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Happy Cool Down!
I will not play tug o’ war. I’d rather play hug o’ war. Where everyone hugs instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles and rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, and everyone grins, and everyone cuddles, and everyone wins. ~ Shel Silverstein
Happy Cool Down!
In the San Francisco Bay area we rarely get really hot, at least not on the coast. So in the city and along the coast when it gets around eighty degrees we kind of suffer. Part of it is not being used to it, part of it is the fact that very few of us have air conditioning. So for my Friday off I was looking for something to do the night before and had kind of settled on something I wasn’t really excited about. Then I saw a post on social media, someone asking for SF vacation recommendations, things to do. Someone mentioned taking the ferry to Sausalito and I had it. So I decided to take the lunchtime ferry from San Francisco to Sausalito. The idea of both having a half hour boat ride out on the bay, and a couple of hours walking along the ocean in Sausalito seemed like a great way to beat the heat.
So I started out by taking BART over to the Embarcadero and visiting one of my favorite sculptures on the way to the Ferry Building to catch the ferry.
The ride across the bay to Sausalito turned out to be gloriously foggy and cold and was a lovely ride over. Had a lovely chat with some tourists who were interested in the biology of the bay and were taking a not so direct route to Muir Woods. Upon arriving in Sausalito I met the Pirate Reverend, Pete Romanowski. He claims to have been on a house boat in Sausalito since 1964, and to hanging out on this bench for the last 18 years. He also claimed that the houseboat spot he had was where Otis Reading wrote Dock of the Bay. Now a Sausalito houseboat was where he penned the first verse of the song, so who knows. Well Reverend Pete was busking/hustling on the waterfront, and he seemed like an interesting guy, so I sat down for a rev to rev chat. He was entertaining as hell and we had a nice fifteen minute chat, then I dropped a five in his guitar case and said goodbye, he said, see you on the way back out.
Sausalito is lovely little seaside town. There are a lot of art galleries and shops and even a little seaside museum. It’s why I used the Shel Silverstein quote, turns out he lived in Sausalito during some of his most productive years. It was a nice mellow time walking around the town. I decided to get lunch at the Napa Valley Burger Bar and then a little apple strudel at a cafe for desert, both were excellent. However, I have to say the Napa Valley Burger Bar makes one hell of a burger, I had their bacon burger and it was fabulous.
There were some interesting little bits of town, a front yard with a really fabulous decoration. A nice little sea lion sculpture on the beach and an interesting mailbox sculpture.
There also was of course, as expected, lots of great little parks and flowers over town, and we all know I like a good flower shot.
Made my way back across the bay and the fog had significantly pushed out so got some great views of the Bay Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, boats on the bay, Alcatraz and the city from the water.
It was a great decision and a lovely day, glad I made the decision to flee the heat for the afternoon.
Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Posted in personal happiness
Tagged be happy, burger, happiness, happy, life, napa valley, san francisco, sausalito, travel
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A Happy Sunny Summer Day in San Francisco
I grew up in San Francisco. And so I’m informed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I’m a very ardent patriot. ~ George Lucas
A Happy Sunny Summer Day in San Francisco
I’m fortunate enough in my job to be able to work a four, ten hour a day schedule in the summer. So this means I get eight free Fridays every summer. I consider these Fridays to be very precious and try really hard not to squander them by simply sleeping in and taking it easy. So while in fact I did waste the first one last week in exactly that manner, I was determined not to do that this week and made plan to visit a museum I have not been to in San Francisco, the De Young.
In planning my day I realized that the De Young is currently hosting an exhibit, Monet in Venice, and I’ve never seen a complete Monet exhibit so I was excited to visit. I was excited for the De Young in general, I’ve walked it’s grounds several time but had never visited the museum. It’s not a huge museum but it has really interesting architecture and I really love the layout. The grounds are wonderful and I dig their sculpture garden out behind their cafe. Probably my favorite room was the Oceania room, the sculptures in particular were really fascinating. There were some interesting pieces throughout the museum including a number of really interesting Chihuly pieces. Some of my favorites below:
I was excited for the Monet exhibit and it was nicely laid out with a good number of pieces. But I was a little disappointed. Let me put it this way, Monet’s work is really lovely, the paintings of Venice and the water lily paintings were beautiful and absolutely showed the talent and skill that the master possessed. But for me, art is not just about skill and beauty, for me personally, what makes me love a piece of art is if it moves me emotionally. My favorite painter is Van Gogh, and in Massachusetts several years ago I saw an exhibit of mostly lesser known pieces except for two, Wheatfields and Starry Night. The thing is though, almost every piece in the collection moved me in some small way, whether it was a village, a portrait, a field of wheat or an evening sky, something in Van Gogh’s work taps emotion in me. It’s this metric that makes Rodin’s sculpture of Saint John the Baptist my favorite piece of art. Decades ago a Rodin exhibit came to the museum in Knoxville, Tennessee while I was there in graduate school. I went to the exhibit, excited to see The Thinker and his enormous gate sculptures. The exhibit was incredibly impressive but much like Monet’s paintings, while I recognized the talent, skill and beauty of the pieces I wasn’t particularly moved. They had set up some of the pieces in a bit of a twisty maze of curtains so that you’d turn the corner and be face to face with the next piece. I was going through this part of the exhibit when I had the most amazing art experience of my life. I turned the corner and was face to face with St. John the Baptist, looking directly into the sculpture’s eyes and I started to weep. The piece touched me immediately and deeply in a way I cannot explain or understand but I was stunned. I spent an inordinate amount of time with that piece and it was an incredible experience.
I left the De Young and walked a winding route back to the Civic Center Bart station, strolling around Golden Gate Park.
I strolled through the Haight-Ashbury District.
