My grandmother bought five-pound cans of Maxwell House and perked it on the stove. A drink in the evening was a rare glass of sherry. Suburban aunts made coffee in machines and their husbands drank gin and tonics out of wide glasses with urbane dancing frogs on them.

This is not my liquid life. I live in San Francisco where the drinks are complicated and expensive and there is nary a dancing frog in sight, let alone an ice cube from a freezer tray or, God forbid, coffee in a tin.

I’m not complaining. I drink well here. On our trip to the mountains of Colorado a few weeks ago though, it was back to basics and a welcome break.

First, let’s talk coffee. In Colorado, all the coffees were hot. Super hot. Mountain hot. Boiling hot. And they cost $3.75 for half a gallon of espresso and steamed milk. Well, almost half a gallon. This is fine with me. Hot, caffeinated and not bitter are my morning baselines. Above that line, I can really take it or leave it, even if I can tell the difference.

Back in San Francisco, I had it out with the barista at Ritual Coffee for delivering my coffee at room temperature for the umpteenth time. (This is apparently kind of a thing for me.) The guy said they had a POLICY that they did not steam their milk above a certain temperature because it carmelized the sugars. Apparently I like carmelized sugars based on my liking of apples covered in same and hot *(&#$#! milk in my cafe au lait.

That’s not to say that I don’t like what’s on offer here in general. Ritual Roasters, Four Barrel and Blue Bottle all spring from the Bay Area. Like Folgers crystals before them, they’re served in the finest restaurants around the country. (Another survey of their backgrounds here.) I’m not going to deny they’re good. Well, Blue Bottle and Ritual are good. Four Barrel I don’t get but a lot of people disagree with me so I’m outvoted there. Can I tell that these $4 cups of coffee are better than other coffees? Um, well, sort of. I can tell that they’re better than instant or coffeemaker coffee. And Starbucks. But that much better than much faster, cheaper, no-name coffee that I should pay twice as much? Probably not. Case in point: Dunkin’ Donuts makes my favorite coffee and I think they’re still on the Maxwell House train. So I’m not 100% sure I appreciate the level of precision that coneisseurship has brought to my morning cuppa.

Perhaps I’m being willfully dense here and resisting developing an expensive taste because then I’d have to spend $4 every morning rather than drinking what I can most conveniently get. I do this with wine. If I got hooked on $40 bottles of wine, I wouldn’t be able to drink the $10 bottle. So while I appreciate the expensive wines when they’re presented to me, I try not to take too much notice. I already spend enough money as it is.

Enough about me: if you’re looking around to taste the best of the best and have a nice sit-down while you’re in the city, here are my picks, with a heavy bias toward the south side of the city because that’s where we live.

Ritual Roasters’ original location on the gritty end of Valencia (21st/22nd Streets) will brew your regular coffee cup by cup, as well as serve you any espresso drink (with warm, not hot, milk). Rich flavor gleaned from their blends and their use of whole milk. My favorite of the top three but often crowded (they have free wifi) and they play non-background music - like, edgy, slightly metal indie stuff that’s hard to write to and chat to.

In which case, on a sunny day, you might prefer their new permanent cart in Hayes Valley (on Octavia just off Hayes) where you can sit outside and look in shops with commensurately priced goods of all kinds.

Similar music issues and an even grittier ‘hood, but less crowded and with a Scandinavian vibe, Haus on 24th Street brews Ritual as well and does a good job of it. Bonus: back patio with lots of sun, albeit also the neighbor’s laundry in view. Free wifi and excellent baked goods make up most of the way for the crabby hipster baristas.

Blue Bottle’s original San Francisco location in a garage on a side street in Hayes Valley has become enough of a landmark that now you don’t have to compete with cars: they’ve paved a little plaza in front. You can also pick up a cup at the super trendy, way-overcrowded-at-the-weekend-Farmers-Market yup-fest Ferry Building and downtown on Mint Plaza. Or - brilliant brilliant location choice - at Spin City, a high end laundromat in chic Noe Valley, Blue Bottle is served at the coffee window.

If you want to try Four Barrel, they have a giant, airy space on the other end of Valencia from Ritual, at 15th Street. You decide if you like it or not.

Let’s get back to Colorado and discuss cocktails. I sidled up to our lodge’s bar the first night to order a couple of straightforward cocktails: vodka cranberry and vodka tonic. No big deal. Nothing fancy. Didn’t want to go out on a pisco limb or anything in a building made of logs. The bartender delivers them in about thirty seconds and says, “That’ll be $7.” This prompts a tiny ethical dilemma. Should I tell him he’s only charged me for one, and at happy hour, well-drink prices even though it’s 9PM?

I ask. Turns out it’s not a mistake. Cocktails are $3.50. Cocktails with premium vodka no less. Living where I do and traveling mainly to other places like where I live, cocktails cost $9. Or $12. Or $14 if it’s that trendy and I’m paying for the slab of polished oak they use as a bar that they imported from a speakeasy in the basement of Versailles. Or something like that.

I will admit that I prefer the high-end cocktails at Beretta to the low-end ones at our old neighborhood’s dive bar Il Pirata. But do I notice if the bar makes their own ice using pure water and a special, I don’t know, vaporizing hyperbaric icebox or whatever? No, I do not. Can I tell if they’re using bottled bitters or homemade ones? Um, no. In the new world order or artisinal bars, I am a cretin and, for that, I’d like apologize to my bartender at Beretta who goes to so much trouble to make me happy.

I might be more of a high and mighty in this category if I drank more whiskey, bourbon or gin which seem to be the base of many, if not most, of the new breed of cocktails. I was a gin girl for a long time but have moved on to vodka and tequila for the most part, with a recent strong liking for pisco. This limits my range but it keeps the choosing simple.

I do wish that all bars offered the option of a straightforward drink at Colorado prices the way restaurants offer tap water or bottled. I can tolerate the tiny sneer that follows my, “Tap, please,” and would happily tolerate another if I could get Ketel One and Ocean Spray cranberry juice with tap-water ice cubes in an Ikea cup for half the price of my extra-special Pisco Punch.

Until that happens, here’s where I go.

For artisinal cocktails, it’s hard to beat Beretta. They have excellent food as well and, if you can get a seat (no reservations, go early), a buratta margherita pizza or chicken liver crostini will tide you over to a third drink if you want to hang out.

Bourbon & Branch is also well-reputed but you will need to plan ahead and make a reservation if you want food. I’ve written before about Range and their excellent food, but beware their hipster-looking cocktail menu: they’ve gone off the reservation in my estimation. Tomatoes have no place in evening drinks, unless by “evening” you mean “morning” and it’s a bloody mary you’re after.

