SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: France, 24th Street and Guerrero
Tell us about your look: “I’m from Belgium. I made these clothes.”
SFBG Blogs
Bloodsports and the Exotic Erotic Ball
By Juliette Tang
Those who would like to attend Perry Mann’s Erotic Exotic Ball (Oct 24 @ Cow Palace) next weekend but who balk at the $79 general admission price tag (i.e. you, me, and everyone we know) have the option of donating blood this Saturday in exchange for a free pass, while supplies last. Organizers are sponsoring a blood drive at Blood Centers of the Pacific’s Irwin Center (270 Masonic Ave) from 2 to 9PM on Saturday (Oct 16) and each donor will receive one ticket to the event. If you wish to schedule an appointment to donate blood, you may go to BloodHeroes.com and enter “ExErBall” as your sponsor code. For those who partake in needle play, this means you can have your cake and eat it too.
The Erotic Ball has graced San Francisco with its presence since 1979 and features “live music, top DJs, erotic performers, exotic dancers, wild sideshows and playful interactive fun on multiple stages”. If the video above with its clips from previous years’ festivities is anything to go by, this entails near limitless opportunities for depravity and an all-around epic night of partying. A pass seems well worth a little blood, a service to the community, and an hour of on a Saturday afternoon.
Why do they hate America and love Brazil?
What we have here with Rush Limbaugh and staffers at the Weekly Standard is a coup de foudre, a thunderbolt of love that strikes without warning and cannot be denied.
By Jess Brownell
(Jess Brownell is our Voice of the Heartland, observing the political scene as a freelance writer from Milwaukee.)
According to news reports, staffers at the conservative Weekly Standard cheered when they learned that Rio de Janeiro rather than Chicago had been selected to host the 2016 Olympics. Rush Limbaugh pronounced himself “gleeful,” I’m told. Others in that camp were equally pleased at the result.
Why do these people hate America?
Understand that I ask the question in a plaintive tone. In the past they were the people who could always be depended upon to love America unconditionally, without reservations, with all their hearts and souls, forever and ever, amen. When others ventured to criticize some little American venture – Viet Nam, Iraq – they were the ones who told us to love our country or leave it. They carried around flags to wrap themselves in whenever they thought the occasion called for it and a camera was in the vicinity. They admired the men and women of our armed forces so much they might almost have become one of them had they not heard a higher call to punditry. Now, without warning, they have transferred their undying affection to Brazil. How could this happen?
Hot sex events this week: Oct 14-20
Compiled by Molly Freedenberg
Artist Laurel Lee hosts a fine art class geared towards women, lesbians, and female-identified people on Saturday.
————-
>> CSC Film Night: Happy Endings?
CSC presents an intriguing exploration of the Asian massage parlor industry in Providence, Rhode Island.
Wed/14, 7:30pm
$5-$15
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.sexandculture.org
————-
>> Barbary Coast Burlesque
Wear a costume, wine a prize, and enjoy drink specials while Virginia Suicide hosts this monthly show, featuring Mae Western, Cupcake, Kitty Von Quimm, Balla Fire, and more.
Wed/14, 8pm
$5
Annie’s Social Club
917 Folsom, SF
www.anniessocialclub.com
————-
>> Sensual Chemistry
Beyond Education and The Pleasure Course present this installment of BEing Talks, meant to help you realize your deepest desires.
Thurs/15, 6:45pm
$15
Call for location
(415) 308-9580
www.pleasurecourse.com
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Our endorsements
For the Nov. 3 election are here. We’ve also endorsed John Garamendi for Congress in District 10. Fell free to comment if you disagree with us ….
alt.sex.column: Perv 101
By Andrea Nemerson: andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com. Read more of Andrea’s columns here
Dear Andrea:
I guess this is pretty common, but it’s not something I have any experience with, so please bear with me.
I have a lot of fantasies about being tied up, humiliated, etc. and often think about them while my girlfriend and I are having sex. I’m sure you know where this is going, but I’d really like it if she did the tying up and humiliating — but I have no idea how I would bring it up or how to talk to her about it. It’s not like I even know that much about it myself. Should I just forget about it and stick with fantasies? Is it just a stupid idea?
