San Francisco can truly become great with the creation of a GWZ

Some tech bro just wrote another one of those why-is-San Francisco-so-terrible posts that blew up and made everyone hate him!  Here's part of it:

Just got back to SF. I've traveled around the world and I gotta say there is nothing more grotesque than walking down market st in San Francisco. Why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash I have no clue. Each time I pass it my love affair with SF dies a little.

The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it's a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that's okay.

In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city. Like it's their place of leisure... In actuality it's the business district for one of the wealthiest cities in the USA. It a disgrace. I don't even feel safe walking down the sidewalk without planning out my walking path. 

You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the working class. 

(Thanks to Valleywag for the selective bolding.)

Tech Bro is right! We need an area of town for degenerates!  That's why I'm proposing the creation of a Godforsaken Wretch Zone (GWZ) here in San Francisco.  We can then move the Crazy, the Homeless, the Dropouts, the Trash, and Internet Explorer users there and have them out of our hair as we march forward into the New Utopia.

I propose a number of areas in the GWZ where the Enlightened can visit and do their part to help out the Human Trash.

In Trinket Town by Etsy, the gnarled underclass can sell their pathetic little goods.  You'll stroll happily through a faux streetscape and purchase their little geegaws with Trinket Town Tokens, which are not redeemable for alcohol.  "Oh look!," you'll cry.  "The little orphan girl is selling her handmade bracelets!  Let's get one for Skyler!"

Over at the Snapchat Shooting Gallery, you can fire actual coins and bits of chocolate at homeless dropouts who are "workin' the range"!  They get to keep what hits them!  You'll have fun and help out society's trash at the same time.  Watch out for Jimbo!  He may look weak, but he can move!

And don't miss the Genentech Garden of Diseases!  "Daddy, why is that man coughing blood?"  "Hold on, sweetie, let's read the placard.  Oh, he's got pneumonia and bronchitis!  Don't get too close."  "Gross!!"

What could be better than giving to the less fortunate out of the goodness of your heart, expecting nothing in return?  Why, giving with the expectation of a cheerful song by a happy street urchin!  Over in Pandora Panhandlers' Row, your (non tax-deductible) donation prompts one of our prescreened musical hobos to attempt the song of your choice!  "Play Teenage Dream again on your battered guitar, Mister!," you'll shout with glee.

We're currently looking for space for the GWZ.  Hmmmmm, with Candlestick coming down......

"Book of Mormon," eh.

Sorry I've been slacking off here; I've been busy.

We went to see "Book of Mormon" at the Orpheum.  The problem with going to see BOM is that it is so wildly overhyped at this point that it was bound to be disappointing.  I mean, when Penn Jillette says it's better than The Clash, the Sex Pistols, and George Carlin, if you don't LITERALLY orgasm during the performance, it's a letdown.  (Penn Jillette orgasm video via Generic, thx.)

I didn't literally orgasm.

Here's why I think it's so popular:  it marries conventional musical structure to a mildly subversive plot (Mormon missionaries go to Uganda and encounter benighted brown people; Mormon religion exposed as ridiculous) and transgressive language ("Fuck you, God, in the ass, mouth and cunt").  It gives people permission to laugh at things they normally couldn't laugh at, like someone else's religion, AIDS, Africans, and female genital mutilation.  People like to be shocked, and it's (sort of) shocking.  And it's occasionally funny; not as funny as most episodes of "South Park," but it has its moments.

For me, it was about a half-hour too long.  It really drags at the end of the first act and beginning of the second, and then wraps up far too quickly and neatly.  The songs all sound roughly the same - like someone was trying to write songs that sounded like they were From a Musical, which I guess is actually true.  And there is the whole race problem which I won't get into here but other people have taken a look at.  I guess go see it if you love musicals and think "I have maggots in my scrotum" is hilarious.

These vegetarian faux crab cakes were a big hit

2 things: (1) I like crab cakes, but don't particularly like the taste of crab.  I think I like the crispy fried aspect and also I like the taste of Old Bay seasoning; (2) Our friends Stephen and Jessica are vegetarian and come over for dinner not infrequently so I'm constantly looking for new vegetarian things to make so it's not just some pasta again.  Also, Jessica is a fantastic cook and so we're locked in an eternal struggle to see whose cuisine reigns supreme.  (NB: It's possible Jessica doesn't know about this last element.)

