So, walking through Yerba Buena during my lunch hour today, I came across the very not normal site of a large line of only young women, stretched around the side of the Metreon, and then down around the corner of the next block of it, all dressed in various states of glam (or their ideas of glam). Yes, despite what the typical

Check out the weather outside. The sun, the shine, the lack of fog. It’s simply a sight to behold. Makes me want to lie in the park and sleep under the sun’s warm rays. Unfortunately, I’m stuck inside the office, fending off sleep caused by too much carb-intake in the morning.

It’s this kind of weather that makes me regret not having enough warm weather clothing. I have t-shirts, but not enough skirts and dresses; not casual ones at least. That’s primarily because warm weather in San Francisco is such a freakish thing that I plan my entire wardrobe around my pair of Levis. Which is very limiting, admittedly.

Last Friday (before the torrential downpour over the weekend), it was similarly warm and wonderful, so a few co-workers and I went to nearby South Park to grab a bite to eat. Now this may sound super-lame coming from someone who has lived in SF since 1999, but I’ve never ever been to South Park here in San Francisco. Heck, if I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I would’ve thought it was a myth. It’s like a little slice of small-town suburbia tucked away in the midst of SoMa. Small-town suburbia filled with a curious combo of geeks, VCs, yuppies, and families, that is.

I went to South Park Cafe due to a recommendation. I found it to be kinda hoity, but the food sounded good. One item on the menu is called Pig Salad, which is a salad made with pork confit. Sounds sinfully delicious. I ordered the Croque Madame instead, which is basically French toast made with ham, cheese, and topped with a fried egg. It was so good. Simple and good. We had our food outside on the park, picnic-style, and people-watched a good bit. We saw this old guy with a huge SpongeBob Squarepants t-shirt on, and a friend couldn’t help but shout “SPONGEBOB ROCKS!!” at him. He looked stunned, then turned around, and smiled. I guess it doesn’t sound too hilarious now, but at the time, it was like it was the funniest thing in the world, and we totally cracked up.

Such is the good time had when it’s actually sunny and nice outside in our fair city. Here’s hoping it lasts through the weekend.

Three open letters to my favorite neighborhood restaurants:

Dear Tokyo Go-Go,
I love your sushi. I love your nigori sake. I love that you’re walking distance from my house. I’m not so keen on your surly waitress or the barely chewable size of your tempura hamachi roll, which nearly prompted me to hold my hands up to my throat in the universal sign for “I am choking” the other week. But I forgive you your foibles and will return soon to dine and watch Godzilla movies on your wall.

Dear Ti Couz,
Hi! It was so great to see you on Sunday! You’d think after a week in Holland and France I wouldn’t want anything remotely resembling a crepe, but you’d be wrong! Who wouldn’t want a tasty tomato, cheese and caramelized onion crepe, plus one of your delicious special salads? Plus, kir royale! Oh, Ti Couz, you are the perfect cure for jetlag.

Dear Tartine,
Where shall I begin, my flower? Your decadent coffee. Your delicious morning buns. Your line — so daunting at first glance, yet so quickly moving. If only you were not so wanton in your affection, perhaps I might more often sit within your warm embrace. Alas, you often coldly relegate me to take-out, but I keep coming back for more! You vixen! My heart is yours.

I work two days a week at Harding Park Golf Course, which is in the middle of Lake Merced. I’m fascinated with the history of the area. According to the Western Neighborhoods Project, back in the 1850′s it was the place to handle your (unfinished) business.

In the name of full disclosure let me start off by saying that I’m a gainfully employed Technorati Engineer so this post may be a bit biased. Secondly, w00t! Come out and help us celebrate 1 billion links tracked by Technorati tomorrow night at Chevy’s in Soma.

This Thursday, March 31, 2005, Technorati will host a user salon to bring together Technorati staff and users for face-to-face discussions. The event will take place at Chevys at 3rd St. and Howard St. in San Francisco.

We will deliver a short presentation about what is new in the blogosphere, including some new stats. The world of weblogs has been through a lot of change in the ten months since our last user salon last May. We would like to bring together the community to have a conversation about the last few months in the world of weblogs and discuss how Technorati may be of service in the future.

We’re also approaching the milestone of a Billion links tracked in the Technorati database. as of this writing, we are at 990,172,347 links tracked, and at this rate, we’ll hit 1 Billion links before the end of the week. Come and celebrate with us the amazing growth of the Blogosphere.

Thursday is the seven year anniversary of the release of Netscape Communicator 5.0 source code and the creation of the Mozilla project. In celebration of this milestone Technorati and Chevys will donate 20% of the bill to the Mozilla Foundation.

So come on out and wave the flag and have a drink on us. Technorati will provide appetizers and drinks for approximately 50 people. Please RSVP to salon-sf@technorati.com and let us know how many people you are bringing so we can plan the event space, food, and drink.

