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I'm heading to Europe tomorrow and it's a funny thing over there in that there are no wine bars. There are cafes that serve wine and beer and whatever else. The concept of just a wine bar is quite unnecessary. You just drink wine when you're out or you drink beer. No need to be all uppity about it.       San Francisco could learn something from this as the concept of the wine bar is simply out of control. I mean, I love 'em; these wine bars. I love wine and I love having the ability to go out and have good wine at a bar instead of having to pay $8 for a glass of wine from a $4 Trader Joe's bottle like how it used to be five years ago. But, people seem to have gotten addicted to a good thing and have made it the new, "it" venue. So naturally along with this comes perversion of the original intent.       We have now seen an overabundant use of the word, "and" so that some place that is actually something else can get in on the wine bar vibe by being something like, "Restaurant and Wine Bar" or "Wine Bar and Massage Parlor", the former example being just the least bit more common. And while this would be fine if there was a wine bar component to these places, it's just shoddy marketing glitz that might lure in a sucker or two. To illustrate my point, here are a few examples of "Wine Bars" as listed on Yelp:              Amelie - Yes, it's a wine bar, but it's a pretty rotten scene. Just a lot of striped shirts crowding the joint at any given moment.       William Cross Wine Merchants & Wine Bar - A good example of the overused 'and'. This is a wine store and not a wine bar.       The Hidden Vine - Pure wine bar. It's changed owners in the last couple of months, so we'll see how things go.       Yield Wine Bar - Another pure wine bar. The staff are quite helpful and the selection is okay, but the hard floors make it pretty noisy and it's really, really far away in the Dogpatch.       Hotel Biron - Another example of only a wine bar. It's a decent place, but as it gets crowded, any sense of intimacy goes away and the crowd gets pretty tough to deal with.       Swirl on Castro - Another one of the wine stores trying to pose as a wine bar. yeah, there's a "bar" in the back, but you aren't going to sit around and sip here. Plus it closes at 9. What bar closes at 9?       Cafe Meuse - Nearly a wine bar and nearly not. It's straddling a tough line that they should walk one way or the other on and be just be a wine bar or just be a small restaurant.       Nua Restaurant & Wine Bar - The guys who run it are cool and they have a very good wine list, but really, they are purely a restaurant. Sitting around drinking wine in there feels like you've forgotten to order your main course.       Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant - There will be people sitting around sipping wine sometimes, but this is really a store.       Bacchus Wine Bar - Super cool, but super small. If you're one of the lucky 12 people at the bar that it seems the place can hold at any one time, then count yourself lucky. Definitely a pure wine bar.       The Alembic - I have no idea how this Haight bar is in the list of wine bars. It's just a bar bar that has some additional wine. If you want to go this route, then I'd recommend Rye on Geary which has a decent wine selection surprising.       Eos Restaurant & Wine Bar - Ha ha, nice try. Just a restaurant.       Dell'Uva - Hmm, I guess it's something of a wine bar, but it's like a sport wine bar. I hate to say it, but it's probably more of a wine bar than Nua across the street, but I'd choose Nua any day.       1550 Hyde Cafe & Wine Bar - Again, just a restaurant.       Bar Tartine - Wha? You gotta be kidding me. Restaurant.       Cav Wine Bar and Kitchen - A wine bar that steps deeply in to be a scene place that is more restaurant. Still, they have a very interesting wine list.       Bacar Restaurant & Wine Salon - Restaurant and a big one at that.       Nectar Wine Lounge - Definitely a wine bar and pretty descent despite being in the Marina.       District - Yeah, it's a massive wine bar, but no where anyone I know would want to go. Just a meat market that serves wine.       Cafe Royale - I happen to quite like Royale, but it is leaning much more towards being just a local joint than wine bar, but I agree the case could be made for calling it a wine bar, especially if they punch up their wine selection a great deal.       London Wine Bar - An old school spot that is definitely a wine bar, but not one that's high on my list as their wine selection isn't tremendously amazing.       Annie's Bistro - This is a restaurant and this classification is so ridiculous, there must be some mistake here.              So, that's a shot list and while you may or may not agree with my opinion, you can see that the wine bar phenomenon is pretty widespread across San Francisco. In one day, I am going to look forward to having a 1€ glass of wine in Madrid and any number of cute bars and cafes.

