It’s deep summer, which means neighborhood street fairs — the usual long rows of booths with obscure nonprofit groups, greasy food, and crafts of questionable provenance, with a stage at either end cranking out music that is quickly swept off by the strong breeze.

Two events which should be different:

The Street Food Street Fest, which will happen Saturday from 11 to 7 on Folsom St. between 25th and 26th. Why there? It’s the block where you’ll find La Cocina Community Kitchen, a four year old nonprofit business that incubates community food-oriented businesses run largely by immigrant women. Among the food vendors will be Sabores del Sur and Laiola.

On Saturday and Sunday, visit the San Francisco Zine Fest from 11 to 6, at the Hall of Flowers (known also as the County Fair Building) off Lincoln Way and 9th Avenue in Golden Gate Park. Not just an exhibition, the event features panels of all kinds for DIY publishers, journalists and artists. Admission to the whole event is FREE.

“Miracle fruit” — Synsepalum dulcificum to the degree-holding class — is a strange berry which has little taste of its own but which works to nullify and transform spicy, sour or bitter tastes, making them sweet. The New York Times had an article about it in May, with users saying it makes Tabasco sauce taste like sugar and lemon sorbet mixed with Guinness like a chocolate shake. Thus “the fruit of the poor lemon” becomes possible to eat.

Mugwumpin, the San Francisco theater company planning a trip to Cairo to a theater festival, will hold a fundraiser for the trip featuring the strange fruit on Saturday, Sep. 6 in Oakland. For more info, email info@mugwumpin.org.

With the combination of the sad steroids scandal shadowing baseball, and economic hard times bringing attendance down, Bud Selig and his boys have got a hard sell on their hands.

Leave it to “America’s Pastime” to pull through in a pinch, and in a country where half of all people are overweight, ya gotta keep fans fat & happy, so the teams are going all out this year…

The bloated innards of Oakland’s McAfee Coliseum will be filled with happy gorging bleacher bums this summer as the soon to be Fremont A’s offer up their take on the latest “innovative marketing” idea to hit MLB.

Hey corndog fans, have you ever craved “All You Can Eat” seating sections ?

Apparently the LA Dodgers started this ploy off a couple years ago, and it’s all the rage, with Nascar & Hockey Teams now doing it as well. Be amongst the first in the Bay Area to enjoy this symptom of our societal sickness, and an obsequious toast to obesity…

I know previous dollar hot dog nights in Oakland have long been an insanely popular tribute to the Bay Area’s reputation for gustatory excellence & impeccable taste, and if they throw in those nasty Nachos & bottomless Mountain Dews… now yer talking.

If you’d be interested in trying this out in April and filling your belly with an endless feast of soda pop, ice cream, franks and other ballpark cuisine health hazards, I’ve got discounted ticket code info below.

To purchase discount All-You-Can-Eat seats: visit www.oaklandathletics.com and select one of the below listed games, and enter the coupon code: EATS

This will get you in for just $20 each (instead of the usual $35) to enjoy your privileged feasting section at the following select games in April…

Saturday, April 5 vs. Cleveland @ 1:05PM
Friday, April 18 vs. Kansas City @ 7:05PM
Tuesday, April 22 vs. Minnesota @ 7:05PM

Order the tickets online, then get on Bart & get yer butt down to 7000 Coliseum Way in Oakland…

I was hungry when I decided to surf around for new blogs to peruse. And I guess one should not surf on an empty stomach, as I discovered a mini-community of food bloggers in the process, which managed to make me even hungrier. Or maybe one should surf on an empty stomach, as I also managed to stumble upon a number of cool San Francisco food blogs. Not only were they full of beautiful photos of mouth-watering food, they were also chockful of restaurant reviews, interesting recipes, and colorful insights on the culinary scene in the Bay Area (I believe some of them are professional chefs). I only managed to find 6 of them, but I’m sure there are more. Here they are for your perusal:

• On My Plate
• Chez Pim
• Cooking With Amy
• An Obsession With Food
• The Cheese Diaries
• 101 Cookbooks

Just be forewarned that you may get hungry while visiting the above blogs.