Monday, September 28, 2009

Bad Thai Food

I knew i shouldn't have let myself get so fixated on this place. I just knew it. I saw this place whilst driving down Post st. and for some reason the purple neon lights beckoned to me. We tried to go on Saturday night but couldn't find parking. So I insisted we try it last night. What was I thinking? I hadn't read any reviews of the place prior to going. I hadn't even heard any word of mouth about it either. I just knew I had to do it. I think it's because after eating at the Thai noodle shop in L.A. I have become obsessed with finding similar noodle gems here in the city. I seriously love southeast Asian food. Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Burmese et al. I haven't eaten Laotian food, but I hear it's very similar. Sadly, with the huge popularity of these cuisines there seems to be such a cluster fuck of mediocre to bad restaurants out there. Bahn on Polk st. was no exception. I should have known when Steph pointed out the fact that no one was there when we came in. Bad sign. I should have known when we sat down and watch a roach scurry down the wall. But, I can be one stubborn bastard when I want to be. I learn things the hard way at times. I ordered a plate of unspectacular fried noodles with pork. Snooze. What really drove it home was the pink in color soup that Steph got. It looked to me like when beets are introduced into a salad that has blue cheese dressing, or some other iteration of white cream based dressing, involved. It turns this sickly pink color. What a horrible color for broth to be. The flavor didn't do much to help. I couldn't nail it down but it didn't taste remotely Thai to me. And lastly, the inclusion of faux crab in the soup was just horrific. I deplore imitation crab. Not because of it's taste, which is almost non existent but rather I hate it because it's fake and the restaurant is telling you they are too cheap to use the real thing. It was a sad dinner. Oh and they only take cash which I hate because I hate carrying cash. Steph said she might have thought the servers shoes were okay, for vacation shoes anyway. They were these little shoes that had all the look of a mary jane and all the comfort of a sneaker. I was in no mood. They looked awful to me. They're her feet, but I would have to lodge a protest against them. Seething with rage we went to the grocery store to have a little shop. I said little shop because I'm really enjoying the way Brits say things like "having a laugh" or "having a sleep." I have also heard one of them say that he and his girl were going to do a "big shop" rather than a small one. Brilliant! And no I don't wish I was English and therefore go around annoying people with my faux Brit accent or my insistence that I love soccer. I may annoy Steph at times with my insistence that I love British comedy. Just ask her about when we were fist dating and I put Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in the VCR. But whatevs. I really do. Also I like that they eat a lot of things involving meat pies and mashed potatoes and lots of sauce to cover everything. That's pretty exciting too. To sum up. Bahn no good. Also don't pretend that you're English. It works for Jude Law and that's great but he also got caught fucking his not at all hot housekeepr.

Wow.

A complete Rando from Germany sent me a request via Youtube to watch her video.l Normally I'd be like "Fuck you and your video!" It's just the way I am. Secondly it was a video of her doing a cover of "Machine Gun" by Portishead. Portishead is one of my Fav bands and if you try and cover one of their songs and you butcher it I'm going to hate you for wasting my time. But I liked that she said she did her own version of it. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. This girl killed it. I share it.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Funny Thing about weekends when you're unemployed - they don't mean quite so much.



OK, I am gainfully employed, but I was really just thinking about Primus for a second. Ah those were the fun, fun times. This weekend we also had fun, fun times. On Friday night we went to Sebo in Hayes Valley. We've been hearing a great deal about this place, especially after Anthony Bourdain's visit to SF. We wanted to compare and contrast it with a place that Steph is steeped in experience, Sushi Sam's in San Mateo. It's hard to imagine that the best Sushi I've tasted in the Bay Area resides in a suburb, but it does. Sebo was supposed to top it. It features two sushi chefs doing it the old school and very traditional way, the best and most flavorful fish available with minimal preparation. I do love that style. I like it when compared with all the myriad rolled sushi stuffed with everything, including the kitchen sink and given such trite names like, "Dragon Roll." That is not to say I don't like that stuff because I do. I just think it's a bit overdone and used to hide the fact that the fish isn't the best. We ordered 5 different kinds of fish, yellowtail, sea urchin, sardine, butterfish and their very special tuna. Everything about Sebo just screamed to me that this place should be amazing, the atmosphere, the presentation, the colors etc. But they fell short on a couple of major points. Firstly, they are over the top expensive. Secondly, their portions are ridiculously small. Their cuts are probably half of what you'll usually find. Then lastly there was the flavor. I just wasn't getting it. The butterfish, the yellowtail and most importantly the tuna all failed to excite me. To me the tuna didn't taste much different than that of a grocery store bought piece of tuna. It's texture was lacking. Sad. But, the sea urchin and the sardine were very good. Anyway, the total for this meal, plus a a beer and some miso soup was about $80. Meh, I'll tick to Sushi Sams. It's not exactly cheap either but I always enjoy myself there. We were so nonplussed by Sebo, we had to go and get second dinner elsewhere. And speaking of food, we went to visit my business partner and good buddy Andy at Fabric 8 Gallery because he was doing some live food painting. I snatched an ice cream cone from him. It was also good to see his lady and my hair stylist Karafina.

