Coffee

Adieu, Paris

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Adieu, Paris

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

Here’s a funny thing. I am supposed to be on a plane right now, and I’m not. You know in movies when the tearful lover is in line at the gate, wearing sunglasses, even while the other lover, the one with better sneakers, is dashing through the airport, leaping over luggage, dodging go-carts, and generally knocking over ordinary citizens in a desperate attempt to stop her?

Well, this was nothing like that. Not even a little. Hedgehog has an ingrown toenail and is in no condition to dash, dodge, or leap. In consideration of which I had tried to get her to purchase an airplane ticket to somewhere, but she was all like, why?

“Um,” I explained, “because — hello — my feet are fine?” In fact I am training for opening day of the SFWFFL on March 12, and running through airports is pretty good for me.

She was all like, oh. Still … did she buy herself an airplane ticket? No, she did not. At 11 a.m. this morning, when my flight to France took off without me, I was sitting on my slave quarters bed, calmly sipping coffee and reading the Sunday Times.

Hedgehog was home reviewing post offices for Yelp. Sure, she is happy I’m still in New Orleans, as am I. In fact, tomorrow afternoon we are going to sit on her porch! So you know, though, two other people are even happier than we are that I didn’t get on that plane. I speak of course of the Doughboy’s moms, Butterby and Super Duper Flashlight Mom, who have been threatening since my arrival to cut off my feet by way of keeping me here.

Time and again, I have argued that without feet I would not be much use to their baby. Eventually, after many repetitions and PowerPoint demonstrations, they “got” this — thankfully because I wouldn’t have been much use to my football team either.

Butterby cried when I told them I was staying. She had to leave the room. It wasn’t the first time I made her cry. The first time, I was explaining barbecued eggs to her, and when I got to the part where I wrap the bacon “scarf” around the bell pepper, she started to go emo on me.

Super Duper took me to the Krewe du Vieux parade and caught throws for me. She’s tall, aggressive, and Southern by birth, so she says “y’all” with authority. But you know what? So do the Asian people at Nola’s many fine Vietnamese joints.

My moms’s child, my charge, is perhaps the most edible thing our planet has ever produced. It’s all I can do to keep my own teeth out of the fuzzy skin behind his ears, let alone ward off the dogs and coyotes of New Orleans. When we are at the zoo, all the animals, even the vegetarians, come right up to the edge of their domains and stare at him in a kind of a trance.

Do you think he might be Jesus?

Dear You,

That is great. Me and Joel went to the Pad Thai Restaurant near where he now lives, which is Bernal, and that’s sad for me in that he no longer lives in the building, but great all-in-all because he has a great setup with a great lady and a terrific little boy wherein he can now get a little weepy listening to pop songs when he thinks about how wonderful life can be. It was Presidents Day, and I was wondering if it was all presidents, including the Bushes.

Joel said no, just two of them.

At Pad Thai, there is no confusion because they have pictures of all the dishes they serve. No lunch specials to speak of, but everything is around $8 or $11. We split a mango salad, which had shrimp and squid and was lime-y and good-spicy. And I got the Egg Bomb because if it’s on the menu, you have to get it. And Joel got the chicken with green beans. Except for the egg, our dishes were very similar. Delicious.

Yers, Earl

Pad Thai

Mon.–Fri. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Sat.–Sun. noon–10 p.m.

3259 Mission, SF

(415) 285-4210

MC/V

Beer and wine

No easy baskets for St. Mary’s

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
No easy baskets for St. Mary’s

culture@sfbg.com

SPORTS It was January in Nashville, and it was cold as balls. Snow had fallen two days earlier and was still lying on the skinny slivers of road where the cars hadn’t repeatedly passed over yet. Inside Vanderbilt University’s Memorial Gym, a cold reality of a different sort was being served up by the Vanderbilt Commodores to San Francisco’s accomplished St Mary’s men’s basketball team, ranked 22nd in the nation by the Associated Press at the time.

For those who don’t keep a close eye on college basketball, St. Mary’s team had flown under the national radar for the past few years until it really began turning heads about a year ago. That’s when the tiny Catholic college from the East Bay town of Moraga upset second-seeded Villanova in the second round of the NCAA tournament and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 1959. At viewing parties across the country, salsa was spit out of mouths, glass coffee tables were karate-chopped, remote controls were flung to shatter priceless antique mirrors. And the following Monday that cocky asshole from accounting had to walk over to the 20-year old intern who’d probably never filled out an office pool bracket in his life and hand him a wad of his beer money.

None of that magic came with St. Mary’s Gaels to Nashville. They lost 89-70. It still ranks as their worst loss of the season, and it came on the heels of 11 straight wins. But as they prepare for this week’s West Coast conference tournament in Las Vegas and then the national tournament — assuming they qualify — should all conclusions drawn from one game like this one be thrown out the window? Or is it noteworthy that some weaknesses were exposed?

“Definitely you can learn a lot of lessons,” says Gaels guard Matthew Dellavedova, sitting and facing a cluster of postgame cameras and reporters after the Vanderbilt game. “And we’re going to learn some from today.” With the Australian’s shaggy hairdo, it might help to imagine a pothead younger brother, if you’ve got one, or at least a very misplaced surfer. That kind of stigma was amplified, and seemingly justified, once Dellavedova was bombarded by strange Southern interviewers with slow drawls that must have seemed pretty foreign from the perspective of the sophomore, who himself speaks in deep, slow-cadenced Aussie near-mumbles. He hesitates after every question and glances over at his coach, as if to make sure he’s heard everything right. “Definitely it could have been a different ending if we could have taken the crowd out of it,” he says. “But, yeah, we did have chances. We just didn’t make the most of ’em today.”

But Dellavedova didn’t really owe anyone much explanation after the loss. He scored 19 points, while other usual hot hands, like the more conventional scorer Mickey McConnell (six points), went suspiciously silent. And Dellavedova maintained his focus through the Vandy student section’s syncopated chants of his nickname, “Psych-o Cave-Man … clap, clap, clap-clap-clap,” every time he stepped up to the free throw line in Nashville.

Dellavedova is one of the best hard-nosed street ball type players in America. A deft ball-handler, his name can usually be found among the country’s leaders in assist-to-turnover ratio. Some of those unorthodox shots he makes really drew out a humorous cross-firing of spattered curse words from the flustered opposing fans in Nashville.

The problem was that after playing so well early in the season, the St. Mary’s team had to seriously struggle against the Commodores’ brutish man-to-man defense. St. Mary’s was limited to 41.9 percent accuracy in shooting from the field, and went 6 for 23 from the three point range. The Gaels came in second in the country in field goal percentage (.511) and made three pointers per game (9.6).

The Commodores achieved these unprecedented results with their notably longer-armed players. In the South, that’s the norm; to West Coast teams, it presents problems offenses aren’t used to. Vanderbilt, a team easily among the best 20 or 25 in America, had a hand in every passing lane and contested nearly every shot. “Length is all over our league,” says Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings. “When you step out of your league and play in a league like ours, it can be bothersome. St. Mary’s is a much better team than we saw today.” The question now is, how much better?

St. Mary’s followed its loss to Vanderbilt with an impressive win at Gonzaga (the first of two games the teams played against each other the season). But having lost the last three games to the University of San Diego, Utah State, and its round two with Gonzaga, the Gaels once again have something to prove. They came into this season with pundits saying they’d struggle to replace last year’s star big man Omar Samhan, but Dellavedova and McConnell’s play silenced that early negativity. Now they will be playing for their tournament lives with the conference tournament looming and, if all goes well, the NCAA tournament after that.

It is in those tournament formats that the Gaels have succeeded most in the past. Teams are left to scramble to prepare for their unique offense, often with much quicker turnarounds between games than in the regular season. But given the way Dellavedova and McConnell shoot coming off a ball screen, it would be unwise to rule out the possibility of the Gaels getting back to the Sweet Sixteen.

If they do make it back, their coach, Randy Bennett, will look like a genius in the eyes of the national writers for scheduling a tough non-conference road game in late January, against convention. Just don’t expect the Psycho Caveman to get too bothered by any regular season loss. He says the memory of last year’s tournament run will make his team respond as they continue their fight for a tournament berth. “They played pretty good defense today,” Dellavedova says. “And hopefully that helps us later in the season.”

 

BAY AREA COLLEGE MEN’S BASKETBALL ROUNDUP

UC Berkeley: The Golden Bears have a good shot at the NIT. They played one of the country’s most difficult schedules this season, but their conference and overall records are hovering just above .500.

Stanford: The Cardinal is in a similar position to Cal. But with the team’s softer non-conference schedule, it really needs to make a big splash in the Pac-10 tournament to turn any heads.

San Jose State: The Spartans will not get into the NCAA tournament unless they win their conference tourney. But since they are near the bottom of their standings, there is little reason to expect it this season. Even so, the team still has a shot to finish with a winning record.

University of San Francisco: The Dons have proven they can beat every team except St. Mary’s. To earn a trip to the big dance, they will either have to beat the Gaels or hope someone else does.

Santa Clara: Like the Dons, the Broncos have lost twice to St. Mary’s. They will end up with a winning record this season, but to take the next step they will need to get past the Gaels.

Time to start building a cold frame

Mary Magee
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4
Time to start building a cold frame

No, I’m not talking about Democrats building shelters against the big chill that the Republicans are trying to bring down on public sector workers, and the impact of that push on folks engaged in pension reform debates in San Francisco. Instead, I’m looking at the possibility that snow could fall at sea level around San Francisco this weekend for the first time in 35 years–and wondering if gardeners need to start worrying about protecting crops and plants that don’t like icy climes.

Hardy winter vegetables and bulbs typically do fine under a warm blanket of snow. But a lot of folks in the Bay Area start growing stuff in January and February that’s not cut out for snow.
 
I’ve read that you can use empty coffee cans, milk jugs with the bottom cut out, or sandwich bags as makeshift plant protection, provided there’s enough space in these containers for your plants to breathe. But just as I was planning to raid the recycle bins, Adam, a fellow gardener and Guardianista, pointed out that such measures won’t withstand high winds, and that if I’m serious about protecting buds and blooms, I should consider building a cold frame

Hmm. Maybe I’ll get around to buying untreated lumber, fastening it with galanized screws, pounding wooden stakes into the ground, and battling sheets of plastic film, all before Saturday’s threat of snowflakes. Or maybe I’ll simpy pop sandwich bags over my plants by torch light Friday night.. Or say a Hail Gaia, and hope that my plants survive regardless, just like they did last week’s hail storms.

And I suspect the snow won’t last too long here, unlike the East Coast, where, as the Farmers Almanac notes, native tribes called the February full moon, which occurred Feb. 17 this year, the Full Snow Moon, since the heaviest snows usually fall in February.  In fact, reading the Farmer’s Alamanac made me recall the 12 years I spent shoveling snow in eastern Canada, and I’m once again reminded just how good we have it here. at least on the weather front.

“Some tribes also referred to it as the Full Hunger Moon or Little Famine Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult,” the Farmer’s Almanac observes. “Forced to gnaw on bones and sip bone marrow soup for sustenance, the Cherokee named it the Full Bony Moon.”

The Celts called February’s moon the Moon of Ice, the Chinese named it the Budding Moon in anticipation of spring. Here in the Bay Area, maybe we should call our February moon, the Full Hail Moon, since that’s what fell from the skies last week.

Renew yourself

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Renew yourself

culture@sfbg.com

So 2011 is a couple months in, and already your new year’s resolution list reads like so many dreams deferred? Chuck it in the flames — not all rebirths neatly coincide with the Gregorian calendar. This spring, rejuvenate your inner and outer workings with some of these excellent opportunities to renew everything from your chi, to your core strength, to the sweetness of your swagger.

 

HEAR THE CRY OF THE MIDNIGHT DOWN-DOG

Tripped the light cataclysmic a time too many? The toxic Fernet fumes ooze from your pores, and you’ve left not only your debit, but your credit, library, and frequent bagel-buyer card in various watering holes about time? Time to purge. Take a night off from tippling and toddle to Laughing Lotus, where Friday night’s midnight yoga class (each week from 10 p.m.-midnight) soothes abused chakras — and livers, need be. Each week even features a different live musician: Fri/25’s class will be home to the didgeridoo and sound-healing savasana of Amber Field.

Laughing Lotus, 3271 16th St., SF. (415) 355-1600, www.laughinglotus.com

 

PARTICIPATE IN A GROUP POKING

What’s community acupuncture, you ask? Small groups of patients are treated in recliners in a quiet, calm room. During the hour-long sessions, those waiting for their pokes receive staggered personalized care (needles are inserted into one’s limbs, face, and head: no disrobing necessary) from a licensed acupuncturist. Learned how to share in kindergarten? Perfect, because the cooperative method means that a single session will only run you $25–$45, including the initial visit’s paperwork fee. Circle Community Acupuncture, 1351 Harrison, SF. (415) 864-1070, www.circleca.com

 

ALKALINIZE!

Fasting, ugh. It has its place, but not eating anything is a bitter pill in the land of street tacos and gourmet coffee grounds. If you’re asking our opinion, a day of cleanse is best accessorized with Lydia’s raw green soup, a tangy elixir of kale, cucumber, dulse seaweed, avocado, ginger, and other green delicious majicks. Lydia’s sells neatly packaged soup servings, resplendent kale chips, and other yummy raw treats are favorites at the city’s crunchiest festivals, and you can pick them up at health food stores too.

Available at various SF grocery stores, www.lydiaslovinfoods.com

 

SWEAT IT OUT

Hidden behind hippie-wear emporium P-Kok is a small green garden and a sauna where tired city souls retreat for the store’s patchouli-heavy full moon ceremonies, complete with vibrational sauna singing. Starting in March, the hidden space will go holistic and become Tall Tree Tambo Wholeness Center. Monthly memberships (to encourage the use of the space as a healthy community hub) will be available for $100–$125 including coed and single-sex sauna access, healing events facilitated by other members, and the center’s four on-site healing arts practitioners, small-group classes in spiritual alignment, yoga, and the ever-popular full moon rites.

776 Haight, SF. (415) 430-8285, www.talltreetambo.org

 

TAKE INSPIRATION FROM A FEMALE FIGHTER

Forget Rocky. For true Bay Area boxing spirit, you couldn’t do better than checking out the super bantamweight championship boxing match of Ana “the Hurricane” Julaton vs. Franchesca “the Chosen One” Alcanter on Fri/25. Julaton, a Daly City and Bayview raised Filipina American, is looking to regain her standing in the pro world after a disappointing loss last year. Regardless of who walks with the belt, the ring’s high-powered punching — and rock hard musculature — is worth checking out if you’re in need of some gym motivation.

Fri/25 6 p.m., $35–$360. Craneway Pavilion, 1414 Harbour, Richmond. www.brownpapertickets.com

 

SWEAT TO BOLLYWOOD BREAKS

Of course, you could saddle up your most comfortable heels and get your werqout in the club. Should you try this tactic, you could hardly do better than the rum-tum-tum stylings of Non-Stop Bhangra, a night that’s been teaching San Franciscans how to circle wrists and move hips in pure Punjabi mode since 2004. Nights begin with a hour-long class on Bollywood-style dance, continues with ample time to practice to beats by resident DJs and guest scratchers, and now attract a diverse following of races, ages, and ahem, physical aptitudes. Calorie burn and culture learn at the same time, perfect.

Next show: March 19 9 p.m., $10–$20. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.nonstopbhangra.com

 

READ ABOUT OTHER, HEALTHIER PEOPLE

Maria Arellano was gunning for a healthier lifestyle, so she decided to blog about it. “Accountability,” the chipper office manager e-mailed us when we asked her about Oh Healthy Day‘s providence. “Posting your workouts and healthy eating habits with others is a great way to stay motivated.” Her short, addicting posts and sunny photos of her ongoing journey to fitness are also great ways to hold us accountable — how are you going to down that family-sized bag of corn chips after reading Arellano’s upbeat prose about her delicious protein and veggie dinners or inspiring Crossfit workout? Answer: you’re not.

www.ohhealthyday.com

 

REACH FOR THE SKY

While the spectacularly cool House of Air has added a valuable component to San Francisco’s kid’s-activity-starved landscape (little ones can’t help but explode with glee at the very sight of the humongous “Bounce House”), there’s trampin’ for adults as well. Specifically, the Air Conditioning workout is a 50-minute fly-through that promises to “leave your cheeks just as sore as your quads from smiling so much.” At $16 for a 50-minute session, it’s not a huge leap to “yes.”

926 Mason, SF. (415) 345-9675, www.houseofairsf.com

 

BUFF YOUR BRAINPOWER

Feel the burn all you want in your thighs, but no fitness program would be complete without a stretching your mind. At vibrantBrains, you’ll exercise that flabby cerebellum in what amounts to a workout for your brain. Improve your memory, tackle abstractions, and fast-track your alertness, literacy, and comprehension skills with programs like “Neurobics,” “Mind Evolve,” “NeoCORTA,” and “Posit Science Cortex with InSight.” Each program concentrates on a different area of mental agility using a combination of cutting edge techniques and personal attention. Even reading about the various vibrantBrains offerings makes us feel smarter.

3235 Sacramento, SF. (415) 775-1138, www.vibrantbrains.com

 

IMMERSE YOURSELF IN EGGHEAD

Holy smarty-pants, Batman, there’s a ton of intellectually stimulating stuff going down at the Mechanics’ Institute. Any given day you might enjoy a screwball comedy from the 1940s, a talk by a famous fantasist-cartographer, a book club discussion centering on the Harlem Renaissance, a class in beginner Excel, or intensive chess instruction at any level. It’s also a library! The 1854 Mechanics’ Institute building is a mind-blow in itself — but with a wide-ranging and welcoming program of creatively exhilarating (and very inexpensive) events, you may not even notice your intriguing surroundings.