We recently rediscovered Smugglers Cove in Hayes Valley (it used to be a trendy, purple-lit place we didn’t enjoy) where you can get a ridiculous number of pirate drinks made one-by-one by their single bartender. It’s not exactly the high-end science of mixology you’ll get at the places listed above, but tiki has been on an upswing the last couple of years and, let’s face it, sometimes you miss Club Med and their sweet, sweet drinks. (I’d advise only going in the week when the locals stop in for libations. We cruised in once on a Saturday and it was a bizarre mix of drunk, overweight, gay tourist developers and tacky bridge and tunnel girlies on a bender.)

Recently (like, yesterday) voted Best of the Bay for their unique happy hour - whoever orders first after 5PM, that’s the discount drink - we’ve latched onto Asiento of late for a not-dive but not-too-trendy evening drink accompanied by crazy good little plates. We haven’t made it there on a Sunday yet, but I hear they serve tater tots. Eighties lunchroom trashy trendy. I like it.

Although I enjoy all the developments in drinking my generation has ushered in, I (and my wallet) miss those dancing frogs and wish there a Dunkin Donuts at the end of my block. Until I find that block - or open a frog/donut outlet of my own - I’ll enjoy what San Francisco has to offer.

Oh, and if you’re in New York, don’t miss the Pisco Punch at Pegu Club. Best. Ever.

Dear Barista With the Dorothy Hamill Haircut,

I am having a hard day already. I’m sorry to have to break it to you, but you made it worse. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but there it is.

I hope that haircut is meant to be ironic. Some things aren’t meant to be brought back. Like fluorescent socks. Maybe your Dorothy Hamill haircut is supposed to be like hipster boys growing beards that are so sincerely frontier terrible that they must be ironic and therefore attractive. But most of them are so actually terrible that they double back over the irony attraction into well, just plain terrible.

Does your boyfriend have a beard?

See, Wednesdays are my Day to Get Things Done. They are the only day in the week when I have the whole day to attend to business. Writing mainly, multi-step projects that require some thought, lots of we-own-a-house-now business, some no-way-can-I-do-this-with-a-toddler errands. A day to be able to start a task and finish it. Wednesdays are my Day of Satisfaction.

Why are you wearing a nautical stripe shirt? I’m just asking. Not that I don’t like the shirt. It’s fine. It’s just there’s no boat, and I’m in a bad mood.

I should have just told you that my hot coffee was cold, that you didn’t heat the milk past just-below-room-temperature and I wanted you to make me another latte, but because I’m already having a rough day, that extra effort seems impossible right now. I’ll just sit here and steam like my milk didn’t.

I don’t book appointments on Wednesdays because having to be somewhere at a specific time disrupts the whole start-to-finish thing. Today I made an exception to that rule. Now there’s an unpleasant block interrupting the middle of my Day of No Interruptions. This was a mistake. Not yours, BWTDHH, I agree, but that first Mistake made your Bad Job the third Bad Thing in the day instead of the first. Keep in mind that your small straw might be the last small straw for someone else.

That’s something I’ll try and remember myself. Do your job well because you don’t know when someone else’s day might depend on it.

Competence Karma.

No, scratch that. It sounds like a cereal.

When I tried to get out of the house early, our green car glided from 10 mph to 2 mph a block from home and a big red exclamation point came up on one screen and a picture of a car with another big exclamation point over it appeared on the other screen.

I assume that that car in the picture is supposed to be our car even though our car is shorter. If the car in the picture were shorter though, I guess you wouldn’t be able to see it behind the giant exclamation point. Which might make the emergency seem worse, not being able to see your car for everything that’s wrong with it. It still seems pretty bad though. I should do something to make that exclamation point go away. Getting rid of exclamation points was not on Today’s Plan.

So that was the Second Thing.

None of this stuff is that big a deal if you’re on a roll, but I was not on a roll. I came by to get some coffee to get rolling. I just needed a cup of milk and espresso and some time at a table. It’s true I have the table. But an inaccessibly cold cup of coffee taunting me with its flattening foam isn’t the table companion I was hoping for.

Anyway, Dorothy Hamill, I hope you get better at your job. Today you did not deliver on your $3.75 commitment to serve hot coffee, which does seem like a basic job requirement for a job which involves serving hot coffee.

Maybe you’re a good person behind your poor milk management. Maybe. It’s just hard to see you behind the giant exclamation point that’s come up over the screen in my head.

Yours in passivity,

Me. I’m at the table window. I’m pretty sure I look really irritated. Yup, you see me now.

OK, so you’re in your car with someone else and you live in California so you are constantly getting cut off by $#&*!, um, let’s call them “people” driving 4 mph in a 35 mph zone who have no idea where they’re going but decide that this left turn, yeah that one right there 20 feet away, must be the one they need to take even though they’re in the far right lane, so they nearly kill everyone in their path, not to mention slow traffic speed to a standstill, so they can make their turn.

What do you do?

Take a breath? No.

You yell. You say bad words about stupid people and curse this state’s lax law enforcement and poor driver’s education that allows clearly incompetent, aimless people on the roads with the rest of us.

I’m not saying this is the most constructive response for my blood pressure, but you don’t know: maybe my head would explode if I didn’t let some of the steam out.

In the last year or so though, there’s been an increasingly large wrench in those mechanics, namely that the passenger with me is very small, facing backwards in the backseat, unable to see the offending event, and, even if she could, unaware of traffic laws (written and unwritten). So she understandably believes that the loud expletives from the front seat must be meant for her, same as the little chunks of cheddar cheese that magically appear over the back of her seat with soothing reminders that we’re “almost there”.

It’s probably good that I learn to curb the yelling now before she starts imitating the content which could lead to some X-rated exchanges that’ll get her kicked out of preschool in a couple of years.

Generally, I’ve been trying to keep a handle on what goes into her ears while I still can, but, even before she falls in love with ska and playing the trumpet in the basement, it’s already a seriously heavy lift.

I’ve refrained from introducing A. to our music list beyond our classical collection because she’s always been sound-sensitive and our tastes veer towards heavy beats (too loud) and complaint rock (too whiny). She prefers easy to understand single voices with obvious instrumentation. Like Raffi. And cowbell.

But I can’t listen to that indefinitely, so, since she’s gotten more noise-tolerant lately, I tried our local techno radio station last week. Ah, Rihanna:

” ‘Cause I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it. Sex in the air, I don’t care, I love the smell of it. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me.”

Let’s let the issue lie of what the hell she’s thinking putting out a song like this after her personal experience with getting the crap kicked out of her by a boyfriend and take up what a one-year-old mind would make of these lyrics.

