Despite my traveling to far-off lands, I’ve rarely had a case of food poisoning on the road. Actually, I’ve only had one that comes to mind after eating at the Alliance Française in Abengourou, Ivory Coast. I was the unlucky victim to having eaten what were otherwise delicious meatballs the day after a power cut from which their freezer hadn’t restarted. So it goes. I was much happier having that very fast heave-fest that the day or two my more steel-stomached ally experienced in eating the Swedish meatballs at the Ikea in Sacramento, California.

And that’s really the thing of it. All of my episodes with a meal hell-bent on making me one with the “thunder bucket” were in the “civilized” world. I think I’ve been taken down at least four times in San Francisco alone. I attribute some of this to having what is probably a stomach made of tissue paper from having drank horrid irrigation water as child–nobody mentioned to my city folk parents that what came out of the tap was not potable when they bought the farm. But, it’s also the fact that people are dirty (like dudes with a half meter beard making my food in San Francisco) and the more advanced a society is, the more it stores its foods, and the less fresh items are eaten. Food storage, while in days of yore had its merits, is now rancid.

Take for example, eggs. It takes some time to get used to them not being refrigerated in Europe. But, in the end you think, “Fuck it, it’s getting cooked/boiled/poached, so who cares?” The problem arises though when you mistakenly buy hardboiled eggs in the supermarket. Why on earth would anyone buy hardboiled eggs? To put it succinctly, I don’t fucking know unless there is a huge degree of foreigners who don’t understand that they’re hardboiled and buy them. That and people could just be lazy as all hell.

My foray in to Spanish hardboiled eggs promptly ended with a worship of the porcelain Buddha, throughout the night, without my stomach needing any call to prayer to show bare my neck to the almighty lord of gastroenteritis. Needless to say, I won’t be making that mistake again and I’m still, as of now, mystified as to why these are even being sold. Sure, I’ve bought them as a snack before, like in Ghana where street vendors have them, but they’re fresh there. Actually, all over Africa they have hardboiled eggs to buy and many a loved one and friend have basically lived off them without issue. They haven’t been sitting on a shelf all day and I’ve never had a problem buying those hardboiled eggs, just those in the fine establishment of Mercadona.

On that note, I think it’s time to go cook up the wild asparagus I just picked for lunch and make an omelet with some fresh, farm eggs.

The photo above is one in a series about the Kinshasa Symphony by Vincent Boist

So, you’re living in San Francisco. Congratulations! I don’t anymore, but when I did I was one of the writers for The Tender, the Tenderloin’s #1 News Source™. It was both rewarding and frustrating as hell at the same time. I didn’t get paid to write it but it did become popular and was a worthwhile experience. I’d suggest that you write your own local blog, but if you do, there are things to take in to consideration.

First, you need to focus. I don’t mean just geographically, but also topically. Humor is more popular with San Franciscans that serious. Also, hedonism. Writing about food and drink will always get eyeballs. Writing about the Mission will get you eyeballs as the Mission loves talking about the Mission, but it’s a crowded room at this point. Also, toss in a random article about neighborhoods and microhoods. San Franciscans prematurely ejaculate when they get the chance to debate hood politics.

But, even if you can write at the level of a Nobel laureate, if you don’t get links from other sites, no one is probably going to see it. This is of course a double edged sword as in the beginning it will be great but then you’ll realize that how these sites stay in business is to scrape your content and if you have enough of your own momentum and reader base, it will get annoying as you won’t be getting paid (see below).

The Linkers

SFist gets oodles of traffic and they do link roundups daily. The key is to either have an article that is odd (“Naked yoga guy punched in nuts by Willie Brown!”) or a scoop that is immediately topical which will most likely have something to do with SF city government or something about gay life (“Olague bitch slaps Kim at BoS meeting. Weiner: I like to watch”). Of course, until you get on their radar (ie they follow your feed) you’ll need to nudge them with a tip about the article. Keep in mind that Brock, Andrew, Leanne, and Jay are nudged all the time and so you might get ignored in the beginning. Don’t take it personally, just keep at it in a friendly manner.