57 Post. # 415, SF. (415) 393-0110, www.milibrary.org

 

STROKE SOME FUR

Next time you’re about to calculate your checkbook in your head or cry because your (ex-)drummer stole your boyfriend, head over to the Little Farm petting zoo in Berkeley’s Tilden Regional Park. This fully-loaded snuggle gang of cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, and pigs will have you back to your cute self — because petting zoos are restorative for small, whiny children, but they also work for midsized, whiny adults.

Little Farm petting zoo, Tilden Regional Park, Central Park Drive, Berk. (510) 525-2233, www.ebparks.org

 

MEDITATE STUPA-SIDE

If you want to change your outlook, pay a visit to the Peace Pagoda in Japan Center, an underrated San Francisco landmark. Designed by artist and architect Yoshiro Taniguchi, the pagoda and its subtly Op Art-tinged interpretation of a Buddhist stupa made their debut in the year of the Summer of Love. Walk around and even step inside Taniguchi’s 100-foot-high, five-tiered, many-passaged structure to meditate from an infinite variety of angles. Or better yet, play a quick game of hide and seek with someone you love. 24-7.

1704 Post, SF. (415) 775-1817, www.sfjapantown.org

 

LET YOUR SPIRIT WANDER

Sometimes the best way to refresh yourself is to get a little lost. When things begin to spiral out of control, let the ancient spiritual meditative paths of the three Bay Area labyrinths lead you to a calmer place. Take a natural journey to the mysterious Eagle Point Labyrinth (Lands End, Sutro Heights Park, SF.). Experience transcendence — and a spectacular quiet zone — with the Labyrinth at Grace Cathedral (1100 California, SF. www.gracecathedral.org). Or amble with playful tots along the colorful circle of the Scott Street Labyrinth near Duboce Park (Scott between Duboce and Waller, SF).

 

MULTITASK YOUR RETRO BEAUTY FIX

If you want to feel new, sometimes there’s only one thing to do: get a fresh hairdo at Down at Lulu’s. The bass is thumpin’, the clothes are cheap and sexy, and the pop culture treasures and creative energy are abundant at this self-described “hair salon-vintage clothing-record store-junk shop” co-owned by Tina Lucchesi and Seth Bogart, where you can get hot highlights, cuckoo color jobs, and perms with panache.

6603 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 601-0964, www.downatlulus.com.

 

PUT CUTE AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

You’ll break your lease in the land of not-so-fresh after an introduction to wonders of kawaii nail art. Let Trang Bui, the manager of Crystal Nail, facilitate your escape from the days of dull French manicures with her signature collage talons of glitter, jewels, and — so popular you should book and specify you want them well in advance — Hello Kitty 3-D art. Don’t be shocked at the price tag — a full acrylic set with designs and tip will run around $65. Worth it for such blingy digits, no? Next challenge: learning to type with horizontal fingers.

2347 Clement, SF. (415) 752-4425

 

STICK A FEATHER IN YOUR COIF

Still rocking the all-natural look? Shame that — freshen up your do with some feather hair extensions, slim bursts of hue that’ll set you apart from the other land-locked long hairs, but don’t involve the same commitment as a jar of Manic Panic (though they can last for months). You can get a natural or neon-colored bundle of up to four feathers for $30 or single plumes for $10 each at the Mission’s Pretty Parlor. Move fast — once these hit Dolores Park, the trend’s gonna blow up.

Pretty Parlor. 3150 18th St., SF. (415) 556-2883, www.prettyparlorsf.com

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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0

THURSDAY 24

Benefit for Bradley Manning

Raise funds to support U.S. Army soldier and accused WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning at this events, which features discussions, updates, and special guests, including Daniel Ellsberg and former Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska.

7–9 p.m., $5–10 donation

Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists

1924 Cedar, Berk.

www.couragetoresist.org

 

Eyewitness to Egyptian revolt

Ahmed Shawki, editor of the International Socialist Review and a Cairo native, shares his eyewitness account of the revolution that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

7:30–9 p.m., free

The Women’s Building Auditorium

3543 18th St., SF

Facebook: Eye-Witness to the Egyptian Revolution in SF

 

FRIDAY 25

Progressive senator in town

Vermont Sen. Bernie Saunders, an independent and arguably the most progressive U.S. senator, will give an overview of his work, from his historic filibuster against the continuation of George H. Bush-era tax cuts for the rich to his fight against big money interests in Washington.

7–9:30 p.m., $15

First Unitarian Universalist Church

1187 Franklin., SF

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/156941

 

SATURDAY 26

Iraqi solidarity

Stand in peaceful solidarity with the people of Iraq, including the many who are protesting the Maliki regime, and call for an end the U.S. occupation and demand that our troops come home.

2:30–3:30 p.m., free

Ferry Building

Embarcadero and Market, SF

www.codepinkalert.com

 

Coffee Party meeting

The progressive answer to the widely publicized Tea Party, this nonpartisan grassroots movement calls for more accountability from our corporate-sponsored, conflict-based political system. This meeting will focus on organizing outreach strategies and the proposed landfill in the San Francisco Bay. But anything goes, so come and exchange ideas over coffee and help take back the democratic process.

11 a.m.–12:30 p.m., free with drink purchase

Cafe La Tartine

830 Middlefield, Redwood City

www.coffeepartyusa.com

 

Panel discussion on censorship

This public forum titled “Censorship in the Arts: A Trend or Just a Passing Fad” is about exploring the current rise in censorship and the renewed threats to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment of the Humanities, and the Public Broadcasting Service. Join the panelists and learn about the recent efforts toward censorship in the arts.

2:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m., free

Performance Art Institute

575 Sutter, SF

www.theperformanceartinstitute.org

 

SUNDAY 27

Who inspires you?

Attend the fourth round of the Bay Area Inside the Activists’ Studio, where you will surely be inspired by the many change-makers and leaders of local Jewish social organizations on the panel. Celebrate the many ways change that can be brought about through skill-building workshops, panel discussions, and more. A catered lunch will be provided.

10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m., $8–$18 sliding scale

Contemporary Jewish Museum

736 Mission, SF

www.pursueaction.org

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Playing chicken

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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27
Playing chicken

news@sfbg.com

The Heart of the City farmers market in U.N. Plaza may not exude the bourgeois foodie reputation of the Ferry Plaza farmers market. It doesn’t sell micro-roasted coffee or artisan cheeses, and its fountain may sometimes double as a public shower, but it does offer one product that no other San Francisco farmers market does: fresh, live poultry.

Raymond Young has sold live chickens here for two decades, showing up at dawn to set up shop and peddle his poultry to an eager throng of customers, mostly Chinese, who happily take home upwards of 600 birds per day.

But a group of animal rights activists is saying that the poultry stand is inhumane, violates health codes, and that Young’s employees have infringed on their civil rights as protestors. Since April 2010, members of LGBT Compassion have been showing up in the wee hours of the morning next to Young’s stand with banners, brochures, and signs promulgating the alleged cruelty of his business and seeking to block the sale of live birds. In January, protesters upped the ante when they slapped Young and the HOC market with a lawsuit alleging continuous abuse and negligence by those who supervise the market.

“For me, it was as simple as seeing the animal cruelty,” said Andrew Zollman, 43, the founder and organizer of LGBT Compassion. “The cages are dilapidated and cramped, there are feces everywhere, and the chickens are shoved in plastic bags, two at a time, while they scream in fear or pain. It was like walking down the street and seeing a dog beaten — and it’s really frustrating to see it happen here in San Francisco.”

Zollman and fellow protester Alex Felsinger, 25, filed the lawsuit with San Francisco attorney Matt Gonzalez after months of attempts to get city officials to intervene.

The allegations have Young and market management squawking, saying that the activists are opposing a practice that is both legal and routine. They claim the protesters are overly sensitive to the treatment of the chickens simply because they can see it, and decry their tactics as an attack on a small business and cultural traditions since almost all of his customers are Asian.

“These people just don’t seem to like other people’s culture of selling live chicken,” Young said. “”I think that what I do is right. I abide by all the health codes and animal care codes. I try to do everything I can to satisfy everyone. These protesters think they can override the law because they don’t like what they see.”

 

THE PATH TO COURT

Zollman and Felsinger have been encouraging the city to investigate Young’s stall, regularly sending videos and photos taken at Young’s stall to the Department of Public Health and Animal Care and Control. But their quest to protect the chickens has been complicated by the lack of city oversight and an inability to enforce animal cruelty laws due to provisions exempting poultry.

The clash between the vociferous vegans and the poultry purveyors reached its pinnacle in late December 2010, when Felsinger claimed he was punched in the side of the head, wrapped up in a tarp, and had the memory card from his camera stolen by one of Young’s employees. As painful as the altercation was, Felsinger’s scuffle has helped him garner support.

Felsinger doesn’t have footage of the December attack, but he and Zollman have documented several instances of alleged verbal and physical abuse by Young’s employees, including anti gay statements from Young’s daughter, which was the subject of a complaint to the Human Rights Commission.

“There is a long list of things being done to us over the past year,” Felsinger said. “I never expected them to take such a violent act against me. It’s not how I wanted to go about it. But it might have the end result we’re looking for.”

Christine Adams, manager of the HOC market since it first opened in 1981, has consistently defended Young and called the lawsuit “completely outrageous.”

“This is a market, and if they (Young’s crew) were illegal, they would have been booted,” she said. “I have done nothing wrong; Raymond has done nothing wrong. I’m not worried at all about the lawsuit.”

Adams said that while she had not been personally affected by the protesting in the past, she did not approve of Zollman and Felsinger’s actions and attributed a decline in live poultry sales to their presence.

“Their sales have gone down considerably,” Adams said. “They used to sell more than 1,000 birds a day and now it’s more like 600 or 700. I think it’s definitely because of the protesters. People don’t like to be followed through a market and have a camera shoved in their face just because they bought a live chicken.”

 

GATHERING EVIDENCE

Almost every market day, Zollman and Felsinger would show up to protest and take video and still photography of Young’s stall. They have posted numerous videos and photos to their group’s website (lgbtcompassion.org) — the same ones they say they send to DPH and ACC — documenting the conditions at Young’s stall.

The DPH makes routine inspections twice per year to the market. In November, Zollman, Young, and Adams held a meeting with principal environmental health inspector Lisa O’Malley to address issues of sanitation, handling, and guidelines for bringing live animals near food. The department says the vendor is operating within guidelines.

“There were some problems in the past, but they’ve been fixed,” O’Malley told us, naming a few instances of inadequate removal of chicken feces from the area and improper hand-washing as past problems. She said the challenge was maintaining the guidelines, the most difficult of which is making sure people do not walk through the market after purchasing their birds. Health codes prohibit animals from being within 20 feet of food. The primary concern is contamination from fecal matter, which could cause illnesses such as Salmonella poisoning.

O’Malley walks by the market regularly because of its proximity to her office and says all operations seem compliant. At the same time, official enforcement and inspection is limited to the Public Health Department’s semi-annual visits. This means the only people watching over the operations of the stall and customers are the security guards, who don’t start working until two and half hours after the market opens, long after prime time for buying live chickens.

 

CULTURE CLASH

Young stands by his actions and said he is not guilty of any wrongdoing. The activists criticize him for practices such as cutting off the tips of the chickens’ beaks, but Young said he only does this to prevent fighting injuries sustained when they are caged for transport and sale, a common practice for any chicken farmer.

In their pamphlets and the lawsuit, the activists claim that the poultry is a “collection of ‘spent’ live chickens (those who are no longer productive egg layers) from large Central Valley farms,” according to the suit. But Young contests that characterization and the activists can’t produce credible evidence of the birds’ age or origins.

“They don’t know how old my birds are. They don’t know how I care for them,” Young said, refusing to tell us how old the chickens are. “They just assume. What’s the difference between Safeway chicken and my chicken? They were all alive at one time, but you see mine.”

Young has three farms listed on his permit — in Modesto, Sacramento, and Manteca — that he runs with the help of his children and a few employees. Adams has visited his Modesto facility and reported that the chickens are free-range, seem to be in good health, and are treated no differently than they would be at any other farm. She also supported the accusation that the protests undermine cultural norms.

“How can it not be cultural? All their customers are Asian!” she said. “And why is it only the chicken man they harass? There is a guy who sells quail and pheasants and they aren’t bothering him.”

Zollman, Felsinger, and Gonzalez call that cultural criticism a diversionary tactic. “I don’t even want to dignify culture and race as an issue in this,” Zollman said. “I understand that people want to buy live chickens. Animal cruelty issues aside, this isn’t a live animal market like they have in most of Asia.”

Young and Adams stressed that Zollman could not possibly know about operations on the farm, and that his suggestion that the operation is extremely profitable is absurd. “Do you know how hard it is to work on a farm?” asked Young, a single father of three. “You don’t make any money except to put food on the table or send your kids to school. And now I have to pay for a lawyer.”

 

ARE CHICKENS ANIMALS?

Although the activists oppose factory farms and live animals for sale for human consumption in general, they have focused their attention on the HOC market because it is permitted by the city.

Gonzalez said the lawsuit aims to address three different issues. The first is violating his client’s free speech rights by Young and HOC market. The second seeks to compel the city to better identify and enforce alleged health code violations. The third and trickiest aspect deals with animal cruelty laws, which the activists hope will force more humane treatment of the birds.

Penal Code 597 outlines animal cruelty provisions, defining the word “animal” as “frogs, turtles, and birds sold for human consumption, with the exception of poultry.” That law was adopted in the early 1900s. Elsewhere the code defines animals as “every dumb creature.” But in 2000, the Fourth District California Court of Appeals analyzed the section and deemed that the definition should include birds.

But Gonzalez and ACC say city officials have allowed the poultry exemption to stick. “[The law] refers to live animals and makes a specific exemption for poultry,” Rebecca Katz, director of the Department of Animal Care and Control, told us. “I would venture to guess that poultry lobby was very strong at that time.”

The ACC, prompted by the protests, inspected Young’s facilities and cited him for 700 different violations, according to the lawsuit. Katz mentioned a few instances in which they observed chickens suffering to the point where they had to be euthanized. But most of the citations were for inadequate water supply or holding birds improperly.

“A lot of people eat animals for food, and that’s what it is,” Katz said. “I’m not a vegetarian, but the way they are being kept is not the way we would recommend they be cared for. Do we think there is some cruelty? Probably. But there is nothing we can do at this time until the law changes.”

Like his predecessors, newly appointed District Attorney George Gascón seems to believe that chickens are not protected by state law, regardless of perceived cruel treatment.

“To date, our position has been that there is a clear exception under the law for live poultry being sold for human consumption,” said Gascón spokesperson Erica Derryck. “As much as it appears that the treatment of these animals is inhumane, there is nothing we can do to prosecute these allegations under the current laws in California.”

Gonzalez disagrees, and his office referenced similar cases in the state in which poultry was protected from cruelty. “Frankly, it’s kind of embarrassing that they are taking the position they are taking,” Gonzalez told us. “They are trying to avoid a topic that would compel them to do what they need to do. Many in the Asian community and Mexican community see this as an attack on their cultural traditions, and that’s not the issue. We see it as a straight matter of misinterpretation.”

 

DAILY OPERATIONS

On a recent visit to the market, the stall appeared clean and the chickens were out of view. The stall features prominent signage in English and in Chinese languages of the ban on bringing live animals into the market, with additional signs throughout the plaza, but customers routinely step directly into the market after buying their chickens.

“This is not easy,” security guard Diana Ybarra said while trying to point a man carrying a bag with two chickens in the right direction. “Nobody wants to listen — most of them don’t speak English. Everyone wants to take a shortcut right back through the market.”

Ybarra and her coworker, Washington (who chose to be identified only by his last name), said that their entire day is consumed trying to get customers to abide by this rule. Prior to the November meeting, no signage was posted and customers just “walked all over the place as if it didn’t matter at all,” Ybarra said.

“Chinese New Year was bad,” Washington added.

The guards see enforcing the rule as an unnecessary waste of time that takes their focus off tasks such as preventing theft. Both said shoving birds in sacks was “messed up,” but they were also quick to criticize the protestors.

“Why are they bothering this man? This is a family business and people have to make money,” Washington said. “Those protestors came in and fucked everything up, if you ask me.”

Young said he resents getting caught up in this controversy. “We are so loyal to this city and to this market,” he said. “We have put up with drug dealers and crime just so we can serve the people. Maybe these protesters think differently.”

For now the activists are more focused on the lawsuit than remaining vigilant in their protests, hoping it will accomplish their goal.

“I wasn’t always so adamant about getting rid of them, it was having people notice something that is animal cruelty,” Felsinger said. “It had been good in some ways to have people exposed to this cruelty in San Francisco because it gave us a platform to speak on animal rights. These are egregious offenses and it’s hard to ignore when it is right in your back yard.”

Appetite: 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer

We San Franciscans are lucky to have a place like the Boothby Center for the Beverage Arts. Debuting last year at SF Cocktail Week as home base for the Barbary Coast Conservancy of the American Cocktail, this year sees the launch of Boothby classes, tastings and events on all things drink.

Naturally, there’s cocktails and spirits heavily represented. But there’s also going to be coffee classes from many of our local favorites on everything from brewing to roasting. There will also be tea and wine seminars, and founder H. Joseph Ehrmann’s Mixology 101 series (with three levels of advancement) for budding and experienced bartenders. 

Price ranges will vary but at this week’s cognac class, a mere $20 provided over an hour and a half of cognac education from New York experts, a side-by-side sampling of four cognacs, and three well-made cocktails from classics to modern inventions. The room was a mix of bartending industry folk and curious tasters, all with a hunger to learn (and imbibe).

Watch for Boothby Center parties during big drink weeks like a whisky-themed event around Whiskies of the World next month. This week clear your calender on Saturday night for 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer, a special SF Beer Week tasting where you’ll sample 15 beers and 15 whiskies (from rye to white dog) for the mere sake of discovering their complimenting flavors. Oh, and because they taste good.

