Slow Food Eat-In

Not sit-in or walk-out or picket line, but eat-in. An eat-in is my kind of protest. This is how we change the world, people: free food.

Between my restaurant gig and a brief internship at Roots of Change, a local food sutainability organization, I've been spending a large chunk of my waking life immersed in the pleasures of a locally sourced diet.

It's easy to do here, San Francisco kicks ass at sustainable food. There are three weekly farmer's markets within a few blocks of our apartment and you can't throw a stick in this town without it landing in someone's beet gazpacho at a new organic restaurant. Michael Pollan is beginning to rival Barack as San Francisco's change-spouting favorite- although the Prez recently gained ground when the First Lady planted a vegetable garden on the White House's front lawn.

Have you seen this thing? More newsworthy than her latest shift dress.

I like this, because food is delicious. Eating has beaten out door-knocking as my favorite way to save the world (yes Mom, I know you have to do both).

This is why on Labor Day the boy and I cooked us a mess of rice and pinto beans, bungeed it to our bike rack and rolled out to the Slow Food Eat-In, a community potluck on a grand scale. It took place right in front of San Francisco's majestic City Hall to publicize the Child Nutrition Act, which is leglislation due to be reauthorized soon that can amp up our country's commitment to healthy food in public schools. Keep all the kiddies bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and diabetes-free!

Yesterday was a sunny indian summer kind of day and there were several long tables dotted with contributions from our fellow activists. This being San Francisco, home of the foodie fanatic, most offerings were a bit more sophisticated than the twenty-something standard we'd brought. I'm talking coconut quinoa with squash, massive wheels of sharp yellow artesan cheese, gorgonzola studded heirloom tomatos, cabbage salad with tangerines and crunchy japanese noodles... I could go on, but you get it. It was a nice spread.

You can't really blame the park's regular occupants for forgetting to bring a casserole of their own to contribute, and to be fair it did look somewhat like an outdoor soup kitchen. At one point a tall white guy in a soiled Giants hat walked up with his tablecloth bedecked lady friend and began addressing the Tupperware containers in a manner that suggested it had been a long time since their last roasted local lamb shish kabob. A Slow Food volunteer arrived to address the situation.

"So, sir, this is an event to publicize the Child Nutrition Act... It's for healthy food in schools? Did you bring a dish to share?" Her political teachings met a blank stare from the would-be activist. She tried a different tack. "So, like, I can't have you... taking 25 things and then there won't be any for- try to not take too much, okay?" She turned, and, satisfied with the exchange both resumed their duties, the volunteer returning to the seed-planting table and the hobo to making a large dent in the mushroom tabouli. Truly heartwarming to see individuals from distinct walks of life coming together to make a difference.

We left after listening to speeches from a kid from a recent San Francisco high school grad who had planted a kitchen garden on campus, a stoked politician and a doctor who'd written a book on the wisdom of the indigenous diet. We were up some oregano and spearmint seedlings, but down the Tupperware container that had housed our rice and beans, which seemed to have been appropriated by a fellow warrior for food justice who wanted to bring the good word to his buddies' bellies in the Tenderloin.

Anything for the cause,
Sister Caitlin

The Mission District

So we're kind of cruising along, me and America. Everyone's out of work, everyone's living in their parents' bedrooms, everyone's going to happy hour and skipping Friday night. No idea when this whole 'recession' thing is going to end. Peter Donohue, economist extraordinaire, tells me it's getting worse before it gets any better. Things are a little... up in the air, you might say.

Erik and I spent today with Caleb, his eight-year old be-mohawked cousin, cruising the Mission District 'cuz we had nothin' better goin' on. So for those of you that don't live in San Francisco (I know you're out there), the Mission is where you want to be. And what I mean to say by that is, it's where Caitlin wants to be.

The neighborhood was first settled by Whitey back in 1776, when the Spainards came to town(they built San Francisco de Assi, after which the neighborhood was named). It morphed into a blue collar community with the gradual addition of the German and Irish who Gold Rushed over from the motherlands. It even benifited from Central Americans workers, who moved in after finishing out their terms with Californian companies building the Panama Canal down south. The 'hood has always had a card up it's sleeve because when the rest of the city is lost in fog, it will sometimes poke it's head through into a sunny spot.