Love,
Unsure
Dear Sure:
I’ll tell you one thing: what with all the "I’m sure you already know" and "I don’t know much about it myself" and "Do you think I’m stupid even to think about this? How stupid? Really stupid?", you are showing a certain natural talent for abjection that I’m sure will serve you well in your new career as a bottom.
This is a perennial topic, and in a way it has gotten easier to answer over time — when I started the column, I had to recommend books (can you imagine?) and about three Web sites I happened to know about (and you’d never find without me because Google didn’t exist). In another way, though, it’s, well, not harder, but more disheartening. A girlfriend who’d never heard anything about bondage and discipline except the phrases "whips and chains" and a few grim episodes of Law and Order in 1997 could conceivably just need a little education and just might jump right in as soon as she knew what you were talking about. A girlfriend who says "I don’t know what you’re talking about, and also, ew!" in 2009 is probably not going to be running down to the Dungeon Hole Gifte Shoppe for a black latex body-bag and a "Gates of Hell" penis cage in your size anytime soon.
Squeeze my box
By Dan Abbott
Skyler Fell, who performed at the SF Accordion Club’s September gathering.
In an age of accelerating cultural fusion and mutation, it should come as no surprise that the accordion has undergone something of a renaissance. A staple of musical traditions from as far afield as Eastern Europe, Mexico, and Italy, the various permutations of the squeezebox has resurfaced with renewed vigor. The San Francisco Bay Area has become something of a hub for this rebirth, aided by both its location at the hub of cultural ley lines and its rich history as – believe it or not – an accordion exporting powerhouse.
Frank Montoro, president of the, San Francisco Accordion Club has watched accordion culture wax and wane with the times. Until the middle of the 20th century, there were at least five accordion factories churning out instruments in North Beach alone, Montoro says, mostly by Italians who’d brought generations of craft knowledge over from the Old Country.
“I watched my accordion being built, back in the ‘40s,” he remembers fondly. The advent of rock’n’roll and mass culture swept much of the accordion’s prestige (and visibility) away, Montoro says, until it seemed an ethnic relic, the obscure province of nerds, wedding music and Weird Al Yankovic. “Times have changed,” the octogenarian Montoro says. “If you like Swedish music, where are you going to go?”
Dive In: Phone Booth’s a missed call
Bar reviewer Kristen Haney seeks to separate hipster wannabes from real-life dives in this weekly column. Check out her last installment here.
Before you all start squawking at me about how Phone Booth isn’t a dive – I know. But after reading reviews of the place that kept throwing around the term “dive” like confetti on New Year’s Eve, I figured it was my duty to check it out. (Tough life, I know.) So I threw myself on a bus and traveled over to the area in the city best known for having dives that are anything but dive-y – the Mission.
At first glance, Phone Booth looks promising. The place is tiny, cramped, and dark. Cigarette smoke floats through the air, further obscuring vision, and a chandelier comprised of naked Barbies looks like a dead baby joke waiting to happen. Furry fake spiders crawl over another light fixture, and a lone pool table hunkers in the corner, with barely enough space around it for a proper shot. The mixed drinks are poured with a heavy hand by a no-nonsense bartender who looks like she could just as easily shoot the shit with you as she could tear you a new one.
Unfortunately, while the atmosphere feels right, the touches that make Phone Booth unique are also ultimately the cause of its fall from grace (or is it an upward crawl?) away from classification as a dive bar. Kitschy décor, seasoned bartenders, and cheap drinks do not a dive bar make. However, they do attract a certain kind of crowd, especially in that area.
Tim Schafer: the brütally complete interview!
By Ben Richardson
Tim Schafer is the San Francisco-based game designer behind Brütal Legend, an epic action-adventure title set in the world of heavy metal. (Read our cover story here.) Reached by phone in New York City, where he was preparing to tape Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Schafer dispensed some wit and wisdom.
San Francisco Bay Guardian: What was the moment in which you went from being Tim Schafer, man about town, to Tim Schafer, game designer about to go on the Jimmy Fallon show?
Tim Schafer: There was a moment when I was getting on a MUNI train, when someone yelled at me that they loved [the game]Day of the Tentacle. I was like “God, that’s so awesome! My own town! They love Day of the Tentacle!”