And back down through Hayes Valley to BART, but this also meant I got to make pizza stops at both Escape from NY and Gioia Pizzeria, the two best slice places in the city.
I really love my walking days in the city. Today was really wonderful, the weather was absolutely perfect, Golden Gate Park was full of people and music. I did a drive at the beginning up to the De Young in a Waymo, and doing a robot taxi is always a blast and our robot overloads always remind us who is in control.
And yes, Waymos are Jaguars, so they’re really nice vehicles, today it even did a right on red which was a bit of a surprise to me. So great weather, a five mile walk and some great pizza make for a really wonderful and happy day in San Francisco my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Posted in personal happiness
Tagged be happy, california, de young, haight ashburry, happiness, happy, life, monet, pizza, rodin, san francisco, travel, van gogh, waymo, writing
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A Happy SF Slice Debate
I like coal fired. I’m definitely, generally, always a coal-fired guy. Crispy, don’t do a ton of sauce, but kind of a well-done, coal-fired pizza is my jam. ~ Dave Portnoy
A Happy SF Slice Debate
So, if you’ve read this blog at all, or know me even a little bit, you know the significant place pizza holds in my life. If you want proof, just check out the pizza page. In San Francisco, I’m always on the look out for high quality NY slices. A NY pizza slice has a very specific set of characteristics, thin crust, crispy bottom, sauce that is not sweet, good quality, full fat cheese with a bit of a fluffy crust and a burn bubble is always a beautiful bit of authenticity.
San Francisco is of course a very large city, with many, many pizza places or places that serve pizza. What I’m always looking for though, is first off slice places, if they don’t do slices it’s not part of this discussion. And of course, I’m looking for NY slices. Sure there are Sicillian Style, Detroit Style, Chicago Style and all manner of gourmet slices. A lot of these are really good food, but they’re just not part of this conversation for me, and not what I crave when I want pizza.
I’ve sampled, and reviewed, a lot of pizza places in San Francisco and have had some incredible disappointments. There are also a lot of places that have good reputations and are good, but not spectacular. In San Francisco, for me, on the NY slice front there are truly two competitors, Escape from NY and Gioia. Escape has two locations and I really need to hit the downtown location for comparison some day, but the one I frequent is in the Haight-Ashbury area of the city. And I was there today:
You can see from the picture that slices at Escape absolutely pass the eye test for a NY slice. And honestly they can hit every point. The one thing that Escape does better than anyone is to nail the crispy bottom and soft crust of a perfect NY slice. The mushroom slice in the picture was absolutely a perfect slice. Toppings good and not overwhelming, sauce and cheese on point and an absolutely perfect crispy bottom with a soft crust. However, that pepperoni slice was meh, at best. The pepperoni wasn’t great quality, the sauce wasn’t quite right and the bottom was not crispy at all. And that’s the issue with Escape for me. They do everything right, it feels like a NY pizza place, down to the completely disinterested look on the face of the guy at the counter. It’s bare bones, a few tables, good music playing and a wall full of celebrity images of people who’ve eaten their pizza.
The pictures above are just a sample of the huge number of pictures from super famous actors and bands, to local bands and regional groups and athletes. So the atmosphere is absolutely on point and like that mushroom slice they can absolutely knock it out of the park, but the problem is consistency. I mean two slices at the same time and the quality was miles apart. Still, one of the best slices in the city.
The king though for me is Gioia. The ambiance isn’t a NY pizza place, the bottom is crispy just never quite perfectly crispy. But the slices are near perfect and consistently so, to the point that in all of the times that I’ve gotten a slice, and it’s a lot, I’ve never had a substandard slice, the quality is remarkably consistent.
So today, a really wonderful walking day in San Francisco did confirm one thing for me, that Gioia is still the king and good pizza slices always make for a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Posted in personal happiness, Pizza Places
Tagged be happy, happiness, happy, life, New York, NY style pizza, pizza, san francisco, slices
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Tiny Happiness
Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement. ~ Golda Meir
Tiny Happiness
A small post tonight, about a very simple idea, taking pleasure and gaining happiness from the small things. This time of year I post a lot of photos of what’s pictured above, and what I call, the tiny patio garden. Other years the garden is a little more complex, in addition to tomatoes I’ve often had basil, scallions, dill and mint that I grew. But this year, as I am trying to make a move out of my current life and situation, I decided to keep the tiny patio garden even a bit smaller than normal. So this year I only bought two tomato plants. However, one of my cherry tomato plants has hung on since last summer and is still producing, I ate the first tomato off it for the year today. It’s not producing a lot, but anything is a bonus. Additionally, in another two pots I have volunteers, plants coming up either from the roots of the plants from last year or seeds from a cherry tomato that dropped into the pot. I have a feeling both volunteers are cherry tomato plants. One is tiny, the other is doing incredibly well.
So, while the tiny patio garden is extra tiny this year, looks like I’ll still have a decent flow of homegrown tomatoes. In addition to my first cherry tomato, I also had my first regular tomato of the season that I wrote about this weekend. And so yes, I’ve already sliced, salted and ate my first homegrown tomato of the season.
While it’s not very big, or all that impressive, I take great joy and happiness from my tiny patio garden. It’s very soothing and a bit zen to be out on the deck and trimming the plants, pulling weeds and even watering them. Of course, there’s great joy in eating the tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes taste so much better than store bought tomatoes.
While I’m certainly all about big swings at happiness and adventure, we can’t do those things all the time. There need to be consistent and small bits of happiness that we wrap into our lives to make this existence as good as it can be, my tiny patio garden is certainly that for me. As they are annoyingly saying on social media these days, tiny patio garden tax below. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Posted in personal happiness
Tagged be happy, garden, gardening, happiness, happy, life, small things, tomatoes
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The Ministry of Happiness 