Laughing Squid also has pornstar amounts of traffic loads. Probably a bit harder to get up on there as they don’t do roundups like SFist, but if you breach their perimeter spam tip defense and get a listing, the masses will arrive. As to the best content to toss at them, again, unique SF things, similar to what you’d send to SFist, although if it’s a bit artsy and creative in nature, they will probably like it better.

SFgate gets no end of traffic, but they will never link off to anything you write. Hell, they can barely even afford to spellcheck articles before they go up. Your best bet there is to create an account or two to comment with and leave a link to your articles in the comments section when they’re related. They have really weird policies though and might delete the link, but it’s fucking scary how much traffic it will toss your way. Scarier still is that they somehow stay in business. One spot that will get your decent traffic though is Inside Scoop if what you have is food-related and my interactions with Paolo were always positive.

Eater SF is where you want your food and drink links to appear. Carolyn is insanely hungry for links and content scraping so if it’s the least bit new, she’ll put it up in a round up or even make a small “article” out of it. One horribly annoying thing is that you’ll always see your content phrased in a form like “As Eater has been following…” or “Based on tips to Eater” in order for them to somewhat “own” your content. Again, in the beginning traffic from Eater can be helpful, but as time goes on, it’s more of a burden than anything else.

Curbed SF is similar to Eater in style and if you write anything related to property news (“Old Victorian burns down”, “Hippie crack den to be torn down for mixed use apartment building”) you can send it there. Curbed has a similar model as Eater as they’re both part of the same company. The downside with Curbed is that it’s very easy for the editor Sally to blacklist you. You’ll never know why and honestly, once you’ve got your own consistent reader base, it’s a blessing in disguise.

Grub Street San Francisco is similar to Eater. You won’t get as many clickthrus though which is unfortunate as I quite like Grub Street. If you email the editor Jay (yeah, same Jay as at SFist) about a new article, he’s a pretty fair dude in how he puts stuff up and cites the source. Again, it’s gotta be food and drink related.

Muni Diaries are the good people of Eugenia and Jeff. If you have an article that’s Muni-related, send them a tip. They’ll likely post it and without any bullshit or drama.

Uptown Almanac is there for when you have something really offbeat. Kevin is a funny dude and he likes funny, rough shit. If you send him a tip about a new ice cream pop up in Hayes Valley, he will probably tell you to fuck off, as would I. Or, you might luck out and he’ll write an article calling you a dumbass.

SF Weekly has a couple of thriving blog sections. Send them tips about your articles and you’ll probably get picked up in round ups, especially for Foodie.

Leave no trace

The sites above are all decent to get links. Not decent are ones like 7×7 which seems to be completely run by blonde intern girls from the Marina. How that piece of shit “publication” is still around blows my mind. Try and stay off their radar as at best, they will see one of your articles, maybe like it, and then write up their own article without citing you as the original source. That’s the way they roll. Also sucky are the likes of San Francisco magazine, SF Appeal (“It’s not a blog, it’s a news source!”), and Tablehopper. Don’t bother with them as they’ve got their own deal going on which won’t help you in the least.

Connectshuns

You can find other like-minded SF blogger folks at Huffington Posts’s list but that’s a little of out date. Kevin at Uptown Almanac tries to round up all the local bloggers for a super secret, super sexy happy hour every now and again, so contact him and let him know how much oral sex you’d love to give him to be invited. He might let you in.

Also, make sure to start up a Twitter account and Facebook page for your blog for branding purposes as well as to publicly deride anyone who rips off your articles or calls you an asshole. After all, everyone knows there’s nothing better than to witness a flame war on Twitter…

Money, money, money

You will not be making any; money that is. No matter how well you write, how fresh your content, and how sexy you might be, you will not make any money from a local blog in San Francisco. You pretty much do it for your own enjoyment, which is something that has its ups and downs.

If you want, from the start put up some Google AdSense on your site in a non-annoying manner. That will probably rake in $15 a year. Don’t bother with sponsored articles as these will be met with scorn and people thinking you’ve sold out despite the fact you don’t get paid to blog. Also, trying to work with local businesses to advertise on your local blog is a lost cause. They’re much happier paying Chronicle ad rates with no way to measure success.