Probably nothing, right? But I’m not starting that sex-me-up diet this early. She’ll get that from billboards, magazines and the internet soon enough.

(Not to be old-fashioned but, holy God, what twelve year olds are wearing these days is the equivalent of what I wore to college parties when I was feeling particularly sure-I’ll-go-home-with-you. I was walking behind what looked like a pre-teen yesterday and I wasn’t sure she was wearing anything between her giant sweatshirt and her Uggs. Going entirely pantsless is pushing the, “But I’m not cold!” excuse a little far, isn’t it? No? OK. Whatever. I guess any sentence that includes the phrase, “these days” marks me as uncool already. And A. is only one. That doesn’t bode well…)

I switched the station to NPR. The voices are soothing and A. bounces to the theme music. But then I had to turn that off too: a steady stream of bad news, and particularly graphic bad news, about civilian casualties in Libya, pedophilia, tsunamis, reactor meltdowns and the infallibly depressing coverage of our dysfunctional Congress aren’t much better than S&M enthusiasts.

I guess it’s back to swearing and Raffi. At least it’s preparing her for fending off bullies and chatting with longshoremen. That’s something, right?

That said, the World Series is the latest worst thing to happen to us re: our delayed move. (We own our new house as of today, but the old owners have until November 30 to move out, sadly for us.)

One of the big down sides to our current place, aside from the size and the outside noise, is the inside noise. We’re on the top floor but, due to some engineering oddity, hear everything that goes on in the apartment below us.

Every alternate tenant has been fine. The problem couple a few years ago was a girl and her 250-lb. boyfriend who owned a local bar and would bring that night’s band back to the apartment at 2AM for an impromptu, drunk jam session. I can’t imagine why we had a problem with that. After he threatened me one night when I complained, our landlady shook their lease at them and they piped down. Kind of. Sometimes. Eventually they moved out, but not before they started a successful company that makes waffle batter in aerosol cans. I don’t like to talk about that.

The couple after that was perfect. She was a yoga instructor and he was a landscape designer. We never heard anything. Ever. I don’t think they spoke to each other. Which worked out well for us but probably contributed to them breaking up a year later and moving out. Remember children: communication matters.

The latest couple introduced themselves to the building by setting up their stereo first thing and moving in to a throbbing beat at ear-shattering volume with their front door open. That spells Trouble, with a capital T, which rhymes with P and stands for “Phuck you.”

They’re friendly and pretty responsive but still a regular noise nuisance. We have a truce that they shut it off at 11PM, which they do 98 times out of 100, but when you’re up three times a night with a baby, sometimes you want to go to bed at 8:30, which you can’t when their thrice-weekly dinner/furniture rearranging parties are in progress.

I’m guessing that they’re in their late 20’s, not malicious or aggressive but doing what people in their late 20’s do, namely being oblivious. R. reminds me regularly that we used to be them, waking our 40-something upstairs neighbor regularly at my old apartment across town. He’s right, of course, but his rightness just makes me a tad more irritated, not less (as true but inconvenient-to-my-present-argument statements often can).

Here’s my point: just because they don’t mean to upset me and little A., just because it’s an intention-less crime, doesn’t make it not a crime, right? Don’t they watch Law & Order? I’m not saying it’s murder noise - it’s manslaughter noise. But you still go to jail for manslaughter, right? Not that they should go to jail. Just their stereo. And maybe all their furniture, which apparently just can’t stay in one place.

Which brings us to the World Series. (See? I get there eventually.) They’re sports fans, these rowdy neighbors of ours. Which relieves us of the necessity of watching any of the World Series games because every time the Giants get a run, the floor heaves with their cheering. Keeps us abreast of the home team’s progress and makes sure no one up here settles in for a quiet evening at home. Which, you know, keeps our civic pride alive. And keeps any nostalgia that might be setting in about our cute little studio apartment firmly at bay. *sigh* That’s a good thing, right? So now I’m just tense about moving to a bigger place and not being settled in in time for a cozy Christmas and I can’t wait to vacate our current place. Maybe we should just rent an RV and park outside our new house until the current tenants (previously the owners) get creeped out and move out more quickly. I think that’d be a lovely way to kick things off with our new neighbors, don’t you?

I noticed you before in the gallery. You were being loud and sounded angry even though it was a Maira Kalman exhibit. She’s not loud or angry. She’s all about being good-natured and wry and taking things in stride. And being amused. You didn’t seem amused.

I don’t know what’s up with you today. Maybe it’s every day. You are in a wheelchair so maybe it’s that. That would be difficult. I don’t know what I’d do if I were in a wheelchair. I hope I’d be one of those inspirational people who take up extreme skiing or sailboarding and get profiled in People or on Good Morning America. I think it would take me a really long time to get there though. I mean the being great about it, not the sailboarding. The sailboarding might take me forever. (I’ve never had very good balance.)

Whatever it is that’s bothering you though, it’s not nice for the rest of us if you take it out on a stranger who didn’t know you were waiting for the mom-with-kids/handicapped bathroom stall in the really nicely designed ladies room at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Honestly, I didn’t know you were waiting when I took my time sorting A. out. Do you think I would’ve kept you waiting on purpose? I hope not. That would be a tough way to go through your day, thinking people who don’t even know you are purposely being rotten.

Not to sound like a mom, but you really didn’t need to take that tone with me. If you’d just politely said you were waiting or made your presence known - a slight cough, an amusing note under the door - I’d have been just as obliging, I promise, but you wouldn’t have put that little bit of unpleasantness into the world by making me and little A. feel bad. I know you can’t feel good about it either. No one does when they’re mean, however justified they feel they are. It backs up on you. I know. I’ve been there.

Please, next time give me a little more credit for being a person who doesn’t knowingly inconvenience strangers. And remember: other people don’t think about us as much as we’d all like to think that they do. Which means that when they drive by you in their cars, even if they seem like they’re looking right at you, they probably didn’t register your amazing ensemble, the one with the alluring hat and the matching socks that you wore specially. (Don’t worry: the people who love you did and that’s what matters.)

But it also means they didn’t mean to cut you off in traffic. They were probably thinking about something else entirely. Like how their boss yelled at them this afternoon or that maybe they married the wrong person. Or maybe they’re rushing to save a kitten, one of the really adorable ones.

Of course, there’s a very slight possibility that you’re right, that that person really did mean to intentionally rain on your day. I’m sorry if that happens to you regularly. That has to be difficult to bear. But take a moment, just today, to consider whether that’s really true, even if you really, really believe it is deep down inside. Think hard. Is the world really not on your side on purpose? Between ourselves, I doubt it. You know why? Because I wasn’t, even though you thought I was.