Today, the Mission rocks. By the 1950's, Chicanos and other Latinos had become the area's predominant ethnic group, blessing us with a taqueria on every corner and organic mangos four for a buck up in the grocery stores, even the year of our lord 2009. And other, Caitlin-friendly species have become endemic as well, such as the urban hipster. You wouldn't believe the bike shops down here- oh, the colored frames, oh, the wheel walls.

I actually feel compelled to give you my top 5 Mission District hit parade.

1. Paxton Gate, 824 Valencia Street
a taxidermy/florist shop brought to you by the most florid, twisted, pretty fever dreams. Sample goods include a stuffed cat wearing a prom dress and caniverous plants, both ready to be taken home and become your best friend! They just opened up a kid's store down the block, heady.

2. 826 Valencia Street, 826 Valencia Street
author Dave Eggers (he of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the best titled book ever), has created this string of kid's writing workshops across the country. They all have business fronts to raise money for the childrens. 826 Valencia is a pirate shop. If you go, you must dig on the small theater whose screen has been filled by a big old fish tank. Original stories about the tank's inhabitants have been framed on the wall and I like them.

3. Amnesia Bar, 853 Valencia Street
lots of obscure beers, free bluegrass Mondays. Stand near the front so you can see the barefoot, hillbilly dancers get down.

4. the Precita Eyes Mural Project, here there and everywhere
around the Mission, you'll find narrow alleyways covered street to street with bursts of hot art that make late night bar cruisers stop and stare. Precita Eyes gives kids and other Missionites the power to make their neighborhood colorful, and the resulting wall coverings give us all reason to be proud.

5. Mariachi's, 508 Valencia Street
this taqueria on Valencia Street beat out Thrift Town, the mega-used clothing store not only on the basis of it's delicious Mazatlan fish burrito but also because all their bottled beer is the same price. Bud Light? $2.99. Pacifico? $2.99. Anchor Steam? $2.99. Only in San Francisco...

So... how did I get on that track? Oh yeah, being broke and stuff. Well, if I had a job, I wouldn't have had the time to bomb around down here and formulate a top 5 hit parade for you all. I wouldn't be in this awesome coffee shop with Erik and Caleb drinking beers in the middle of the day and enjoying the freaks and hippies wandering by the plate glass windows. I guess the main thing is the uncertainty involved in not having a gig to fill your time. A grid on which to plan your day.

But seriously when did I, she of the ever diminishing bank balance, get uncomfortable with unemployment? Since when was the freedom to wander a bad thing?

Silver lining not so hard to find here,

Love,

Cait

Pretending to Drink Illegally

Bourbon and Branch
501 Jones St, San Francisco, CA

So speaking of poor property retention skills, I've gone and lost my driver's license. Shocking.

Last night we were out on the town with the Anderson/Shea clan and I had to pull some fast ones not to slow up the show. You know, bat the eyelashes, talk real fast and swish through the bar door before the bouncer knows what hit him. Bonus points if I mention I'm from Oregon!

In light of my situation's illegalities, I suppose it was only right that we wound up at a speakeasy. Back in the 1920's, Prohibition San Francisco was a den of inequity, and one of the old haunts where the Bay came to play has been converted back to it's roots, into a swish downtown night spot on the corner of Jones and O'Farrell named Bourbon & Branch. "Speak-easy," for those of you keeping track, was bartenders' admonition to indiscreet boozers. Keep it under your hat bro, on the down low.

Us being new to town, we thought we were slick for finding out about the place. There was a odd swarm of police at the Jones Street entrance when we rocked up, but we were quietly informed that "the Library" was at the back.

We dropped the secret password (shhhh, it's "books") and stepped out into the coolest room ever. Bourbon and Branch looks like how I envision my life to be when I'm buying vintage clothes. There's red velvet patterned wallpaper, the ceilings are shiny stamped metal, all the bartenders (men) are wearing bowler hats and shaking drinks into highball glasses. The Library (which is just one of the bar's rooms, the most "selective" I guess) walls are lined with bookshelves that every once in awhile will swing open and become doors to other rooms, which have secret doors to other rooms themselves, each lovingly attended by an appropriately retro employee.