With tracking down the torch yesterday, I have to say that I was quite amazed at how well old fashioned lying and deceit, beat all the tricks of technology for people to be able to see the torch.       We keep thinking that blogging, mobile technologies, and this new age of mass information through Citizen Journalism is going to topple corrupt regimes. As yesterday proved, this isn't the case and it will most likely not be the case for a long time. The only thing we have seen from this so far is more information, which is good, yet practically useless by itself. It makes us feel like we know something and are affecting change because anyone with an internet connection can know anything immediately these days.       But knowing and doing are two very different things. This would be the big difference between my generation and my parents'. Where we go forth and learn about everything that's happening in the world, they just went out with bullhorns, masses of people, got in the face of The Man, demanded change, and got a great deal of it.       This is how the city of San Francisco was able to so easily foil the what was probably the largest treasure hunt ever seen. No matter how many iPhones, Blackberrys, and WiFi connections people could pop on to, the simple truth in the end was that no one knew where the torch ended up going. Why? Because the information wasn't there.       This is one of the big misconceptions about our new digital age in that if you have enough people involved in something, the information will just arise spontaneously. It goes to show that the information is only as good as the activity level of those involved in getting it. All of us amateurs ate it when it came to tracking down the torch. The only folks who were able to really find the torch with limited success, were the traditional media outlets because they have the money and people employed to do these things. Those of us in the blogosphere who think that if we just show up to an event and wonk about it when we get home are doing actual reporting, are sadly mistaken. This is commentary. Reporting requires digging in and kicking some ass out there in the real world. No matter how incredible your cellphone, the planet is still and will always be an analog place that requires getting yourself dirty to get the scoop.       In the end, #1 Fan and I were reduced to losing any aspirations of digital omnipotence. We tried to listen in on what people were saying only to find that they knew nothing more than us. We tried to see which direction large amount of police were heading, only to see that they didn't really know either. About the only thing that worked in the end was to watch what the helicopters were doing and once we saw them fly away from anywhere that we were, we knew our chances of seeing the torch were sunk. I still find it sad that our officials consider this a success when the only way you could have watched the torch was on a video feed from a helicopter above it.

For those who might not possibly have been aware, the Olympic torch was supposed to come and be run through San Francisco today. Given the massive protests and conflict that happened in London and Paris, people were a little concerned as to what might happen in San Francisco, which is probably the most liberal city in the US. The protesters all got ready for a show down on both sides. It was the Tibetan exiles and their supporters, versus the Chinese supporters and well, the Chinese supporters. The first group had to run away from their homeland when the Chinese seized control. The second group will defend this and be very pro-China, which makes me wonder as to why they're in the US and not China if China is so good?       Anyways, if you feel like unraveling the 300+ posts on Twitter, you can see what happened today. Probably the best summary was on The Chron who said:       ...After being hidden in a waterfront warehouse, bused to Van Ness and carried on a surprise route through the Marina to evade protesters, the Olympic torch's wild journey through San Francisco is over. Closing ceremony moved to SFO [the airport].       I have to hand it to the Chronicle. They really put a lot of effort in to this and the stakes were high because SF is the navel of Citizen Journalism and Swarm Reporting. Yet, they ended up with what seems to be the most complete coverage of this shitzkrieg. Go old media!       But that was the crappy part of all of this. The only people who saw the torch were those guarding it. They kept moving the route around and shifting the plans so that no one knew what was happening. The crowds were just aimless. While you'd want to follow one group because they had just consulted their iPhones and supposedly knew where the flame was going, they were just as clueless as anyone else. It looked like a bunch of sheep running from one street to another and then back until they even canceled the closing ceremony, leaving the thousands who came out to see it really cheated.       I'm sure that both in China and on a national level in the US, this will be seen as a success because there was no attempt to extinguish the flame and no conflict. Go figure. I bet there are no protesters on the plane that they carry the thing on either. Paris and London were 20-30 miles on an established route, whereas SF couldn't even handle a truncated three mile route.       Overall this was a complete failure and I hope shows badly on Mayor Gavin Newsom who seems more interested in which is the proper striped suit for the occasion as well as his future political career.