We - everyone, all of us - are exceptionally bad guessers. It’s the scared part of us that thinks we’re great at guessing and tells us our worst guess is the correct one. The fact is, most of the time, we just don’t have any idea what’s going on with other people, so we may as well decide to believe the nice thing, right? Because in the end, it will make everyone’s day, including yours and mine and tiny A.’s, a little brighter. And we can all use a little sun.

Have a nice afternoon.

Thanks to numupdraft for the photo.

“A city can’t be too small. Size guarantees anonymity—if you make an embarrassing mistake in a large city, and it’s not on the cover of the Post, you can probably try again. The generous attitude towards failure that big cities afford is invaluable—it’s how things get created. In a small town everyone knows about your failures, so you are more careful about what you might attempt. Every time I visit San Francisco I ask out loud “Why don’t I live here? Why do I choose to live in a place that is harder, tougher and, well, not as beautiful?” The locals often reply, “You don’t want to live here. It looks like a city, but it’s really a small village. Everyone knows what you’re doing” Oh, OK. If you say so. It’s still beautiful.” - David Byrne

This is exactly why I don’t like San Francisco. Not that I’ve failed a lot publicly here, but it feels insular and homogenous, like a sprawled out small town masquerading as a real city. Give me New York’s anonymity any day.

Full article here.

(Thanks Swiss Miss!)

Yesterday afternoon, 4PM on a grey Sunday, there was a shooting across the street from our apartment. (News coverage here.) Not “in our neighborhood” or “around the corner” but directly across the street from our living room. Yeah, in Potrero Hill, one of the sunnier, yuppier neighborhoods in the city. It’s not the Marina or Pacific Heights, where the real money lives, but nor is it the Mission or the Tenderloin, where the crack dealers roam free.

I’ve seen enough Law & Order to know that the sound of gunfire isn’t as explosive or dramatic as most people think it will be, so when a rapid succession of flat bangs burst out close by, my aural scan came up with “gunshots.” If I weren’t pregnant, I’d have been out the door to confirm and help, but R went instead (with admonitions from me to check for shooters before stepping outside - I don’t watch CSI for nothing) and yelled up to call 911. Disturbingly, I was on hold for at least two minutes with emergency response - what if there had been an intruder in our apartment? - but, on the other side of it, police, fire and ambulance were screeching up as the girl answered my call. “Are you a witness?” was the extent of our conversation, so they get points for efficiency.

R said the victim was just a kid, put him at about fifteen, and all but unconscious. Gang violence, the news said, which was my first guess too. My thoughts, in succession?

1. “Thank God this country doesn’t materially restrict the sale of firearms or shooting down 15-year-olds in the street wouldn’t be possible.”
2. “What is wrong with this city that this happens?” Sure, there’s violence in all cities, it’s a fact of urban life, but I’ve never felt so uniformly unsafe anywhere else. Low level criminality, vagrancy, lack of law enforcement and filth is everywhere in this city, even in the most exclusive neighborhoods. (My car was stolen from one of those ‘hoods and broken into in another.) No place is safe in San Francisco.

   This town’s pervasive permissiveness in allowing crackheads to stagger around the theater district, homeless people to sleep in any doorway they choose and cars to be routinely stolen and vandalized, telegraphs to citizens and criminals alike that no one’s watching the store. If there’s no action on the small stuff, the stuff that happens every day, the stuff that depresses quality of life and demoralizes expectations, there’s definitely no deterrent for a group of guys who want to shoot someone in broad daylight.*

   Turns out my Spidey sense that San Francisco is way worse than New York isn’t just anecdotal: despite having less than one eighth the population of New York City, the FBI reports that San Francisco has twice the rate of violent crime and murder (per 100,000 residents) and is charged with underreporting those numbers. Even if you were to take those numbers with a grain of salt, they’re shocking.

   It’s nice that San Francisco had gay marriage first (albeit briefly), banned plastic grocery bags, and the vegetables here are organic and fresh, but what the hell difference does that make if I can’t run across the street to pick up my fresh, organic vegetables in a paper bag from a married gay grocer without getting shot while doing it?

3. “Where the hell am I going to find a bulletproof stroller?”

We definitely have to move. Maybe someplace safer, like Newark.

*The “small crimes lead to large crimes” theory is called the “fixing broken windows” principle. Implementation of small crimes tracking and deterrence in New York started with transit cop Jack Maple and his fascinating CompStat system, more widely adopted under then-Police Chief William Bratton. Interesting read, picked up by Gladwell in The Tipping Point.

Re: multiple construction sites covering blocks and blocks between my apartment and my intended breakfast destination:

You have no track record of being able to manage multiple projects at once. Why don’t you just sit down, pick your favorite project and put all the guys on that one till it’s done?

Related, when you show me that you can feed and water the hamster all by yourself, we can talk about getting a puppy.

Just driving by it, I was excited about Four Barrel Coffee, the hipster coffee place on Valencia. For one, it has huge windows and a ton of sunny space. For two, there wasn’t a laptop in sight. (I like to be the only one on a laptop in a place if at all possible. I know: total hypocrite. Hater. Yes. Guilty.)

But now that I’ve been there, I’d like to offer a big shout out in the form of a gigantic thumbs down to Four Barrel.

I don’t care if they hand craft or double roast or ritualistically violate their coffee twice daily, that is some oily dishwater disaster coffee. To compound the error, they refuse to offer the usual buffet of bad coffee doctoring options. Raw sugar, half and half and skim milk are the extent of the sideboard buffet. No actual milk. No Splenda. Not even a grain of white sugar. Nuthin.

So you get your crap coffee and then you’re stuck with it. Bastards.

So here’s what I have to say to you guys over at Four Barrel Coffee:

I don’t come to your probably all-organic, no-leather, egg-free, wind-powered house and take away all your vegan muffins and forcefeed you chicken McNuggets, so don’t deprive me of my proper milk and artificial sweeteners after you charge me $3 for a small cup of blackened swill.

And don’t whine that the coffee beans were picked by vegetarian, hemp-clad peasants either ‘cause that doesn’t make it better coffee. Woody Harrelson and Ed Begley, Jr. could roast and brew my coffee one cup at a time in their environmentally-sound trousers and I wouldn’t care if it tasted like yours. Make a decent cuppa first and then I’ll be down with any sustainable plan you’ve got.

Geez.