1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer
Sat/19, 6:30-9:30pm
$45 ticket
1161 Mission Street, Suite 120
bourbonscotchbeer-eorg.eventbrite.com 
www.sfcocktailweek.com

–Subscribe to Virgina’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot: www.theperfectspotsf.com

Flush with tips

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Flush with tips

culture@sfbg.com

CULTURE I floated drunkenly into the second-story bathroom at 1015 Folsom. It’s a tiny affair, and my head was just enough obscured to make navigating past the waiting bodies a sure difficulty. I did my business and realized that the man that I had squeezed by, near the sink, wasn’t another patron, but some sort of bathroom attendant. In my inebriated state, it appeared to be an elaborate joke.

He was Latino, wearing a nice suit, and stood in the narrow space between the sink and one of the three urinals, his back against the middle pissoir. He had a mountain of curiosities piled over the sink, and a towel for drying hands draped over one arm.

“Have you worked here long?” I asked.

He shook his head. No. Just a little while.

“Do you keep your tips?”

No. He shook his head again, indicating that there was some sort of split. Reluctantly using the towel, I thanked him and dropped a Washington into the tip jar.

Somewhere, after more French techno, I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke, I wondered, had that really happened? Had I dreamt it? Had I hallucinated?

I sent 1015 Folsom an e-mail inquiring about the attendant. Apparently it was true. Barnaby May, who describes himself as a seven-year veteran of the nightclub scene, took credit for the hookup. He felt that something was lacking from 1015, that it would be better to have a bathroom attendant than not. He put me in contact with Shaun Fausz, who runs a company called Refreshus, which trains and supplies bathroom attendants.

According to Fausz, the service is tailored to appeal to a lackluster economy: it costs the clubs nothing. “Clubs would rather have a free service than have to repaint every few months and replace a trashed sink,” Fausz says. Which makes good sense in a city where one of the dominant aesthetics of the nightlife is a sort of high-class posturing that can quickly be ruined by a Magic Marker. Other clubs have resorted to taunting taggers. Look how fucked up our bathroom is, the Rickshaw Stop seems to say, what else can you do? Put up another sticker? The Independent has painted its water closets black to nullify vandalism.

Bathroom attendants from Refreshus act as security, whether they’re at a nightclub, like 1015, or at a strip club, like the Century Club, where one of Refeshus’ longest standing employees, Gary Lawton, has worked for nine months. Lawton says it’s “a good public service,” although he never imagined performing it. Positioned in the bathroom, he’s able to monitor illicit behavior. “As you hear the snorting, you know what’s going on and you just let them know that they have to take it outside,” he says. “Or they’ll approach me and ask me if its cool, and I’ll just inform them that it’s zero tolerance, as well as alcohol, because there’s no drinking with full nudity.”

This was news to me. (My Catholic upbringing and feminist programming at university makes it impossible to attend a “gentleman’s club.”) If a club includes full nudity, and not just topless dancing, alcohol is verboten. “Our beloved senator is responsible for that, Dianne Feinstein.” says Lawton. “It doesn’t make any sense — I mean that’s what security is for. If you see someone being belligerent, you just tell them to go get some fresh air or something.”

Lawton, who looks like he could be a bouncer, doesn’t necessarily tell people he’s a bathroom attendant as much as “a member of security, who’s stationed in the bathroom.” But no embarrassment shows when he discusses the details. He loves his work, where he gets to act as liaison, recommending girls to patrons and occasionally getting a peek himself. He gets to meet people from all over, and show them a piece of the world that he never glimpsed before being at the Century. “It’s something I can’t explain,” he says. “You know you’re stuck in the bathroom, and then you see them doing something like ‘School Girl Night.’ It’s wild. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s just amazing every time I get out there. They have several girls who actually lift their legs up and climb all the way to the ceiling. It’s like being at the circus, but they’re stripping.”

It’s an experience that, to put it simply, Lawton is generally priced out of, a world where “private dances” can cost upwards of $100. In terms of straightforward class, Lawton has no shortage — he’s a polite man who chooses his words with the precision of someone who makes a living speaking to people — but if we’re talking economics, he’s low on the ladder. Once or twice before meeting me at the Barbary Coast coffee shop off Market Street, Lawton had to drop appointments at the last minute, his housing situation in tumult. Truth is he’s on General Assistance, in the shelter system, and shared tips from a few nights work a week aren’t enough to get over.

The income for a bathroom attendant, the flow of tips, breaks down across class lines as well as cultural ones. In Lawton’s experience, middle- to upper-class white men tip well. With African American or Indian men, he doesn’t count on tips. In some ways, bathroom attendants perform an obsolete service that only older generations know how to handle. (Think of the bathroom attendants at Bimbo’s, and that club’s retro style.)

Fausz has his own observations: “European people don’t tip. They don’t have tipping over in Europe. Women don’t tip as often — they like to let the guys pay for everything when they go out.” To my knowledge, Refreshus doesn’t have female attendants.

While Lawton can’t enforce any specific prices, he sometimes has to step in, politely explaining that the service isn’t complimentary. “Everyone under 32, they’re oblivious,” he says. “They come in and see the candy and go, ‘Oh, it’s free.’ And you have to remind them that, no, this is a service. But you don’t force any prices. Like I’ll have a jar with a $5 bill and I’ll just let them use their own discretion, just remind them that the colognes are usually this amount because it’s expensive and I have to pay for all that. You just make them feel comfortable and let them know that even though it’s complimentary, this is how I make a living. I’m responsible for all this. Because they think the club provides the service.”

A lot of this has to do with exposure. While a number of clubs — Vessel, Harlot, Trigger — reportedly have similar services, bathroom attendants aren’t common. Lawton had never encountered one before landing his job, just seen them on TV, and he describes the position as obsolete. “Each generation wants their own type of representation,” he says. “So naturally anything they think of as obsolete just doesn’t apply to them.” At the same time, Lawton acknowledges that a genuine amount of surprise plays in his favor, and patrons admire that the service is still on offer.

Whether bathroom attendant work at the nightclubs provides enough income is unclear. In a place where people pack singles, like the strip clubs, the tips are expected to flow more freely. That’s fine with Lawton, who doesn’t like the more amphetamine-infused nightclub culture as much, having had close family members ruin their life over addiction.

Fausz has seen turnover, most often when attendants steal or are headhunted by clubs. Some just aren’t a good fit ,or can’t work in the environment, or can’t hold the right amount of conversation. (The attendant I met at the beginning of this piece no longer works for Fausz.) But there are people willing to work for Refreshus wherever the opportunity arises. On a recent night I ran into Russ, a lean fellow in a sharp jacket stationed in the more luxurious main bathroom at 1015 Folsom. He described the job as “a good way to supplement my income,” adding “I’m a personal trainer.”

Fausz wants to fit bathroom attendants into more of the city’s nightclubs, even if an event tends to draw a crowd for whom a bathroom attendant is an obscure novelty. He puts it simply: “I’m kind of training the next generation of people to tip.”

Sound and environment: Moving beyond tropical bass with Chief Boima

John Elberling
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Sound and environment: Moving beyond tropical bass with Chief Boima

A couple weeks ago I shot a long-winded email to former Bay Area DJ and producer Chief Boima. I had just finished speaking to Dun Dun of the Los Rakas crew for what eventually became this article, and he mentioned an upcoming EP with former Bay Area DJ and producer Boima. Now, if you don’t know about Boima, you need to get acquainted with the Banana Clipz digital funk on Ghetto Bassquake (for free download, too). It’s a joint instrumental album between Boima and Oro 11 of Bersa Discos that merges electronic architectonics with rhythms, melodies, and sound bits from the African diaspora.
Enough of that, though — Boima withstood my long-windedness, and after a couple exchanges, he did all the explaining.

SFBG Dun said that you do with instrumentals what Los Rakas does with lyrics. Do you see similarities in your respective styles? Your backgrounds and influences?
Chief Boima Well, when I first came across Los Rakas I had just come back from Panama, and I was on this high from hearing all the big carnaval tunes and the mix of sounds that reflected my musical and cultural background, but in a Spanish-speaking world. I grew up on the stuff that a lot of Panamanians grew up on, zouk, dancehall, soca, etc. So I was at the SF Carnaval and I heard Panamanian reggae but with this Bay Area flavor to it. (Check my initial reaction here, and I had been posting stuff like this.) I identified with what they were doing immediately.
Also, my father is from Sierra Leone, and I grew up with West African cultural influences, so I try to incorporate that musically into my electronic and hip-hop beats. I feel like Los Rakas do the same thing with Panama, and what Dun said is a great compliment.

SFBG Dun also mentioned a future EP coming up. What’s your process working with Los Rakas? What are some of your thoughts on this upcoming EP?
CB Well I linked up with Rico and Dun after not seeing them for maybe a year. I had given Rico some instrumentals and I never had gotten the chance to record on them. At that point I had a little studio set up in my spot in Oakland, so I invited them down to work on stuff. I think it was a real natural collaboration because we knocked out a lot of different stuff in like 6 months. They would come over and just freestyle or write. A lot of songs came out through different processes. Like one song they gave me an acapella and I constructed a beat around it. Other songs, I played them the beat and they’d just start writing to it, and we’d record. This would all happen after work and on weekends, so it was cool because the sessions were real compact but productive. I’m real excited about the EP. I think the material is strong and unique, so I can’t wait to see the reception.

SFBG “Tropical” or “tropical bass” seems to be the new term which has emerged to cover the range of new electronic music informed by both American and Afro-Latin styles of music, and their many convergences and hybrids. Do you see yourself as part of this tropical movement? Would you trace its form or define it differently?
CB I get the name tropical bass, but I see it akin to a label like world music that’s just kind of vague. I think the styles that are included under the genre are diverse musically, but they share similarities in the production process that is informed by increased access to technology and information across the world. It’s also really related to urban environments, like hip-hop and house were in their beginning stages. So I see all this music as a kind of continuum of hip-hop and electronic music from Detroit and Chicago. I see myself as part of that production process, more than a musical genre.
The genres I enjoy and work with are informed by their local environments and have names like hip-hop, dancehall, coupe decale, house, soca, and kuduro. They come out of specific regions, and their environments inform the music. A lot of the most popular rhythms are related to Africa and its diaspora, people who are generally scattered around the tropics. So that’s why people use tropical, but I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself or anyone else that way. It doesn’t really work anymore when you get [sounds like] Balani in Mali, or UK Funky, which are not tropical [in setting], but are still informed by the same aesthetics and production processes.

SFBG Do you try to digitize or transfer Afro-Latin/Caribbean folk sounds, genres, or ideas into electronic form?
CB Yes, but I don’t explicitly set that as a goal. I add in all my influences, which are informed by growing up in the Midwest and spending time on the West Coast as much as “folk” music. I was into hip-hop and electronic music growing up, and my older relatives would get down to music that was recorded by live instruments. I love those older tunes, they make me nostalgic, and make me feel connected to my culture, so I wanted to bring the feelings that I have when I hear them to a contemporary club space.

SFBG Our sense of place is now more amorphous than it was maybe thirty years ago. The Internet has in many ways uprooted us, and with regards to music, given us access to all sorts of folk genres, sonic forms of indigenous culture, traditional sounds and instruments, beforehand only accessible perhaps by being there or coming into contact with someone who was indeed there. To what extent do you think the open source availability of the Internet influences the way you channel folk forms of music and older sonic traditions in your production? In what way does place or region (whether the Bay, Cuba, NY, or online places, even the temperate range of tropical) inform your music?
CB I think the Internet has facilitated interactions and dialogue, but you can’t overlook things like increased immigration and traveling. A New York Times article recently said that New York is as diverse as it’s ever been. It claims that NY has more people born in other countries living there than ever before. The whole United States is changing. Europe is changing. The feedback loop to global centers of production in the “South” is super influential. International travel is becoming cheaper, so it’s easier to see the whole world. I think we’re going to reach an energy crisis in the near future where all that will be curbed a little, and the Internet will keep those interactions going, but we’re really living at the apex of an empire, just like the Romans, and the Ottomans, and the Greeks were super diverse civilizations informed by cultures from all over the world. So the Internet is just our current means of achieving those interactions. It takes the place of the role that sailors and desert caravans and conquerors had before. It’s just faster, and totalizing across the globe.
I travel a lot, and I have a diverse cultural background with multiple influences. That puts me in a certain position of influence because of my experience, but someone who has never traveled can have the same influences because I post about it on the Internet. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a new thing. Cotton and sugar comes from India. Potatoes come from Peru. Coffee comes from Ethiopia. These are things that are fundamental to our cultural identity today, but we don’t necessarily think about them as coming from other places. I feel like these things seep into everyday life, and they become a part of wherever they end up whether NY, London, Rio, Kampala, etc. But when they get to those places I think they change. In other words, environment’s influence is fundamental and if you listen hard you can tell the difference.

Hot sexy events: February 2-8

Andrew Lam
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Hot sexy events: February 2-8

Why do most alien encounter stories involve sexual liaison? Leaving aside the non-believers’ theory that the yarns are the result of pervy souls in need of some quality time with a loved one, one must come to the conclusion that for the aliens, sex is part of some higher purpose. (Just kidding — how much higher can you get?) The folks at Bent, the Bay’s party for kinky youth, have this figgered, of course. This month, when many events are turning pink and heart-shaped, the costumed kinkfest pays homage to the greys, the greens, the purples, and the scaled. It’s an alien get-down, and we’re all invited! Just be sure and brush up on your E.T. anatomy before you go. You don’t wanna be “that girl” that gets freaked out by an extra orifice or three.

 

Bent: Close Encounters

Take me to your penis! The young persons’ kink party goes extraterrestrial with a full program of alien delights: a staged abduction, a bellydance by an enslaved human, a static wand striptease (go with it), and all manners of UFOs to beam down to the dungeon once you’re ready to play rough. 

Fri/4 9 p.m. – 2 a.m., $20

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2746

www.sfcitadel.org


Nude Aid

There are few things sexier than the sight and feel of paintbrush on bare skin. Though body painting has been the victim of co-option by Pink Floyd (and by extension, every coed’s dorm room wall, ever. Honestly, who’s gonna be the first to make a coffee table book of the most cliched college posters?), true artistry exists in the form of colorized folds and follicles. Test that theory out for yourself at this benefit for the Center for Sex and Culture, at which naked and fetish-clad models will be rendered masterpieces – all in the name of art, mind you.  

Fri/4 3-8 p.m., $20

Center for Sex and Culture

1519 Mission, SF

(415) 552-7399

www.sexandculture.org


Essence

The first edition of Mission Control’s new pansexual, erotic-spiritual play party promises to reinvigorate your chi – the night will be populated by shamans, Aphrodite, shrines, services, and attempts to recalibrate sexually. Yessir – sex is rite tonight, so if you’re down for the spiritual-sensual woo-woo then my friend, you have found your Saturday jump-off. 

Sat/5 9 p.m. – late, $30-35 members only

Mission Control 

www.missioncontrolsf.org


Burlesque ‘n’ Brass

So you love burlesque, but simply cannot leave yourself open to the prospect of another Ke$ha or Metallica-soundtracked stripdown? Hie thee hence to Cafe Van Kleef, where the lovely ladies are accompanied by a live jazz band that would never, ever launch into “Oops I Did It Again.” Nothing but class for the wondrous women performers of Hot Pink Feathers – and your side of gin martini.

Sat/5 9:30 p.m., $10

Cafe Van Kleef

1621 Telegraph, SF

(510) 763-7711

www.cafevankleef.com


Introduction to Red Tantra

Progress from tantric yoga to light touch and energy work, along with discussions of amrita (the female ejaculation), the multi-orgasmic state, and delayed ejaculation for men. This couples-only workshop is non-explicit, so it’s perfect for the twosome that wants to expand their practice, but not their audience. 

Tues/8 6-8 p.m., $45-50 per couple

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com


Gay Mystery 101

Nancy Drew was never this sexy. Mystery novels have progressed since your grade school days, as authors Paul Faraday and Haley Walsh can surely attest. The two will be reading excerpts from their novels (Straight Shooter and Foxe Tail, respectively) that star hot gay protagonists getting to the bottom of sinister happenings in Southern California. Bathhouses, vodka martinis, and Antonio Banderas lookalikes promise to figure mightily. 

Tues/8 7:30 p.m., free

A Different Light Bookstore

489 Castro, SF

(415) 431-0891

www.adlbooks.com

 

 

Don’t nobody give a damn: day 3

Mary Magee
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Unemployed construction workers protested outside UC Mission Bay’s Hospital building for the third day straight—but by early afternoon seemed to have got some clarification from UC officials over upcoming job opportunties at the site.


At issue is the tension between UCSF’s stated desire to be a good neighbor and put local residents to work, and the reality that while unemployment remains high throughout the construction industry, the communities immediately neighboring UC’s Mission Bay campus have been hard hit.


.“I want them to set up a system where we have a referral mechanism that includes CityBuild, and for UC to discontinue using DPR’s subcontractor Cambridge and other consultants,” James Richards, President of Aboriginal Blackmen United (ABU), said shortly before he met with UC officials. “Because if you don’t have a community-based organization helping UC make good on its commitment to be a good neighbor, then you are going to see stuff like UC’s voluntary local hire system. The idea that you can have a voluntary system without someone like ABU, which organizes folks from the community, is why this system is going to fail. And it’s why we only see token folks on the site. Because if you don’t work with the community, you won’t get the community to work. Really it’s an easy proposition: you have unemployed union workers at the gate. So put them to work.”

Just then Dwayne Jones, who worked in the Mayor’s Office when Gavin Newsom occupied Room 200, stopped by to chat with Richards and the ABU crew. 
Jones, who is now with Platinum Advisors, told the Guardian that he works as consultant for DPR Construction, UC’s prime contractor at Mission Bay. Fortune recently ranked DPR number 22 in its list of Top 100 companies to work for in the U. S.