I've chatted a little bit about Yelp.com in the past, but a recent article in San Francisco magazine really brought a lot of things home. While I'm not a tremendous fan of SF Mag, this article was quite good and a read I would recommend. Basically, the author asks, what is the future of Yelp? The site works somewhat well in San Francisco, but expansion is a problem. I would posit that the problem lies in the fact that the only other annoying hipster population of any merit lies in New York City and that is a territory heavily covered in all things hipster-related, Vice being one of the more amusing ones. So, expanding a lot in NYC is a heavy fight, while any other city doesn't have much of a market worth pursuing. San Francisco happened to be the best mix of everything and they're pretty much the kings here.       But the fact is that Yelp is probably doomed to failure or a buyout. The site is just too cool for school and has no generic merit to it that allows it to spread beyond the "in" crowd of any particular city. It's part of the reason that while I review on it from time to time, it's gotten to be only useful to me as an online 411 directory. Even if an establishment doesn't have a website in SF, they will probably be listed on Yelp. Beyond that, the reviews are nearly worthless to me, unless of course some place gets insanely good reviews all the time, then I know I should stay away as it will be thronged by hipster masses constantly.       I mean, yeah, we get it, Tartine is great. The 1,000 reviews that are there for it are kinda redundant at this point. But that's the problem. To get in to the crowd, you need to review and to be welcomed by the crowd, you need to love what they love and hate what they hate. Step out of line and the "Yelp Elite" will not welcome you unless of course you can out-drink them and I gotta warn everything that there are some severe fishes in that group.       One last point that I've mentioned in passing to people and the author of the SF Mag article picked up is that it seems like a Google buyout would make a lot of sense. Once I saw that Google had put ratings on its business listings, it seemed like a perfect fit. That and the fact that Yelp's revenue comes from premium placements for business (which several owners have told me are a waste of money) and advertisements, which Google does splendidly. What Yelp could do for Google's ratings system could be what YouTube did for Google Video. I'm sure they wouldn't change anything about the front end of Yelp so that they keep the community that drools over it in place, while at the same time, they'd take the backend and make it all Google, hopefully fixing Yelp's very sporadic image server in the process. After all, Yelp's search system sucks to the core and I always use 'blah blah restaurant site:yelp.com' searches on Google to actually find what I'm looking for, so the fit would be more brilliant than a shotgun with a silencer

Waking up at 11 in the morning is rarely good. While it doesn't always infer that you've done ill will to your body or wallet the night before, it kind of stunts the day to some degree. It's not fair to the day of course, but the highly underrated hobby of sleep is given a chance to catch up with life.       Such was the case yesterday. It was a pathetic, slow, mumbling start to the day. It was further lumbered down by a jaunt to the gym for some brief de-fatting. Then, after realizing that I'd done little more than write two emails the whole day, I remembered that I was going to an art opening at 5 in the ever-so-blonde Marina. These sort of things bring out the 80 year old man in me. I always like to have something to show at the end of any day. Even if it's going to the cafe on the corner to chat with friends for a couple of hours, it's still more than grousing around in my slippers and having, "Took a shower after lunch at 4PM. Feel clean for dinner now." be my main action item of the day.       So, without feeling much momentum, #1 Fan and I took a walk up to the Marina. It ended up being quite a nice day out, as many of my fellow San Franciscans had discovered.       It's weird when you start to drift in to the Marina Ghetto. Everybody does indeed get a lot more white and blonde (whether fake or real, but mostly the former) and I start seeing less hoodies, ironic t-shirts, and hip facial hair and more clothes that look like they're from the Gap or Tommy Hilfiger, although I wouldn't know as I don't shop there. I was unhappy.       Being in this super fantastic mood, we slipped in to Nectar. This was interesting and surprising. First off, the lack of baseball caps and conversations starting along the lines of, "Ah man, that's awesome. Donkey punch. Cool!" or "Omigod. Omigod. Oh! My! God! Donkey punch?" were not to be found, at least while we were there. The wine bar was plush and kick back. The seats were welcoming to asses that had walked two miles to get there. Much appreciated.       Oh, I should mention that we were there for a show by Hilary Williams. She's a hip local artist specializing in prints and paintings whose work we've gotten to like a great deal to the point where we even commissioned her to make a print for us. Her show is going on there for awhile yet and is a great splash of her recent works. If you happen to be in the Marina for some reason (um, maybe to shop at uh...? I don't know) swing by and enjoy it.       Naturally after downing far too much good wine, we were hurting for sustenance. Pulling ourselves together, we stepped out, ready to hike around and find somewhere to eat, only to go right next door to Nectar for, Bistro Aix. Not expecting much, we were incredibly surprised to find good food at good prices with good service. We weren't frowned upon at all, like can happen at so many restaurants because the host gives you attitude due to their thinking they are someone important standing behind the podium and walking people to a table. But no, Aix is a tasty place. I'm sure it can get loud as the bar crowd moves in there, but while we were there, it was a great mix.       Obviously, this gleaming moment of Marina bliss starting to tarnish a little as the night got later and more people showed up playing in to all the stereotypes of the area that one could imagine. Thankfully we were walking out of there before too many polo shirts were buying too many princesses too many drinks to get them to stop talking and move in the direction of a bed. While the mating of the BMWed crowd can be amusing, we were quite happy to be back at home having made something of our day (beyond the 4PM shower) and then returning to our little neighborhood clinging on to the edge of Nob Hill.