It looks like the San Francisco Chronicle may go under. Is it a shame when a newspaper goes down? Yes. Is it still a shame if that newspaper is really terrible? I’m not sure. My discernment (that it’s an awful paper) is at war with my principles (that we need print media). Given all the money that’s flowing out of Washington to crumbling national industries, I think print media - although possibly not the Chronicle - might need a small piece of the pie

I’m standing squarely in the middle of the media consumer road. I like print media but I’m not a Luddite: I get the Sunday New York Times delivered and I read the online edition every day. I read blogs, the New Yorker and The Morning News. If it’s long, I print it. If it’s short, I read it on the screen. It’s not a complicated system, but it does rely on both on- and offline media outlets staying in business and, no matter how much I read on the subject, that’s a problem I can’t seem to solve.

Online media is great for a lot of things, but two of them aren’t 1.) paying writers well and regularly, and 2.) in-depth, long-term, investigative reporting on international events.

Let’s take the second point first. The truth of the matter is that the Times and the Post and the Wall Street Journal, as media giants, were capable of keeping global offices staffed and running. Online outlets don’t have that kind of infrastructure in place. (All you media conspiracy wing nuts can put your hands down: I know the mainstream media is biased, but you’re delusional if you think there’s such a thing as absolute objectivity.) If they all go out of business, who is going to provide general reporting on what’s up in Myanmar?

There are absolutely some kick-ass online media outlets that uncover major stories through investigative reporting, but almost all of those stories are domestic. Which is a problem. Sure, I can seek out local media in Myanmar (provided it’s online, which is a substantial provision in the developing world), but how will I have any idea if it’s remotely accurate and not propaganda? I won’t, unless I do all the research on it myself. And that’s more than I am willing to take on to find out what’s up in every region of the world every week.

This is the route that medicine has gone in the last 20 years: you’re the “consumer”, so it’s on you to figure out if a particular treatment is cutting edge or dangerously untested. Doctors have abdicated their positions of authority. While this is a good thing - in cases where the doctor is unhinged, undereducated or just wrong, in most cases it leaves me in a terrible position - namely, having to make educated decisions in an area in which I am not educated.

The same will be true of media consumption if the major outlets - the voices of authority - go under. I don’t believe everything I read, but I read fairly widely and, since I’m familiar with the particular focus and bias of steady news sources, I can pull together an opinion with some hope of having some of the facts straight. I have no such hope for my ability to sift through the millions of online voices, most of whom have no recognizable credentials. And by “credentials” I mean meaningful access to and contacts in the region that would help assemble an educated perspective. A track record of consistently even-handed reporting wouldn’t hurt either. A loud voice and blazing marketing don’t count as credentials. (Which is why I don’t watch Fox News or Perez Hilton.)

So what’s going to replace the New York Times if it goes out of business? Who’s going to cover Africa and South Asia? The Drudge Report? The Huffington Post? New media aggregates old media at low cost. Are new media companies going to cover old media’s reporting costs if old media goes under?

We need to find a hybrid model where old and new media can both make money because they both need to exist. Maybe it’s OK if the print Times declines in circulation, but we can’t expect them to give their expensive product away for free online. Who’s going to foot the bill for their correspondent in the foothills of Pakistan? Click-through ads for finding your high school classmates aren’t going to cover those costs. (Maybe new media should pay for feeds from old media?)

Which brings me back to my self-centered first point, which is that if the offline media outlets go out of business, the number of writers who can survive on their earnings is going to decrease. And then we’ll all have to go back to second jobs as e-commerce consultants and waiters. God help us if journalism goes the way that teaching has: the only good ones who stay at the available wages have got to be saints.

Charging for online content didn’t work. Revenue generation from ads offline was plenty but online ads are different and insufficient. Newspapers aren’t like the banking industry: sure, there were paid lunches and car service boondoggles, but it wasn’t a profligate industry of wealth and waste. All that got cut ages ago and it hasn’t made the difference.

I’ve been thinking about this problem for ten years, ever since I took my first online editorial job, and I still can’t see a way through. (The Times can’t seem to sort out a long-term revenue model either, even with their killer New Media Group.)

Which brings me back to the Chronicle. The Chronicle’s been terrible for a long time and even though I’m not behind 100% free markets, I do think that the market should have a say when a company refuses to improve. Case in point per this morning’s news: the American auto industry, which is being forced to re-plan and re-staff as it should have done under its own steam years ago.

Why should we let the media industry stagger while we bolster up the banks and cars, both of which have had much longer to sort themselves out? Why not take over and rip and replace, the way we’re doing with AIG and GM? We subsidize the industries and endeavors that are of national value and I would argue that print media is one of those things, at least for now.

I still pay $27 a month for the Times to show up every Sunday even though I often read the online version instead and, until the new media model sorts itself out, I’ll continue to do that as an act of principle and charity because I don’t think we can do without the Times anymore than we can do without the banks.

In San Francisco, it’s raining. And I don’t want to go out. Why? Because it’s raining? No. Because it’s NOT SNOWING. Normal places all got snow. San Francisco? No. Why? Because this place can’t get it together to have proper weather. *sigh*

In New York and Boston, I got up in the morning, got myself out the door and stepped into the flow of a real city. A city with people on the street who have places to go and things to do. San Francisco? Two people have been sitting in my eye line for half an hour doing NOTHING. Nothing. Staring. Sitting. Nothing. Yesterday I stood behind a guy writing a check at the supermarket. Do you know where people think it’s OK to write checks at the supermarket in 2009? Small towns, that’s where. The middle of nowhere. Fine. A place masquerading as an actual city? NO!!!

San Francisco, you have got to stop. Pink hair is not cool on an overweight 35-year-old. (I don’t really think it’s cool ever unless it’s 2AM in a club in 1999.) Dawdling is not cool. Homeless people are not cool. Having to walk five blocks through urban blight to get to the nearest cafe is not cool when you live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city. Especially when that cafe is a #$(*#! Starbucks. What is wrong with you, SF? Why can’t you get yourself together to have some ambition, some drive, a little get up and go?

I think I must be missing the point. People come here to step out of the river current, I guess, not to gain momentum. San Francisco is the lukewarm pool of water off to the side where people paddle around in the eddies and surf and smoke weed and have kids and go out to eat a lot of vegetables and worry about their hemp pants. SF is like the stoner teen who is happy to get C’s and be self-righteous about “the man.” The northeast is the driven over-achiever kid who has things to do and places to go. San Francisco is like the retirement community of cities where people dye their hair blue and self-entertainment passes for self-actualization. New York is where the old ladies knock down muggers with their handbags, look better than I do and schlep around on the subway to 75 events a week.

I just don’t get this place. Maybe if it ever snowed here, it would brace up and get its rush on. Bring me my snow already then and let’s get moving!!! Geez.

