Scowl, Nu?

As you now know from the front page, Janet and I are leaving San Francisco in a couple of weeks as we embark on the next phase of our live. I was offered a dream job in Connecticut, and we have decided to take take the plunge and head back East.

Janet and I both grew up in Central Connecticut. We went to school there, met there, got our first apartment there and eventually got married in Elizabeth Park in the middle of America's oldest rose garden. We left so that we could make a name for ourselves without having to deal with the pressures of being near family.

Since we left, we lived in Slippery Rock, PA… attended West Virginia University… spent a fun couple of years in Boston and then moved out to San Francisco. It's been ten years since we've called Connecticut home.

But as long as we have lived away from Connecticut, we always found ourselves comparing our newly-adopted cities to Hartford. So, when I received a job offer that would bring us back East… we decided to take it.

Sure, there are people we are going to miss… and there are places that we'll never be able to replace. But I think I am finally at a point where I'd give up the convenience of being able to walk to a Thai restaurant in order to get a humongous apartment and a car that I can park in my own driveway.

So, even though the stress is massive, and the preparation for the move has sucked up every free minute of my life for the last few weeks (hence the lack of postings), I really think that this is the best choice for the two of us.

This is the last entry that I'll be making from San Francisco… but I'm sure that there'll be more than enough to Smirk and Scowl about in Hartford.

See ya on the East Coast.

Sometimes a little bit of foresight can lead to a great weekend. Well, I guess you could call it foresight… more accurately, it was an impulse purchase that just happened to work out.

Scroll back to Saturday afternoon. Rainy, cold, San Francisco in Spring Saturday afternoon. We had planned on going out and picking up some housewares (like new towels and some cooking utensils) downtown. However, the only thing worse than having to go anywhere on the bus in the rain is having to take the Haight Street bus lines downtown.

The Haight Street bus lines are trials even on nice sunny days. The reason isn't the general state of disrepair that the buses are in, it's because the damn line runs from the dirty Haight Street zone to the tourist zone at Union Square. That means that on the best day, I'm competing for space with the dirty, smelly hippies heading to the tourist area to bum cash off of the unexpecting tourists and I'm competing for space with the whining tourists asking me every single block "Is this where I get off for Haight Asbury?"

But in the rain, it's significantly worse. When the rain hits, the Haight Street buses are filled with soaking wet hippies (which smells like a wet labrador retriever) and whining tourists who didn't know that it actually rains in "Sunny California." Needless to say, heading downtown wasn't an option.

So, we decided to head down to the Ross Dress for Less in Potrero Center, which is on the 22 Fillmore bus line (which coincidentally is usually tourist-and-hippie-free). If you've never been to a Ross, it's an outlet store like Marshalls or Filene's Basement… hordes of shoppers hoping to find the one great gem hidden in the racks. Search me, I've never found anything amazing in the clothes racks. However, the housewares sometimes have occasional treats pushed behind the tacky porcelain cat-shaped cookie jars.

This week, the great find was a 2-quart Calphalon saute pan for $15.99. If you've never used one, Calphalon makes the best pots and pans out there. Last month, we found a 3-quart pan there, and this 2-quart beauty was the last piece of cookware that I had been looking for to complete my rag-tag kitchen.

Fast forward through five excruciating minutes in the check out line and there we were, new pan in hand, standing in the driving rain, wondering if we should just go to the Safeway next to the Ross or go to a better supermarket. It was tempting to just grab some tasteless meat and under-ripe (or rotting) produce at the Safeway, but we had a new pan, damnit, and I wanted to use it for something good!

The decision was made: we were heading to Mollie Stone's Market.

Mollie Stone's is a great gourmet supermarket in the upper Fillmore, which (also coincidentally) is also on the 22 Fillmore line. They have the best selection of meat, produce and cheeses in the city… and even more important, they are the only place in town that carries Jew food.

You see, I have been on a search since I moved here almost six years ago for the ingredients needed to make a good Jewish breakfast. If you've never been to a Jewish brunch, you don't know what you're missing. We don't have any of those sissy pancakes and waffles or anything like that. A good Jewish breakfast consists of eggs, lox, baked salmon or whitefish and a bagel with cream cheese to nosh on. Unfortunately, the only lox that I could find in San Francisco was flavorless and there was no whitefish to be found. Anywhere.