SFBG: Do you think the rise of game designers as public personalities — more along the lines of musicians, or movie directors or authors — is a good thing for gaming? Do you think it will make publishers more willing to put out products that are more risky, that are more bound up, like Brütal Legend is, in the dream of one talented designer?
TS: I think it’s good for games creatively, because a lot of times games can seem anonymous, they can seem like they were made by any studio or created by a committee — like no one’s really responsible for it. I would love to see games become more personal, and make you really feel like you’re playing a specific person’s, or a specific team’s game, like “this is a Double Fine game, this is a game only Double Fine could make.” That’s just something I hope for in the industry.
SFBG: What are the things that you would point to that define a Double Fine [Schafer’s company] game, or a Tim Schafer game?
Jon Stewart: CNN leaves it there
B3: Jon Stewart says, “CNN: Nobody leaves more things there.” In a short segment on his Daily show (l0/12/09),
Stewart gives one of the most incisive commentaries I’ve seen on the problem with television news. He nails,
among other things, the interviewing bloviator who allows the lies to go unchallenged, doesn’t ask the obvious followup questions, or do the research to get at the truth. How can CNN keep “leaving it there” (the lie), he asks, when it has a huge backup staff and a 24-hour news cycle?
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| CNN Leaves It There | ||||
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SFMTA report recommends extended parking meter hours
By Steven T. Jones
A just-released San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency study has recommend extending parking meter hours to Sundays and nights as a means of raising $8.8 million in annual revenue, increasing parking availability, and reducing traffic congestion and illegal parking – setting up a potential clash with Mayor Gavin Newsom, who opposes the idea and who appointed the MTA board members who will make the decision.
The detailed SFMTA study, launched in May as part of a budget compromise, took a neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach to its analysis, recommending varying hours and conditions to try to achieve the 85 percent occupancy rate it considers ideal. For example, 59 percent of metered spaces would have hours extended to 9 pm Monday through Thursday and until midnight Friday and Saturday, while 23 percent of spaces would remain at 6 pm on weekdays and 9 pm on weekends. And at 17 percent of meters with the lowest parking availability, drivers would need to plug meters until midnight everyday except Sunday, when metering hours would end at 6 p.m. citywide.
“This proposal for extended meter hours fits into a larger vision of the SFMTA’s overall transportation and parking policy goals and furthers San Francisco’s Transit First policy,” Nathaniel P. Ford Sr., executive director of the SFMTA, said today in a prepared statement. “Parking meters create parking availability and they support economic vitality by helping business customers find parking when they need it.”
An abomination in the Mission
By Tim Redmond
Thanks, MissionMission for alerting us to the abominable project proposed for 17th and Mission. Ick. Talk about out of place.
Teens take over library, olds gasp
By Cailtin Donohue
Just when you thought you were safe… teens take over the library
Friday night at the library! Sure, when I was 17 you couldn’t have gotten me there with a sharp stick and an unmarked van, but back then I was doing more meaningful things like chugging Mike’s Hard Lemonade and straightening my hair.
Not so with the attendees of TeenQuake. This sucka-free event of which I speak is part of LitQuake’s mega lineup of all that is arty and eloquent. The west coast’s largest literary festival has somehow managed to convince the San Francisco Main Library to be peacefully taken over by the under-20 set, and dulcet tones of teen lit authors will be echoing off the walls all night. Look forward to readings by Frank PortmanFrank Portman, author of King Dork, whose title character wryly dismantles life as a baby boomer’s progeny:
“He must have read the notebook. Otherwise, how would he have reached the conclusion that my ‘relationship’ with ‘my girlfriend’ was undermining his generation’s sacred achievement of the institution of easygoing touchy-feely ouchless deodorant optional crunchy-granola Hair-soundtrack butterflies-and-unicorns sexuality?”
TeenQuake featured artist Tom Franco’s story illustration from his collaboration with Mom
Also featured are teen lit writers Ying Chang Compestine, Tom Dolby and mother-son team Betsy and Tom Franco who recently collaborated on Metamorphosis, a young adult novel whose narrator recasts his high school social milieu in the form of ancient Roman mythology. In addition to all the booky folk there will be an emcee battle, a scavenger hunt whose victor wins a Wii, a live art wall and performances by teen spoken word artists, dancers and musicians.