It’s the second day of summer and Midsummer’s Eve and hot as blazes in San Francisco. Even if you didn’t know how hot it is, you’d know something was off because the tourists have come out of their hovel hotels and are crawling all over the place. Go home silly people blocking my bike’s path! Go home! This city is not for visiting.

Our place is usually lovely and breezy but since we’re on the third floor, beneath the black tarpaper roof, we bake in the heat. I make spa water - charcoal filtered water with oranges or lemons - so we stay hydrated. Glasses of spa water are everywhere. Our studio has begun to resemble the house in Signs. Remember that movie? The last good one Shyamalan did?

The little girl is always asking for a glass of water and leaving half-full glasses all over the house. And it turns out that the aliens are burned by water. Remember? And the brother is a former baseball star. And just before the wife died years earlier, she tells Mel Gibson to tell him - the brother - , “Swing away, Merrilll. Swing away!” And Mel Gibson doesn’t know what she means, thinks she’s delirious from pain, until the aliens are there in the house and the water glasses are everywhere and Merrill’s bat is above him on the wall. And Mel Gibson says, “Swing away, Merrill! Swing away!” And he does, breaking the bat and the alien and shattering glasses and glasses of water onto the otherwise invincible alien. Remember?

That’s what our apartment looks like, minus the alien.

Here’s how 4/15 rolled for me this year.

• Let’s set the stage. I didn’t get my taxes done last week because I was rushing to get to New York. I decided that wouldn’t be a problem I would get back on the 14th, so I had that evening to get them sorted. That was my first miscalculation: since I was up at 2AM PST to catch my plane back from New York, by the time I got home from work that night, I was running into walls I was so tired. Scratch getting them done Monday night. 
• Panic: how was I going to get my taxes done and to the post office on Tuesday by 5PM when I had to be at work all day?
• Relief: e-file, that’s how. I’d start ‘em over lunch and e-file by midnight. 
• Panic: I got to work on Tuesday and realized I’ve left my W-2 at home so I could only load TaxCut on my laptop at work but not actually do any of the tax entry. Deep breath.
• Relief: Got home early, got sorted out, ready to roll. 
• Panic: After getting through my federal taxes and moving on to my state returns, it turns out I’m married. Even though I have never been married, the status has not generally struck me as something that creeps up on you so I do a little light research. R and I are Registered Domestic Partners (or RDP, in the catchy parlance of our government) in the state of California. As of last year, that means that in the eyes of the (state) law, we are effectively married and have to file as such. Aside from the emotional repercussions - what did I wear? did I register? - I now have a problem at 8PM. TaxCut populates my state taxes using my federal tax info and my federal tax info says I’m single. But in California, I’m not. While I appreciate the health insurance being an RDP entitles me to, it’s annoying that my crunchy granola state and my fascist (for now) national government can’t get on the same page. Especially at 8PM on the 15th. 
• Relief (tiny). It appears there is a workaround. If I save a copy of my accurate federal return (the one I will file that says I’m single), I can create an inaccurate one saying I’m married that can be used as the basis of the state one. This strikes me as encouraging lying and criminality on the part of H&R Block but whatever. It’s getting late. 
• Panic. I do as I’m told, re-do everything, save my screwy second version of my tax returns and am all set to file. But no. What was I thinking? Of course, no. I cannot e-file a federal return that says I’m single (accurate) and a state return that says I’m married (also accurate). This is the software’s way of encouraging me to get with the conservative agenda and pick a lane. 
• Relief. I’m wily. The software wants me to e-file both state and federal in one transaction. I decide to e-file my federal and state separately using the two separate but equally accurate files. Clever, right?  Right hand doesn’t know what left hand’s doing, right? So far so good: I make it to the e-file screen on the federal taxes. 
• Panic. I can no longer locate the Key Code that came with my tax software and that is required to get through the e-file screens. Where is it? Printed on the sleeve that the software came in. The software that I installed at the office. The sleeve that I stacked with some other papers to come home with me from said office but which, after a thorough search of the home premises, I cannot locate at 9PM. 
• Resignation. I get in the car in my pajamas and head to the office. 
• Relief. I find the sleeve, drive home and e-file my federal return without further glitches. The finish line in sight, I get some ice cream and start on the state filing. 
• Panic. Not so fast: for reasons passing understanding, you can’t e-file your state taxes separately from your federal until the federales approve your federal ones. And I’m guessing that won’t happen at 10PM on the 15th. I give up. I start Googling penalties for late filing. 
• Resurrection. I’m nothing if not stubborn and I’ll be damned if the IRS and H&R Block are going to both get the better of me in one night. That’d be a bit much for anyone, I’d think. I find the California State Franchise Tax Board web site which looks like it was put together in 1982 by a bunch of seven-year-olds with an Etch-a-Sketch and one orange crayon. Using my print-out of the un-file-able TaxCut state return, a spoon and some cunning, I manage to get through all the screens and get within $50 of the result TaxCut spit out. This site requires no oversight by the federales and lets me submit my state taxes. I do not have a warm fuzzy feeling because the site is so amateur it feels like I’ve just sent the Crown Jewels overnight using a plain envelope, some twine and the post office, but whatever: I am a tax-filing, law-abiding, married/single citizen once more. 

I hate to do this but I’ve got to give the new Sundance Cinema a thumbs down. I wanted to like you, Sundance Kabuki Cinema, I really, really did. But you disappointed me and now I am crestfallen and slightly angry and feel a little bit dirty for wanting to go out with you at all.

Maybe it’s because I had such high hopes for our first date. Maybe it’s because I dressed all hip in my black turtleneck and it turns out you cater to middle-aged annoying people. Maybe it’s because I thought you were going to be a taste of home, a little slice of Manhattan on the west coast, a hipster haunt with your over-priced tickets ($27 for two) and your cocktail lounge and your upscale snacks (Izzy sodas!) But no. It turns out your forty-foot bamboo plants are just a screen for you to hide your mediocrity.

Let me offer you some constructive criticism so you can do better.

• When new visitors ask where they should eat - the upstairs cafe or the restaurant you opened next door that replaced Pasta Pomodoro, you should not tell them to go next door. The place next door is trying very hard to look upscale in a downscale neighborhood. The food is trying to be upscale too but it fails. Green Goddess salad with tempura avocado? Nice try but it’s an avocado. Pecorino mac and cheese ($9)? It’s covered with breadcrumbs like something from Stouffers and has less flavor than the boxed version. I liked Pasta Pomodoro better. (Speaking of which, try their prosciutto tortellini in pink sauce as take-out comfort food sometime.)
• Three bathroom stalls in the women’s bathroom? I don’t think so.
• Reserved seating is so yesterday. Just stop it. Even the Ziegfeld in New York doesn’t do that anymore. I would rather have to show up half an hour early to get a prime location and sit next to other committed viewers than show up two minutes ahead of time and sit next to a couple of baby boomers who ordered their seats online four days ago because their lives just aren’t interesting enough to have anything better to do.
• Tickets for $13.50. Do I really need to say anything else on the subject? I know you’ve got to pay off the remodel, but find another way.
• The Sundance Catalog is displayed on the side tables in the hall. This is shameless but predictable cross-marketing. The Sundance Catalog, for anyone flirting with checking it out, is on a par with the cinema: some interesting things but wildly pricey and of inconsistent quality.