However, when I walked inside Mollie Stone's, I was greeted with a display of lox (the real Nova Scotia lox, not that damn Pacific Northwest crap), whitefish (both the whole whitefish and the small chubs), smoked sable and sturgeon and a big display of bagels. Call it foresight or call it an impulse buy, but by the time we walked out of the store, we had all of the fixins for a great Jewish Breakfast.

Sunday, we woke up and immediately went to cook. Since Janet is still getting used to good-ol' Jew food, she opted for an omelet with chives and tomatoes. I went full-out and decided to have my favorite: Lox, Eggs and Onions. Aah… three eggs, a diced onion, a quarter-pound of Nova lox and some chives all scrambled up and served with an english muffin ('cause if you use a bagel to make an impromptu sandwich, the eggs fall out the hole when you pick it up).

Lox, Eggs and Onions are a favorite of mine. I would have it when I visited my grandfather in Stratford (that's in Connecticut) for a family brunch when I was a little kid. Also, my father made a point of having the essential ingredients to make this dish whenever I stayed over, which, if memory serves, was the first real meal that I ever cooked. When Janet and I went to New York City last December, we made a pilgrimage to Barney Greengrass just for the Lox, Eggs and Onions… and when we were in Las Vegas, I had a plate of Lox, Eggs and Onions at the hotel cafe…

…and Sunday morning, I had my first Lox, Eggs and Onions in San Francisco and wondered why the hell I was still living here.

I was searching through my mail and I happened to find a picture worth putting up as a smirk. Here goes nothing…

This picture was taken in a small Polaroid photo booth at the Harbor Inn in Cleveland, the destination of my last business trip. Shown in the photo are (Top Row, Left to Right) Rufus, Me, Al, (Bottom Row, Left to Right) Mike and Kevin. Some of them are co-workers, some are customers and another is a fellow vendor from another major (and sometimes competing) corporation.

I don't know if Drew Carey is right when he says Cleveland Rocks, but it certainly doesn't suck.

Though I eat Japanese food every chance I get, I have never been able to fully master the art of using chopsticks. Mind you, I was never one of those people who sends the waitress scurrying into the depths of the kitchen in search of a fork; I could pick food up with them, I just couldn't do it perfectly. The top ends always crossed, no matter how I tried to hold them, and according to Japanese etiquette, the ends just aren't supposed to cross. Avery would try in vain to explain it to me: "Hold them higher…no, put your fingers higher on the chopsticks…now pinch your fingers together…no, those fingers, and keep the bottom chopstick steady while you move the top one." (Me: "Stupid chopsticks. Stupid me.") After failing again and again, I resigned myself to one half-hearted attempt at the beginning of each meal, and left it at that.

While in Las Vegas last week, on a whim we decided to search out a Japanese restaurant. There were a few listed in the free What-To-Do-In-Las-Vegas magazine, but only one place described their sushi as "excellent": Hamada Sushi in the Luxor. And it was excellent, much to our surprise, even though we had to write down our order for the chef ourselves, which we thought was kind of weird. But this sushi was some of the best we've ever had, and dining at the Luxor Hotel & Casino affords you such after-dinner entertainment as watching the interactive King Tut robot slowly run out of power and be wheeled away by a Luxor maintenance man much to the dismay of the gathered crowd. But going back to the chopstick issue, as I picked up the chopsticks to eat a piece of gari, I noticed that the ends weren't crossing! I was using chopsticks the way they were intended to be used, and I owe it all to Playboy magazine. You see, while looking through the April issue of Playboy (and yes, I do read it for the articles, which are interesting much of the time. As far as the pictorials go, I think that they either use the same model every month and just change the name, or someone's doing some secret cloning) I noticed that in one of the "men's lifestyle"-type sections they had a step-by-step blueprint diagram showing you how to pick up — and maneuver — chopsticks. For some reason, their diagram made perfect sense, and the next time I picked up a pair of chopsticks, it just clicked…and I can't even go back to doing it the wrong way. Viva la Playboy articles!

Sometimes you just have to splurge. Yes, because I am in training for Golden Gloves I'm supposed to cut back on my eating and drinking… which I really have done for the last month. However, this week was a complete bust on the old diet and self-imposed prohibition front.