So find the coolest, most verbose teenager you know and give them a ride. And how about just drop them off there because (a) they want to do their own thing and (b) Teenquake’s for 13-19 year olds. Don’t be that guy.
TEENQUAKE
Fri/16, 6:30-9 p.m., free
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin, SF
(415) 750-1497 www.litquake.org
Twenty galleries in two hours
By Spencer Young
“First Thursday” is, you guessed it, the first Thursday of every month, but it’s also an open house art event where 30-plus galleries, mostly concentrated in downtown SF, invite you to look and hopefully buy their art things from around 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
But, what if — like me — you struggle making decisions that involve seemingly endless options and finite resources (time, money, stomach space)? If at restaurants you get overwhelmed by the menu’s dimensions, eventually narrow it down to the french toast and panini, but linger between the combinations tirelessly? You can choose at random, allowing chance to dictate your indecisiveness, or, you give in, exercising volition. Neither option, however, will erase the pangs of what was left out — what if the wild arugula salad would have been the one?
Oh the anguish of living in a liberal democracy! How does one make a decision and avoid the anxiety of absence? The answer: suicide. Not the act, but the drink. Filling a 64 ounce mug from every soda pop spout from Hawaiian Punch to Mountain Dew reconciles the dilemma at hand, because everything is chosen and nothing left out. Sure, the result tastes like shit, but at least you’ve experienced all there was to experience, albeit all at once.
This was my logic for “First Thursday.” There was just one problem: given that there’s over 30 participating galleries and only a two-hour window, that leaves less than four minutes per gallery, excluding commute time. Impossible.
The next best alternative? Hit the most concentrated area: 49 Geary St. With five floors and 20 galleries, two hours allow five minutes per gallery and 20 minutes in the hallways and stairs. Most galleries get boring after mere seconds anyways, so five minutes is plenty of time to drink a glass of wine, do a quick perusal, snap some photos, and jot down some impressions. In order to avoid another decision, these shotgun summaries are limited to 49 words each, constrained, like each gallery’s space, by the building. In order of viewing, here are 20 extremely hasty reviews of the 49 Geary St. galleries:
1. Bekris Gallery: “Common Ground” (continues through Nov. 21) www.bekrisgallery.com
Importantly dressed buyer-types regaling each other of trips to Africa and chanting, “Oh, how do you do?” “How do you do.” Broom-like statues of African subjects, and lively colored paintings with tricky ciphers fill the room. General, by William Kentridge, is the most attractive piece in the place.
General by William Kentridge. All photos by Spencer Young.
2. George Lawson Gallery: Clem Crosby, Tad Wiley, Transfocus (continues through Oct. 3) www.rfprfp.com
Eerily empty compared to Bekris Gallery. Clem Crosby: crude, ugly, drippy oil paintings seemingly painted with fingers, fists, and libidinal angst. Tad Wiley: solemn, yet inviting graphic arts balanced-shape paintings on paper. Transfocus: haunting photos of the abstract, awash in yummy colors. Uhh… where is the wine?
Art by Tad Wiley
Gavin Newsom’s “reform” pitch
By Tim Redmond
Mayor Gavin Newsom doesn’t have enough money to do a major statewide TV buy, but he’s making his early pitch, and trying to define the race, with a new internet ad. Calitics points out that the ad
mentions not once, but twice, both the Constitutional Convention and eliminating the 2/3rds rule. Newsom is positioning himself as the candidate of not just “change” but of structural reform:
Of course, those of us who live in San Francisco know that Newsom has done nothing — nothing — in terms of real structural reform in the city, and has pused a Schwarzenegger-style no-new-taxes budget. He was at first very wary about Constitutional change, but now is embracing it, sensing, no doubt, that the mood of the public is so down on Sacramento and Sacto politiciians that the concept of fundamental change is attractive — even when peddled by someone who has no credentials as a “change” candidate.
But for Jerry Brown, this is serious stuff — the candidate who defines the race first is often in a much better position to make the case for his or her election. And Newsom is trying to define the race as insider-outsider, change v. politics as usual. Brown may have the poll numbers and the money, but if he sits around and lets Newsom define the race, he’s playing a dangerous game.