Cocktails were of the old-fashioned persuasion, gimlets and ginger beer. Looking lovely but at $11, you know I didn't try a single one, current financial situations being a bitch to launch a food and drink writing career on. But it's all good, because I had my first Anchor Steams since coming back to the Bay ($5). Also joining us was Delirium Tremens, a Belgium beer which is my all time favorite based purely on it's name and label ($10):

Pink elephants! Strutting crocs! Only in Ghent...

B & B rocks, in a totally hidden, underground way. Kind of. It's hard to suspend your belief in the conceit after viewing the bar's website, where the "secret" password is prominently displayed alongside hokey 'House Rules.' Aw, applesauce!

But gimmick though it may be, it's a gimmick done well. The Library was packed, but a cute redheaded bar runner took pity on our boothless state and escorted us through some secret passages to another, nearly empty room where we chilled on red velvet love seats and spied on Jones Street degenerates and millionaires and millionaire degenerates through peepholes in the thick wooden doors. The music is Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald style jams of the highest order and at a certain point when we were sitting there, Andrew pulled up suddenly on the latch of a hidden trap door that had probably been there since the heydays of our grandparents.

I'll be back. Next time I'm wearing a dress. And bringing my date a fedora. And maybe eleven dollars.

No Jive,

Caitlin

San Francisco

"Do you know San Francisco?" The crackhead had trapped Erik and I in our MUNI seats, forced by politeness and morbid curiousity to listen to a twenty minute monologue surrounding the topics of cocaine, adultery and how awful he found the music of Johnny Cash.

I'd say the answer is up for debate. Do I know San Francisco?

Well, I know a lot about Jefferson Elementary School in the Sunset neighborhood where I spent my days of innocence and kickball. I know a bunch about the playgrounds in Golden Gate Park and the famous wooden bridge at the Japanese Tea Gardens, it's arch so steep that steps and handholds are built into it so accident-prone tourists and small children don't tumble into the stream below. I know what it's like at Ocean Beach when it's foggy and cold (which is to say, always), but you want to feel the waves so bad you splash into them anyways, winter coat and parents' yelps and all.

the Sunset, at Sunset. You didn't really want to see what it

looks like, did you?

I know about the Cliff House and how it used to have the penny arcade where frightening mechanical gypsies will tell your fortune for a coin. I know about Louie's, the diner overlooking the Sutro Baths that has the best minestrone soup this side of anywhere. I know about which bookstores have sufficient kid's sections and I know about the Chinese New Year's parade and I know about dim sum and Ethiopian food and baklava.

People ask me where I'm from, and I guess this is one of the possible answers, I mean it's where I spent my childhood. But what about where I was born? (Austin) What about where I came of age? (holla, City of Roses!) It's a tough call.

Yesterday I was walking down Van Ness, just out of a successful meet and greet with some people in the know and I felt city and it felt good to be on my way to coffee shop on Polk Street and then off to North Beach for happy hour with friends. Like, now I'm getting somewhere. And I know this.

But I don't know some things and they're kind of a big deal. I don't know the cheapest bars. I don't know the good yoga studios. I don't know the bus routes. I don't know how to find a job. I don't know who's looking for a room mate. I have no idea how I'm gonna pay rent in this city, one of the most expensive places to live in the world. And nope, not a clue on how I'm gonna get my bike up all these friggin' hills.

So I didn't really know how to answer our fine, stimulated friend. Do I know San Francisco... like, have we met or are we intimate? I opened my mouth to start prattling on in navel-gazey kind of way.

Gotta be quick on the uptake with these guys.

"I mean, like, you know Pill Corner? Down by the Civic Center. Where you can buy all them pills. Man, they be getting shot out there, man! Man, the otherdayIwasoverthereandtherewasthisonedude..."

The show went on. And we got to see his prison tattoos, super sick.

So do I know San Francisco? Can I get back to you on that one? I'll have in answer for you in a couple months.

Respectfully Yours,

Ms. Caitlin Byrd Donohue (Big Shot of Tomorrow)