Jones noted that his work with DPR had nothing to do with ABU’s local hire protest. “I’m only involved because I have worked with all these folks in the past and know all the players,” Jones said. “So, I’m helping these folks. At the end of the day, DPR’s concerns and mine are the same: I want to facilitate a process that maximizes opportunities for local folks.”

“These are all great people,” Jones continued. “I’ve worked for them for 15 years.”

Asked what the city can do to get the state-owned UC to hire more folks from economically disadvantaged communities on a project that isn’t financed by city funds, Jones said, “I agree that there is little leverage that the city has, given the constraints of the contract, so people need to be creative.”

Jones said he was not aware that Dr.Arelious Walker and the San Francisco Workforce Collaborative has issued a flier stating that they were gathering lists of names to be submitted to UC for jobs, amove that angered ABU members since they have been protesting for jobs at the site for over a year


“I was not aware of this group but there are a multitude of organizations trying to do good work,” Jones said. “And frankly this [multitude] was one of the things that led to the end of the lead agency methodology, because it caused so much division in the community. I hope we build a really strong coalition in the community that leverages its strengths.”

Jones gave UCSF credit for trying to move the local hire process forward
“I’m glad that they accepted the initial recommendation to do whatever they can to mirror the city’s local hire legislation,” he said. “Because although it’s voluntary, if it’s part of your culture and you embrace it, it’ll get done. And these are the people who have been out here for a year.”

Last December, the Board approved local hire legislation for city-funded projects. Mayor Gavin Newsom did not sign the legislation, which met stiff opposition from the building trades, and it’s fallen to Mayor Ed Lee to mplement this new law, which does not apply to state agencies,but had led to a parallel dialogue with UC.


“Much like any policy, implementation is the biggest challenge,” Jones observed. And until we do some inventory of which organizations, contractors, individuals and groups can do each piece of the work, it’s going to be a struggle. What I’m praying for is that local hire legislation allows us to get a bigger table. What I’m interested in doing is creating a pipeline of qualified workers, so that whenever something like this happens, I don’t have to hear the excuse that folks aren’t ready to work.”

Then Richards took off for a meeting with UC Vice Chancellor Barbara French that lasted two hours during which time rumors started circulated that Mayor Ed Lee had called French to try and help move the conversation along, as ABU members continued their protest and shared stories with reporters of how they came to be standing on a picket line in Mission Bay.

One worker, who preferred to remain anonymous, said he was frustrated by UCSF’s plea for workers to remain patient because jobs are coming soon. “We’ve been out here for one and a half years, so since before they did their demolition, and they have been playing games with us,” he said. “ Folks with ABU were promised jobs. But then they didn’t get anything. That’s what UC does. They try to pacify you and tell you stories, then the money gets taken out of the community, and another year goes by. So, if anybody says, why aren’t you more patient, the answer is that the whole area has been built with only a handful of people from our community. Especially now, when no one has jobs, and everybody wants to work here. We are not going into other communities and trying to steal their jobs. We just want to work here. But we could be protesting every day, until this whole stuff has been built. It’s a city within a city. Just look around you. We was patient. And all this stuff has been built and we got no jobs.”

Michelle Carrington, 58, a flagger and an operating engineer from the Bayview, said Dwayne Jones helped her graduate from Young Community Developers. “He got me in tears, he dropped me in the mud at 5 in the morning and made me do push ups, but I fought and kept on and graduated at the top of my class out of three women and 15 men,” she said. “But now we got people going behind the gate, folks who used to work for Dwayne Jones, like Dr. Arelious Walker, who are trying to say that they are the ones who have got the sign-up list for jobs here. But you ain’t been here marching, or down at City Hall fighting for local hire. And I saw Rodney Hampton Jr. on the number 54 bus, and I let him have it. I said, what’s this I heard about you and Walker? And he said he went to UCSF and tried to get a bid but was told ABU had it. So the only way to get in was for him and Marcellus Prentice to go to God’s house.  But Walker’s not out here. Meanwhile, we see folks coming from Hayward, Sacramento and Vallejo and working on this yard. Why is it such a hard decision to try and put us to work? It’s easy. Just take 5 or 10 of us, put us to work, and we will go away. Work smarter, not harder.

Laborer Sharon Brewer, who was born and raised in the Bayview and has been out of work for two years. She helped her granddaughter, Akira Armstrong, hold a protest sign and talked about losing her apartment because she lost her job.
“I had to move back in with my daughter because nobody lets you live for free,” she said. “I used to work for UCSF as a patient coordinator for physical therapy but I got laid off. Now I have to dummy down my resume to try and get a job making $8 an hour selling coffee and donuts .”

Jesse Holford said he had reached the fourth level of his apprenticeship as a Carpenter.
‘There are eight levels between an apprentice and a journeyman,” he said.

Jason Young and Alonzo McClanahan said they were unemployed laborers from  Bayview Hunters Point resident. Robert English, a carpenter journeyman from the Bayview, had been out of work 6 months. Tina Howards, a carpenter’s apprentice from the Bayview with four kids,  had been out of work for a year. And Keith Williams, a carpenter from the Bayview, had been out of work for nine months.


Fred Green, who has lived in the Bayview for 50 years and has five kids, said protesters were trying to remain as peaceful as possible.


“But an empty belly makes you do strange things,” Green said. “If there’s enough work for everybody, why should we be stuck at home while someone comes into my community and takes food out of my kids’ mouths. I got five kids and they all go hungry.”

Bayview resident Carlos Rodriguez has three kids and has been out of work for two years.
“They called me to work before Christmas but never hired me, “ he said.


Bayview resident Truenetta Webb has two kids and has been out of work for four months.
‘Some guys called me and took my information, but there’s been no work,” she said.

Troy Moor, who has lived in the Bayview for 47 years and has two kids, worked in January on Lennar’s shipyard development for 17 days.


“Two weeks ago, UC said they were going to hire four folks on ABU’s list, but they didn’t,” he said. “We don’t want it to get ugly out here. All we want to do is feed our families.”

Moor said he believes Mayor Ed Lee will ensure local hire is implemented on city-funded projects. “Ed don’t want no problem, we know him personally, we used to work for him when he was at DPW (the city’s Department of Public Works),” he said. “He’s a decent guy, as long as you keep the pressure on him.”

Moor speculated that if ABU blocked both gates to the UC Mission Bay hospital project, it would cost UC thousands of dollars.“Here at the front gates, we are visible, but we figure that if by next week, nothing is happening, we’ll start making them lose money,” he said.

Ed Albert, a retired painter and a Bayview resident for 57 years, said he was protesting for folks in his community.
“I grew up in the Bayview, I’m a servant of the Bayview,” he said. “I went from paperboy to contractor. I was a painter for Redevelopment and the San Francisco Housing Authority. But I don’t want a job. Who’d hire a 67-year-old guy with one eye? But I want to see my people get a job.”

James Amerson, a laborer with Local 261, said he worked on the Transbay Terminal in July, then got transferred to Pier 17.
“But when that was over, they didn’t bring me back to the Transbay, so I’ve been out of work since the end of December,” Amerson said. “They sent me to the Transbay as a flagger, and I rode by the other day, and saw they had an apprentice operator doing flagging.”


“When we are not working, we always come back to James [Richards]’s church at Double Rock,” he continued. “We meet at 9 a.m., Monday through Thursday. James is sick with diabetes. But he ain’t asking for anything. He’s here for the people, coming out here, buying food every day. We feed everybody. Yesterday he was feeding the police officers.”

Finally, Richards emerged from his meeting with UC officials. After he crossed 16th Street slowly, Richards was encouraged take a swig of orange juice from the back of ABU’s flatbed truck before giving folks an update.


“When DPR needs someone for a job, they’re gonna call Dwayne Jones, and then Dwayne will let us know,” Richards finally said. “There’s enough work for everybody. There’s hundreds of jobs, but I don’t know if they are in every trade. So, I feel good. But not so good that I can say that ten carpenters will be hired tomorrow. There’s not enough need for that, right now. But the work that’s there, when they call, you’re going to know it. Laborers, there are going to be no others going first. You guys are going first. So, I suppose next week, more laborers should be going, then more carpenters.”

Asked if ABU was going to continue its protest, Richards ‘said he thought folks needed to regroup.


“I think we got enough to not have to come out here tomorrow again. So, we’ll come back to church on Monday and let everyone know what happened. Then we’ll make a decision about what we are going to do. If the majority says, fuck this man, make ‘em hire 10 or 20 more folks, then that’s what we’ll do. But for now, we gotta regroup.”

Reached by phone, as ABU members prepared to pack up for the day, Cindy Lima, executive director of UC Mission Bay Hospitals Project, said she felt UC’s meeting with Richards was positive


“We clarified some misunderstandings and made some progress,” Lima said. “Our goal is still to create jobs for San Francisco residents and make this project happen. So, we are continuing to try and match people who need to go to work with available job opportunities. The bottom line is that there are a lot of people in this city who are out of work and a lot of groups with different intentions in mind and we get tangled in that process. So, maybe we need to have more dialogue about when jobs will become available. And we have made a commitment to talk more.”










Haute pot

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
9
Haute pot

steve@sfbg.com

CANNABIS Marijuana edibles have come a long way in a short time.

Just a few years ago, the norm was still brownies of uncertain dosage that tasted like eating weed, right down to the occasional stem or lump of leaf, served in a wax paper envelope. But now the foodies have gotten into the game, producing a huge variety of tasty treats that are incredibly delicious even before the munchies kick in.

San Francisco could be on the verge of a culinary revolution that would parallel those being experienced in the realms of boutique eateries, gourmet coffee, and high-end street food vendors — except for the fact that makers of cannabis edibles still reside in a legal limbo.

As long as they’re operating under the umbrella of a cannabis collective, getting marijuana from its growers and selling through its dispensaries, then the weed bakers are in compliance with state law. But they’re still illegal under federal law, and even California law doesn’t allow them to operate independently as wholesalers, making it difficult to scale up operations and do more than just break even financially.

Judging from the skittishness of some of San Francisco’s top edibles producers — who didn’t want to be identified by their real names and were wary of letting us know too much about their operations — they perform this labor of love under a cloud of understandable paranoia.

“Unfortunately, secrecy is a rule we have to live by, day in and day out,” said the founder of Auntie Dolores, who we’ll call Jay. She makes a line of popular, strong, and yummy products that include pretzels, chili lime peanuts, caramel corn, and cookies of all kinds.

Yet the legal threats haven’t stopped producers from professionalizing the edibles industry — in terms of quality control, packaging, consistency, and innovation — and drawing on foodie sensibilities and their own culinary training to develop creative new products that effectively mask or subtly incorporate that bitter cannabis taste.

“We’re all about masking the flavor of the cannabis because I really don’t like the flavor that much,” Jay said of products that are stronger than most but somehow without a hint of weed in them. “People here have a high standard. It’s their medicine and their food, and we have a lot of foodies who are really into our products.”

Choco-Potamus is an example of this new generation of edibles, combining gourmet chocolate-making with the finest strains of cannabis, using only the best buds rather than the leaves and other plant matter that have often gone into edibles. Mrs. Hippo, the pseudonym of the chief baker, has worked for a national company in the food industry for about a decade, mostly doing branding, and it shows in this eye-catching product.

“I’m kind of a foodie. We have friends who roast whole pigs and brew their own beer, that kind of thing,” she said. “Really good high-grade marijuana has some really great flavor qualities, particularly when combined with cocoa. I really want the patients to enjoy the flavor, not just the feeling.”

 

EAT YOUR MEDICINE

Steve DeAngelo, founder of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, one of the Bay Area’s biggest dispensaries, said edibles have been increasingly popular, particularly among older users, patients with medical conditions that make smoking problematic, or those who prefer the longer body highs of eating it.

“Our sales of edibles has trended steadily upward since we opened,” DeAngelo said, noting that last year the club sold $1.2 million in edibles, about 5.5 percent of total sales, compared to $306,000 (3.2 percent) after they opened in 2006. “As an absolute amount, we’ve seen the amount of edibles quadruple in the last four and a half years. As percentage of sales, we’ve seen it double.”

He said the main difference between eating and smoking marijuana is duration and onset. Smoking it brings on the high within minutes and it usually last for less than two hours, whereas eating it takes about 45 minutes for the effects to kick in, but they can then last for six to eight hours.

“There are different forms for different symptoms,” he said, noting that edibles are perfect for someone with insomnia or other symptoms that disturb normal sleep patterns, while someone who needs marijuana in the morning can smoke or vaporize it and have the effects mostly gone by the time they go to work.

“When you eat it, it goes through your limbic system, so it hits your brain differently,” said Jay of Auntie Dolores, saying that she and many others prefer the subtle differences in the high they get from eating cannabis. Others who prefer edibles are those looking to just take the edge off without being too stoned. “A lot of the people who like the edibles are moms. They don’t want to smell like pot or be too high,” Mrs. Hippo said.

She noted that her chocolates are not as strong as many of the edibles out there, with each candy bar containing two doses. “It’s a personal preference for how I want the bars to taste,” she said, although she has been working on making a stronger version as well, which many dispensaries and their customers prefer.

But Mr. and Mrs. Hippo say they think taste is becoming as important as strength, calling it an emerging area of the market. “I have a dream that there could be just an edibles dispensary,” Mr. Hippo said, envisioning a pot club with the look and feel of a high-end bakery.

For now, demand for edibles is still driven by “potency and packaging,” says SPARC founder Erich Pearson. “I think people eat food to eat food and enjoy. They don’t eat to get high.” Yet as long as they’re getting high in this competitive marijuana marketplace, the edibles makers have been making better and better tasting products.

Jade Miller makes 12 flavors of cannabis-infused drinks under the Sweet Relief label, with spiced apple cider being her top seller. She draws other training at New York City’s Institute for Culinary Education to make some of the best-tasting drinks on the market.

“I got into it because I needed alternative pain relief when I had whooping cough and a torn shoulder muscle,” Miller told us.

She was injured while on a cooking job with Whole Foods Catering in September 2006. She hated the opiates that she was prescribed for her shoulder pain, preferring marijuana. But when she contracted whooping cough, she couldn’t smoke pot anymore without painful coughing, so she got into making edibles.

At the time, many of the pot-laced foods out there weren’t very good or professionally made. “Some edibles were inedible,” she said. “I became a one-woman campaign against brownies.”

 

QUALITY CONTROL

With a background in homeopathy and appreciation for marijuana, Jay started making edibles 10 years ago, informally helping two aunts battling cancer. But in the last couple of years she’s honed her recipes, improved her packaging, and transformed her Auntie Dolores snacks into some of the best on the market, available in several local dispensaries, such as Medithrive, SPARC, Bernal Heights Dispensary, and Shambhala.

“I just knew I could make stronger and better-tasting stuff,” she said. “The demand from the patients is really high for great products.”

Horror stories abound about users who overdosed on edibles and ended up being incapacitated all day or night, but that’s mostly been a problem of dosage, which modern technology has helped overcome. Choco-Potamus and other makers routinely send their batches to a lab for testing.

“The idea is we can be helping an edibles producer or a tincture maker quantify the cannabis in the product,” said Anna Ray Grabstein, CEO of Steep Hill Laboratory in Oakland, which tests cannabis and related products for strength and purity. “They’re able to use that information to create consistency in their recipes.”

It’s been difficult to meet the rising demand given the current legal framework.

“Yes, we would love to scale up. I’d love it if more people had access to our product. We’d love to sell it outside of California,” Jay said. “But it’s tricky because there’s so many gray areas,”

Larry Kessler is the program manager for the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Medical Cannabis Dispensary Inspection Program, which reviews the procedures of edibles makers and requires those who work with one than one dispensary to get a certified food handler license from the state.

“We just want to make sure they know what they’re doing,” Kessler told us.

San Francisco has some unique rules, banning edibles that require refrigeration or other special handling, granting exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Unlike Oakland and some other jurisdictions, San Francisco also requires edibles to be in opaque packaging. “It was to get rid of the visual appeal to children,” he explains.

All the edible makers say they can live with those local rules, and they praise San Francisco as a model county for medical marijuana regulation. The problem is that state law doesn’t allow them to be independent businesses.

“It’s against state law. There’s no wholesaling allowed, and that’s a big issue around edibles,” Kessler said. “It’s a complicated issue.”

All the edibles makers in this story say they are barely getting by financially, and all have other jobs to support themselves. Jay says she’s thought about giving up many times, but she’s been motivated by stories they’re heard from customers about the almost miraculous curative properties of their products, particularly from patients with cancer and other serious illnesses.

“I get an e-mail like this and then it’s back to the kitchen,” Jay said, referring to a letter from a customer who credits her with saving his life. “There are so many positive properties it has. There’s really no other plant like it.”

Derailment

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Derailment

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS The last thing I did before I left San Francisco, I promised Earl Butter that this time I would not kiss any gangsters on the train. I didn’t say anything about self-proclaimed hillbillies who burp a lot and don’t have front teeth — or luggage — so you wonder if they just escaped from prison or are only on parole.

This one, he flirted with me all the way from Emeryville to Chicago. That’s a long way to not kiss someone!

He was going on to Detroit and had less of a layover than me, but helped nevertheless with my luggage, which was considerable. He wanted to help more, but when he went outside to smoke, I stuffed my stuff in a locker, stepped out into the Windy City, and promptly got my nails done. Which was one of the best decisions I ever made.

One of the worst was early next morning when I stepped off the train into a frozen shit town not unlike, or far from, the frozen shit town where I was born. Did you hear me scream? Henceforth, when East Coast people in California say that they miss the seasons, I will put lettuce in their ears and flick them on the forehead.

Probably, to the residents of Erie, Penn., this snow was a non-event. But to an overtired, underdressed California girl without boots, it was the Big One, blizzardwise. To his credit, the snot-nosed station master did ask, before locking me out of the station, if I needed a ride.