What was good about it? The movie. The seats. The fact that I can get a drink on-site to take the edge off my annoyance. Would I go again? Only if I were desperate to see a first-run indie film. But I’d try the Lumiere first. Or the Embarcadero. And no, you can’t have my phone number. And I’m not free Thursday.

A frighteningly familiar take on 30-something weekends in San Francisco. Hmmm. It might be time to make some changes.

I’m back from New York. It snowed. I loved it. That’s what February’s supposed to be like.You know what February’s not supposed to be like? Flowering tress, that’s what. What is wrong with California?

How do you honk at the guy in front of the guy in front of you?

Twice in the last two weeks I have been irritated at the car in front of the car in front of me. In New York, everyone behind that front car would be honking, creating a chorus of justified displeasure. I admit that the tenth cabbie in the line doesn’t know anything about what’s going on except that he’s not moving, but who cares? Not moving in New York is bad.

In San Francisco, no one honks except to be annoying. The justifiable honk is almost unknown. So when I honk as the second car up from me sits at a green light, the driver in front of me - who should also be honking but isn’t - glares at ME. Like I’m the one making the mistake. Where’s their sense of civic duty? The greater good? Come on people, get it together. We all have to live in this town.

This town encourages defection, at least of my high-powered, ambitious friends. In the last three years, I have lost two friends to Dallas, one to Florida, one to L.A. and, as of this morning, two to London. They have all left to move on with their lives, lives which were in sleepy limbo while in San Francisco.

I know that there are many defenders of San Francisco, but none that I have met are ambitious. Some are opportunistic (there is money here, after all, if you are willing to wait for it) and some are energetic, but none are ambitious. This city is the geographical equivalent of molasses. If you are seeking a place away from the madding crowd because you want to recover, raise a family, write a book without interruption or are a student, a stoner or a surfer, or even because you are famous and want to hide out, this is the place for you.

Nothing will push you here. The customer service is slow. The traffic is cautious. Even the ubiquitous homeless are slow-moving and under-motivated. It is a city that hopes for sun, basking when it’s out, huddling in restaurants when it’s not. It hikes and hangs out, it skis and sips wine, but it does not drive for the finish line. It’s about changing the world through hemp rather than heft. It encourages contemplation - yoga, therapy, knitting, Buddhism, hallucinogenic drugs - but it does not have any particular aim in mind besides live and let live, man.

It is a city of slow principles and slow growth and slow change. This is no place for those on a mission and moving fast. Hence the defectors. Someday, I will be among them. This town is no place for a New Yorker. For now, I’m running as lightly as I can over the surface of the molasses. Come visit for the views but don’t stay for the ambition.

I went early, eager to get to the produce and beat a retreat before the yuppies had strapped their offspring into their Audis and started their weekend errands. I didn’t beat anyone. Yuppies are early risers. I was going for oranges and tomatoes and lobster, oh my. Little did I know that even Whole Foods does not stock cooked lobster meat. Crab, yes. Shrimp, yes. But their pincered brethren are kept alive in a tank and you have to buy them as such. I am a Boston born and bred hypocrite as far as lobster is concerned: I’ll eat ‘em but I won’t kill ‘em.

Saturday was my day: the bearded young fellow behind the counter said that not only would they steam one for me, they’d crack it and pack up the meat as if the nasty murder had never happened. Excellent. We made an appointment that I’d be back for my magic in two hours and I trotted home to brag of my good fortune to R.

Skip to three and half hours later. I approach. The bearded guy goes into the back and returns to say that he, “Hadn’t gotten to it yet.” What could he have possibly been checking on? His crack team of lobster gnomes?

At this point, I should have cut my losses and left the shellfish slaughter for a less busy day but Beardy says if I can wait fifteen minutes, he’ll do it immediately. Fifteen minutes is no big deal, so I go get some sushi and read the paper. I return in twenty minutes. Nothing doing. I return twenty minutes after that. Still nothing doing. I would leave but I’ve already paid for the lobster, by the pound, pre-steaming.

A full hour after I arrived, the lobster appears. I am furious and Beardy can tell. Perhaps it’s the foam at the corners of my mouth. He looks scared. I open my mouth to say that I will take it and crack it myself but Beardy starts his work. Three hours after it was supposed to be done, I am at home with, as far as I can judge, half the meat the lobster should have yielded for the bargain price of $26. The handful of fresh shrimp he has thrown in and his assurance that this is a “bad day” do little to make me feel better about the chunk of my Saturday that will not be recovered.

Appalling, stoned-out San Francisco customer service strikes again.

1. No snow. Seriously, it’s Christmas people. Where’s the weather???

2. Union Square. (SF, not NYC.) Always crowded. Mostly tourists. Like the Times Square of San Francisco except it’s dark and doesn’t even have a Dunkin’ Donuts. I would never go there if I could avoid it. And while we’re on it…

3….SF has the highest pedestrian death rate of any American city. It’s not hard to see why: a combination of the poor drivers and poor planning. Why doesn’t this city get it together (like New York did in the 60s) to make their main thoroughfares one way so you can make a left when you need to and, while they’re sorting that out, time the crosswalk lights so that drivers can actually turn onto those streets sometimes without waiting on the herds of slow-moving out-of-towners and backing traffic up for ages? The drivers here are already operating at some subterranean levels of skill and intelligence and the poor transit planning only makes it worse. It took me 20 minutes to drive around one block the other day in the middle of a weekday. 20 minutes.

Home. And a damn hot home it is too. It’s a testament to this city that, as much as I hate heat, and I do, I love New York more. When I was a kid, I had heatstroke three times, all of them terrifying, so I kind of lost interest in all things hot, including beach vacations (which also tax my patience with lying still - I would have made a really bad Victorian bride) and summer in general. Give me spring or autumn.

Living in San Francisco has changed - or at least moved - my opinion of hot weather. The uniformity of the weather in California freaks me out. Endless days of the same half sunshine/half overcast weather grate on my nerves the way I imagine endless daylight drags on the Scandinavians. It’s like eating the same thing day after day: no matter how pleasant it seemed in the beginning, after 300 times, it’s lost all appeal.