We begin on Wednesday with me, Avery in an airplane on his way to a business trip in Cleveland. Now, let me tell you… as much as people insult Cleveland, I have to say that I tend to enjoy the city. Sure, it's been years since the Cuyahoga River lit itself on fire… and Lake Erie can finally support complex multi-celled life forms like algae and plankton. That, and I really like my co-workers that work out there… so when I was told that I had to go to Cleveland, I wasn't that put off. Still, being in an airplane at 6:30am somewhere over Lake Tahoe wasn't my favorite way to start a business trip.

Luck was with me… the flights were on time, and I had the whole three-seat row all to myself on both of my flight segments, so I was able to get another few hours of sleep before landing in Cleveland. 10 minutes later, my co-workers on a different flight out of Oakland arrived and we grabbed the rental car and headed out to the hotel.

The Hotel: Holiday Inn. A step above a motel six, but they had a hotel bar, so I can't complain. Fast forward a half hour. We're at the pre-dinner drink. The drinks: Great Lakes Elliot Ness Alt and a Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold. An hour later, I'm in my room ironing my shirt and then we're off to a steak dinner at a local restaurant.

The Dinner: Split Pea soup, a rare 14oz NY Strip Steak, a Great Lakes Fitzgerald Porter or two and a La Gloria Cubana Corona Grande for dessert. It's so nice to be able to enjoy a nice cigar after a decadent meal.

Midnight. Sleep.

6am, Thursday: Wake up. Head down for breakfast. Eat. Go to the meetings. Kick ass.

5pm: Head back to the hotel, change for a night out on the town.

The first stop of the night was at one of my favorite bars in Cleveland: The Winking Lizard. The Winking Lizards are a great chain of bars. 150 beers in the bottle, and another dozen on tap. Add killer chicken wings and the best jalapeno poppers in the country and it's a great place to start off a night of drinking and debauchery.

Stop number two: Great Lakes Brewing Company for dinner. Sausage, pierogies and many pints of fine Great Lakes beers. Seven of us descended on the basement dining room for two hours of food and conversation.

Final stop: The Harbor Inn. The Harbor Inn is this little dive bar in the Flats section of Cleveland that has a couple hundred beers in the bottle. I had an Erdinger Pikantus, a hard to find dark wheat bock (read: strong) beer… the rest of the team also indulged in the rarities found at the Inn (except one guy who kept on drinking Coors Light).

Thursday, Midnight: Go to the airport and fall asleep.

Trip summary: Definitely worthwhile and thoroughly enjoyable.

Last night we saw the musical Rent for the eighth time. We've seen the most recent Broadway cast, we've seen the Benny cast (the second national touring company), and now we've seen the Angel cast (the first national touring company.) We've had a special affinity for the Benny cast, as it was the first one we ever saw, the one we saw the most, (in La Jolla, L.A., Seattle, and Tampa) and the one with our favorite character interpretations (Neil Patrick Harris as Mark comes to mind….) but last night's performance was the best we've ever seen…definitely the best second act we've ever seen. I mean, you'll shed a tear the first time you see Rent, and maybe the second time, but if six times later a whole new interpretation makes you laugh and cry in unexpected places, it's good. It's damn good. Thank god we have tickets to three more shows! 

Another surprising thing that I realized is that even though the story takes place in New York, I actually believe that it works better in San Francisco. One of the neat things about seeing it performed in so many different cities is noticing the differing audience reactions. People in different parts of the country laugh at different lines, and are generally less attentive and less understanding during certain parts. The Tampa audience, for example, is for the most part older, less urban, and truth be told, they probably don't see a hell of a lot of homeless people. They can't relate to a lot of it; they don't understand. They laugh a lot in the wrong places. San Francisco, though, has thousands of homeless people, lots of drug use, an obvious, well-publicized class struggle, and a rent crunch. The majority of San Franciscans are young, many are in creative fields, and practically everyone has a roommate. Obviously, there is also a better understanding of the gay community, AIDS, and cross-dressers.

I often dread going to the symphony or the theater here because of the typically bad (read: late, loud, and inattentive) audiences I have encountered in the past, but last night…last night was one of the most attentive, respectful, enthusiastic crowds that I've ever been a part of. Could Rent finally be something that all San Franciscans agree on?