Anyway, everybody loved these.  Original recipe from Food & Wine magazine.  Can be vegan too - just sub vegan mayonnaise, whatever the fuck that is, for the mayo.

1. 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for frying
2. 2 1/2 cups fresh corn kernels (cut from 4 ears of corn)
3. 1/4 cup minced onion
4. 1/4 cup minced green bell pepper
5. One 15-ounce can whole hearts of palm—drained, thinly sliced lengthwise and cut crosswise into 3/4-inch lengths
6. 2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning
7. 2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
8. 1/4 cup mayonnaise
9. 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
10. 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons plain dry bread crumbs, plus more for coating
11. Salt
12. Freshly ground pepper

1. In a nonstick skillet, heat the 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the corn, onion and bell pepper and cook over high heat until crisp-tender, 4 minutes. Scrape 1 cup of the mixture into a food processor and pulse to a coarse puree.
2. In a bowl, squeeze the hearts of palm to break them into shards. Add the puree and the remaining sautéed vegetables to the bowl, along with the Old Bay, parsley, mayonnaise, mustard and the 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of bread crumbs. Season lightly with salt and pepper and stir until evenly moistened.
3. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and fill a pie plate with bread crumbs. Scoop scant 1/4-cup mounds of the hearts of palm mixture into the bread crumbs and roll to coat. Form the mounds into eighteen 2-inch cakes and transfer to the baking sheet.
4. Wipe out the nonstick skillet, then add a scant 1/8 inch of oil. Fry half of the cakes over moderate heat, turning once, until crispy, 2 minutes per side. Wipe out the skillet and add clean oil before frying the remaining cakes. Serve the cakes hot.

So that's the official recipe.  I made them  few hours ahead and put them in the fridge; I would recommend you do the same, or else they'll probably fall apart on you.  Mine fell apart a little bit anyway and then individual corn kernels EXPLODED in the oil and sent oil flying everywhere.  NOT COOL MAN.  So watch out for that.

Please consider these items from the Bold Italic gift store this Christmas

San Francisco Neighborhood Stereotype Greeting Cards

What does Chinatown say?  Congraturations!  Get this and many other simpleminded stereotypes of various San Francisco neighborhoods in this lovely set of greeting cards.  Your friends will roar with laughter when they get a card from the Haight Street hippie wishing them a "Groovy Birthday, Man!" Guess what?  It's foggy in the Sunset!  SO IRONIC. (NOTE: Set does not include Ingleside or any other neighborhood where recent transplants don't go.)  $27.00

Wooden Moustache

Choose this fun, funky accessory for the person on your list who keeps a sombrero in their closet for Cinco de Mayo and who would think a wooden moustache is hilarious.  Item has no practical use whatsoever.  No returns.  $49.95

New Mission Resident Handbook

Did you just move to the Mission from Back East?  SO DID WE!  With this handy guide to your new neighborhood, you'll be all equipped for your new life in San Francisco's most vibrant neighborhood.  What do you do when a brown person tries to talk to you?  Which burrito is most like Chipotle?  Is it OK to call the police if there are no more outlets at Ritual?  Get the answers to these questions and more! $35.00


Wooden Map of San Francisco

It's a map of San Francisco...but it's wooden! This somehow increases its charm.  (NOTE: Ships directly from Etsy.)  $165.00

Craziest SF Characters Trading Cards

Schizophrenia? More like Schizo-FUN-ia, right? This whimsical deck of trading cards celebrates the kooky weirdos who aren't getting proper mental health care and who make San Francisco such a fun place!  Here's the Man Who Thinks He's Talking to God Who Harrasses People Outside Civic Center Station! Oooo, trade you for Woman Who Carries Rags Around in Plastic Bags and Paints Her Face With a Sharpie!  $75.00