Writers Issue: Along Telegraph
By Arisa White
East Bay Rats are across the street from Gold Coin Car Wash
Oaksterdam is across the street from Victory Stables
Greyhound is across the street from Social Services
The woman in sequins is across the street from EBT Cards Accepted
The cross on his chest made my body the more bare. Compelled to be a blanket, fur, however he would have me, he had me. His god was something to hang on to. A chain that made return possible. My reflection sullied the gold. It dimmed above or beneath me, a way a mother’s face turns off her love. She offers enough to guide you towards her but her withdrawal leaves a cold spot, hollowed earth after a stake’s been pulled.
The house we couldn’t build is across from the house I wouldn’t build
Makes miracles happen is across from when whiskey made my tongue thirsty for hers
Blue Bird Liquor is across the street from the bathroom whose orange walls could not muffle
Hotel California is across from Broaster’s Chicken coming soon
Men, when they do, cross their legs in the way of academics. Never in the way of churchwomen who keep the secret covered—there’s nothing to be implored, explored, discovered. In the way of academics, the whole body thinks. To the side, he shows a chin propped by a fist, between his cheeks thought is candy, eyes turn skyward. In the way of churchwomen their eyes look down, to their breast, beneath their shirt, to the source of much anxiety, a nipple, pleasured by the touch of rayon.
City Line is a hand hennaed and scarred
Retro the Victorian’s scaffolded face
Free Baby Jamaica from the bus’ accordion folds
Black & White the street for a frantic Dodge, a passenger lost
I cross my t’s and think men are dying. The bushes sing baritone and contralto, from someone’s gut a baby’s born. For every shattered platelet, men are folding into each other, bodies pressed like puzzles. There’s comfort knowing his edge has a home. In a t. In a cup or covering the chest, he values sunrise, for days to speed, for the soul to let go bone. He the more aware death’s a trespasser, and the heart will bark ’til a red meat turns it elsewhere—a man at the end of wait.
Rent-a-Relic is the fence that says this side, mine; this side, you stay
The rainbow an International Blvd where pussy is young and produce is wilted
The lake is the ocean whose skin is split by pirates who negotiate with corporations
The senior citizens home weeps willows in his and hers yards
Cross my heart and hope, a needle in the eye. The cross is an X, really. Is how to find a treasure. How to hug at an end of a letter. If you dig where I mark, what do you do with the gravel, the flesh that slips back into the hole? Mail it to my brother, he is the most poetic. He will blend it with oil-colors and spend nights on canvas, painting verse after verse, with the breathiest weather, a text you can prism.
Newsom’s fundraising and ethics challenged
By Steven T. Jones
The San Francisco Chronicle has a solid lead story today about how Mayor Gavin Newsom seems to be violating Prop. H, a campaign finance reform measure that he wrote and promoted last year. Reporter Heather Knight unearthed compelling evidence, but then unfortunately bought the bullshit excuses from Newsom’s notoriously unethical treasurer Jim Sutton and concluded the contributions “don’t appear to violate the letter of Proposition H.”
I suspect it was Knight’s editors who made her pull the punch because some of the donations seem squarely banned by Prop. H – with Newsom essentially giving away public funds to entities that then gave to his gubernatorial campaign (not to mention giving his wife an acting job). What do you think?
Meanwhile, the ironically named “I Love You Gavin Newsom” has an interesting post today on a similar topic, questioning whether Newsom is getting unreported in-kind political contributions from Twitter. The story isn’t well-sourced, but it does raise an interesting question and is worth a read.
Why gag orders don’t work anymore
By Tim Redmond
One of the many wonderful things about the modern world of media is that government and legal gag orders really don’t work anymore.
The Guardian of London faced a stunning order this week not to publish information on a question asked in Parliament. But the minute the paper announced it had been gagged, the social media networks and the bloggers came alive with the story, and before long, the question that the Guardian couldn’t report on was published in its entirely (among other places, in the comments on my previous blog item on this).
Turns out this was all about a London law firm, Carter Ruck, trying to block publication of information about alleged toxic waste dumping in Ivory Coast. (You can read the report that started all the fuss here.)
Here’s the result,. according to the Guardian:
The result of Carter-Ruck’s intransigence was an avalanche of online publication, as well as the reproduction of Farrelly’s parliamentary questions in the magazine Private Eye, which hit the London streets at lunchtime today. Bloggers who posted Farrelly’s questions in full included the political website Guido Fawkes and the Spectator magazine website.