“My friend is coming,” I said.

“Can I drop you somewhere?” he said. “Where are you going?”

“New York.”

He laughed at my apparent joke, pointed to where the Post Office was, in case I needed it, and left. In retrospect, I would have licked that booger off his upper lip for a ride to New York. Instead, I stood in the blowing snow and freezing cold, stomping my feet and, yeah, screaming, until the Post Office opened. Then I stood in there.

Probably I should have stayed on the train. I could have stayed on the train. It was going very close to where I wanted to get, but I’d thought I would keep my old ex-bandmate and good friend Rube Roy company on his way there and eat in diners for a day, instead of dining cars.

Rube Roy was two hours late and partially blind in one eye, but did buy me breakfast. On our way out of town we found a diner called Somebody’s “Dinor,” where, over eggs and potatoes and sausage and coffee and such, we talked about the old times, and the new times, and even some of the upcoming times.

There is so much time. So much time to think, in a car spinning around and around on a snowy interstate highway in Pennsylvania, bouncing between guardrails like a complicated bank shot off the cue of someone named Chuck or Lefty.

One of the things I thought about, boom, spin, was how I didn’t think I was going to die, but you never know, bang, spin. I never did like merry-go-rounds, or whirligigs, but the bumper cars I guess were all right. Now, I get motion sickness facing backward on BART. I didn’t think we were going to die, but when our car came to rest finally, facing traffic in the passing lane, I don’t know. I wondered.

Before I go, I would like to spell Papi’s name right, at least once, in the paper. They didn’t exact any promises from me, but Papi, Papa, and Coach did want one last dinner together before I left. So I said, “Brothers! Korean barbecue!”

And, like magic, that was where we went. For meat and meat for me and Papa, and some other kinds of things for the vegetarians. Ah, you know, it was all pretty good and everything, but not as probably good as the last time I went. Does it matter?

Not here.

“Rube Roy?” I said, as a semitruck whizzed by in the right lane. “Can I drive now?”

He flashed his headlights at the next one and said, “No.”

I write to you from New York City. Hi. Next time, I promise you, dear reader, dear gangsters, dear hillbilly, I will stay on the train. 

BROTHERS RESTAURANT

Daily 11 a.m.–midnight

4128 Geary, SF

(415) 387-7991

AE/D/MC/V

Beer and wine

Cannabis Club Guide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
8
Cannabis Club Guide

CANNABIS CLUB GUIDE 2012 When we first created our detailed local Cannabis Club Guide two years ago — which you can find at www.sfbg.com/cannabisguide — it seemed as if the marijuana business had entered a golden age of openness and professionalism in San Francisco. But with a federal crackdown shuttering at least a half-dozen dispensaries in the Bay Area (Market Street Collective, Sanctuary, Mr. Nice Guy, Medithrive, Divinity Tree, Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana) things have changed. Luckily for needy patients and stoners alike, San Francisco has always been a resourceful city, so those meddling feds have actually done very little to disrupt the free flow of the world’s best marijuana.

Even before the cannabis industry moved above ground and into brick-and-mortar storefronts, there were always pot delivery services here. Now they’re really proliferating, so we thought it was high time to add them to our guide. And once we delved into this realm, we found that it was every bit as civilized and professional as a visit to our friendly neighborhood dispensary — and perhaps even more convenient and cost-effective.

The process seems just as secure and legally compliant as it is at the clubs, with most reputable delivery services requiring that you become a member before accessing their products. That means sending them copies of your doctor’s recommendation and California ID, which can be even done from a photo on your smart phone. After the services verify you, you’re good to go.

We’re starting the guide with just a trio of the most high-profile delivery services, as well as a couple more dispensaries, but we’ll be adding to the online guide throughout the year, so check back frequently for more updates.

DELIVERIES

THE GREEN CROSS

This is one of San Francisco’s premier cannabis clubs, setting the standard for everyone else in terms of quality, professionalism, and advocacy for the industry. My sources had long been telling me that the Green Cross carries the best weed in the city — information validated by the long string of awards it accumulates at cannabis competitions. And founder Kevin Reed has been a passionate, high-profile leader in the community for years.

But I became even more impressed once I actually used the service. Its great website features the best descriptions of its nearly two dozen strains of lab-tested marijuana, including where and how it was grown, as well as products ranging from inexpensive pipes to eye drops. I settled on a $40 eighth of Blue Deliah, a sativa-dominant hybrid that looked both cheap and good.

Within about 30 minutes, the friendly delivery guy showed up at my apartment, handed me a white paper bag full of goodies, and charged me $35 with my new customer discount. Inside the bag, there was a grinder, a cool jar, rolling papers, a lighter and other Green Cross swag, a pot cookie, non-medicated munchies, an information packet, a receipt stuck to the inside of the bag — and a baggie of beautifully trimmed buds.

www.thegreencross.org

(415) 648-4420

Opened in 2004

Price: Low to average

Selection: Huge and high-quality

Delivery time: Super fast

Sketch factor: Very low

Access: Secure but easy to use

 

MEDITHRIVE

When Medithrive opened as a dispensary in my Mission District neighborhood, it became one of my favorite clubs, so I was disappointed to see it shut down by threats from the federal government late last year. But it immediately reinvented itself as a delivery-only club, and it still retains the friendly service and large selection that first endeared me to it.

“It’s definitely been a change for us, but if patients can handle the delivery thing, it ends up being better for everyone,” said the employee who took my order: the Apocalypse Medi-Mix, a mix of high-quality small buds (better for vaporizers) for $40 for four grams. And because I was a newbie to its delivery service, they threw in a free joint.

I called at 3 p.m. and was told to expect delivery between 4:15 p.m.-4:45 p.m. — and it actually showed up at 4 p.m. It wasn’t a problem because I was working at home all afternoon, but I can imagine such a long arrival window wouldn’t be ideal for some. And frankly, the buds were pretty dry, perhaps the result of not moving as much inventory as Medithrive is used to.

But on the whole, it’s still a solid dispensary and a very friendly staff that’s still worth using.

www.medithrive.com

(415) 562-MEDI

Opened in 2010

Price: Average with good deals

Selection: Large

Delivery time: Fast but uncertain

Sketch factor: Low

Access: Secure but easy to use

 

FOGGY DAZE DELIVERY

This place pops up prominently when people Google marijuana delivery services in San Francisco, but other parts of its operation don’t seem quite as tight as its search engine savvy. Even its readily available website, I learned while trying to order, has an outdated menu of available items. For what it actually offers, customers need to visit www.weedmaps.com, where the guy said the menu would quickly appear when I typed in “foggydaze,” but it didn’t.

Finally, I just asked him to recommend a good sativa strain, and he mentioned just two that they had in stock: Headband and Cheezle. Shooting in the dark, I went with an eighth of Cheezle for $45, and he offered me a new member gift of a joint or sample of equal or lesser priced weed. I opted for the joint because it just seemed easier at that point, particularly since my initial call went to voicemail and then I had to wait 45 minutes to get my information verified. An hour later (he said it would be 45 minutes), I had my weed.

Compared to the bad old days of ordering whatever my underground drug dealer had and jumping through whatever hoops he required, Foggy Daze is much better. But in the modern marijuana scene in this highly evolved city, Foggy Daze doesn’t quite measure up as is.

www.foggydazedelivery.com

(415) 200-7451

Price: Average

Selection: Small

Delivery time: OK, but slow on verification

Sketch factor: Medium

Access: Pretty good

 

DISPENSARIES

APOTHECARIUM

It was only a matter of time before someone had the idea to really emphasize excellent personal service with high-end products in an elegant environment — but the folks at Apothecarium have done it in a way that really sets them apart from the rest of the pack. This place is an experience more than just a place to score weed, much the same way adventurous bars like Alembic aren’t just about getting tipsy but appreciating just what a cocktail can become in the right hands.

Visitors to the Apothecarium are warmly greeted and seated in front of an extensive (and well-designed) menu, which an knowledgeable staffer patiently and enticingly walks you through, focusing exclusively on you and your needs. Once you finally find what you want, a large jar of your chosen buds emerge, and the employee uses long silver tweezers to place the prettiest ones on a display tray in front of you to inspect while he weighs out your choice of small or large buds with an air of showmanship.

2095 Market, SF

(415) 500-2620

www.apothecariumsf.com

Buds weighed on purchase

Opened in 2011

Price: High to low (“compassionately priced” strains available)

Selection: Large, extremely informative menu available

Ambiance: Looks like a fancy hair salon, hardwood floors and patterned wallpaper

Smoke on site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/security: Secure but easy access

 

1944 OCEAN COLLECTIVE

Despite a somewhat forbidding waiting room, this neighborhood dispensary on a mellow stretch of Ingleside’s Ocean Avenue has a real family feel once you step onto the salesfloor.

I was in the market for edibles when I went to 1944, and chatted with the jocular sales staff about which available edible wouldn’t give me couch lock or paranoia — a fully-functioning treat, as it were. My budtender pointed me towards a sativa-based peanut butter cookie with high potency, and then made me feel OK about our difficulty making a decision. “We’re all stoners here,” he laughed.

Once you make your selection among the edibles, flowers, and tinctures on offer, head to the back of the low-glitz, comfortably appointed room to give your money at the cash register. Head back to the bud counter to pick up your selection — if you’re lucky you can grab a brownie bite, cup of tea, or apple from the buffet to assuage your munchies. There’s even a sign that announces the dispensary’s job counseling and resume writing classes. A somewhat cold exterior sure, but it belies a warm heart. (Reviewed by Caitlin Donohue)

1944 Ocean, SF.

(415) 239-4766

Buds weighed on purchase

Opened in 2004

Price: From cheap to high

Selection: Large

Ambiance: Comfortable seating, jovial staff, family feel

Smoke on site: No

Sketch factor: Forbidding waiting room, friendly inside

Access/security: Tight 



2011 REVIEWS

SPARC

The San Francisco Patient and Resource Center, or SPARC (1256 Mission, SF) immediately set a new standard for dispensaries when it opened last August, combining a stunningly beautiful facility with deep connections to the medical marijuana community and a strong commitment to taking care of patients and moving the movement forward.

Even the casual observer can see what a unique place this is. A selection of almost three dozen bud varietals is presented in the style of a Chinese apothecary, each strain laboratory-tested for strength and purity and labeled with THC and CBD levels. The facility was lovingly designed from scratch with state-of-the-art humidors and security systems, creating an environment that is warm, friendly, and secure, with more employees per customer than other clubs.

Below the surface, SPARC is also setting a standard. Founder Erich Pearson and others involved with the club have been movement leaders for many years and they have deep connections with growers, patient groups, and the progressive political community. So they offer everything from free acupuncture and other services to generous compassionate giving programs to strong support for all aspects of the vertically-integrated collective.

But it is the experience of visiting that is most striking. Get expert advice on choosing from a huge range on indoor and outdoor strains and then settle into one of the tables, load a bowl into the high-end Volcano vaporizer, and taste the fruits of SPARC’s expertise.

There are always lots of great deals to choose from, from one-pound bags for baking for $300 to eighths of the finest outdoor weed for as low as $28.

SPARC is truly an industry leader, setting a high bar for what dispensaries can be.

Prepackaged buds

Opened in 2010

Price: Wide range

Selection: Huge!

Ambiance: Warm, comfortable, hip

Smoke on site: Vaporizing only

Sketch factor: Low

Access/security: Tight but welcoming

———–

IGZACTLY HEALTH CENTER

Opening in late 2010, Igzactly (527 Howard, SF) is the new kid of the block — but it’s already establishing itself as one of the best cannabis clubs around. With a rotating supply of almost 40 varieties of buds to choose from at a full range of prices, it has the biggest selection in town. I asked the bud tender how the club is able to offer such a wide array of high-quality buds, and he said it’s because they’re using a different model than most clubs. Rather than buying the buds from growers, Igzactly uses a consignment system, splitting the proceeds with the growers.

Complementing the huge stock of dried buds, Igzactly also has a large selection of cannabis-infused edibles, concentrates, tinctures, ointments, and just about anything you can get weed into. On top of that, Igzactly has a comfortable lounge and is one of just a handful of clubs that allows vaporizing on site, giving clients a choice of using the top-end Volcano or the Zephyr (my personal favorite) vaporizer models. They even offer complimentary teas and coffee.

The staff there is friendly and customer-oriented. For example, when the club opened, it offered prepackaged buds like most clubs, but it heeded customer input and quickly switched to displaying all their buds in huge jars and weighing them out on purchase, which many patients prefer. And he said the club plans to expand the lounge soon and to add on-site laboratory services by year’s end.

If Igzactly is a sign of where the industry’s headed, the future looks bright and verdant.

Buds weighed on purchase

Opened in 2010

Price: From cheap to average

Selection: Huge!

Ambiance: Green, friendly, inviting

Smoke on site: Vaporizing only

Sketch factor: Low

Access/security: Secure but easy access

———–

SHAMBHALA

I visited Shambhala (2441 Mission, SF) on its second day open, when the smell of paint was stronger than that of weed, so it’s hard to judge it fairly. Check-in for new patients was maddening slow to an almost comical degree, they weren’t yet taking credit cards and had no ATM on site, and they offered a bigger selection of rolling papers than bud varieties.

But I still liked this place, the only one in that stretch of Mission Street. The staff is very friendly and they seem to really know their products. Unlike many clubs that offer a few good deals, the only cheap weed here was Afgoo for $25 per eighth, less than half the price of most of the 13 varieties they offered. When I asked why it was so much cheaper, the bud tender explained that the buds weren’t as tight or well-trimmed as the dispensary expects, although it still proved to be plenty strong and tasty.

Beyond the buds, Shambhala is also part head shop, selling lots of nice glass bongs, a display case filled with pipes, and rolling papers of all shapes and flavors. And while its selection of edibles is small, they do feature all of Auntie Dolores’ yummy cookies and savory snacks, even displaying the pretzels, chili-lime peanuts, and caramel corn in large glass jars on the counter.

Once Shambhala finds its groove, it will be a solid addition to the city’s dispensary network.

Prepackaged buds

Open since 2011

Price: Moderate

Selection: Limited buds, lots of paraphernalia

Ambiance: Clean, open, friendly

Smoke on site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/security: Tight

———-

MARKET STREET COOPERATIVE

It’s easy to overlook this place (1884 Market, SF), as I did last year when I first began to compile this guide. Nestled into the back of a wide sidewalk courtyard where Market meets Laguna just up the street from the LGBT Center, Market Street Cooperative has low-key signage and doesn’t seem to do much advertising or outreach, particularly compared to marketing-savvy clubs such as the Vapor Room, Medithrive, and SPARC.

But the operators clearly know what they’re doing, offering a wide product selection in a quiet, clean, no-nonsense environment. They offer a choice of buds for every taste and use, from the best high-end buds at a good price down to eighths for a dirt-cheap $18 and three different grades of shake, which many vaporizer users prefer over the tight buds that they need to grind themselves.

Access is limited to members, and the club insists on being able to verify the recommendation of users in a phone call to their doctors, a stricter standard that most clubs use and one that can get users turned away if their visit is after normal business hours (as they unapologetically did to my friend, the first time a club had denied him entry).

But once you’re in, you’re in, and this long-running club will take good care of you. 

Prepackaged buds

Opened in 1999

Price: Moderate with lots of good deals

Selection: High

Ambiance: Low-key and business-like

Smoke on site: No

Sketch factor: Very low

Access/security: Tight 

 

RE-LEAF HERBAL CENTER

I wasn’t terribly impressed by ReLeaf (1284 Mission, SF) when I first reviewed the club in 2010, so at their owner’s request I returned recently to give them another look. They have definitely improved in both the feel of the club and its customer service, but it still suffers from some of the same shortcomings I noticed last year.

While they allow smoking on site, which is great, they don’t have any vaporizers or bongs on hand for patients to use, making it seem a little sketchy. The selection of buds is also fairly limited, with about a dozen varieties divided into two pricing tiers (although only a couple selections on each tier really looked and smelled great), and the clones they had on sale during my visit looked scraggly and sickly.

But the employees there are very nice and helpful, and the atmosphere in the club has become more inviting. There carry a large stock of edibles not available in other clubs, including smoothies and other refrigerated snacks that require a special permit from the city to sell. And the customer appreciation barbecue events they offer are a nice touch.

For a small storefront operation, Releaf does a fine job and it’s worth a visit. But with the way in which the bar has been raised for dispensaries in this city, I wouldn’t put Releaf in the top tier. Sorry guys, maybe next year.

 

Buds weighed on purchase

Open since 2007 ( with three years at previous SF location)

Price: Moderate

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: A loud head shop that also has some weed

Smoke On Site: Yes

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Moderate

—————

2010 REVIEWS

DIVINITY TREE

While the reviews on Yelp rave about Divinity Tree (958 Geary St.), giving it five stars, I found it a little intimidating and transactional (although it was the first club I visited, so that might be a factor). But if you’re looking to just do your business in a no-frills environment and get out, this could be your place.

The staff and most of the clientele were young men, some a bit thuggish. One worker wore a “Stop Snitching” T-shirt and another had “Free the SF8.” But they behaved professionally and were knowledgeable and easy to talk to. When I asked for a strain that would ease my anxiety but still allow me enough focus to write, my guy (patients wait along a bench until called to the counter) seemed to thoughtfully ponder the question for a moment, then said I wanted a “sativa-dominant hybrid” and recommended Neville’s Haze.

I bought 1/16 for $25 and when I asked for a receipt, it seemed as though they don’t get that question very often. But without missing a beat he said, “Sure, I’ll give you a receipt,” and gave me a hand-written one for “Meds.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: four years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: A transactional hole in the wall

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy. Membership available but not required

————-

GRASS ROOTS

Located at 1077 Post St. right next to Fire Station #3, Grass Roots has the feel of a busy saloon. Indeed, as a worker named Justin told me, many of the employees are former bartenders who know and value customer service. With music, great lighting, and nice décor, this place feels comfortable and totally legit. Whereas most clubs are cash-only, Grass Roots allows credit card transactions and has an ATM on site.