The Chinese New Year Parade was this last Saturday and of course, being the ever-so-vigilant San Franciscan that I am, I was there, taking photos and getting everything I needed to write the blog article that you're now reading. Naturally, I am not alone in this, as San Francisco is the navel of the blogosphere, but the fact that you're reading this and not one of the other thousands (or at least reading it along with the other thousands) of articles about it, just warms my big loving heart somehow.       Anyways, aberrant musing aside, the parade kinda sucked this year. Last year was great. There was no rain. There were crowds and crowds of people and it was a good time that was so good that it made it hard to get off the few photos that I did. This year, there was no problem getting a good view of the parade and thusly, I have a much more full 2008 Chinese New Year Gallery for the viewing. Unfortunately, getting these shots meant slogging through a lot of rain and cold. There were a good number of people out there with me, braving the weather as well, but none of us were happy about it.       The parade seemed somewhat empty overall. There were these large gaps between groups and floats that led me to believe that some groups must of pulled out at the last minute due to the rain. Then of course, those whose stayed and were in charge of some dragon dancing, covered their dragons in plastic, which definitely mutes a lot of the appeal of the dragon.       And that was about it, just two hours of firecrackers and people, looping through the city. Oh yeah, there was also these guys, the Gay and Lesbian Freedom Band which had annoyingly weaseled their way in to the event somehow. I suppose it was to prove that this is San Francisco, they can do this, and yes indeed, marching bands are really, really gay in the end.

For any visitor walking around San Francisco on a Tuesday in the middle of the day, it must be scary as hell. Out of nowhere, this air raid siren blasts at 130 decibels throughout the city. For the sane-minded person, they probably look around and see that people aren't doing anything more than crouching in to their cellphones harder so they can continue talking while walking. Thusly, the visitor shrugs it off as do most of the people who live in San Francisco, which of course begs the question as to why we even have them now, since we don't pay attention to them.       The system was originally designed to protect against air raids in World War II, although the system was completed long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor rendering it someone obsolete from the get-go. It's hard to think of it, but in the early 1940's, San Francisco and Los Angeles were technically front line cities in the war. To this day, you can still go and walk the old battlement trenches that were dug along San Francisco's western shores in order to provide a defensible front should the Japanese invade by water.       Obviously, nothing ever happened and yet the air raid sirens remain. During the Cold War, they were presented as a siren to alert to a nuclear attack, although given the blast radius of even a small nuclear bomb, there would be no sirens to sound should an attack hit. Once the Cold War threat lessened, which was not until the 1990's (I remember doing air raid drills in elementary school where we all had to get under our desks and that was less than 20 years ago), the air raid sirens were then thought of as a Public Address system in case of a natural disaster. This is one of the most common uses of the system in the Midwest where shit seems to hit the proverbial fan quite regularly.       So, along we went with the system being tested on a once a month basis just to make sure that it worked. Then September 11, 2001 happened and all of the sudden the Cold War fears were transformed in to Terrorist fears. At some point (and I don't know when exactly), they shifted from "testing" the sirens once a month to every week.       Is this necessary? No. It's designed to be an extremely simple system that is hard to destroy and once a month or even once every six months would seem to be adequate to check on it. But, in today's state of there being a "constant threat to the American people" it seems that we need to be reminded of how close we really are to complete annihilation via a weekly reminder that is heard over the entire city. Such as it is, I'm including an ever so helpful sound clip for those who haven't been privy to the air raid sirens of San Francisco.