Large numbers of messages were posted on Twitter, to the extent that “Trafigura” and “Carter-Ruck” became the most viewed keywords in London throughout the morning.
So now the whole thing is a major public issue, probably bringing more negative publicity for Carter Ruck and Trafigura than would ever have happened if the firm had never sought the gag order. Go team.
Sexcipe: Mommy makes steak
By Mistress Eve Minax, a professional dominatrix, sex educator, and food lover based in SF
If you’ve been following the last sexcipes, you now know how to prepare an eight hour pork spare rib meal with side of rubber gimp, and you also know how to make a hot sexy quicky with a burger and your lover.
Today’s sexcipe will focus on a meal that may not take any longer than the quicky but is so widely appreciated that it begs to be accompanied by a classic scenario from everybody’s favorite person and potential sex symbol, their Mommy. Now, I’m not talking about your actual mother. I’m talking about that feminine archetype who has held your hand when you were sick, spanked you when you peed the bed, and gave up the best cuts of meat to make sure you grow up big and strong. In other words, the maternal figure who cares for you, disciplines you, and also creates some of your initial sexual propensities in life. As a Mommy figure I find bringing my “children” into a primal state of no longer having to worry about who they are and what their place is in society gives me a great opportunity to contain them in that primal space while allowing their sexual fantasies to emerge.
Ingredients:
Truffle Steak
1 pound grass fed velvet steak (you may substitute skirt or bavette, but I prefer velvet)
2 cloves garlic
pinch of truffle salt
crushed black pepper
smidge of olive oil (truffle if you have it)
8-10 shitake mushrooms
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Anette, 19th Street and Valencia
Tell us about your look: “I really like this coat. It’s from Buffalo in the Mission.
I like big hoods, they look mystical. I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan!”
Free concert: 40th Anniversary of Woodstock
From the producers of the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock:
Free Concert Golden Gate Park
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Event: “West Fest” Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock.
Attraction: 42 bands, 3 stages and 26 poster artists. Solar domes, Alternative vehicles, Electric bikes, Native American Tipi Village, Sustainable Living Road Show, Conscious Art Gallery, Light Temple, Holistic Healing Section, Hooper Heaven, Rock’n Green Kids Zone and Eco Village vendors. Narada Michael Walden featuring Vernon e Black leading 3,000 guitar players and closing the show with the Hendrix Experience reenactment and Superstar Jam
Admission: FREE
When: October 25, 2009, 9am to 6pm
Where: Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA USA
Producer: 2b1 Multimedia Inc. and the Council of Light in association with Artie Kornfeld, the original producer of “Woodstock 1969”
Contact: Boots Hughston, 415-861-1520 www.2b1records.com/woodstock40sf or woodstock40sf@yahoo.com
A stunning gag order
By Tim Redmond
The Guardian of London just received a stunning gag order forbidding the paper from reporting on a Parliamentary debate.
Check this out:
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.
The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.
Whoa. The thing is, with today’s social networking and fast-moving media, I suspect somebody’s going to leak and post the info pretty quickly anyway. And I don’t think the UK authorities can prevent web sites in other countries from publishing it.
The outcome will be interesting not just for UK media law, but for the (lack of) success of gag orders in general. At least, I hope so.
Sweet Tooth: So Fraîche, so clean
By Megan Gordon
I know, I know. The last thing you want to hear about is a new frozen yogurt joint. Last year, it seemed like the neon Pinkberry imposters were popping up on every street corner. It wasn’t the Jane Fonda yogurt of the 80’s—it was fresh, tart, and had a clean, healthy aftertaste. It was good while it lasted, but I’m over it. There’s only so much mochi a girl can take down.
But the other day, I was cruising down Fillmore, trying to walk off a hearty brunch when I stumbled across Fraîche, a sweet little shop with a brilliantly designed interior (i.e. no neon), and really different yogurt. Trust me. Yes, I already ate brunch—and we’re talking biscuits, grits, a crab benedict, two cups of coffee, and a few bites of a warm beignet. So it wasn’t exactly a small meal, and I was far from hungry. But I couldn’t resist. I had to try a little cup.