The steady stream of customers are asked to wait along the back wall, perusing the menus (one for buds and another with pictures for a huge selection of edibles) until called to the bar. When asked, my guy gave me a knowledgeable breakdown of the difference between sativa and indica, but then Justin came over to relieve him for a lunch break with the BBQ they had ordered in and ate in the back.

Justin answered my writing-while-high inquiry by recommending Blue Dream ($17 for a 1.2-gram), and when I asked about edibles, he said he really likes the indica instant hot chocolate ($6), advising me to use milk rather than water because it bonds better with the cannabinoids to improve the high. Then he gave me a free pot brownie because I was a new customer. I was tempted to tip him, but we just said a warm goodbye instead.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: A warm and welcoming weed bar

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

HOPENET

Hopenet (223 Ninth St.) is one of the few places in the city where you can smoke on site, in a comfortable, homey style, as if you’re visiting a friend’s apartment. In addition to the loveseat, two chairs, and large bong, there is a small patio area for smoking cigarettes or playing a guitar, as someone was doing during my visit.

Although the small staff is definitely knowledgeable, they all seemed stoned. And when I asked about the right weed for my writing problem, a gruff older woman impatiently dismissed any indica vs. sativa distinctions and walked away. But I learned a lot about how they made the wide variety of concentrates from the young, slow-talking guy who remained.

He weighed out a heavy gram of White Grapes for $15, the same price for Blue Dream, and $2 cheaper than I had just paid at Grass Roots. That was in the back room, the big middle area was for hanging out, and the front area was check-in and retail, with a case for pipes and wide variety of stoner T-shirts on the walls.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: eight years

Price: Low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: Like a converted home with retail up front

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————

VAPOR ROOM

Vapor Room (607A Haight, www.vaporroom.com) is San Francisco’s best pot club, at least in terms of feeling like an actual club and having strong connections to its community of patients. It’s a large room where customers can smoke on site, giving this collective a warm, communal vibe that facilitates social interaction and fosters a real sense of inclusiveness.

Each of the four large tables has a high-end Volcano vaporizer on it, there’s a big-screen TV, elegant décor, and large aquarium. There’s a nice mix of young heads and older patients, the latter seeming to know each other well. But, lest members feel a little too at home, a sign on the wall indicates a two-hour time limit for hanging out.

Its early days in the spot next door were a bit grungier, but the new place is bright and elegant. It has a low-key façade and professional feel, and it strongly caters to patients’ needs. Low-income patients are regularly offered free medicine, such as bags full of vapor prepared by staff. Mirkarimi said the Vapor Room is very involved in the Lower Haight community and called it a “model club.”

But they’re still all about the weed, and they have a huge selection that you can easily examine (with a handy magnifying glass) and smell, knowledgeable staff, lots of edibles and concentrates, a tea bar (medicated and regular), and fairly low standardized pot prices: $15 per gram, $25 per 1/16th, $50 per eighth. And once you got your stuff, grab a bong off the shelf and settle into a table — but don’t forget to give them your card at the front desk to check out a bowl for your bong. As the guy told me, “It’s like a library.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: seven years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Warm, communal hangout

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————-

MEDITHRIVE

The newest cannabis club in town, MediThrive (1933 Mission, www.medithrive.com) has a bright, fresh, artsy feel to it, with elegantly frosted windows and a welcoming reception area as you enter. This nonprofit coop takes your photo and requires free membership, and already had almost 3,000 members when I signed up a couple weeks ago. Tiana, the good-looking young receptionist, said the club recently won a reader’s choice Cannabis Cup award and noted that all the art on the walls was a rotating collection by local patients: “We’re all about supporting local art.”

The decorators seemed to have fun with the cannabis concept, with a frosted window with a pot leaf photo separating the reception area from the main room, while the walls alternated wood planks with bright green fake moss that looked like the whole place was bursting with marijuana. There’s a flat-screen TV on the wall, at low volume.

The large staff is very friendly and seemed fairly knowledgeable, and the huge selection of pot strains were arranged on a spectrum with the heaviest indica varieties on the left to the pure sativas on the right. Lots of edibles and drinkables, too. The cheapest bud was a cool steel tin with a gram of Mission Kush for $14 (new members get a free sample), while the high rollers could buy some super-concentrated OG Kush Gold Dust ($50) or Ear Wax ($45) to sprinkle over their bowls.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: one year

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Professional, like an artsy doctor’s office

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Very low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————

KETAMA COLLECTIVE

At 14 Valencia St., Ketama is a testament to how silly it is that clubs within 1,000 feet of schools aren’t permitted to allow smoking on site. This former café has a large, comfortable seating area and full kitchen, both of which have had little use since a school opened way down the street last year, causing city officials to ban smoking at Ketama.

Pity, because it seems like a great place to just hang out. Yet now it just seemed underutilized and slow. The staff is small (one door guy and a woman hired last summer doing sales), and we were the only customers during the 20 minutes I was there (except for the weird old guy drinking beer from a can in a bag who kept popping in and out).

But it still had jars of good green bud, several flavors of weed-laced drinks and edibles, and a pretty good selection of hash and kief at different prices, and the woman spoke knowledgeably about the different processes by which they were created. To counteract the slow business, Ketama has a neon sign out front that explicitly announces its business — another indication the industry has gone legit.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Low

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: Hippie hangout, but with nobody there

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but free membership required

————

MR. NICE GUY

Belying its name, Mr. Nice Guy (174 Valencia St.) thrilled and scared me, but not necessarily in a bad way. Located across the street from Zeitgeist, the thug factor here was high and so was the security, allowing no human interaction that wasn’t mediated by thick Plexiglass, presumably bulletproof.

After initially being told by a disembodied voice to come back in five minutes, I submitted my doctor’s recommendation and ID into the slot of a teller’s window, darkened to hide whoever I was dealing with. Quickly approved, I was buzzed into a small, strange room with three doors.

I paused, confused, until the disembodied voice again told me, “Keep going,” and I was buzzed through another door into a hallway that led to a large room, its walls completely covered in brilliant murals, expertly painted in hip-hop style. Along the front walls, a lighted menu broke down the prices of about 20 cannabis varieties.

Then finally, I saw people: two impossibly hot, young female employees, lounging nonchalantly in their weed box, like strippers waiting to start their routines. The only other customer, a young B-boy, chatted them up though the glass, seemingly more interested in these striking women than their products.

I finally decided to go with the special, an ounce of Fever, normally $17, for just $10. I opened a small door in the glass, set down my cash, and watched the tall, milk chocolate-skinned beauty trade my money for Fever, leaving me feeling flushed. It was the best dime-bag I ever bought.

Prepackaged buds

Price: Moderate, with cheap specials

Selection: High

Ambiance: Hip hop strip club

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: High

Access/Security: High security but low scrutiny

————-

BERNAL HEIGHTS COLLECTIVE

Bernal Collective (33 29th St. at Mission) seemed both more casual and more strict than any of the other clubs in town — and it also turned out to be one of my favorites.

After refusing to buy pot for a guy out front who had just been turned away, I entered the club and faced more scrutiny than I had at any other club. It was the only club to ask for my doctor’s license number and my referral number, and when I tried to check an incoming text message, I was told cell phone use wasn’t allowed for “security reasons.” On the wall, they had a blown-up copy of their 2007 legal notice announcing their opening.

But beyond this by-the-book façade, this club proved warm and welcoming, like a comfortable clubhouse. People can smoke on site, and there’s even a daily happy hour from 4:20–5:20 p.m., with $1 off joints and edibles, both in abundant supply. Normal-sized prerolled joints are $5, but they also offer a massive bomber joint with a full eighth of weed for $50.

The staff of a half-dozen young men were knowledgeable about the 20 varieties they had on hand and offered excellent customer service, even washing down the bong with an alcohol-wipe before letting a customer take a rip from the XXX, a strong, sticky bud that was just $15 for a gram.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: High

Ambiance: A clubhouse for young stoners

Smoke On Site: Yes

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Fairly tight

————-

LOVE SHACK

This longtime club (502 14th St.) has had its ups and downs, the downs coming mostly because of its location on a fairly residential block. After taking complaints from neighbors, the city required Love Shack to cap its membership, although that seems to be changing because the club let me in, albeit with a warning that next time I would need to have a state ID card. It was the only club I visited to have such a requirement.

Once inside this tiny club, I could see why people might have been backed up onto the street at times. But the staff was friendly and seemed to have a great rapport with the regulars, who seemed be everyone except me. The knowledgeable manager walked me through their 20-plus varieties, most costing the standard street price of $50 per eighth, or more for stronger stuff like Romulan.

On the more affordable end of the spectrum was the $10 special for Jack Herrer Hash, named for the longtime legalization advocate who wrote The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a classic book on the history of the movement.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: nine years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Small, like a converted apartment

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Tight

————-

COFFEE SHOP BLUE SKY

Blue Sky (377 17th St., Oakland)is based on the Amsterdam model of combining marijuana dispensaries with coffee shops, although it suffers a bit from Oakland’s ban on smoking. Still, it’s a cool concept and one that Richard Lee sees as the future of marijuana-related businesses because of the synergy between smoking and grabbing a bite or some coffee.

Most of Blue Sky is a small coffee shop and smoothie bar, but there’s a little room in back for buying weed. “We’ve got the best prices around,” said the guy who checked my ID, and indeed, $44 eighths and $10 “puppy bags” were pretty cheap. Customers can also sign up to do volunteer political advocacy work for free weed.

The only downside is the limited selection, only four varieties when I was there, although the woman at the counter said the varieties rotate over the course of the day based on the club’s purchases from growers.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: 15 years

Price: Low

Selection: Very limited

Ambiance: A fragrant little room behind a coffee shop

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

HARBORSIDE HEALTH CENTER

I have seen the future of legitimized medical marijuana businesses, and it’s Harborside (1840 Embarcadero, Oakland). With its motto of “Out of the shadows, into the light,” this place is like the Costco of pot — a huge, airy facility with a dizzying number of selections and even a “rewards card” program.

All new members are given a tour, starting with sign-up sheets for daily free services that include yoga, chiropractic, acupuncture, reiki, consultations with herbalists, and classes on growing. Then we moved to a section with the clones of dozens of pot plant varieties available for purchase (limit of 72 plants per visit), along with a potted marijuana plant the size of a tree.

Harborside is also blazing the trail on laboratory services, testing all of its pot for contaminants and THC content, labeling it on the packaging just like the alcohol industry does. Some of the smaller clubs don’t like how over-the-top Harborside is, and they complain that its prices are high. But those profits seem to be poured back into the services at this unique facility.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: four years

Price: High

Selection: Huge

Ambiance: A big, open shopping emporium

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Tight

————-

SANCTUARY

The people who run Sanctuary (669 O’Farrell St.), the first club to fully comply with the new city regulations and get its permanent license, have been active in the political push for normalizing medical marijuana, as a wall full of awards and letters from politicians attests. Owner Michael Welch was commended for his work by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, where Sanctuary employee Tim Durning has been an active longtime member and former elected officer.

Sanctuary has a generous compassionate giving program and caters to lots of poor residents of the Tenderloin neighborhood. While the club is prohibited from allowing smoking, they fudge the restriction with a Volcano vaporizer. “A lot of patients are on fixed income and live in the SROs, where they can’t smoke, so we let them vaporize here whether they buy from us or not,” Durning told us.

Those who do buy from them find a huge selection — including 20 different kinds of hash and 17 varieties of buds — at a wide price range. Staffers know their products well and take their business seriously, giving a regular spiel to new members about responsible use, which includes maintaining neighborhood relations by not smoking near the business.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Low to moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Campaign headquarters for the marijuana movement

Smoke On Site: No, but vaporizing OK

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

GREEN DOOR

If low prices or a huge selection of edibles are what you seek, Green Door (843 Howard St., www.greendoorsf.com) could be the club for you.

Eighths of good green buds start at a ridiculously low $25 and go up to just $50 (the cheapest price for eighths at many clubs and also the standard black market price). If that’s not low enough, super-broke users can buy a quarter-ounce bag of high-grade shake for $40.

If you didn’t already have the munchies going in, you’ll get them perusing the huge menu of edibles: from weed-laced knockoffs of Snickers bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for just $5 to cupcakes, ice cream, or Chex party mix. They have lots of hash and other concentrates as well.

Somehow, the club also manages to have a strong compassionate giving program and contibutes to local civic organizations that include the Black Rock Arts Foundation, Maitri AIDS Hospice, and Friends of the Urban Forest.

The club itself is a little sterile and transactional, with an institutional feel and employees stuck behind teller windows. But even though that and the steady flow of tough-looking young male customers raise its thug factor a bit, the employees all seemed friendly and helpful, giving free edibles to first-time customers.

Prepackage buds

Open for: nine years (five here, four in Oakland)

Price: Cheap

Selection: High for edibles, moderate for weed

Ambiance: Like a community bank of cheap weed

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy access, high security

————–

 

Appetite: Catching our Fancy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Catching our Fancy

Fancy Food, the largest showcase of specialty foods in North America (held annually in NYC and SF) returned to the Moscone Center. Again this week I explored thousands of products from around the world, with only the limits of my stomach to slow me after hours of sampling.

Fancy Food showcases trends in food, which there’s been much talk of this week already. I didn’t notice many major differences from last year, but saw a welcome increase in spirits vendors (though still merely a handful) and a continued proliferation of healthy, organic, low calorie (therefore sometimes tasteless) products. I was impressed by Teatulia out of Denver and their completely compostable wrappers and packaging. Their clean, 100% organic teas are grown in Bangladesh, subtle but full in flavor. I also took note of Philippe Padovani of Padovani Chocolates‘ sultry chocolates, in flavors ranging from apple banana ganache to lilikoi soft caramel.

Here’s my coverage from last year, and my stand-outs this year:

SPIRITS

Sinai Mezcal – Probably the best taste of the day for this spirits lover was Sinai Mezcal, a tiny, under-the-radar mezcal that, despite tasting numerous brands, is the first to really excite me since Del Maguey. Whether Blanco, Reposado or Anejo, each is smoky, clean with slate and agave. Don’t mind the low budget labels… it’s all in the taste. They need a US distributor (hello, anyone?) At the very least, it should be on the shelf at Tommy‘s.

Velho Barreiro – One of the most popular cachaca brands in Brazil, this bright sugarcane spirit tantalized in a well-made Caipirinha but also stood on its own, whether the traditional Velho Barreiro or Gold (aged) version.

FOOD

La Tourangelle Oils – Based out of Richmond, CA, it’s no surprise these memorable oils are local. La Tourangelle‘s peanut, pistachio, sesame, white & black truffle, and avocado oils are superior to average brands, but their latest releases especially wow: Thai Wok Oil exudes lemongrass and basil essences, while Pan Asian Stir Fry Oil is layered with garlic, ginger, fried onion. You can purchase at Whole Foods, Andronico’s and Williams Sonoma, to name a few.

Rumba Dessert’s Ice Creams – I’d seen Rumba before, but had not been able to try as many of its products as I did here. Whether creamy banana & cinnamon, tart passion fruit ‘maracuya’ or caramel-y lucuma (a tropical Peruvian fruit), I appreciate the robust flavor and care evident in these ice creams.  Rumba’s husband/wife team are delightfully engaging (wife, Laly Protzel is president and creates the recipes, while her husband assists with marketing and business). Find Rumba at Noe Valley Whole Foods and RJ’s Market in the Rincon Center, not to mention around the Bay Area.

Tahitian Gold Vanilla Products – Tahitian Gold is an elegantly-packaged line of vanilla products based out of Torrance, CA. Going the 100% natural route, they use a range of beans to create an intense vanilla bean paste, refined extracts for cooking, Tahitian vanilla sugar and fleur de sel. The look and quality is among the best I’ve seen in the vanilla world.

Glop – Glop may not exactly sound appetizing, but it’s a playful spread of Parmesan and Asiago cheeses, olive oil, garlic, herbs and spices. It’s another Bay Area-based company — and the exciting part is they’re working with one of my very favorite chefs, Aziza’s Mourad Lahlaou, who has created sauces and dips they are hoping to sell further into the year. I especially like smoky harissa, chickpea and yogurt herb.

Yarra Valley Dairy’s Marinated Feta – From Australia, Yara Valley Dairy’s (http://www.yvd.com.au/) creamy feta pops with flavors of herbs in uber-fresh cheese. Handmade on the farm, it’s an elegant (and addictive) snack.

Crispy Green & Fruitzio – Usually a long list that includes gluten free, dairy free, vegan, nut free, means I’m not going to like it. In the case of a little bag of freeze-dried fruit from Crispy Green and Fruitzio, I’m pleased at just how edible the product is. Stand-outs were freeze-dried pineapple, banana and kiwi. It’s one of those guiltless snacks that doesn’t compromise flavor. Here’s where to find it.

COFFEE

Malabar Gold Supreme from Josuma Coffee Company – Kudos for a shiny, silver espresso machine calling me like a beacon and perfect espresso preparation of Malabar Gold from Josuma, based in Menlo Park. They sell their beans mainly to cafes or restaurants though are seeking retailers. The crema atop their espresso glows a warm, velvet brown, while the flavor awakens you with robust, elegant force.

Caffe Barbera – From Naples, Italy, Caffe Barbera, a fifth generation coffee company since 1870, likewise served a supreme shot from their gold espresso machine.

–Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot

Appetite: 3 new coffee havens

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: 3 new coffee havens

CAFFE PASCUCCI, SoMa – I feel like I’m back in Italy at brand new Caffe Pascucci, the first outpost of a popular Italian chain. The crisp, white space is chic and soothing, even as the place buzzes with the Italian families and individuals already frequenting the place within merely days of opening. It’s not just because the menu is loaded with dozens of types of espresso, cappuccinos and iced coffees topped with banana or doused with amaretto. It’s because the majority Italian staff and clientele exude convivial Italian spirit, throwing out “ciaos” and “pregos” liberally. I like the robust Gold Espresso, though dark hot chocolate was a little too pudding-like in consistency, even if thankfully dark (my favorites in Italy or France are syrupy rich, but not stiff). Chad Newton, formerly of Fish & Farm, executes a simple but pleasing menu of salads and sandwiches – even an ultra-basic Tri-Color Salad is three types of greens (including bits of endive), gentle shavings of Parmesan, and a perky lemon dressing. 170 King, SF.

CONTRABAND COFFEE, Nob Hill – Yet another in the endless flow of Third Wave coffee houses,  brand new Contraband Coffee Bar occupies a less coffee-driven corner of Nob Hill (the Mission and SoMa don’t need any more… spread the wealth!) The space is clean, white, with modern art, and baristas I’ve seen working at other coffee havens around town. It sports a shiny Synesso Hydra espresso machine and also offer V60 pour-over and Chemex preparations for its own roasted beans. Additional kudos for getting the snacks right: Dynamo Donuts and Peasant Pies. 1415 Larkin, SF.

BAR AGRICOLE, SoMa – The simplicity is appealing. Bar Agricole, previously open for dinner and bar only, shares its soothing garden patio and forward-thinking, urban interior for a Four Barrel coffee and one food item: a pretzel bun, aka Laugenbrötchen, from Mountain View’s German baker par excellence, Esther’s Bakery (http://www.esthersbakery.com). Order the pretzel roll with a side of apple butter, jam or cream cheese. Oh, they also have free WiFi and are open all day (from 8am on) until the dinner switchover at 5pm. There are fewer cooler spaces you could linger in. 355 11th Street, SF.

–Subscribe to Virgina’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot

2011 Cannabis Club Guide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2011 Cannabis Club Guide

Welcome to our 2011 Cannabis Club Guide. We’ve added four new clubs to our updated guide, a continuation of last year’s.

As I created my list of the clubs I planned to review, I found abundant online resources such as San Francisco Cannabis Clubs and Weed Tracker. But an even better indicator of how mainstream this industry has become were the extensive listings and reviews on Yelp.com.

I combined that information with recommendations from a variety of sources I interviewed to develop my list, which is incomplete and entirely subjective, but nonetheless a good overview of the local industry and the differences among the clubs.

Also, like our restaurant reviewers, I didn’t identify myself as a journalist on my visits, preferring to see how the average customer is treated — and frankly, I was amazed at the high level of friendly, knowledgeable customer service at just about every club. To comply with city law, all the clubs are fully accessible by those with disabilities.

So, with that business out of the way, please join me on my tour of local cannabis clubs, in the (random) order that I visited them. 

2011 REVIEWS

SPARC

The San Francisco Patient and Resource Center, or SPARC (1256 Mission, SF) immediately set a new standard for dispensaries when it opened last August, combining a stunningly beautiful facility with deep connections to the medical marijuana community and a strong commitment to taking care of patients and moving the movement forward.

Even the casual observer can see what a unique place this is. A selection of almost three dozen bud varietals is presented in the style of a Chinese apothecary, each strain laboratory-tested for strength and purity and labeled with THC and CBD levels. The facility was lovingly designed from scratch with state-of-the-art humidors and security systems, creating an environment that is warm, friendly, and secure, with more employees per customer than other clubs.

Below the surface, SPARC is also setting a standard. Founder Erich Pearson and others involved with the club have been movement leaders for many years and they have deep connections with growers, patient groups, and the progressive political community. So they offer everything from free acupuncture and other services to generous compassionate giving programs to strong support for all aspects of the vertically-integrated collective.

But it is the experience of visiting that is most striking. Get expert advice on choosing from a huge range on indoor and outdoor strains and then settle into one of the tables, load a bowl into the high-end Volcano vaporizer, and taste the fruits of SPARC’s expertise.

There are always lots of great deals to choose from, from one-pound bags for baking for $300 to eighths of the finest outdoor weed for as low as $28.

SPARC is truly an industry leader, setting a high bar for what dispensaries can be.

Prepackaged buds

Opened in 2010

Price: Wide range

Selection: Huge!

Ambiance: Warm, comfortable, hip

Smoke on site: Vaporizing only

Thug factor: Low

Access/security: Tight but welcoming

———–

IGZACTLY HEALTH CENTER

Opening in late 2010, Igzactly (527 Howard, SF) is the new kid of the block — but it’s already establishing itself as one of the best cannabis clubs around. With a rotating supply of almost 40 varieties of buds to choose from at a full range of prices, it has the biggest selection in town. I asked the bud tender how the club is able to offer such a wide array of high-quality buds, and he said it’s because they’re using a different model than most clubs. Rather than buying the buds from growers, Igzactly uses a consignment system, splitting the proceeds with the growers.

Complementing the huge stock of dried buds, Igzactly also has a large selection of cannabis-infused edibles, concentrates, tinctures, ointments, and just about anything you can get weed into. On top of that, Igzactly has a comfortable lounge and is one of just a handful of clubs that allows vaporizing on site, giving clients a choice of using the top-end Volcano or the Zephyr (my personal favorite) vaporizer models. They even offer complimentary teas and coffee.

The staff there is friendly and customer-oriented. For example, when the club opened, it offered prepackaged buds like most clubs, but it heeded customer input and quickly switched to displaying all their buds in huge jars and weighing them out on purchase, which many patients prefer. And he said the club plans to expand the lounge soon and to add on-site laboratory services by year’s end.

If Igzactly is a sign of where the industry’s headed, the future looks bright and verdant.

Buds weighed on purchase

Opened in 2010

Price: From cheap to average

Selection: Huge!

Ambiance: Green, friendly, inviting

Smoke on site: Vaporizing only

Thug factor: Low

Access/security: Secure but easy access

———–

SHAMBHALA

I visited Shambhala (2441 Mission, SF) on its second day open, when the smell of paint was stronger than that of weed, so it’s hard to judge it fairly. Check-in for new patients was maddening slow to an almost comical degree, they weren’t yet taking credit cards and had no ATM on site, and they offered a bigger selection of rolling papers than bud varieties.

But I still liked this place, the only one in that stretch of Mission Street. The staff is very friendly and they seem to really know their products. Unlike many clubs that offer a few good deals, the only cheap weed here was Afgoo for $25 per eighth, less than half the price of most of the 13 varieties they offered. When I asked why it was so much cheaper, the bud tender explained that the buds weren’t as tight or well-trimmed as the dispensary expects, although it still proved to be plenty strong and tasty.

Beyond the buds, Shambhala is also part head shop, selling lots of nice glass bongs, a display case filled with pipes, and rolling papers of all shapes and flavors. And while its selection of edibles is small, they do feature all of Auntie Dolores’ yummy cookies and savory snacks, even displaying the pretzels, chili-lime peanuts, and caramel corn in large glass jars on the counter.

Once Shambhala finds its groove, it will be a solid addition to the city’s dispensary network.

Prepackaged buds

Open since 2011

Price: Moderate

Selection: Limited buds, lots of paraphernalia

Ambiance: Clean, open, friendly

Smoke on site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/security: Tight

———-

MARKET STREET COOPERATIVE

It’s easy to overlook this place (1884 Market, SF), as I did last year when I first began to compile this guide. Nestled into the back of a wide sidewalk courtyard where Market meets Laguna just up the street from the LGBT Center, Market Street Cooperative has low-key signage and doesn’t seem to do much advertising or outreach, particularly compared to marketing-savvy clubs such as the Vapor Room, Medithrive, and SPARC.

But the operators clearly know what they’re doing, offering a wide product selection in a quiet, clean, no-nonsense environment. They offer a choice of buds for every taste and use, from the best high-end buds at a good price down to eighths for a dirt-cheap $18 and three different grades of shake, which many vaporizer users prefer over the tight buds that they need to grind themselves.

Access is limited to members, and the club insists on being able to verify the recommendation of users in a phone call to their doctors, a stricter standard that most clubs use and one that can get users turned away if their visit is after normal business hours (as they unapologetically did to my friend, the first time a club had denied him entry).

But once you’re in, you’re in, and this long-running club will take good care of you. 

Prepackaged buds

Opened in 1999

Price: Moderate with lots of good deals

Selection: High

Ambiance: Low-key and business-like

Smoke on site: No

Thug factor: Very low

Access/security: Tight 

 

RE-LEAF HERBAL CENTER

I wasn’t terribly impressed by ReLeaf (1284 Mission, SF) when I first reviewed the club in 2010, so at their owner’s request I returned recently to give them another look. They have definitely improved in both the feel of the club and its customer service, but it still suffers from some of the same shortcomings I noticed last year.

While they allow smoking on site, which is great, they don’t have any vaporizers or bongs on hand for patients to use, making it seem a little sketchy. The selection of buds is also fairly limited, with about a dozen varieties divided into two pricing tiers (although only a couple selections on each tier really looked and smelled great), and the clones they had on sale during my visit looked scraggly and sickly.

But the employees there are very nice and helpful, and the atmosphere in the club has become more inviting. There carry a large stock of edibles not available in other clubs, including smoothies and other refrigerated snacks that require a special permit from the city to sell. And the customer appreciation barbecue events they offer are a nice touch.

For a small storefront operation, Releaf does a fine job and it’s worth a visit. But with the way in which the bar has been raised for dispensaries in this city, I wouldn’t put Releaf in the top tier. Sorry guys, maybe next year.

 

Buds weighed on purchase

Open since 2007 ( with three years at previous SF location)

Price: Moderate

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: A loud head shop that also has some weed

Smoke On Site: Yes

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Moderate

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2010 REVIEWS

DIVINITY TREE

While the reviews on Yelp rave about Divinity Tree (958 Geary St.), giving it five stars, I found it a little intimidating and transactional (although it was the first club I visited, so that might be a factor). But if you’re looking to just do your business in a no-frills environment and get out, this could be your place.

The staff and most of the clientele were young men, some a bit thuggish. One worker wore a “Stop Snitching” T-shirt and another had “Free the SF8.” But they behaved professionally and were knowledgeable and easy to talk to. When I asked for a strain that would ease my anxiety but still allow me enough focus to write, my guy (patients wait along a bench until called to the counter) seemed to thoughtfully ponder the question for a moment, then said I wanted a “sativa-dominant hybrid” and recommended Neville’s Haze.

I bought 1/16 for $25 and when I asked for a receipt, it seemed as though they don’t get that question very often. But without missing a beat he said, “Sure, I’ll give you a receipt,” and gave me a hand-written one for “Meds.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: four years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: A transactional hole in the wall

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy. Membership available but not required

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GRASS ROOTS

Located at 1077 Post St. right next to Fire Station #3, Grass Roots has the feel of a busy saloon. Indeed, as a worker named Justin told me, many of the employees are former bartenders who know and value customer service. With music, great lighting, and nice décor, this place feels comfortable and totally legit. Whereas most clubs are cash-only, Grass Roots allows credit card transactions and has an ATM on site.

The steady stream of customers are asked to wait along the back wall, perusing the menus (one for buds and another with pictures for a huge selection of edibles) until called to the bar. When asked, my guy gave me a knowledgeable breakdown of the difference between sativa and indica, but then Justin came over to relieve him for a lunch break with the BBQ they had ordered in and ate in the back.

Justin answered my writing-while-high inquiry by recommending Blue Dream ($17 for a 1.2-gram), and when I asked about edibles, he said he really likes the indica instant hot chocolate ($6), advising me to use milk rather than water because it bonds better with the cannabinoids to improve the high. Then he gave me a free pot brownie because I was a new customer. I was tempted to tip him, but we just said a warm goodbye instead.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: A warm and welcoming weed bar

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

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HOPENET

Hopenet (223 Ninth St.) is one of the few places in the city where you can smoke on site, in a comfortable, homey style, as if you’re visiting a friend’s apartment. In addition to the loveseat, two chairs, and large bong, there is a small patio area for smoking cigarettes or playing a guitar, as someone was doing during my visit.

Although the small staff is definitely knowledgeable, they all seemed stoned. And when I asked about the right weed for my writing problem, a gruff older woman impatiently dismissed any indica vs. sativa distinctions and walked away. But I learned a lot about how they made the wide variety of concentrates from the young, slow-talking guy who remained.

He weighed out a heavy gram of White Grapes for $15, the same price for Blue Dream, and $2 cheaper than I had just paid at Grass Roots. That was in the back room, the big middle area was for hanging out, and the front area was check-in and retail, with a case for pipes and wide variety of stoner T-shirts on the walls.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: eight years

Price: Low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: Like a converted home with retail up front

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

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VAPOR ROOM

Vapor Room (607A Haight, www.vaporroom.com) is San Francisco’s best pot club, at least in terms of feeling like an actual club and having strong connections to its community of patients. It’s a large room where customers can smoke on site, giving this collective a warm, communal vibe that facilitates social interaction and fosters a real sense of inclusiveness.

Each of the four large tables has a high-end Volcano vaporizer on it, there’s a big-screen TV, elegant décor, and large aquarium. There’s a nice mix of young heads and older patients, the latter seeming to know each other well. But, lest members feel a little too at home, a sign on the wall indicates a two-hour time limit for hanging out.

Its early days in the spot next door were a bit grungier, but the new place is bright and elegant. It has a low-key façade and professional feel, and it strongly caters to patients’ needs. Low-income patients are regularly offered free medicine, such as bags full of vapor prepared by staff. Mirkarimi said the Vapor Room is very involved in the Lower Haight community and called it a “model club.”

But they’re still all about the weed, and they have a huge selection that you can easily examine (with a handy magnifying glass) and smell, knowledgeable staff, lots of edibles and concentrates, a tea bar (medicated and regular), and fairly low standardized pot prices: $15 per gram, $25 per 1/16th, $50 per eighth. And once you got your stuff, grab a bong off the shelf and settle into a table — but don’t forget to give them your card at the front desk to check out a bowl for your bong. As the guy told me, “It’s like a library.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: seven years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Warm, communal hangout

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

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MEDITHRIVE

The newest cannabis club in town, MediThrive (1933 Mission, www.medithrive.com) has a bright, fresh, artsy feel to it, with elegantly frosted windows and a welcoming reception area as you enter. This nonprofit coop takes your photo and requires free membership, and already had almost 3,000 members when I signed up a couple weeks ago. Tiana, the good-looking young receptionist, said the club recently won a reader’s choice Cannabis Cup award and noted that all the art on the walls was a rotating collection by local patients: “We’re all about supporting local art.”

The decorators seemed to have fun with the cannabis concept, with a frosted window with a pot leaf photo separating the reception area from the main room, while the walls alternated wood planks with bright green fake moss that looked like the whole place was bursting with marijuana. There’s a flat-screen TV on the wall, at low volume.

The large staff is very friendly and seemed fairly knowledgeable, and the huge selection of pot strains were arranged on a spectrum with the heaviest indica varieties on the left to the pure sativas on the right. Lots of edibles and drinkables, too. The cheapest bud was a cool steel tin with a gram of Mission Kush for $14 (new members get a free sample), while the high rollers could buy some super-concentrated OG Kush Gold Dust ($50) or Ear Wax ($45) to sprinkle over their bowls.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: one year

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Professional, like an artsy doctor’s office

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Very low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

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KETAMA COLLECTIVE

At 14 Valencia St., Ketama is a testament to how silly it is that clubs within 1,000 feet of schools aren’t permitted to allow smoking on site. This former café has a large, comfortable seating area and full kitchen, both of which have had little use since a school opened way down the street last year, causing city officials to ban smoking at Ketama.

Pity, because it seems like a great place to just hang out. Yet now it just seemed underutilized and slow. The staff is small (one door guy and a woman hired last summer doing sales), and we were the only customers during the 20 minutes I was there (except for the weird old guy drinking beer from a can in a bag who kept popping in and out).

But it still had jars of good green bud, several flavors of weed-laced drinks and edibles, and a pretty good selection of hash and kief at different prices, and the woman spoke knowledgeably about the different processes by which they were created. To counteract the slow business, Ketama has a neon sign out front that explicitly announces its business — another indication the industry has gone legit.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Low

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: Hippie hangout, but with nobody there

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but free membership required

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MR. NICE GUY

Belying its name, Mr. Nice Guy (174 Valencia St.) thrilled and scared me, but not necessarily in a bad way. Located across the street from Zeitgeist, the thug factor here was high and so was the security, allowing no human interaction that wasn’t mediated by thick Plexiglass, presumably bulletproof.

After initially being told by a disembodied voice to come back in five minutes, I submitted my doctor’s recommendation and ID into the slot of a teller’s window, darkened to hide whoever I was dealing with. Quickly approved, I was buzzed into a small, strange room with three doors.

I paused, confused, until the disembodied voice again told me, “Keep going,” and I was buzzed through another door into a hallway that led to a large room, its walls completely covered in brilliant murals, expertly painted in hip-hop style. Along the front walls, a lighted menu broke down the prices of about 20 cannabis varieties.

Then finally, I saw people: two impossibly hot, young female employees, lounging nonchalantly in their weed box, like strippers waiting to start their routines. The only other customer, a young B-boy, chatted them up though the glass, seemingly more interested in these striking women than their products.

I finally decided to go with the special, an ounce of Fever, normally $17, for just $10. I opened a small door in the glass, set down my cash, and watched the tall, milk chocolate-skinned beauty trade my money for Fever, leaving me feeling flushed. It was the best dime-bag I ever bought.

