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For some reason, I hadn't heard about Pug Sundays at Alta Plaza Park before. This comes as a surprise to me as I live in San Francisco, love dogs, and really love pugs due to their adorable ugliness. I mean, I had heard about and accidentally stumbled upon the Chihuahua Cha Cha sometime back and I don't even really like those Hilton Handbag dogs. So, I was thrilled to finally check out the Pug Sunday yesterday.       Damn, that's a lot of pugs there. #1 Fan wisely bought some treats before we went there, because without treats you are basically an inanimate object to a pug. With treats, you are their new best friend and they will downright molest you once word gets out that you're dealing the doggy version of crack.       The biggest reason the event is fun is because you get to enjoy all the fun of owning a pug without all the annoyance of owning a pug, because honestly, they're quite needy little buggers. But, letting a pile of them run around in these insane little puggicanes is a good time, since they just start spiraling out of control as a group for no reason at any time.       Of course the setting is great as well. This park (which happens to be a direct line of sight from where the Cha Cha happens) is a great setting. The park grounds are nice, but they also affords views of the bay and lovely San Francisco homes around it. It's a good walk and a good time. If you're ever sitting around San Francisco in the afternoon of the first Sunday of the month, stop on by and prepare for the attack of the pugs. I uploaded a gallery for those wanting to see my view of the mayhem.              PS - Someone should really create a new page for the event. That one I link to is supposedly "official" but it hasn't been updated since 2002, which basically makes it either dead or the website of a pension on the coast of Croatia.

It was while dining at Liszt Ferenc tér that I really got a taste of how tipping works in Budapest. I have to say that I'm a rather big opponent of the tipping culture in general, so what I found in Budapest what shocking to find in a European capital.       Here's the thing in that if you generally stay out of touristic areas, tips aren't such a problem in Budapest, but even still, the general system works in such a way that the tip is mandatory. A low key restaurant will only put on 5% or so for a tip. This is tolerable, although it still goes against the grain of Europe at large wherein the customer completely decides the tip based upon the service received. But, if you move in to an area that is more touristed, this automatic tip grows a great deal. It will often be a minimum of 10% and can be as much as 15%. The customer is not informed of this either at lesser restaurants, due to their inclusion of how much the tip is in clandestine spots on the menu.       Beyond this, you can also have an experience like I did where you go to a place, the food was okay and the service atrocious, only to find that a whopping 12% tip was added to your bill without your asking, which is out of line even in a tip-happy place like San Francisco. In addition to this they say the take credit cards, but the machine is supposedly broken (a common ploy.) So then you want to pay in Forint only to discover that you don't have quite enough, but they give the option of paying in Euros as well. The only catch is that when you calculate the exchange rate quoted, it's 20% less than prime, which in this case was 200 Forint to the Euro instead of 250. So, suddenly, you're giving a rather bad restaurant a 35.4% tip!       What is one to do to avoid this? Well, when faced with a bill like this, you pull out every scrap of local currency you can find in order to pay it without using foreign currency. Secondly, you avoid touristic places to eat. Thirdly, you wait for the day that Hungary is on the Euro so that at least one of these scams can be done away with. Fourthly, you just try not to eat out to much, which is hard because the food is usually so damned good.

I'm not sure where my breaking point was on the American custom of tipping. Perhaps it was the 18% I automatically had added to my bill for a dinner for two at Chez Panisse. Or maybe it was a recent meal with friends where they insisted on leaving what amounted to a 33% tip. I'm not really sure, but my ire towards the system of tipping in the US has swelled to an indefinite point of frustration and to a large degree, disgust. No, I'm not disgusted with friends who leave large tips (I used to do this as well), but more our society as a whole wherein we feel compelled and forced to leave large tips for any variety of reasons (they make no money, I know how it is for them, you can afford it, etc.) My disgust also lies with the restaurants who seem to revel in this practice as it allows them to pay squalid wages to their employees, thusly levying the salary of their workers solely upon the backs of the customer.       As you can see in the Almighty Wikipedia link above, the origin of the word came from, "to give unexpectedly". My, but how we have strayed from the original intent and naturally this is something that varies greatly by region. My preference is often for the European models where it is still not an expected item, but more a bonus for a job well done. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against tipping; I'm just against it as a constant when doing anything outside of your home and having a service charge that is part of the price is fine too. But my favorite tipping model overall has to be from the Japanese, "...tipping is rare, it is usually assumed that if you liked a restaurant you will reward them by returning." I have never seen logic in a more easy to digest form than that.       I don't really don't need to rant anymore about tipping I suppose, as Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs did that oh so well. But even there, he was eventually cajoled in to putting in a tip, which seems to be the way it goes for all of us eventually. Having gotten sick of this practice, I'm starting to see why my cousins in Slovenia flat-out told me to stop when I went to leave a 10% tip. I know what you're thinking, "I'd hate to work in that country.", but the difference is that people who work in service jobs are paid a lot better. The tip is again, back to its root of being "given unexpectedly". Ah, but how can we do this in the US? People earn so little here in restaurants! To which I greatly beg to differ. Servers in San Francisco will often earn up to $60,000 a year and for what? Bringing my plates to me? Honestly, I could do that myself if it were allowed. And then of course there are bartenders who make even more than that because of tips drunken idiots shower them in. I mean, why does some guy get a 25% tip for opening a bottle of beer for me in a place where they're charging $4 for it and it costs them around $.50? Yeah, I know, you're paying for ambiance which is most likely the reason I've all but stopped going to your typical bar.       It's all a ridiculous circle that ends only when we as the customers say, "Enough! Charge me the actual cost and be done with it!" To this end, I feel like taking a first step and when at restaurants where there is good service and an actual reason to do it, leaving a 5% tip. I do acknowledge that peoples' salaries come from this, so I would never suggest ended it all overnight, but maybe that would be the straw that broke the crappy system.       No more tipping at the damned bars until the bartender has actually done something worthwhile and not just stared at my lack of hipster apparel when I first enter. And that's it. This is a systemic deep-rooted problem with the culture in the US by which we put our fingers in our ears when it comes to knowing the full cost of something (ex. sales taxes, cleaning fees, extended warranties that are added on to the price tag) but if we can get past this, then, as silly as it sounds we can actually have systems like national health care. Explaining that is for a future post.       Okay, yeah, everyone is going to start throwing eggs and booing me at this point, but I don't care. I'm done with this system. You can even call me Dutch if you want, but I can take it and my 5% tipping is coming soon to a table near you even if that means I get called out in a forum.