In truth, if you want to look at it this way, it can be something of a resume piece. I got a few paid articles from putting in time at The Tender. The other main writer and one that was short term also got some paid work. But, from the blog directly, you won’t earn a damned thing, so go in to it realizing that and maintain that attitude as it will help when your first “who the fuck to you think you are?” comment from a troll comes rolling in.

Otherwise, good luck. San Francisco needs a new batch of bloggers as a lot of us from the “old guard” have moved on and if people have to depend on “traditional media” for news in that town, then things are gonna get pretty unfresh pretty quick.

It infuriates me to the point of exhaustion and pure frustration when campaigns such the one that Invisible Children is running develop legs and become popular. In this instance, they’ve put up a 27 minute video about the evils of Joseph Kony. If the name isn’t familiar, he’s a piece of crap from Uganda who has been using child soldiers to fight wars and has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on a slew of serious war crimes.

Of course none of that matters really because a group of whiteys from the US decided to make a little film to raise awareness about Joseph Kony. I’ve watched said film and it’s painful. It’s like a “Have you seen this warlord?” campaign on a milk carton in case you happen to spot him in the parking lot while picking up that weeks groceries. “Oh, but they’re just trying to do good in the world.” Not really. They feel guilt for being white, privileged to some degree, and being from the US and thus needing to create a non-profit that pretty much just “raises awareness” and does little else. There is no state building mechanism in what they do and if there were at some point, the citizens of whatever state they were working to fix should move to a neighboring one as these guys are typical of Whites in Shining Armor. I can’t even get in to all the details of this lest I write through the night. But, it’s simple: white people in the US donate to make themselves feel better. They don’t give a damn about the recipients as long as they get a newsletter with smiling dark-skinned children that shows their money “at work”.

Why would I say this about Invisible Children? Watch the video. Pay attention to how the narrator has made himself and family the real focus of the video from the beginning. Pay attention to how the narrator interacts with the Africans. He always talks down to them as if they were children, no matter their age. Pay attention to key phrases such as “something in my heart told me”. All of this comes up time and again when you’re dealing with white people from the US and their approach to Africa. There is no sense of equality, only of being a savior.

What gives me the right to criticize them, after all, they’re “doing something”, right? My right to criticize is the same as their right to make this in the first place. But, people need to understand that just “doing something” is the worst thing you can possibly do. Would you “just build a skyscraper”? Would you “just perform open heart surgery”? Obviously not, so why on earth are Americans “just doing something” when it comes to Africa? We have no business doing this. Our business should be first in foremost to fix both our local and national problems. For instance, the narrator is shocked to see all these homeless children in Uganda. Um, they’re in the US too. We’ve some really serious problems.

All of this, to use the skyscraper analogy is like deciding to build a 50 story building. One day, you run down to a random building site you know nothing about. You dump money there. You work on it over a three day weekend, or even a summer, then run off. A year later, you’re shocked that it never got finished. It’s a horrible approach to everything charity-related and the fact that the vast majority of people can’t see this makes me numb.

Absolutely no problem that faces the world today has an immediate fix. The work is long term, hard, and a hell of a lot more invested than retweeting a YouTube link.

Rarely do I get excited about cleaning products, but that was before I met the bayeta. This thing is best described as all that’s awesome in sponge crossed with all that’s awesome in a paper towel minus all that sucks in a regular towel. They’re of a sponge material, but only maybe half a centimeter thick at most.

When I first encountered them, I didn’t that much of them. Of course that’s when I started using them. They wipe up everything. They can have it all get squeezed out and then wipe up some more. That one above is above three months old and used daily.

Sadly, they’re getting harder to find in Spain. At only 1€ or so for a three pack, they would last forever and I guess that’s the problem in that people weren’t buying enough of them. Now, they’re trying to get people to switch over to this newer cloth type thing. And by switch, I mean, they’re trying to not sell the bayeta anymore.

At first, this photo of a stop by Obama in San Francisco’s Chinatown didn’t seem like too much to me. Then, I looked at it closer and realized that I had missed a serious what the fuck moment. Look at that dude in the window just above the frowning black-suited Secret Service guy’s shoulder. What’s up with him? Did he see Obama on a Jumbotron or something? I mean, the man is right there, in front of him, giving Chinese fertility handshakes (trust me, they’re much better than the milkshakes) to any and all. San Franciscans are damned weird.