An Israeli teacher on a year-long posting to a Hebrew school in San Francisco finds Pier 39 “filled with beliefs and life” and the Golden Gate Bridge “a magnificent architectural structure.” Another ball of fire writes that he “spent the summer living in San Francisco, doing exactly what I’d hoped: working in VC, reading business plans, meeting with entrepreneurs, doing due diligence and generally learning the business;” in his spare time he rode a motorcycle.

A Swedish woman now living in Hayes Valley wonders: “Can somebody please explain to me why staff in the Golden Gate Park always leave the engines running while they load and un-load their trucks in the park? While clearing shrubs, cleaning up flower-beds and so on. The engines are always on. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Previously:
Idle NY theater critic visits, finds our scene wanting
Visitor finds SF “too hilly to be dull“

I must admit that Zuni Café is an old stand-by for me. It is my go-to restaurant for late-ish dining, for entertaining out-of-town guests, for enjoying a meal with hard-to-impress friends, and it seems, for constructing sentences with lots of hyphenated phrases.

I’m hardly breaking new ground by reviewing Zuni, but more and more, I’ve run into people who’ve lived in San Francisco for at least a couple of years and have never eaten there. My advice: invite some out-of-town guests to visit and take them to Zuni.

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Periodically, Opium Magazine hosts their signature event, the Literary Death Match, and from time to time it doubles as a release party for their latest issue. Such will be the case tonight at 7:00 PM, at the Rickshaw Stop (located at Fell St & Van Ness).

What is a Literary Death Match? It works like this: there are four contenders and a panel of judges. Two contenders are allotted ten minutes each to stun, enchant, and delight the judges and audience with their deathless prose. Subsequently, the judges have an open panel on these readings, and judge them on literary merit, as performance, and on “intangibles” — then they vote to choose the winner of the first round. Repeat with the other two.

In the final round, the two survivors face off. Not with further readings, but rather in some kind of gladiatorial combat: the Death Match Challenge!

Like, for instance, a miniature basketball contest.

Usually by then, audience and contestants alike are somewhere between “kind of tipsy” and “probably-if-not-definitely drunk,” which of course just makes everyone funnier, smarter, and better-looking.

Doors open at 6:00; admission $10, but you get a free copy of Opium 6: Go Green once you’re in there. If past performance is indicative of future results, the show will be great entertainment: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll order one drink too many. Don’t miss it!

Welcome to the first of (hopefully) many Rapid Restaurant Reviews.

You won’t find star ratings here. You won’t find a lot of flowery descriptions of food or snarky comments about service. And you especially won’t find any charming back story about how the chef’s first job was cleaning the deep fryers at McDonald’s before securing the financing to open a wildly successful San Francisco bistro.

Instead, you’ll find the answer to ten questions that, to me, encapsulate the San Francisco dining experience:

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The Stop AIDS project’s biggest annual fundraiser is Thursday night April 24th, and to participate all you have to do to help is something you were likely to do anyway… eat. Many local restaurants will donate 25% of your check to the Stop Aids Foundation just for dining between 6 & 10 pm…

It’s the 7th annual evening, and last year’s raised over $200,000 for Aids related charities, and they hope to exceed that this year.

Amongst the participating restaurants in Dining Out For Life this Thursday, April 24th are numerous joints ranging from high end to many mid priced indie run spots from the ballpark’s Acme Chophouse to Alamo Sq Grill, or Anchor Oyster Bar in the Castro.

In the chain dept. all the local Amici’s Pizza & Pasta Pomodoro locations…

Whether you like Askew or Zazil, there’s something on the list in almost anyone’s potential price range…

more info and link to the
complete list at

http://www.DiningOutForLife.com/SanFrancisco

Planning Issues, A Scarf Drive, Parties, Eats, Openings, Closings, Sales, etc

For an update of local small biz happenings around the bay read on…
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SFPD is hiring & shuffling: Capt. Ehrlich heads to Tac Squad, Fong brings in new female “Community” Capt. Bennet , plus scroll for details for potential applicants and those that just want to know more about what the hell is it they actually do:

In a continual game that is SFPD’s version of musical chairs meets Stratego, respected local Capt. John Ehrlich, a 27 year vet, moves into the Special Operations’ “Tac Squad” and Northern Station’s former Community Policing Lieutenant, Theresa “Teri” Barrett becomes the Park station’s new captain. An ironic shift perhaps since Chief Heather Fong has been reluctant to give so-called “community policing” much headway. Ehrlich also seemed content like most others in the dept. to hopefully let the “community policing” issue fade away before officers ever were forced to move around outside their bulletproof squad cars like any of us ordinary citizens must do.