Actual Muni Bus

The ultimate accessory for the tech wizard who has everything! This is an actual, full-size Muni bus that you can use to go wherever you want!  Finally, you won't risk rubbing up against a poor when your personal Muni bus rolls through the Mission and the Lower Haight picking up your coworkers en route to SOMA.  How about taking it to 49ers games at the new stadium?  Now that the team plays 40 miles away, there's no chance of city residents actually taking Muni to games!  You'll be MUNIficent in your new ride!  $165,000

San Francisco Cutty Bang Map

Find your nearest local purveyor of Cutty Bang, the true San Francisco treat! Not every corner store has airplane bottles of Seagram's, Tanqueray, and Bacardi Limon.  With this handy map, you'll be getting faded in no time, playa! $55.00

Kansas City here I come

Hey! Prior to Monday, I had never been on a plane that was forced to land because there was a hole in it, and then later saw a drunk chinbeard slow dancing with a one-legged lesbian, but I guess if you live long enough, everything that can happen eventually does.

Let me back up.  The Wife, Baby Beyonce and me left SFO Monday morning at like 6 am to go see my extended family in Real America.  First we flew to Denver, which was uneventful except for the guy who locked himself in the forward lavatory and was violently ill the whole time and was taken off the plane by paramedics when we got there.  But hey, there but for the grace of God go I, etc., etc.

The real fun started when we left Denver.  About 45 mins into it, a panicked-looking girl was reseated into the row in front of me and spent the rest of the flight looking back nervously.  The captain came on the PA and said there was a mechanical problem and we'd be landing in Kansas City but NOTHING WAS WRONG and we weren't going to die or anything.  This was alarming because (1) we were definitely not supposed to land in Kansas City and (2) we were probably going to die.

(We found out later that the pressure seal around the exit row door partially blew out during takeoff and there was a hole in the plane the panicked-looking girl could see daylight through and so they evacuated the exit row and decided we should land and instead proceed on a plane with no holes.)

So we landed in Kansas City.  This was about 1:30 p.m.  I don't know if you're familiar with the KC airport but it is a fucking mess.  There's a security checkpoint for like every three gates, so we were trapped in this little area because we didn't have boarding passes that said Kansas City on them and so we would essentially be Ghost Passengers who couldn't get back into security and were Citizens of No Country and would probably be disappeared just to save Frontier Airlines any more hassle.  They finally decided to let us out so we could get something to eat at the Budweiser Stadium Club instead of the little snack bar by Gate 78 that only sold yogurt and power bars.

Hours passed.  People trickled back to our original gate slash waiting area.  By now it's like 6 pm and we've been promised that a replacement part was arriving on a 6 pm flight.  By this point, as happens whenever you throw a bunch of people into a crisis situation together, a sort of society had formed.  Over here, the floppy haired kid with a skateboard was bonding with a Tumblr-looking chick with glasses.  Another woman had spread out her collection of Essential Oils and was explaining their utility to a perfunctorily interested audience.  Meanwhile, a loudmouthed know it all hypochondriac lesbian who had been sitting in front of us on the plane was still braying away to anyone within earshot ("ALLERGIES? I have so many allergies I take 20 milligrams of prednisone every day."  "If I don't eat something I go into a semi-diabetic kind of shock.") I knew she was a lesbian because she had been braying about her girlfriend to the guy next to her in front of us and also because of her extremely short frosted tips hair.

Around 6:30, a late-30's early-40's chinbeard I had seen before approached the lesbian and wordlessly embraced her and started slow dancing with her.  He was very, very, very drunk.  She seemed only a little surprised by this.  "I'm so sorry about your Mom," she said.  She had to break it off when she got a phone call and he wandered away.  Amazingly, the phone call was a fake girlfriend call from the Essential Oils lady who was SITTING RIGHT THERE and, unbelievably, already had gotten the lesbian's cell number.  (Later we learned via the lesbian that Chinbeard was on his way home from his Mom's funeral and was very upset and drunk. She said he was very brave to start slow dancing with her.)

Right as some guy was in the middle of an excruciatingly boring story about how his bus broke down, we got word that Frontier was putting us up for the night in Kansas City and we would all leave tomorrow.  We were told to go get our bags and get in line to rebook for tomorrow.  This Bataan Death Line was endless and painfully slow.