On Saturday we had to go up to Petaluma because the dogs had an "interview" (I'm not kidding.) at a prospective dog boarder. It's a very cool environment for dogs because they spend most of their day running around a large yard with other dogs playing, running, napping and just being dogs. We're so against leaving the girls anyplace where they don't have freedom of movement. It's hard to find but totally worth the search. The interview consisted of us dropping the girls off at 10 am (we were late) and picking them up at 4pm. We hoped for the best. After we dropped them off we headed to Napa to meet up with my Mom and my Aunt who is in town from Minneapolis. We had a great brunch at the Boone Fly cafe . Afterwards we had some time to kill and we headed up to Dean and Deluca to browse around and look at all of the incredible food stuffs. I love Dean and Deluca! I could spend like a million dollars there, on cheese alone. We bought some delicious items indeed. We bought a pink salt brick fro our friends b-day. These things are awesome, you can cook food right on them and the food will absorb the salt. You can serve cold foods on the brick as well and it serves the same function. We also bought the bacon infused peanut brittle as a lark because the packaging is so awesome. Sir Francis Bacon. Priceless! Among the haul we found a pure cane sugar Dr. Pepper in an 8oz. bottle. It was great, and the bottle is so kitsch we're hanging on to it. Then we ended up going with our buddy Oliver, who I am working on an adaptation of the A Team with, to see Jennifer's Body. Steph and I enjoy bad horror together, and we wanted to see how Diablo Cody pens a horror flick. Megan Fox isn't hard on the eyes either. The movie wasn't great but I didn't hate it. I think Diablo Cody's writing is pretty easy to spot. She invents slang that to me sounds kind of lame, but then that makes it kind of cool. Oliver was mad that it didn't have more horrific gore, and Steph just thought it was bad. Megan Fox has no effect on her. I just didn't have an opinion either way. The movie just kind of happened. But, then today I thought about it and there was a movie that came out a few years ago, and I think it was called Tamara? Anyway it was about a girl that was nerdy and then she died and came back as this total sex kitten that lured boys to their doom with her plunging necklines and hiked up hems. It also featured a girl who had to stop her. Shit, that sounds familiar. Way to go Diablo! However, I do see the genius in Diablo Cody putting out a Horror flick. She had such a hit with Juno that it's going to be super hard for her to top it since everything is going to be compared to it. But, then she puts out a horror flick and she gets to have a pass for it being bad because horror flicks are expected to be bad. Then a year or so from now she can try and work on another opus. Brilliant!

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Hearting these food shops!!!!!!!!



I'm loving the latest in food trends (that I'm noticing at least) here in SF. I'm starting to see a few small sandwich shops starting to open for very limited lunch hours, and often they're sold out before the usual closing times. These shops are distinguishing themselves by using impeccable top shelf ingredients to create some amazing flavor profiles. By keeping the menus small they're able to focus on quality and execution. Rotating the menus sometimes daily allows them to keep things fresh and adds a certain "I must return on Tuesday" quality. The twos shops are Kitchenette SF and The Sentinel SF.