- via Sifry’s Alerts

Muninonymous (mew-knee-non-o-muss), adj.

1.) Feeling of separation from fellow public transportation users either by choice or by circumstance.
2.) A rider who willfully avoids eye contact with other passengers for purposes of avoiding unwanted social engagement.
3.) Awkward, recurring eye contact with an acquaintance without confirmation or conversation.

Examples:

– I saw x on the train this morning but felt it better to ride muninonymously rather than feel like an ass when x turned out to be not who I thought x was.

– Even though I ride the N-Judah everyday, I still feel completely muninonymous here – you’d think I’d see some of the same people, but I never seem to.

A week and a half ago my friends and I had booked passage on an Oceanic Society whale watching cruise to go check out the whales on their yearly migration. The tickets were a bit pricey but the excursion was a full 6 and a half hours out on the open ocean so seemed well worth the money. That is until we got the dock and there was no one to be found. We walked around for 30 minutes till we had to do exactly what the piece of paper said not to do and called the harbor master. He said there was a number we should have called and the trip was more than likely cancelled to high seas. So sad and dejected we headed back to the road to get a cab. When none came by after 10 minutes we called Yellow Cab and the dispatcher said one would be there in 10 minutes. 20 minutes go by so no cab so we called back. 10 more minutes he harked as a shiny Yellow Cab pulled into view. He saw us and had to do a quick lane change at a light to get onto an approach vector to swoop us up. Well to our utter awe when the light changed he looked at us and swerved across 2 lanes and drove the other way. Fast. God bless the reliability of the Yellow Cab! No disrespect to our own Joann who herself is a Yellow Cabbie but I calls em as I see em. So I digress. No whales. No cabs. No food. We head up the road headed to the tourist trap up the road to grab some lunch when after about half a mile another cabbie sees us in distress and rescues us and whisks us back to the Upper Haight. $30 lighter after the 2 cab rides we unearth the other sheet the Oceanic Society faxed over and there was indeed a number we were supposed to call so our bad on that one. So at the point the trip was cancelled you’d think that the Oceanic Society would promptly and swiftly refund our ticket prices since no service at all was rendered. They didn’t even send a representative to meet us and tell us it was off after all. Not a chance! If you read the fine print you have to actually CALL them and REQUEST a refund. Because after all it was our fault that my friends flew into San Francisco to go on this trip and got the shaft from Mother Nature. And when you do indeed call to get your cold hard cash refunded they have the audacity to charge you $2 per ticket as a handling fee!!! Excuse me? Talk about robbery on the high seas! We figure if they just have a phone and a website and never go out on a cruise they can make a nice chunk between the people who forget to call and the others they bilk out of the $2 a head. So the long and short of it is I can’t condone a business who takes advantage of their customers this way. When did Harbormaster equal Ticketmaster? What a load of seahorse shit. I urge you to never book charter on an Oceanic Society cruise.

Not sure why exactly – but it was.

I had just staggered back to the Duboce and Church N stop from Safeway – loaded with dinner groceries, a laptop, and other sundry law student essentials. The platform and sidewalk were littered with work-weary people. Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Nothing came out of the tunnel – not a J, not an N, nada.

You know, of course, what an N train looks like during the evening rush even without a delay.

Sure enough, when one finally creaked above ground and groaned to a halt, it was packed to the gills with frustrated commuters. But with a pound or so of quickly warming london broil and other items I was afraid were begining to grow their own friends, I squished myself into the first car, dragging my fellow law student, grocery shopping friend with me.

It was predictably unpleasant and at each stop the doors seemed to take four times as long to close. The Sunset Tunnel seemed five times as long. And the number of people getting ON the train after Cole Valley seemed a thousand times higher than normal.

All of this is, of course, normal. But when, somewhere around 2d Ave, a couple of high school frosh climbed aboard and began to make out with sickening loud kisses (smack, slurp, mmm, mmm, slurp, slurp, smack) broken up by “you know, like, like, i mean, like, i was all, and she was like, and then he was all” – I had it. I was done. Get me off the damn train now. The girl was pretty enough – the guy was clearly a jerky kid who thought the world of himself judging by the way he expounded on the relatively worth of his classmates, his mother, and various mp3 players. Slurp, smack, smack.

My friend and I locked eyes and lost it. The two women sitting on either side of my friend looked equally nauseated.

Everyone on the train was restless. Angry. You can just feel it.

As the train slammed to a halt at my stop, I peeled myself out and bummed into another young guy who most earnestly declared it his worst train ride ever. It was hard to argue with him as the plastic bags cut further into my hand and beef blood seeped onto my shoe.

Yes, Easter weekend also brings the annual resurrection of Trannyshack out of its comfortably seedy digs at The Stud to make the pilgrimage to

Just looked at all the SF news sites for blackout news and all I could find was more Terri Schiavo stories. Nothing on the blackout at all yet. How lame. Bloggers rule the planet! Heh, a guy can dream can’t he?