New York in August is usually about 85 degrees and 70% humidity which make it feel like a warm bath. With your clothes on. Oddly, this adversity rarely bothers me. It’s inconvenient and you have to plan around it - don’t wear a suit to work, plan on being sticky - but I prefer it to the suffocating uniformity of San Francisco’s non-seasons which make me feel like I’m being pacified for nefarious alien purpose. (If they come, they could take California without a glitch. Seriously. No one out there?s paying any attention. Go for it.)

Not to be religious, but I think there’s something about the adversity of seasons that keeps you alert. Snow for a few months, sweltering for a little while, a few thunderstorms, falling leaves, budding leaves. They remind you that mobility and rejuvenation are essential. Mild heat and clear skies convey a sense of suspicious well-being, encouraging you to believe that all?s well, that there’s no need to press forward. Blech.

1. Fog. Again. F’ing freezing cold and fog again this morning. I keep saying it: it’s August. What is wrong with this place?

2. Lines at Tartine. Their croissants bear about as much resemblance to French croissants as an H3 does to a Mini, but they’re still the best bakery in town. If it weighs more than 2 lbs. with its clothes off, it’s not from France.

3. Gravity.

Circolo had every chance of success with us. It had cool lights and an, um, water feature outside and it’s in our neighborhood. “What more could you want?” we thought and off we tripped in our Saturday finest to drop $140 on dinner and 2 drinks each. What we want is a decent chef and Circolo’s not the place to find one. Before we get to the sad food though, let’s discuss the ambience. They’re doing a club/restaurant thing that is only moderately successful, although I’ll admit that my frustration with the surroundings was likely enhanced by the dismal food. The dining area clearly converts to a dancefloor and while they’ve done a tasteful job of masking this fact and separating it from a lounge area in the forward part of the room, the space is not intimate.

We started with the dumplings, a predictable but almost inevitable choice for me. They were crispy and yummy, as were the mojito and a specialty margerita that accompanied them. So far so good. R. had the most expensive item on the menu, Kobe beef and foie gras, because he loves the combination and is willing to risk his arteries for it. I had the special, a whole, semi-pre-cracked crab, with parsley and lemon marinade. It was awful, awful, awful. It was a strange, offputting temperature, not chilled, not warm. It turns out that “marinade” means absolutely sodden. The crab was overwhelmed with an ultra-sweet broth that seemed to be made up of liquid nastiness and masses of diced parsley which wholly obscured any flavor the crab would have brought to the table and almost obscured the crab itself. The helpful idea of pre-cracking it was also poorly executed and saved no trouble. It was accompanied by “garlic toasts” which were equally cheaply over-flavored and half of which were inedible, having become saturated with the crab’s unfortunate parsley soak. R. fared slightly better with his dish but only because it wasn’t entirely unacceptable. The pairing of the interesting texture of Kobe beef and foie gras is a mistake. Foie gras smooth, rich density should be reserved for pairing with only the finest meat of like nature. That is clearly not Kobe beef, which has a unique, masculine flavor all its own which was ill-matched to the liver. To round out the meal, our second round of mojitos was overloaded with mint, one of them to the point of being almost undrinkable. Must have been the same guy who came up the parsley marinade.

Circolo: full of promise but very disappointing and expensively so.

Espetus is at 1686 Market at the intersection with Gough. Definitely make reservations: 415-552-8792

Espetus is all man. And when I say “man”, I mean an overly tan, front heavy man with a mustache who may or may not have been indicted for that thing that happened on the docks that certain night in 1986. The kind of man who, when he shrugs, turns up both hands, flattens his mouth and pulls his neck back as he says, “Whaaat? Fuggedaboudit.” The kind of man who enjoys having heart-attack-inducing quantities of meat cut at his table and dropped directly onto his plate. Yes, we are in the land of Brazil where hotties in bikinis and rampant fraud abound. Welcome to San Francisco’s one and only churrascaria.

Churascaria, for the uninitiated, are dining establishments focused on meats of all kinds. The chefs cook them on 2-foot metal skewers and, when you turn the little dial on your table to green, the servers descend with the entire skewer and a huge knife, slicing off pieces of each specialty for anyone at the table who has not passed out from Atkins overload. The meats are, for the most part, excellent. They range from pork with parmesan (a little dry) to sausages (outstanding) to chicken with garlic (tasty) to an entire rib cage of an unfortunate cow (stringy meat but impressive visual).

The overall experience is surreal and not a little overwhelming. The decor is upscale and subdued and the price (a flat $45 per person) is equally trendy. The essence of the place though is very Denny’s: eat far more than you should, salad bar’s in the back. (Literally. There’s nothing exceptional there, with the possible exception of the corn and cilantro melange.) It had the air of a restaurant you find on the side of the road in the Midwest where your Uncle Milt always loves to go and the desserts are all Jell-O based. The waiters descend one after another and create a kind of bizarre meat race. (They would do well to train with the subtler dim sum cart jockeys at Yank Sing.) Frankly, when I’m paying $45 for dinner, I prefer to order my meal already composed. I gauge my appetite at the outset, order accordingly and negotiate the meal at a reasonable pace. Espetus is not about that. They’re about speed and quantity and, without careful and early resistance, you will end the evening feeling nauseated and distinctly unhealthy, a fate I barely escaped.

Overall rating: Strange. (Good meat. Bad concept.)

Still overrated. I had a bizarre scallops dish. I love scallops, so it’s hard to hurt them, but they gave it their best, surrounding them with chanterelle mushrooms and what appeared to be sauerkraut. Thank God they change the menu every day: at least this sort of thing doesn’t hang around for long. The chocolate pot de creme was fine but served on a promo business card. Let me hear you say, “Tacky!” Let me hear you say, “Resting on its laurels.” To top it off, the movie was that entertaining and upbeat classic Das Boot. Give me a break.

R had a strange root-vegetable salad and pork loin. I had risotto pancakes and salad. I also had rose petal creme brulee. Citizen Cake has wonderful pastries, in the great tradition of sculpted meringue and perfect paper rings around the tarts. They are not as good as City Bakery’s in New York, but they are stellar. Their scones are excellent. Their chocolates look excellent. (I have never had them.) That said, I cannot see paying their prices again for dinner. The food was a tad strange and left the impression of disorganization, but perhaps that was the server who was a little officious and “we” oriented. In sum, I wanted to steal the art and the flowers (short-cut lilies in a square candle vase) from the bathroom but the food was, as my grandmother would say, nothing extra.