Updated the Ye Olde Etsy Shoppe


So yeah I updated the Etsy shop with a little project spurred on by Steph's grand vision of more boy-centric accessorizing. Head on over to my little Etsy shop and BUY!!!!!!!!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Sorry vegan peeps

This evening steph and I met up with her family for her dads birthday. We went to a faniciful place where all of your dreams can be seriously considered and possibly green lit. That place of course is broadway prime. Broadway prime serves prime rib almost exclusively. It's quite a sight to behold. They keep it pretty tradtional with horseradish, creamed spinach, potatoes and for the love of all that is holy, fucking popovers! Puffy, chewy, lovely popovers. Sweet! I consumed en masse and it was epic. I shan't eat like that again for another year at least. The experince was not to be outdone by our gift to her pops. We made him some homemade beef jerky and holy miarde it was good! Stephs dad is my spicy partner on crime. I wanted to make him some jerky with a nice bite to it. We decided to go for a Thai flavor profile. I made a marinade using soy sauce, fish sauce, shrimp paste, sriracha, lemongrass, lime juice, onion, garlic, ginger, sugar and 3 kinds of chiles. We put the strips in a 225 degree oven for about 5 hours. All I can say is god damnnit that is some tasty jerky. That's the recipe and you can take it and run with it.












Wherever you go, there you are

Thursday, September 17, 2009

For the glory of the state!

It is done! We're ready to go to print with our new shirt designs. We'll have 7 and then two typeface designs. It took me a little while to really associate a slogan that had an authoritarian slant while corresponding to the design itself. Hopefully these shirts will find their audience. I guess that's where clever marketing plans come into play. Anyway feast your eyes on a sneak peek at the designs to come:





Monday, September 14, 2009

An Unexpected Treat



Last night was something of an unexpected treat. I actually had dueling plans for the day which originally called for either cleaning up the screen printing studio and prepping screens or working on my film project with my buddy Oliver. Neither plan came to fruition so I opted to clean our house. I used liberal amounts of Kaboom! on everything. It's purple and has a pleasing bouquet, if a tad fruity. It seems to work fairly well on most surfaces but I got a little cocky and tried to use it to clean a mirror. OK, that was a fail! I had to redo the mirror with a proper glass cleaner..... Holy shit! I am I really positing a household cleaner review? No, I hadn't planned to until I sat down to write. What I really wanted to do was to give a brief description of how non eventful my Sunday was shaping up to be. However, I really wasn't too worried because I knew an episode of the Mighty Boosh was coming on at 1 am so it was all going to be good. But, what I had forgotten is that Steph's online friend Tiffany Star's, who as it happens to turn out is actually our real life neighbor so to speak, art show at Candy Bar which is a very cool little dessert/ wine bar in the Western Addition area of town. We went to be nice and friendly but it ended up being a very random night of fun. Firstly, her art was pretty cool, very girlie but with a kind of dare I say it an aesthetic Tim Burton might well be proud of. Secondly, Can Bar turned out to be a pretty awesome place to hang out. We had initially thought it was the same place we'd been to before in the T.L. which we came to discover is named Sugar. We really didn't care for Sugar because when you bill yourself as a Dessert Bar you should serve deserts past 10. WTF Sugar? Anyway we discovered that it was not in fact the same place and that we were in new territory. We started with drinks, I had a delicious Michelada, which is basically Beer plus salt, lime juice and Tabasco. It was awesome! Steph had a Strawberry infused beverage that was built from ginger ale, prosecco and a fresh strawberry. We followed that up with a dessert which turned out to be grand. It was called a fudgecicle and it consisted of a liquid fudge that had been flash frozen (in liquid nitrogen presumably) into the shape of a fudgecicle. It had a firm, frozen shell but was liquid inside. Nice touch. It was topped with a cannelle of vanilla bean ice cream and lying in a drizzle of some very flavorful caramel. The best part though was the candied corn nuts. That's right I said corn nuts. It brought a savory edge to the dish and worked really well with the other flavors. Nice!

