How to Do Brunch Successfully in San Francisco

Saturday I went to brunch with some friends. Brunch is incredibly important in San Francisco because it's acceptable to drink during daytime when you're at brunch. Luna Park has bottomless mimosas for $9. That means for someone like me, brunch is essentially free.

Brunch goes from 1:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. After the eating part, you go to Valley Tavern and sit on the deck out back and have a couple of pitchers of beer. Maybe 6 pitchers. I'm not sure. My bar tab was $68 before tip.

Then you go to Rosamunde on Mission because it's 7:00 and you haven't eaten in over 5 hours now. So you get a sausage and, oh yeah, more beer.

Then you go to Clooney's because it's the only place you can think of that won't be crowded. Other people are joining your group, people who haven't been with you since 1:00 p.m. and are therefore more qualified maybe to tell you the next day that you looked like "a mess" when the New People saw you at 9:00 p.m. Even though New People could have lied.

You know what's good then? Shots. Shots and playing Styx's "Mr. Roboto" on the Internet Jukebox. You know what else is good then? Leaving.

[SIDE NOTE: I'm not 100% sure why I wrote this post mostly in the second person. Maybe I just wanted to get all Bright Lights, Big City on you.]

[SIDE NOTE 2: I had a pre-existing appointment the following day, yesterday, at Lucky 13 at 3:00 p.m. and while it was touch and go there for a while, I made it.]

Happy Mother's Day!

For MD, I sent my Mom a framed picture of The Wife and me that was taken at our wedding (which Moms did not attend, for various reasons primarily centered on the fact that it was at my Dad's place, and she HATES HATES HATES him). ANYWAY, this is the email I got today:

Thank you for the wedding photo. It's a happy picture. Very nice. I did take it out of the frame thinking I would cut a bit off the bottom so your head wouldn't be cut off but that didn't work. Do you have one w/ your whole head? It's a lovely picture and [The Wife] looks beautiful. I'll put it up in the den and take down the pictures you and your sister never liked and made fun of.

If anyone ever asks why I turned out this way, I will just show them this email.

Today's Power Rankings

“Friday Night Lights” returns	▲	Still hoping for Minka Kelly nude scene
Your San Francisco Giants	▲◊	Sweep Marlins, on to New York. Zito an early Cy Young candidate? WTFF times a million?
George Gascon’s hair	▬	Still has not expressed a view on possible EU bailout of Greece
Bagels	▼	Still delicious, but are we entering the Croissant Era?
Nashville	▬	Was really hoping the piranhas in the mall story would hold up
Muni	▼•	Still sucks; slightly less lethal so far in May
Hipster Puppies	▼	Inevitable fall-off once book deal secured
Banksy	▬	Protip: not every stencil is a Banksy, graffiti bloggers
“Lost” wrapping up	▬	Jesus, please, just fucking end. And if you stick another Hurley episode in there I will hunt you down and stick a tube down your throat and force feed you Twinkies like a foie gras duck
Saturday	▲•	What’s not to like?
Boycotting Arizona	▼	Where will we get meth and racists from then?
New LCD Soundsystem	♣	Don’t get burned out now; you’re going to be hearing it all summer

This is a very sad but also amazing story

If someone hasn't bought the movie rights to this story yet, something has gone wrong:

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A local high school student has been found murdered in Mexico, after her mother told police she went down there to learn how to transport illegal immigrants across the border.

. . .

Mandala, we have learned, was reported missing to Houston police on May 1. Her mother told authorities she had rented a car a few days earlier to go to Mexico to meet up with someone.

According to missing persons, her mother told police that she wanted to be a coyote -- a human smuggler. Her mother also told police Elisabeth was an exotic dancer.

Of course, it's incredibly tragic, but come on. A blonde high school student who's also a stripper and who wants to get into the coyote business? This blows the Kelly-gets-hooked-on-coke plot on 90210 out of the water. I see Hilary Duff in the lead role.

Porn at work: No.

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Two views of the Endup

First, from Roger Ebert's (if you follow him, you know) incredibly prolific Twitter stream:


Now, maybe the Endup is not in the best neighborhood, but (a) it's not in the Mission District, and (b) the Mission District, while it has some rough patches, is not "Skid Row." Parts of the Tenderloin would qualify as "Skid Row," I guess, and maybe parts of 6th Street, on which the Endup is located, but I think Ebert misread the situation.

Everyone's favorite LA-based casual drug user/snarky advice columnist Coketalk was also in town this weekend. What did she have to say?


A more charitable view, wouldn't you agree?

I'm going to be vegetarian this week for no particular reason

So I'm running a little experiment and going vegetarian for one week.

"Why are you doing this?" said The Sister. We were out at Dolores Park yesterday in the OPPRESSIVE, ALMOST UNBEARABLE 68 degree heat. She's a nutritionist and has advised me that I need like mad protein just to get by. "Is this some kind of weight loss thing?"

(Incidentally, when you get a group of about 10 people and 6 dogs together in Dolores Park, the main activity is yelling names of dogs and trying to keep them from going to some other group and sweating them for their sandwiches. Eventually Shaia, Leland, Django, Billie, Todd, and Lucy settled down a little, but it took a while.)

(Also incidentally, for some reason Shaia's leash ended up tied to Lucy's leash, Shaia's a labradoodle and is about 65 pounds. Lucy is some kind of pug mix and is about 10 pounds. I didn't realize they were tied together and tossed Shaia's ball and YOINK poor Lucy got dragged along as Shaia went for the ball. SORRY, LUCY.)

"Nah," I said. "I don't know why. Just for fun, I guess. Just to see if I can do it."

She made a frowny face and told me it wasn't a good idea for my metabolism. Hey, it's just a week, I can't die, right?

As it happens, we went to Greens on Friday night with Stephen and Jessica, who are both vegetarians. We all agreed that it wasn't very good. Sadly, I think the cheese plate was the best thing we got. The wine was good, though.

SO, so far so good, but it's only been a couple of days. I don't think it's going to be hard at all, though.