This personnel shuffle seems yet another shift in the department that on one hand is derided as being insular, ineffective, and wishy washy and then on the other hand is accused of being insular, insensitive & overly aggressive.

I mean how could one not put their faith in an organization that issues glowing reports on it’s own recruits like
“San Frasncisco Policec Academy to Gradtue 13 Lateral Officers” as seen in a press release link posted proudly on the SFPD website since September 21, 2007.

It’s never helped that the majority of SFPD officers don’t live in town, and for a long time many seemed to take gleeful pride in bullying those that do. Lately the embarrassing and stubborn refusal of the SFPD to get around to enacting basic community policing reforms has really strained community relations.

It’s simply ridiculous what we spend here per capita on policing, and the ultimately shoddy results we get for that $500 dollars a year per person. According to a recent editorial in the Chronicle SF spends $120 more per citizen than Chicago, and $180 more per citizen than Los Angeles does on police services. Yet from 1999 to 2005, unlike in those towns, arrests were down 35 percent, and homicides went up, up, up and not away. Especially troubling is the unsolved homicide rate, with less than 25% solved these days, a dramatic reduction since the 50% solved rate of the latter 1990’s under other leadership.

More ranting after the jump…

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The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco announced on January 14th 2008 it was providing over $4 million in Affordable Housing Project grants that are expected to go towards creating nearly 600 units of affordable housing in the area. The funding is reserved for affordable housing sites throughout Nancy Pelosi’s pork craving 8th District, including SF’s Polk & Geary Senior Housing, the 47 unit Zygmundt Arendt Senior House at 850 Broderick, as well as projects at 275 10th St. and 53 Columbus Ave amongst others. Complete list of sites, and factoids provided by the people intent on spending yer tax dollars below the fold…

pic: The Zygmundt Arendt House project was spearheaded by SF’s Department of Human Services, and the photo courtesy Community Housing Partnership (CHP) who are now in charge. The project is named after a Polish immigrant & railroad worker who died in 1998 and left approx 6 million in stocks & real estate to build housing for the poor.
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Walked to Panhandle Pizza today hoping to get a delicious cornmeal crust slice, perhaps even toy with the popular vegan/soy cheese options…

But instead i saw the sickening site of a hollowed out storefront, devoid of ovens, refrigerators or anything related to pizza making. A couple bags of garbage were being dragged out, the sinking shock was so disturbing I shirked my journalistic responsibility and didn’t even ask the folks working , uh, what’s up?

The place has always been rather eccentric, a relic of daze gone by, sorta like the whole stretch of Hayes St. it’s located on. The workers were generally neighborhood teenagers, and an unreliable junkie delivery guy hung in there for awhile. I once asked the owner why he’d stopped selling beers, and he said it “wasn’t making any money”…

uh, I know it’s hard to lose money in the alcohol biz…but if ya try hard enough…I guess anythings possible…

There was an ad on Craigslist in May that this place was for sale, well I’ll just assume there were no buyers, and it must have finally just ended.

A cursory review of their last city health inspection in June didn’t look great and included several violations:

1. Certain food that is not hot enough or cold enough.
2. Food stored improperly.
3. Empty soap dispenser or towels.
4. Dirty utensils/equipment.
5. Improperly cleaned kitchen surfaces.
6. Deteriorated walls/floor/ceiling.
7. Unclean premises.

and my favorite

8. Severe Rat or mice infestation.

The grumpy hippie pizzaman owner who bought the joint a couple years back has hung up his Birkenstock cleats…

Maybe we’re all safer for it…

I’ll assume the “herbal relief remedies” biz continues to be better received around his social circle…

R.I.P another local small biz quasi- institution…

Last night before the earthquake rattled windows and nerves, a crowd of already rattled neighbors crowded into the Cafe Neon in District 5 to hear updates from the police department and city policy pushers on the recent spate of shootings & unsolved murders in the North of Panhandle area. The overflow turnout was considerably larger than one anticipates at these usual community shuck & jives where one hears how your taxdollars are being systematically siphoned and spent on who knows what.

Amongst the presenters gathered by organizer & concerned mother of two Leela Gill were reps from SF’s Drug Court, the Mayor’s Deputy Chief of staff for Public Safety, reps from the DA’s office and the headliners of the event… D5 Supe Ross Mirkirimi, as well as the affable Captain Ehrlich of Park Station and Lt. John Murphy of the Gang Task Force.

While no solutions were likely to come from the meeting, there was some info shared, the usual venting, some back slapping, connections being made and the sense that there are many people concerned about doing some positive things in a city that can’t afford any more negatives.

Some random opinions on the meeting, and also after the jump : some potentially useful numbers you might want for reporting crimes, or contacting city agencies about issues.
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