Another nice part of the evening was that our host, Tiffany and her B/F turned out to be very cool peeps. We sometimes see them when we're walking our dogs and we say hello and all, but Steph and I are kind of aloof at times and most definitely in your face chatty peeps. We ended up talking to them for a good part of the night and as we were leaving they invited us to a late dinner with them at the Bagdad Cafe. As for the Bagdad(sic) Cafe I will say this. I have never been, there are just so many restaurants to go to in San Francisco that it gets hard to try new places as much as you'd like. But, this place is pretty sweet! It's open 24 hours for starters. What blew my mind was the menu. Keep in mind that I had planned on rounding out the evening with a Curry Bun at home, but I opened the menu and they had a "Manwich!" A Fucking Manwich! I haven't eaten a sloppy joe since I was about 6 so I said fuck it, it's a Manwich night. It was pretty good and we'll for sure go back for some late night post '84 rendezvous in the future.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

We're serious about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Steph and I went to the Yeahs (the other two yeahs are becoming terribly monotonous to type) show last night at the fabulous Fox theater in Oakland. It ended up being a great show. Karen O was fun to watch especially when Steph noted that she was a little reminiscent of Molly Shannon's Mary Katherine Gallagher character in her quirky stage moves. Karen O is a "superstar!" Not only were Karen O's dance moves up for scrutiny but the audience as well. Steph and I are brutal dance judges and let me tell you, the girl in the striped pants was just bizarre. As for the show I have but this to say, and it's really an open note to all bands: Enough with the ridiculously predictable encores! Seriously just tell us you require a minute to gather your thoughts or else just play straight til the end. Also on a side note I loathe public restrooms but Fox theater I would make a pee in your bathroom again anytime! In fact I may go to shows there just to use their nice bathroom. Also before hand we stopped off at a little french restaurant called Spencer's that operates out of a truck on Folsom st. We had frog legs and a halibut bisque. It was tasty! I have uploaded a terrible photo from the night. I couldn't get a better one at the time so we gave up.


Wherever you go, there you are

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Chinese Dessert Spots

Steph and I like checking out the various Chinese dessert diners around the city and on down the peninsula, and there are tons of them but we really only go to a few of them. We go for the Milk Tea and Egg Puffs and stay for the noodles. Tonight was no different. Except maybe for the peach buns, which don't actually have peaches in them. Oh they look like peaches, but they don't taste like peaches at all.

Friday, September 4, 2009

T.B.A.

I figured I'd take a moment to remind myself what's to come as far as what we're working on. Andy and I have been working on a series of shirts based on one of his pieces.

1. The original piece is as best can be described, a deranged food pyramid. We're doing a series of 7 shirts based on that. Each shirt will have a piece of the pyramid and the 7th will be the full version of the pyramid, in gold. Our idea is to have the series be branded as a "collectable" series. We want to market them using a blind box approach, meaning you won't know which shirt you'll get. Thus you can trade them etc. We plan on making the gold pyramid be somewhat more limited. Each will include a handmade label across the base of the shirt featuring either the boys or girls logos. and a screen printed "tag" instead of the traditional sewn in tags. Also we're going to do a set of branded typeface T's. One great thing about Andy is he comes up with his own fonts.

2. Our inspiration. We both are really kind of interested in dystopian imagery, film, and literature. Books such as 1984, Animal Farm, and films such as Blade Runner and Brazil and I am especially interested in Communist propaganda. Now take that and mix it with the fact that I love food and Andy likes drawing food items in such a way that even makes ice cream seem unpalatable. I also really want to incorporate a story line into a series of shirts so that each shirt is like an illustrated and wearable page from a book. So we'll be incorporating some messaging on this series. It's not quite that grand vision but hey we can always do that later on.

3. Packaging, Branding. To me packaging is very important and I love the opportunity that it gives to make an item stand out. What I don't like about it is all the waste that's created. As for branding, I really like details like hang tags, but again same problem. Too much waste. Instead of plastic bags for packaging I think I want to use handmade canvas bags. I envision them being "sewn to order." As for the tags I want to make them so that they double as book marks or something.

Future plans. OK so let's say business is booming and peeps like our stuff. What's next? Good question. I think then I'd like to have vintage dresses and coats deconstructed and remade and screen print on them and add details etc. I know not ground breaking, but I'm not a fashion designer. Also I think it would be cool to make blazers and cardigans with perp school style embroidered logos. I'd festoon them with pin back buttons too.

4. The Goods. The following are not in any kind of order. I just want to show what's up (please note these aren't necessarily the final versions of anything. These are just drafts.





Thursday, September 3, 2009

My Calling

Apparently I am working on a new series of photographs entitled "The empyrean pleasures of napping with Bibi." Steph is my muse and Bibi provides the serotonin drip through an eager R.S.V.P of the ocular nerve . My medium is camera phone.





Update: It seems I've been got!