Luckily I had dispatched The Wife and Baby Beyonce to get our luggage and got in line relatively early; we got to the front after about 45 minutes.  I heard it took 2 1/2 hours to rebook everyone.  I cannot fathom what took so long.  Can't you just hand everybody their same seats they had today?  Why was this harder than the math section of the SAT?

We were assigned to the Comfort Inn, which was fine, I guess.  (The guy in front of us as about to get the Comfort Inn too when another guy appeared next to him and said to the Frontier person, "No, he wants to go to the La Quinta." Then he turned to the guy. "A bunch of us are going to the bar at the La Quinta. Come on!"  I didn't know that La Quintas had bars. The guy smartly took Another Guy's suggestion and went to the La Quinta.)

That's about it.  We finally made it to our destination the next day. 

POSTSCRIPT ONE: How did I know the lesbian only had one leg?  In the shuttle to the Comfort Inn, she had to have a special seat so she could accomodate her fake leg, which I guess doesn't bend or something.

POSTSCRIPT TWO: To make up for the hassle, Frontier issued $150 vouchers to everyone who bought a ticket on the Doomed Exploding Plane Flight.  The Wife and I used our miles to book the ticket, so we got squat.  Our 8-month-old daughter now has a $150 voucher.  I wonder where she'll go!

Latest twist in neverending BART saga is the stupidest yet

Back when BART workers were on strike in July and October, it was hard to figure out who to be for.  Sure, management was trying to stiff the workers, or were the workers greedy goons who already have too much?  In the end, we all said fuck it and just hated everybody.

Now with this latest twist, there's no question who to hate.  Take it away, Chron:

Three weeks after BART's striking unions accepted a new contract, the transit agency's Board of Directors voted overwhelmingly Thursday to reject an agreement unless a provision granting six weeks of paid family medical leave was removed.

The 8-1 vote plunges BART's seemingly settled labor issues back into uncertainty with union leaders weighing options that include putting an amended contract to a vote, returning to the bargaining table, striking for a third time or seeking legal action.

The dispute revolves around Section 4.8 of the new contract, which requires the district to provide workers with "six weeks of paid time off to take care of a seriously ill child, spouse, parent or domestic partner or to bond with a new child." While the district currently provides up to 12 weeks of family medical leave, it's unpaid, with workers using vacation days, sick leave or other accrued time off.

Although Thomas Hock, a consultant who acted as the district's chief negotiator, and two other members of BART's bargaining team signed the tentative agreement on paid medical leave in July, transit district officials said it was approved by accident and they didn't discover the mistake until days after workers ratified the agreement, disputed provision and all.

Did you get that last part?  BART is now going back on the contract THEY ALREADY APPROVED and refusing to honor it unless a family leave provision is taken out.  THEY ALREADY APPROVED IT.

Let's not even get into whether or not you think employees should get paid time off for family leave (it's routine in other developed countries, but whatever).  The point here is that we're staring at the brink of yet another BART strike because BART took a look at the contract THEY APPROVED, decided they didn't like something in it, and now won't sign it.

Can you fucking imagine pulling this shit in your life?  Try buying a car and bring it back a week later and ask for a refund.  "Oh, hey, I must have overlooked the part in the contract where I have to make 60 monthly payments.  I'm sorry, I can't honor that.  Regrettable oversight and all."  See how far you get with that.

Here's the deal, BART, and it's something my Dad taught me when I was about 12: Don't sign anything until you read it over.  Don't give me this "approved by accident" horseshit.  Read the fucking contract before you sign it.

Oh, and this:

The district has received more than 700 e-mails in the past day or two, with most of them calling for the directors to reject the entire contract, said Director Gail Murray.

Oddly, 699 of them were from people with email addresses ending in "bart.gov" and one from a mental institution.  Ho ho ho.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Heading to the traditional TK Extended Family Thanksgiving Gathering / Now Who Are You Again Extravaganza, so posting next week may be sporadic/nonexistent.  You should take some time off yourself!  Have a good weekend.

Updates

The citizens of Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, voted down a measure that would have diverted library funding to the jails.  Good job, Lafourche Parish!

The BatKid thing cost the city $105,000.  It was still worth it.



Every ad on TV is already a Christmas ad.