Prepackaged buds

Price: Moderate, with cheap specials

Selection: High

Ambiance: Hip hop strip club

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: High

Access/Security: High security but low scrutiny

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BERNAL HEIGHTS COLLECTIVE

Bernal Collective (33 29th St. at Mission) seemed both more casual and more strict than any of the other clubs in town — and it also turned out to be one of my favorites.

After refusing to buy pot for a guy out front who had just been turned away, I entered the club and faced more scrutiny than I had at any other club. It was the only club to ask for my doctor’s license number and my referral number, and when I tried to check an incoming text message, I was told cell phone use wasn’t allowed for “security reasons.” On the wall, they had a blown-up copy of their 2007 legal notice announcing their opening.

But beyond this by-the-book façade, this club proved warm and welcoming, like a comfortable clubhouse. People can smoke on site, and there’s even a daily happy hour from 4:20–5:20 p.m., with $1 off joints and edibles, both in abundant supply. Normal-sized prerolled joints are $5, but they also offer a massive bomber joint with a full eighth of weed for $50.

The staff of a half-dozen young men were knowledgeable about the 20 varieties they had on hand and offered excellent customer service, even washing down the bong with an alcohol-wipe before letting a customer take a rip from the XXX, a strong, sticky bud that was just $15 for a gram.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: High

Ambiance: A clubhouse for young stoners

Smoke On Site: Yes

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Fairly tight

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LOVE SHACK

This longtime club (502 14th St.) has had its ups and downs, the downs coming mostly because of its location on a fairly residential block. After taking complaints from neighbors, the city required Love Shack to cap its membership, although that seems to be changing because the club let me in, albeit with a warning that next time I would need to have a state ID card. It was the only club I visited to have such a requirement.

Once inside this tiny club, I could see why people might have been backed up onto the street at times. But the staff was friendly and seemed to have a great rapport with the regulars, who seemed be everyone except me. The knowledgeable manager walked me through their 20-plus varieties, most costing the standard street price of $50 per eighth, or more for stronger stuff like Romulan.

On the more affordable end of the spectrum was the $10 special for Jack Herrer Hash, named for the longtime legalization advocate who wrote The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a classic book on the history of the movement.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: nine years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Small, like a converted apartment

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Tight

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COFFEE SHOP BLUE SKY

Blue Sky (377 17th St., Oakland)is based on the Amsterdam model of combining marijuana dispensaries with coffee shops, although it suffers a bit from Oakland’s ban on smoking. Still, it’s a cool concept and one that Richard Lee sees as the future of marijuana-related businesses because of the synergy between smoking and grabbing a bite or some coffee.

Most of Blue Sky is a small coffee shop and smoothie bar, but there’s a little room in back for buying weed. “We’ve got the best prices around,” said the guy who checked my ID, and indeed, $44 eighths and $10 “puppy bags” were pretty cheap. Customers can also sign up to do volunteer political advocacy work for free weed.

The only downside is the limited selection, only four varieties when I was there, although the woman at the counter said the varieties rotate over the course of the day based on the club’s purchases from growers.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: 15 years

Price: Low

Selection: Very limited

Ambiance: A fragrant little room behind a coffee shop

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

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HARBORSIDE HEALTH CENTER

I have seen the future of legitimized medical marijuana businesses, and it’s Harborside (1840 Embarcadero, Oakland). With its motto of “Out of the shadows, into the light,” this place is like the Costco of pot — a huge, airy facility with a dizzying number of selections and even a “rewards card” program.

All new members are given a tour, starting with sign-up sheets for daily free services that include yoga, chiropractic, acupuncture, reiki, consultations with herbalists, and classes on growing. Then we moved to a section with the clones of dozens of pot plant varieties available for purchase (limit of 72 plants per visit), along with a potted marijuana plant the size of a tree.

Harborside is also blazing the trail on laboratory services, testing all of its pot for contaminants and THC content, labeling it on the packaging just like the alcohol industry does. Some of the smaller clubs don’t like how over-the-top Harborside is, and they complain that its prices are high. But those profits seem to be poured back into the services at this unique facility.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: four years

Price: High

Selection: Huge

Ambiance: A big, open shopping emporium

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Tight

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SANCTUARY

The people who run Sanctuary (669 O’Farrell St.), the first club to fully comply with the new city regulations and get its permanent license, have been active in the political push for normalizing medical marijuana, as a wall full of awards and letters from politicians attests. Owner Michael Welch was commended for his work by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, where Sanctuary employee Tim Durning has been an active longtime member and former elected officer.

Sanctuary has a generous compassionate giving program and caters to lots of poor residents of the Tenderloin neighborhood. While the club is prohibited from allowing smoking, they fudge the restriction with a Volcano vaporizer. “A lot of patients are on fixed income and live in the SROs, where they can’t smoke, so we let them vaporize here whether they buy from us or not,” Durning told us.

Those who do buy from them find a huge selection — including 20 different kinds of hash and 17 varieties of buds — at a wide price range. Staffers know their products well and take their business seriously, giving a regular spiel to new members about responsible use, which includes maintaining neighborhood relations by not smoking near the business.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Low to moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Campaign headquarters for the marijuana movement

Smoke On Site: No, but vaporizing OK

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

GREEN DOOR

If low prices or a huge selection of edibles are what you seek, Green Door (843 Howard St., www.greendoorsf.com) could be the club for you.

Eighths of good green buds start at a ridiculously low $25 and go up to just $50 (the cheapest price for eighths at many clubs and also the standard black market price). If that’s not low enough, super-broke users can buy a quarter-ounce bag of high-grade shake for $40.

If you didn’t already have the munchies going in, you’ll get them perusing the huge menu of edibles: from weed-laced knockoffs of Snickers bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for just $5 to cupcakes, ice cream, or Chex party mix. They have lots of hash and other concentrates as well.

Somehow, the club also manages to have a strong compassionate giving program and contibutes to local civic organizations that include the Black Rock Arts Foundation, Maitri AIDS Hospice, and Friends of the Urban Forest.

The club itself is a little sterile and transactional, with an institutional feel and employees stuck behind teller windows. But even though that and the steady flow of tough-looking young male customers raise its thug factor a bit, the employees all seemed friendly and helpful, giving free edibles to first-time customers.

Prepackage buds

Open for: nine years (five here, four in Oakland)

Price: Cheap

Selection: High for edibles, moderate for weed

Ambiance: Like a community bank of cheap weed

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy access, high security

————–

 

When will the gun madness stop?

Zelda Bronstein
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When will the gun madness stop?

Tucson was a disaster, a tragedy, possibly a result of overheated political rhetoric driving a deranged man to action. It was also the result of a national culture that makes it too easy to obtain a powerful weapon.

I looked at the top three stories on SFGATE this afternoon, and here they are:

1. More on the Tucson shootings.

2. 96-year-old woman and grandson shot to death in Livermore.

3. Man shot in Tenderloin coffee shop.

I know, the Chron loves to lead with mayhem, but seriously: That’s a lot of dead people for one day. And you can’t shoot someone if you don’t have a gun. You wonder when this madness will ever end.

 

 

Tapas with Sean: Some modest questions for a West Portal supervisor

Zelda Bronstein
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Tapas with Sean: Some modest questions for a West Portal supervisor

Ever since the Brugmann family moved into the West Portal area in 1964 (with the help of local realtor John Barbagelata), I have been annoyed with the fact that many of our West of Twin Peaks supervisors prance around in their neighborhoods as “neighborhood supervisors,” then go to City Hall and vote to protect PG&E and vote the downtown/bigdeveloper/real estate line without blushing.

Barbagelata and  Quentin Kopp were notable exceptions. Barbagelata, when he was elected supervisor, even refused to go downtown to the election night parties and staged his own party in his West Portal real estate office and made the statement that there was a big difference between neighborhood and downtown issues.

Sean Elsbernd, my current supervisor, is good on some issues, shows some independence on occasion, and comes to the phone and answers emails and comes to the Guardian for interviews. In fact, I was emailing back and forth with him on Tuesday afternoon over my annual holiday card (and my note to “fear the beard in 2011″) shortly before the historic board meeting on the interim mayor. I asked him why he wasn’t more visible in West Portal and that I didn’t see him in the Manor coffee shop (he replied he was a Village Inn type of guy) and that I didn’t see him at Que Syrah, our local Best Of wine tasting gem. (He said he and his wife had gone to Que Syrah over the holidays but they were closed.) I explained that proprietors Stephanie and Keith McCardell had taken a week off.)

Anyway, a few hours later, Sean “mysteriously” nominated Ed Lee, the CAO traveling in Hong Kong, to take on the key city post of interim mayor. How in the world did this happen?

Was Sean once again demonstrating he was a neighborhood guy out in West Portal, but at City Hall the mayor’s go-to -guy in the smelly deal to preserve the mayor’s office and take control of the Board of Supervisors for PG@E and the mayor’s downtown allies?

So I sent him an email with my questions as his constituent. And I invited him to come as guests of my wife Jean and I for the Thursday night special at Que Syrah (230 West Portal Ave), with flights of small production wines and tapas by Val, styled in wondrous Barcelona fashion. I gave him a deadline (noon today) to answer my questions and I invited him to comment on my Bruce blog or send me a letter or email that I would be happy to publish on my blog. Stay alert for news on what my West Portal supervisor is really up to at City Hall.

To Sup. Sean Elsbernd:

You baffle me once again.

I am curious, as a constituent,  why you nominated Ed Lee for interim mayor when he was (a) out of town in Hong Kong, (b) not publicly “out there” or “in public discussion” as a candidate or even known by the supervisors to be a legitimate candidate, (c) has not publicly stated his views on any of the major tough issues coming before the mayor, (d) was not available for questioning by the board when the discussion and vote came down, (e) is not as qualified for t his tough post in these tough times as the other public candidates, and (f) was obviously part of a backroom deal orchestrated by Mayor Newsom and his downtown allies?

I wait patiently  for  your reply.  And I hope you drop by Que Syrah Thursday night,  for tapas and wine flights, so you can explain personally  to the West Portal throngs what you are really  up to at City Hall these days. Jean and I will be there to host you.

Respectfully, Bruce B. Brugmann, 2262 14th Ave, West Portal

Moya

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
5
Moya

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Many of the city’s Ethiopian restaurants are to be found in the Western Addition (on or near Divisadero Street) and in the Inner Sunset, so to find one, Moya, blooming in SoMa is an unexpected pleasure. The rush of Internet Age money into the neighborhoods south of Market Street in recent years has been a fast-rising tide that can be said to have lifted all boats only if by boats we mean yachts. But if by boats we mean boats, then some swamping has occurred. The area isn’t yet devoid of modest, high-value restaurants, but the trend has bent strongly in the direction of pricey new places, from Prospect in the east to Bar Agricole in the once-forlorn west.

The foods of Ethiopia seem a little underappreciated on these shores. The cooking is as gratifyingly spiced as that from the other side of the Indian Ocean. But while Indian cuisine has found a sort of vogue here, perhaps because of the influx of so many software engineers, Ethiopian cuisine has not.

Yet neglect isn’t always and entirely a bad thing. It can help preserve a certain integrity and authenticity. At Moya (which opened last summer), the look is big-city modern, with high ceilings, a floor handsomely laid with rough tiles the color of sandstone, and walls washed with a butter color. The place looks fresh and clean, and the kitchen is half out in the open, which lends a reassuring transparency to things. There is nothing quite like being able to see the people who make your food actually making it.

But at heart, it’s very much a mom-is-cooking operation. The ayb, a kind of cottage cheese, is house-made according to a family recipe. You can order the cheese as a side, for $4, and it’s also served with the kitfo ($14), a kind of spicy, tataki-ized steak tartare — steak tartake? More on the beef in a moment, but as for the cheese: it was more creamy than chunky, almost like a relation of mascarpone but with a fresh sourness that led me to ask our server whether lemon juice had been substituted for rennet as the curdling agent. The answer was indefinite, which might mean I hadn’t put the question clearly or had stumbled on a trade secret. But the cheese did strongly remind me of a simple fresh white cheese I’ve sometimes made myself (using lemon juice squeezed into scalded milk) for the Indian spinach dish saag paneer.

The other lovely element of sourness in the food involves injera, the bread (made from a grain called teff,) that resembles a cross between sponge cake and sourdough. You could make a savory bûche de Noël from it. At Moya. as at all the Ethiopian and Eritrean places I’ve been to, injera is ubiquitous, whether laid out as a kind of mat for other items to rest on; rolled up like fresh lavash and set beside a rounded cone of green lentils — azifa ($5) — strongly seasoned with red onions, garlic, lemon, chilis, and olive oil or torn up and tossed with tomatoes, green peppers, onions, and a garlicky vinaigrette for ye timatim fit fit ($4), a sort of east African panzanella.

The kitchen’s seasoning hand is a robust one, whether the animating ingredient is garlic (the ye timatim fit fit should come with a whole coffee bean or two for each diner, to chew away garlic breath, which becomes particularly lethal the morning after), or hot pepper. We were consulted on how hot we wanted the kitfo and ye doro tibs ($12), chunks of boneless chicken sautéed in clarified butter with berberé, (the traditional Ethiopian chili powder), onions, garlic, tomato, and herbs. When told that hot was quite hot, we said medium and hoped for the best. But medium turned out to be what most places would call hot. I like spicy food, and I found the tingling afterglow of the berberé to be a distinct pleasure. But mild wouldn’t be a bad default choice for those in doubt.

As is customary, the main courses were piled together onto a platter lined with injera, and a well-dressed chopped salad dotted with tomato quarters were heaped at either end. The salad was both decorative and cooling, while the injera rug, of course, was ripped to shreds that served as little finger-operated grabbing devices. The atavistic satisfaction of tearing something up and then eating it reminds us of how close to being uncivilized we are, really, even in such civilized surroundings.

MOYA

Dinner: nightly, 5–9 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.; Sat., noon–3 p.m.

1044 Folsom, SF

(415) 431-5544

www.eatmoya.com

No alcohol

Cash only

Not particularly noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Parada 22

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Parada 22

paulr@sfbg.com

Out at the west end of Haight Street, what do we find? Not a pot of gold, sadly, though plenty of pot, whose haze hovers fragrantly above the pavement like hippie ground fog. Also: a McDonald’s, complete with parking lot. This has always faintly depressed me. Across the street, an emerging Whole Foods (with parking lot), while a block to the east, the old I-Beam has been obliterated in favor of condos.

In the midst of all this corporate commotion, it would be easy to overlook Parada 22, a tiny restaurant that opened last spring serving Puerto Rican food. The western run of Haight Street, while rich in places to eat, has never really been known for its restaurants, yet Parada 22 is worth seeking out. If I hesitate to describe it as a destination restaurant, it’s only because that label might raise expectations to curse (in the sense of “hex”) level.

We are talking, after all, about a restaurant with concrete floors, crayon drawings, and old newsprint on the walls (including the San Francisco Chronicle’s unforgettable reporting on the outbreak of the Spanish-American War), no host’s station, and a table set just inches from the front door, the better for the people seated at it to be buffeted by winter drafts as diners come and go.

But we look closer and find grace notes. Each table holds a flickering candle, along with an old coffee can supplied with utensils and napkins. Even better: one of the chefs, on a cold evening, brings everyone a little cup of pork and vegetable soup, made from a pork leg roasted earlier in the day (and with stock made from the roasted bones). You might call this an amuse-bouche — if it was more whimsical and less sustaining. I warmed my hands with the cup, since concrete floors can make a place seem cold even if it isn’t.

Puerto Rican cooking involves versions of and variations on foods that are characteristic of the Caribbean basin. It’s on the rustic side, with plenty of beans and rice, roasted plantains, and cassava root (an appealing alternative to the potato that has never found much traction in our own potato-involved cuisine). The root stars in a salad ($7) that, when warmed, provides a strong contrast to the chilled greens, carrot tabs, and tomato dice. (The advertised avocado was a no-show.)

There’s also plenty of meat, at least as Parada 22’s kitchen prepares the cuisine, with an emphasis on pork. Pork’s cultural meaning is complex; pigs are fecund scavengers that thrive across a wide range of habitats, which means they are efficient producers of protein and therefore a boon to human populations in less than bountiful circumstances. And pork, along with wine, is about as closely associated as a comestible could be with Latin Christianity. Eating it — or not eating it — can be a powerful assertion of cultural identity.

I love pork as a cook would love it, for its compatibility with so many different treatments and seasonings, its modest cost, and its relative ease of handling. Parada 22’s pernil asado ($12), which reached the table as a heap of oval slices, reminded me of how good pork can be even when lightly adorned (with garlic and oregano) and simply roasted: the meat juicy and giving a hint of ropiness for texture. As, perhaps, an echo of humankind’s ancient fear of going hungry, the plate was finished with failsafe heaps of Spanish rice (studded with bits of ham), white beans (simmered with potato, carrot, and winter squash), and a green salad. Even without the pork, there would have been a meal.

Just as meal-worthy was a pot of red beans ($3.50) simmered in a spicy red sauce with bits of ham and chunks of cassava root. If you had only a fiver in your pocket, you could go to the McDonald’s a few blocks away and end up with God knows what, or you could have Parada 22’s red beans — a stew, really — and be much more genuinely nourished.

The menu card also offers several sandwiches, including a Cuban version with pork (Puerto Rican and Cuban foods seem much more alike than not) and a beef edition ($9), with mats of meat whose toughness belied their thinness. Caramelized onion and melted white cheese lent a Philly-cheesesteak effect. The baguette was adequate, but the whole thing would have been better if the bread had been toasted.

For dessert there was, fittingly, rum cake ($3.25), a neat square of yellow sponginess under a cap of whipped cream. It looked quite demure and innocent but did have DUI alcohol breath. In that respect, it reminded me of tiramisù, except much less soggy and therefore more coherent. Bust averted.

PARADA 22

Tues.–Sun., 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.

1805 Haight, SF

(415) 750-1111

www.parada22.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Tolerable noise

 

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