unfamiliar with the range of his thinking, Mr. LaRouche also claims that the Queen of England “personally runs the military and intelligence services” of the United Kingdom, and recently suggested that “top circles in London, who are furious at President Barack Obama for flubbing the British demands to impose fascism on the United States,” may soon “attempt to assassinate the President.”

And so forth. Let me be out in the open here and say that I'm not a huge Pelosi fan and I don't think she's a particularly effective Speaker of the House. Even my Dad and I agreed that if we still had Tip O'Neill in charge, the health care bill would have been passed and signed about a month after we started talking about it. But that's beside the point. The point, which should be blindingly obvious, is this: You cannot march around SF with pictures equating Obama and Hitler and expect to be elected anything, much less unseat the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Maybe in Texas, but not here.

In other political news, Unfortunately-coiffed Meg Whitman is in a virtual dead heat with Jerry Brown in the governor's race. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that her TV ads are on every 30 fucking seconds and Jerry is doing his best to keep his candidacy a secret from everyone except his closest advisors. I don't know. Want to know why Meg can't win? Read this.

Today's Top 5

1. Bernal Heights Park

When you get a dog, your park focus changes from "Can I drink there without getting hassled?" to "Can I let my dog off-leash there?" Bernal Heights park (or maybe it's just called "Bernal Hill," I don't know) is kind of an ideal off-leash park. There's a long paved road (with no cars) that winds around the hill, and because it's steep on both sides, dogs tend to just stay on the road and not wander off. Bonus for the incredible views. The picture in the title box of this blog was taken from there. I go like twice a weekend now. BHP rules.

2. Hipster Puppies

I don't know who writes this, but it's spot-on, a perfect mix of skewering hipster pretention and zOMG KYOOT PUPPIES!!11!11! Like so:



clara is always first to change the subject to politics, but gets 90% of her information from gawker and the daily show

[photo via jennifer c]

In a disturbing development, there haven't been any new posts since Friday 3/5. DON'T YOU DIE ON ME, HIPSTER PUPPIES!

3. Califone, "All My Friends Are Funeral Singers"

Great album. Here's a taste:



4. Jessica and Stephen finally moved to SF.

From Berkeley. It usually goes the other way! Now they can pay too much for a small apartment and get parking tickets and wait in line for the Bi-Rite Creamery and have a homeless man spit on them and stumble home from the Latin American Club and make fun of the people in Dolores Park and start a photoblog and go to an underground dinner party and get hit on by a drunk girl at the Dyke March like the rest of us.

5. Cheese.

In honor of SXSW. And then a lengthy digression.

In honor of SXSW, I present to you my very first blog post, 2 years ago, entitled "I'm so sick of SXSW." Enjoy.

Hey, that's an easy way to get out of creating new content! No matter. Sentiment remains the same.

(And please, for the love of God, I beg you, please do not send me notes congratulating me on my "blogaversary" or the like. I remain fundamentally opposed to any cobbled-together words beginning with "blog." Generic called them portmanteau and that word didn't turn out to mean what I thought it meant but after I looked it up our conversation made a lot more sense since it means a cobbled-together word and not a French butler.)

(Speaking of not knowing what words mean, The Sister is kind of famous for this. She thought "teetotaler" meant a troublemaker, so to her, the sentence "Looks like the teetotalers are comng!" was fraught with danger.)

(She also used to use the word "touche" just as a general sort of conversational punctuation, until she found out its proper use. Like someone would say "That's it, I'm out of here" and she would say "Touche.")

(I love The Sister to death and I don't mean to make fun of her. Her little quirks are more endearing than embarrassing.)

So, yeah. I don't want to hear about SXSW. Have a nice weekend. Unless you're at SXSW. Then I hope you miss the Datarock show and have to walk back to your hotel in the rain.

(Also, I'm not changing the Random Flickr Image of the Day today because (1) nobody ever notices it or cares about it anyway, I surmise, and (2) I like the current image a lot.)