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.       

Yeah, I was out there with all of the rest of them; the observers. We all had our cameras and we were ready for the action that was San Francisco Pillow Fight 2008. It's in its third year for the city and has grown to a pretty sizable event. I slacked out last year and didn't go, but managed to walk the five minutes from where I was working to see it this time around.       It's a fun thing and a great way to work through any Valentine's Day angst before going out for the evening. People enjoy themselves and they bash the crap out of each other. But, by and large the one thing that I saw was the ring of people that were taking photos on cameras or cellphones (ergh...), and people filming the thing. It seemed like there were more spectators than there were participants. Number One Fan and I were planning to participate, but couldn't find any pillows that we felt like destroying, because destroyed your pillow will become. I was shocked as to how many pillows blew up and then of course with the explosions, came the feather down which was nasty to say the least. It ultimately didn't matter as everyone was really enjoying it despite the inability to breath or see.       But still, there's the issue of all of us just watching, which admittedly cuts down on the potential fun that everyone could be having. Scoring this point home so eloquently was a fellow walking around in a purple outfit saying, "Bloggers! This is not a spectator event! Get a pillow and get in there!" He could not have been more right, especially as I'm proving now by racing home to put up a 2008 Pillow Fight Gallery and write this article about it. And yes, I do see the irony in this. I'm a blogger and thusly I spread irony on my toast for breakfast.       In the end, I find the blogging aspect a fine endeavor, but there's a simple way to cut down on the amount of photographers and videographers like this guy and that's to have the fight an hour later. The light was pretty sketchy at 6, but with a huge aperture and 1600 ISO you can still get off good shots. But in just 30 minutes or so, it all goes to crap and you've got to use a flash, which just doesn't work well on fast moving, large crowds like this. Toss in all the feathers floating around and you get some really lousy shots which would hopefully equal more people fighting. Of course, without the voyeurs watching them, would you lose the participants as well? It's a funny society here these days.       Next year, if I go, I think I'll leave the camera at home and pillow-up early on. I'm just a littler terrified because there are folks who come fully masked up (I laughed when I first saw them until I couldn't breathe), padded out, and armed with some nasty, stanky pillows and even leather couch cushions, which I think is unfair. There are some rules to Pillow Fight, to which I would add a sixth: 'If you come to Pillow Fight, you have to fight."

And with this, another year has passed. This was a year that I wasn't particularly crazy about seeing end as it was a good year. It was a fast year, due to all the traveling, but it was a good year.       Of course, the end of the year is always marked by New Year's Eve. To most folks, this means drink like crazy and I was definitely like most folks until about the age of 25. Since then (and as I quickly roll in to 31) I've really been burned out on the heavy drinking and stupidity that goes along with New Year's in this country. My ideal way to spend it now is to be with friends and/or family, being mellow, going to sleep at what is basically the normal time I go to sleep around two, and then waking up the next day and not having to wonder, "Where am I? Whose pants are these? Why does this girl snore so loud and have such hairy arms?"       Yes, New Year's has toned down a bit in recent years. So, just to confirm that I wasn't missing out on anything, Number One Fan and I went down to the Ferry Building to see what goes down. It turns out not a lot goes down that I want any part of. It's mostly a lot of trashy folks running around drunk, throwing up, and frontin' glow sticks and other garbage that they get for the night.       On a good note, once the fireworks started, we managed to get some good shots of them, although fireworks is fireworks and thusly they are nothing special. I did get a couple of good shots of The Sign Guy and have realized that there are enough for this odd fellow to be graced with his own gallery on this site. The bad note to all of this is that the clock tower at the Ferry Building doesn't chime and so we were unable to eat the 12 midnight grapes in time with the bells.       Also unfortunate was the mad rush of people leaving the Ferry Building area and "genius" of SFPD's crowd management that is always staggeringly bad. For this, they tried channel all these thousands of people on to the sidewalks along Market Street instead of just closing the street where it hits Embarcadero for 15 minutes to clear everyone out of there. No, this couldn't happen as traffic must be allowed to drive through there. I mean, who are these people driving at midnight and why are they being allowed through the downtown? Such mysteries have always been thorny issues in my head.       Anyways, Happy New Year and I'm off to Hawaii in a week, so despite the annoyance of New Year's Eve, I think the year will start off mighty fine.